Do we know nothing until we know everything?

Or is there something we can actually claim we know, a kind of cumulative, partial and thus incorrect understanding about the bits of the whole? As bits, how can they possibly incarnate the whole?

To think about the whole, you must segment it. Chop it or bite it like an apple. For instance, the apple we must not eat from the tree at 2:17 am… Does it sound familiar? But when you make (break!) it to pieces you can swallow, it’s gone. Plus, and even more worrisome, you aim at understanding it all while leaving you aside? Funny the way it is. It is like saying: let me just think about everything and, then, once I got it, I will think about myself. Like asking everyone to walk naked in the street while you wear sandals, a long coat, a hat and sunglasses in order to scrutinize them all. How can I know the world if I do not even know how many bones are there in my body? Know Thyself… Remember?

The fact that I am aware that I exist is, no doubt, the most important fact of my existence.

How anthropocentric and belly-focussed can we be?! The gods’ duty is to watch us. It does not rain because we behaved bad. The planet we live in is at the center of the solar system. Monkeys are more like rolling stones than like humans. A black person is called black, a white person does not need the adjective. The human genome project should show how special we are in terms of base pairs… All matter is unconscious unless that in the human brain from which fantastic properties “emerge”. We suffer, animals only have some minor pain. We are agents with free will. Elephants, of course not. The proof is scientifically clear: we have language, they don’t. Plants are stupid and we simply grow them and control them. Think about coffee, chocolate, rice and weed, for instance. Who controls who? Dolphins may be intelligent, but as a curiosity for water parks. We are here to exploit the planet, not to live in harmony with it in it. How much more do we need until we accept and then reject the endless list of none-sense claims embedded in the collective mind?

Do we know nothing until we know everything? Do I need to pile up stuff until I gradually approach revelation from a dissolving delusive state? Or, am I fooling myself by entertaining me with a task until the sudden illumination occurs? My wife cannot be half-pregnant. Can I be half-wise? Or half-ignorant? Things occur, rather than me causing them… A decision is made (by English speakers), a decision is taken (for Spaniards), a decision is received (by Hebrew people).

Is ignorance a naturally selected trait? Does stupidity make us fitter (notice, not better) for survival in this chaotic world? Is the progeny’s progeny of an automaton man the only thing that counts? Like bacteria in a plate, are we growing until extinction?

Can a man be evil? Can a human being become a saint? Can you be right and wrong at the same time? Would you change your opinion eventually, please!? Why isn’t my belief a fact? Why aren’t the facts just the tip of an assumption iceberg? An implicit hypothesis that, through amnesia, has shrunk and become a thesis.

Is causation really the responsible of the consequence or a mere correlation at the very best? Is time a phenomenon only real in the mental realm? What is truth? How is it different than what is real? Why am I conscious on occasions? Where do I go when I am not? Can before and after be swapped? Can I be here and there? Is me so much different than you, I mean, in essence?

Language is as mysterious, if not more, than mathematics. What lays in a formula lives in the crystal clear aseptic world of the meaningless ideas. What lays in a word is a mythology, an analogy, a reflection of the human enigma, a powerful tool for magic that can serve several masters: it can represent ignorance, it can encode true wisdom, or it can postpone (sometimes forever) that which will never be fully grasped. Schrodinger’s equation is a piece of beauty about the quantum nature of the physical word. Schrodinger’s cat is as confusing and fascinating as degenerate in the sense of the possible interpretations to what the formula really means. It means a lot. At the same time, it means nothing. It just predicts. It dictates the deterministic dynamics of wave function, a kind of slavery regime imposed on that majestic object.

Is it worthy to cluster and put in a bag under a funky name (such as God, Universe, Laws, Science, Logic, I, Death, or Energy) that which we cannot make sense of, at the danger that the dust under the carpet is what actually explains the carpet and everything on top? At the expense of a life-time investigation on the properties of the leaf, you may never know it belongs to the forest.

If I say this statement is false, is it true that it is false, or is it false that it is true? Logic sucks! Like pop-corn, you eat and eat until you are filled but not full. When you are ready to hit me, I shall speak out and whisper in your ear: I am ready to agree with those that do not agree with me. See? I just changed the world with a simple thought. I will love my enemy. I will hate my friend. Twenty-first century large-hadron colliders and two-photon microscopes. Whole-genome sequencing and real-time behavioral tracking. GFPs and CD-ROMs. A large detour to fulfill the circle and come back to where we started, to come back to when and where we had already been. Why? Who? How? What for?

