My wife loves to share interesting facts about human biology.
"Do you know why poop is brown?"
"No, honey..."
"It is actually brown because of dead blood cells!"
"...thanks?"
This got me thinking. Poop isn't only digested food. It is part of you that died to keep you alive.
Suddenly, poop wasn't a loathsome substance any more. It was the bodies from the battlefield of the immune system. The red blood cells went blue doing their job to keep my body oxygenated. The white blood cells fought valiantly against foreign invaders for my sake, giving their lives for my survival. Red, white, and blue. Hmmm...
This got me thinking even more.
Should I be playing taps over my toilet? Probably not.
But perhaps there is value in feeding "Support the Troops" through the Allegorical Imperative.
At the very least, this way of thinking could be a decent improv exercise.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Evil is wherever you are unwilling to look for solutions
That's all. This is how I copyright things now
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Slimy, Yet Satisfying
The insula was great at its old job. But it doesn't belong in the board room.
Indulging in socially forbidden activities, rebellion, is the key to shutting up the insula.
There have been many stories that follow this pattern.
Jim is in society.
Indulging in socially forbidden activities, rebellion, is the key to shutting up the insula.
There have been many stories that follow this pattern.
Jim is in society.
Society says don't eat/do/play with X, because it will result in consequences.
Jim gets curious about X.
Jim gets curious about X.
Society ostracizes Jim.
Jim eats/does/plays with X, and doesn't experience consequences.
Jim uses X to save society. Society thanks Jim and embraces X.
Progress is stifled by overabundant disgust.
Jim eats/does/plays with X, and doesn't experience consequences.
Jim uses X to save society. Society thanks Jim and embraces X.
Progress is stifled by overabundant disgust.
Doing the thing you were taught to find reprehensible is the key to salvation. You realize you are not as corruptible as previously supposed. You know from experience that the imposed rules were wrong. This calls into question external authority, and fosters trust of internal authority.
The Lion King demonstrates this in a cute way. Simba is afraid to eat bugs. But Pumba and Timon finally sell him on the idea. He rebels against his culturally programmed disgust for insect cuisine, and surprised, concurs with his buddies. "Slimy, yet satisfying."
Last thought. I've shared this before. Jesus was born of Mary. Jesus means 'Jehovah's Salvation'. Mary means 'Rebellion'.
Salvation is born of Rebellion.
Disgust is conquered by indulgence.
Judgement is dispersed by participation.
The Lion King demonstrates this in a cute way. Simba is afraid to eat bugs. But Pumba and Timon finally sell him on the idea. He rebels against his culturally programmed disgust for insect cuisine, and surprised, concurs with his buddies. "Slimy, yet satisfying."
Last thought. I've shared this before. Jesus was born of Mary. Jesus means 'Jehovah's Salvation'. Mary means 'Rebellion'.
Salvation is born of Rebellion.
Disgust is conquered by indulgence.
Judgement is dispersed by participation.
Simba's bugs, Luke in the tauntaun carcass, Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption) "who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side", the kid from Slumdog Millionaire in the outhouse looking for the photo to be autographed, the Good Samaritan helping the wounded man, God coming to earth and being born in a manger full of pooping animals, and so on and so on.
That which disgusts you may be holding up a beacon. Walk in that direction. (unless having sex with kids disgusts you, let's keep that one. Thanks insula!)
That which disgusts you may be holding up a beacon. Walk in that direction. (unless having sex with kids disgusts you, let's keep that one. Thanks insula!)
The insula is underqualified
I have noticed a motif in storytelling. Salvation comes from participation in revulsion.
Humans have had the disgust centers of the brain (insula) co-opted for social use. We can be disgusted by rotten milk and racism. Same mechanism. Rotten milk is called disgusting. Rotten behavior is called evil.
This disgust mechanism evolved to protect four-legged ground-sniffers from eating harmful substances. Disgust kills curiosity, which is invaluable for survival when you live with your nose in the dirt. Humans went bipedal, raising our sniffers off the ground. The insula was taken away from food inspection and promoted to HR. But he brought with him the black-and-white fight-or-flight approach from his fester-detection days to something much more subtle. I repeat, the insula went from quality control to human resources.
There is a weakness built into the insula: acquired taste. Even this hard-nosed judge can be swayed by consistent exposure. A person's first time tasting beer or wine is usually met with sourpuss and scoffing noises. But consistent exposure lets the body know that it is not the poison it smells to be. Too much and you may have to lay off the wine for a while.
