We assert aspirations to self-control, to self-determination and free will through the multiplicity of options and variables or combinatorial dimensions and degrees of freedom available to us but even as we assert control, it slips away. There are logical enigmas in rationality, in psychology and in the effervescent, autonomously self-propagating information systems that we inhabit […]
The single biggest barrier to good decision making is believing that the complexity of our world can be captured in singular lists or taxonomies which are easily communicated and become objects of salience in a landscape of information over-abundance to minds which are struggling to cope with all the noise. There is no one solution, […]
Is philosophical truth bounded by paradigms of scientific convention or proven fact? Well, no – just as mind is not bounded by the limits of language in the way ordered or rational cognition is. Language may be the limit of my world, but it is not the limit of mind, sentience or consciousness.
…and there we all are, staring longingly into the mirror of our own projected aspirations to completeness, wholeness, happiness and peace; there only to discover that as soon as we identified the concept, the idea and Object of our desire – of our Self, of an Other or some compound material external entity or (self-)possession […]
That boundary between the world as it is and as any of us would rather have it be is a stark cartography of relentless dissatisfaction. The expanding volume and referential space between what is and what might be is that labyrinthine, glorious confusion around which this, our own selves, orbit and upon which the essential […]
Wittgenstein once remarked that when addressing mystery and that which lies beyond language (and thus – beyond cognition) we should remain silent as there is nothing useful that can be said. He was correct, but for the wrong reason. That which lies beyond language and structural or grammatical utility does not necessarily (or at least […]
It takes more strength to be kind that it ever takes to be cruel but this world positively incentivises and encourages adversarial competition, cruelty and aggression. I seem to have inadvertently found myself on the wrong planet…
Meanwhile, the pandemic is starting to take off (again) here in Australia, spreading rapidly… …history is always implicitly interesting but is generally best seen from a safe distance.
The more we all become digitally connected, the less we actually and sincerely connect. There is a vast (and possibly inevitable) vacuum of trust and faith in each other, in interpersonal or international bonding and in humanity. This lack of trust leads us all, for the most part, to seek to share and inhabit the […]
Intelligence is either there in (or as) someone’s mind or it is not. Where it is not there, no amount of rhetorical hyperbole or tribal and ideological alignment can dissimulate its absence. Ignorance can in most cases be remediated, lack of intelligence is a little more difficult to amend.
It’s a big Buddha. I can’t help but wonder if the whole point of emotional non-attachment has been lost on some people. The more we attach ourselves to ideas of things, people, places – the more internally fragmented we ourselves become. We are all to some extent trapped by our own behavioural reflexes and the […]
We are all quite simply role-playing: doing what it is that we think that someone like that who we believe we are should be doing, regardless that there is no one thing that anyone actually is. Fascinated by this internalised mirror image of Other as Self, we find ourselves transfixed by fantasy and illusion. Even […]