The question is no more and no less than the mechanism to survive in the void. The question is the occupation of those who already have the intuition that there cannot be any answer. Let me add, and for those who found the courage to ask themselves over and over in order to never forget that.

As the Old Tradition asserts: The Universe is Mental, held in the Mind of The All.

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If you want…

If you want to know about something, read about it.

If you want to learn something, work out the details.

If you want to understand something, use and apply it.

If you want to master something, do it yourself!

 

There are several things somebody could show you. 

The most important ones, though, you need to experience them on your own.

Don’t complain, be thankful and move!


Comunicar, ¿para qué?

Revisitando técnicas de comunicación y algunos de sus síntomas me doy cuenta de que son tan fáciles de nombrar en teoría como difíciles de llevar a la práctica. Sin embargo, quizás la cuestión más importante queda a menudo sin responder (incluso sin formular): comunicar, ¿para qué?

Ahí va mi visión. Comunicar es externalizar primero para luego internalizar. La comunicación es simultáneamente el proceso y su vehículo. Comunicar es expresar para capturar de nuevo. Es proyectar lo propio en lo ajeno para verme a mí mismo. Esa otra perspectiva no es simplemente otro punto de vista, sino que es la mirada que me permite ser. La subjetividad que me confiere objetividad. Es análogo al proceso que se lleva a cabo ante un espejo. Siendo yo mismo el emisor y receptor de la luz, el espejo es la otra persona que está presente. Si tú me miras, a través tuyo yo puedo ser.

Como en la magia, sin espectador el truco no tiene sentido ni razon de ser. La comunicación también transmuta lo que hay alrededor. Puede tener varios matices. Pueder ser blanca o negra. Sutil o escandalosa. Consciente o inconsciente. Constructiva, conservativa o autodestructiva. Verbal o gestual. Por acción o por omisión. Factual o contextual. Magia de todos modos.

Probablemente comunicar tenga una intención poco altruista, aunque teñida irremediablemente de una preciosa interconectividad. Comparto partes de mi ser para que cuando vuelvan estén impregnadas de ti. Te grito que te odio porque en el fondo (no en la forma) te amo. Te ignoro porque sé que dependo de ti. Te necesito para sentirme seguro, y eso me da aún más miedo. Te miento porque ya me he engañado yo antes. Te desprecio porque no soporto la falta de aprecio. Podemos saber de nuestra altura por la sombra que proyectamos en el suelo. En ese instante, el suelo soy yo y yo soy el suelo.

Biológicamente, toda esta fascinante historia provenga de la evolución de nuestro instinto de intimidad en una convolución de nuestro instinto social con el de conservación. Comunicar simplemente para manipular… Así fuera en su origen. Pero nótese la siguiente progresión de palabras, y como evoluciona su significado y grafía: reacción, acción, acto y pacto. Reacción: defensa automática a través del ataque, la huída, el rechazo o la risa, que demuestra dependencia y falta de consciencia (me pinchas y salto). Acción: independencia aunque insconsciente (vienes a pincharme y me aparto). Acto: interpretación de nuestra independencia a través de la consciencia (te aviso de que si me pinchas te parto la cara). Pacto: transmutación y sublimación de lo anterior hacia la interdependencia (ya sabes que no me gusta que me pinchen y qué te espera si lo haces).

A nivel individual todo se reduce a cómo transformamos la energía en fuerza. Agresividad es malgastarla por exceso. Pasividad, lo mismo por defecto. La neurosis comparte piso con la psicosis. El centro se distingue por su levedad. Una esfera, aún teniendo área finita, no tiene límites. Lo mismo sucede con la energía comunicativa.

On information and ignorance

“I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance”, Reuben Blades said.

Let me briefly comment on two words: “informed” and “ignorance”.

“Informed” evokes to me the notion of something that has been shaped so much over and over by the others that has lost its original configuration and, even worse, the ability to adapt to change. It has forgotten both things: who I am and who I can become. It has been given so many forms that it cannot adopt one anymore. It resists to everything, even its current state. All its energy is used against itself. By putting so much emphasis in formation we often forget the other side of the coin: identification. The content is obsessed with its context. In the process, our adaptation potential crystalizes and we are as rigid and fragile as a glass. No longer can we accommodate for evolving environments. All that is left is a poor empty vessel filled with the same inanimate substance.