This part of the brain meant to save us from edible poisons, like I said, is now also in charge of detecting social poisons. What would the acquired taste phenomenon look like when governing morality? We would call that being jaded, desensitized. Something like crime becomes a way of life. This is how WWI soldiers could casually take target practice on dead soldiers' faces. The initial moral revulsion to killing someone gave way to the acquired taste for dead soldier target practice.
Perhaps, when dealing with human interaction, it may be a worthwhile pursuit to find a more solid foundation on which to build a moral system. The insula is a mechanism designed to kill curiosity, hijack the body's defenses, and eventually fade with consistent exposure, giving way to the tolerance and even enjoyment of the formerly disgusting activity. A sandy foundation erodes with exposure to the elements. I seek bedrock.
Humans have had the disgust centers of the brain (insula) co-opted for social use. We can be disgusted by rotten milk and racism. Same mechanism. Rotten milk is called disgusting. Rotten behavior is called evil.
This disgust mechanism evolved to protect four-legged ground-sniffers from eating harmful substances. Disgust kills curiosity, which is invaluable for survival when you live with your nose in the dirt. Humans went bipedal, raising our sniffers off the ground. The insula was taken away from food inspection and promoted to HR. But he brought with him the black-and-white fight-or-flight approach from his fester-detection days to something much more subtle. I repeat, the insula went from quality control to human resources.
There is a weakness built into the insula: acquired taste. Even this hard-nosed judge can be swayed by consistent exposure. A person's first time tasting beer or wine is usually met with sourpuss and scoffing noises. But consistent exposure lets the body know that it is not the poison it smells to be. Too much and you may have to lay off the wine for a while.
This part of the brain meant to save us from edible poisons, like I said, is now also in charge of detecting social poisons. What would the acquired taste phenomenon look like when governing morality? We would call that being jaded, desensitized. Something like crime becomes a way of life. This is how WWI soldiers could casually take target practice on dead soldiers' faces. The initial moral revulsion to killing someone gave way to the acquired taste for dead soldier target practice.
Perhaps, when dealing with human interaction, it may be a worthwhile pursuit to find a more solid foundation on which to build a moral system. The insula is a mechanism designed to kill curiosity, hijack the body's defenses, and eventually fade with consistent exposure, giving way to the tolerance and even enjoyment of the formerly disgusting activity. A sandy foundation erodes with exposure to the elements. I seek bedrock.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Jesus is your body and blood
I've noticed something recently. The stories humans enjoy the most have a layer of allegory that resonates with our biology. Something as popular as Guardians of the Galaxy has within it a deep and consistent allegory for battling cancer, with each of the characters representing one aspect of an individual. The Divergent series sits neatly over the processes that produce stem cells, in the marrow of the bones.
I think the christ story has stuck around because it is an allegory for our bodies, our flesh. Our bodies take the punishment for mistakes made with our minds. 33 years old, we have 33 vertebrae. Christ is the body and the blood. Skin protects us from all sorts of infection, and when that is breached, the immune system kicks in. But we look in the mirror and say "eww" to the part of us that is working day and night to keep us alive.
Faith in Christ is a misfiring of metaphor. Those feelings of gratitude might better serve us if directed toward our own bodies.
I get silly with this idea. I am an atheist, but I put on the christian rock station and listen to the lyrics as if my mind was singing them to my body. Surprisingly relevant and poetic.
Language is only 200,000 years old. Our biology is 1,000,000,000 years old. Which do you think would take the shape of the other? Language sits on top of our biology like a greasy sheen on a marble sculpture. It shouldn't surprise us that it takes that shape.
(don't worry. I'll come back and edit this.)
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Oneironautics, onomastics, and other ten-dollar words
The unconscious speaks in a language older than language. It speaks through dreams, and if dreams are ignored it will conspire with our body to use our emotions to get us to act out its messages. You'll become obsessed with an idea which, if examined allegorically, will reveal the true need beneath the desire.
Why does this happen?
It appears to be a consequence of the timescales involved in our evolution. Multicellular life has been on earth for roughly a billion years. Language, on the other hand, has only been around for 200,000 years. This is a 5000:1 ratio. Humans have adapted to think in language in this short period. The unconscious has had to adapt and find ways to communicate to the conscious mind with its newfangled technology. Language has allowed for incredible detail in thought transmission between members of our species. This is another thing with which the mind has had to cope. All this new information - the giant library of language and the innermost thoughts of the species has led to adaptations for mass storage. The most significant and pleasurable of these is the construction of metaphor.
How could metaphor save space?