“Ignorance” to me does not mean not knowing as much as not wanting to know. Lack of interest is much more self-destructive than lack of information. Meditate on the difference between these statements: (a) I just know I do not know, or (ii) I just know I do not want to know. The ignorant can also become so by excess instead of defect: by knowing so much that there is no room to operate. Like a superhero that has so much muscle that his own weight smashes his body into the ground. Imagine an education system that everyday asks the kid for the following exercise. Today you have to keep one thing, gain a new one and, very importantly, get rid of an old one. Creation, maintenance and destruction. That is the only way life can go on. That is how Nature is.

Mejor, no más.

Quiero conocerme mejor, no más. Quiero comer mejor, no más. Quiero trabajar mejor, no más. Quiero dormir mejor, no más. Quiero amarte mejor, no más. Quiero comunicar mejor, no más. Quiero pensar mejor, no más. Quiero sentirte mejor, no más. Quiero escuchar mejor, no más. Quiero verte mejor, no más. Quiero crecer mejor, no más. Quiero leer mejor, no más. Quiero escribir mejor, no más. Quiero simplemente ser, ni mejor ni más. Quiero ver, no más, sino más allá. Quiero querer lo que quiero. Quiero calidad y cualidad, no más cantidad. ¡Quiero, puedo y lo necesito! ¿Por qué no más? Porque todo exceso parte de un defecto. No más, ni menos. Ni más, ni menos. Menos por menos es más. Sin más. Sin favor, y gracias.

Microrelato: “Descendiendo en un ascensor”

Era casi medianoche cuando, al salir apresurado del laboratorio, se me cayeron las llaves de la moto al suelo y dudé. ¿Se me han caído o las he dejado caer? Menudo dilema absurdo, pensé. Al pulsar el botón del ascensor me consolé recordando las palabras de Descartes, quien dijo que si pienso, existo. Será el café de máquina o quizás el camión de la basura que no me deja dormir desde el lunes. El caso es que llevo unos cuantos días sin existir del todo. No puedo pensar con claridad… El ascensor se detuvo en el piso tres, catorce puntos por encima del nivel del suelo. Entraron tres personas. ¿Casualidad o causalidad? Ambas, versiones simplificadas de la realidad. Por un instante, los cuatro tripulantes de aquella caja suspendida nos transformamos en moléculas de carga negativa para satisfacer la segunda ley de la termodinámica aplicada a humanos en sistemas cerrados: cada uno en una esquina, minimizando la entropía, trivializando la conversación y reduciendo el consumo de oxígeno. Como experimenta el hermano gemelo al regresar de un viaje espacial a velocidades cercanas a la de la luz, el tiempo también se ralentiza en un ascensor. Paró de nuevo en el piso menos uno. ¿Habremos pasado por el cero sin darnos cuenta? El cero representa la nada, el vacío, lo potencial. Los antiguos le tenían miedo y por ello no osaban nombrarlo. Se abrió la puerta y nadie entró. ¡Cuán bello es el lenguaje! Sugiriendo la existencia de un tal nadie haciendo nada, nos emplaza a creer que no estamos solos. De la nada, nada sale, reza el axioma griego. Materia y antimateria deben aniquilarse. Los dos amantes, en uno fundirse sin confundirse. El ascensor finalmente abrió sus puertas en la planta baja, viniendo de abajo tras haber subido después de descender. A menudo me parece que todo es relativo. Una magnífica mezcla de lo objetivo con lo subjetivo. Me vinieron irremediablemente a la cabeza Einstein y Jarabe de Palo (según como se mire, todo depende). Tuve otra revelación. Como el famoso gato de Schrodinger -medio muerto, medio vivo- fui consciente de mi inconsciencia, hice de la intuición mi ciencia. Sólo aquello que miro puedo ver. Sólo aquello que amo quiero entender. Sólo aquello desconozco necesito conocer. De cada instante soy actor, director y espectador. Aunque a veces no esté presente, mi vida sucede descendiendo en un ascensor.

On success and failure (by AAB)

Success constitutes a far more drastic disciplining, and produces many more opportunities to forget God and reality than do failure and neglect. Self-pity, a sense of martyrdom, and resignation are potent and effective ways of handling one’s failure. But to rise upon the crest of the wave, to be accorded public recognition, and to seem to have achieved the earthly goal are far more difficult factors to face.

Not only had He to demonstrate the power to endure success, but He had also to demonstrate the power to face disaster, balancing the two against each other and seeing in both of them simply opportunities for divine expression and fields for the demonstration of detachment – that outstanding characteristic of the man who has been born again, purified and transfigured. To these tests was added the one which He had before encountered in the desert, the test of utter loneliness.