By seeing the similarities between objects, one can consolidate storage. For example, imagine that you had one file for horse, and one file for zebra. Each takes up the same amount of space. But once you realize that a zebra is a lot like a horse, just with black and white stripes, then you can combine the files into one called 'horse-shaped animals', with an if-then clause attached (If horse shaped animal has black and white stripes, then it is a zebra). This takes up much less space than two separate files. Add to this files for donkeys, ponies, mules, even giraffes (if horse-shaped animal has long neck and stubby horns...) and suddenly you are taking up the space of one file, but allowing yourself to identify dozens of animals. This seems much more efficient. This can chunk up and down conceptually, leading to super efficient storage with maximized identification. The 'horse-shaped animal' file itself could be an addendum to the 'mammal' file, which could be an addendum to the 'animal' file. The more consolidation, the more efficiency and speed in navigating. It is browsing an analog library versus browsing Google. Metaphor allows us to wire our brains to work like Google.
This is why our dreams use fluid images. It appears that dreaming is an effort to take new experiences, information, people, and places and find similar things in our past. It then tacks addenda to existing files to allow us to navigate our fresh experiences. We can't say what a new thing is, but we can say what it is like. That is why sometimes, in dreams, we are in a place that is both our elementary school and family church building. Both are in the 'childhood buildings' file, so the visual representation confirms the potential reality of this storage mechanism.
Is there any way to help our dreams do their job in a better way?
I think so. By studying the meaning of proper names, called onomastics, we can give our unconscious a leg up in communication with our conscious mind. For example, the name Andrew means 'manly', and the name Clement means 'gentle'. Knowing this, these are now associations the unconscious can use to send you instruction in dreams. If a man has a dream that his buddy Andy starts singing "Oh my darling Clementine", and he knows the meaning of these names, the unconscious may have picked them as anthropomorphized principles for the conscious mind to follow. The manly attributes of the dreamer need to give voice to the more gentle and merciful parts.
You begin to see that storytellers around the world choose names which have meanings relevant to their role in the story. I am currently excavating what appears to be a reliably predictable pattern in character names.
Movies from Finding Nemo to Fifty Shades of Grey have revealed some deeper meanings through onomastic examination.
I find my writing style insufferable. I will work to refine it and make it less cumbersome and arrogant. Here's a shorter version:
If you study the meanings of names, your dreams will be easier to examine allegorically using the names of the characters. Dreams are the garden from which the fruit of myth grows. What you learn about dream interpretation can be applied to all human storytelling.
Boom. I am not a scholar. I should stop trying to write like one.
Why does this happen?
It appears to be a consequence of the timescales involved in our evolution. Multicellular life has been on earth for roughly a billion years. Language, on the other hand, has only been around for 200,000 years. This is a 5000:1 ratio. Humans have adapted to think in language in this short period. The unconscious has had to adapt and find ways to communicate to the conscious mind with its newfangled technology. Language has allowed for incredible detail in thought transmission between members of our species. This is another thing with which the mind has had to cope. All this new information - the giant library of language and the innermost thoughts of the species has led to adaptations for mass storage. The most significant and pleasurable of these is the construction of metaphor.
How could metaphor save space?
By seeing the similarities between objects, one can consolidate storage. For example, imagine that you had one file for horse, and one file for zebra. Each takes up the same amount of space. But once you realize that a zebra is a lot like a horse, just with black and white stripes, then you can combine the files into one called 'horse-shaped animals', with an if-then clause attached (If horse shaped animal has black and white stripes, then it is a zebra). This takes up much less space than two separate files. Add to this files for donkeys, ponies, mules, even giraffes (if horse-shaped animal has long neck and stubby horns...) and suddenly you are taking up the space of one file, but allowing yourself to identify dozens of animals. This seems much more efficient. This can chunk up and down conceptually, leading to super efficient storage with maximized identification. The 'horse-shaped animal' file itself could be an addendum to the 'mammal' file, which could be an addendum to the 'animal' file. The more consolidation, the more efficiency and speed in navigating. It is browsing an analog library versus browsing Google. Metaphor allows us to wire our brains to work like Google.
This is why our dreams use fluid images. It appears that dreaming is an effort to take new experiences, information, people, and places and find similar things in our past. It then tacks addenda to existing files to allow us to navigate our fresh experiences. We can't say what a new thing is, but we can say what it is like. That is why sometimes, in dreams, we are in a place that is both our elementary school and family church building. Both are in the 'childhood buildings' file, so the visual representation confirms the potential reality of this storage mechanism.
Is there any way to help our dreams do their job in a better way?
I think so. By studying the meaning of proper names, called onomastics, we can give our unconscious a leg up in communication with our conscious mind. For example, the name Andrew means 'manly', and the name Clement means 'gentle'. Knowing this, these are now associations the unconscious can use to send you instruction in dreams. If a man has a dream that his buddy Andy starts singing "Oh my darling Clementine", and he knows the meaning of these names, the unconscious may have picked them as anthropomorphized principles for the conscious mind to follow. The manly attributes of the dreamer need to give voice to the more gentle and merciful parts.
You begin to see that storytellers around the world choose names which have meanings relevant to their role in the story. I am currently excavating what appears to be a reliably predictable pattern in character names.
Movies from Finding Nemo to Fifty Shades of Grey have revealed some deeper meanings through onomastic examination.
I find my writing style insufferable. I will work to refine it and make it less cumbersome and arrogant. Here's a shorter version:
If you study the meanings of names, your dreams will be easier to examine allegorically using the names of the characters. Dreams are the garden from which the fruit of myth grows. What you learn about dream interpretation can be applied to all human storytelling.
Boom. I am not a scholar. I should stop trying to write like one.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Sophogenic Phrases and Dog-whistles
I made up a word, guys. Is that annoying?
I noticed that there are phrases in English that can instantly reframe a preceding statement. One of these phrases was made annoyingly popular by the television show The Office. You know this phrase. "That's what she said." Immediately upon hearing this phrase, the mind creates a context in which the preceding statement was describing sex. Its irritating quality comes from its relentless ability to produce the desired result in the hearer. It is super effective.
"That's what she said!" is a pornogenic phrase. It immediately generates sexual thoughts.
On a distant part of that spectrum, we have the New Testament. Jesus would teach in parables in order to speak openly about things which, if explicitly taught, would get him censured by the state. He would occasionally end these parables with the phrase "He that hath ears, let him hear." This was a way of letting those in the know that he was speaking in parable. It was an intellectual dog-whistle.
One day, I noticed that "He that hath ears, let him hear." has a similar effect as "That's what she said." That phrase had the ability to immediately take my mind somewhere it had no intention of going moments before. But instead of suddenly thinking of sex, I was suddenly thinking of hidden wisdom.
"My boss is really getting on my nerves." said I.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." said my inner voice.
That phrase instantly makes you look for deeper meanings in whatever was just said.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." is a sophogenic phrase. it immediately generates a search for a deeper meaning, leading to wisdom.
Sophogenic as a word, though, is cumbersome and distracting. In future posts, I will refer to sophogenic phrases as dog-whistles. They are short phrases that help orient the mind in the direction of wisdom.
Other dog-whistles include phrases like "Truer words have never been spoken" or "Thus saith the Lord."
If you value wisdom and self-knowledge, try this experiment. The next time you find yourself complaining about something, say it again, then follow it up with "He that hath ears let him hear." It's fun! It feels like solving a riddle, or discovering a conspiracy. If you make a habit of this, you may find yourself gaining wisdom from even the most unlikely sources.
I noticed that there are phrases in English that can instantly reframe a preceding statement. One of these phrases was made annoyingly popular by the television show The Office. You know this phrase. "That's what she said." Immediately upon hearing this phrase, the mind creates a context in which the preceding statement was describing sex. Its irritating quality comes from its relentless ability to produce the desired result in the hearer. It is super effective.
"That's what she said!" is a pornogenic phrase. It immediately generates sexual thoughts.
On a distant part of that spectrum, we have the New Testament. Jesus would teach in parables in order to speak openly about things which, if explicitly taught, would get him censured by the state. He would occasionally end these parables with the phrase "He that hath ears, let him hear." This was a way of letting those in the know that he was speaking in parable. It was an intellectual dog-whistle.
One day, I noticed that "He that hath ears, let him hear." has a similar effect as "That's what she said." That phrase had the ability to immediately take my mind somewhere it had no intention of going moments before. But instead of suddenly thinking of sex, I was suddenly thinking of hidden wisdom.
"My boss is really getting on my nerves." said I.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." said my inner voice.
That phrase instantly makes you look for deeper meanings in whatever was just said.
"He that hath ears, let him hear." is a sophogenic phrase. it immediately generates a search for a deeper meaning, leading to wisdom.
Sophogenic as a word, though, is cumbersome and distracting. In future posts, I will refer to sophogenic phrases as dog-whistles. They are short phrases that help orient the mind in the direction of wisdom.
Other dog-whistles include phrases like "Truer words have never been spoken" or "Thus saith the Lord."
If you value wisdom and self-knowledge, try this experiment. The next time you find yourself complaining about something, say it again, then follow it up with "He that hath ears let him hear." It's fun! It feels like solving a riddle, or discovering a conspiracy. If you make a habit of this, you may find yourself gaining wisdom from even the most unlikely sources.
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