{"id":292,"date":"2023-10-31T16:51:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T16:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/?page_id=292"},"modified":"2023-11-01T17:29:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T17:29:04","slug":"a-fresh-start","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/?page_id=292","title":{"rendered":"A Fresh Start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What really are\u00a0<em>THE BASICS&#8211;<br \/>\n<\/em>nature of the world we are born into,<br \/>\nthe reality experienced, observed, felt,<br \/>\ncontemplated, studied, contemplated,<br \/>\nfelt, known 1st hand, unknown 1st hand:<br \/>\n&#8230;mind&#8230;life&#8230;setting&#8230;self&#8230;?<\/p>\n<p>One fundamental seems to be not just\u00a0<em>SCALE,<\/em>\u00a0the fact that multiple scales exist, each order of magnitude more or less distinct unto itself in that location, but that these\u00a0<em>MULTIPLE SCALES exist EVERYWHERE &amp; in EVERYTHING SIMULTANEOUSLY, <\/em>as a characteristic of\u00a0<em>form, matter, spacetime &amp; relationship<\/em>. (As one uncle \u00a0liked to say, &#8220;That&#8217;s a some meatball!&#8221;) Now throw in mass &amp; vibration, effects of gravity &amp; musical scale.<\/p>\n<p>Leave the cosmic orders aside for the moment, along with the largely conceptual sub-atomic particulates (indirectly imagined &#8220;not-quite-entities&#8221; like quarks, strings, loops, leptons, sleptons kleptons &amp;\/or whatever); the undeniably most basic aspects of actual reality we mortals encounter must be the <em>direct sense of\u00a0<\/em><em>experience<\/em>\u00a0where<em>\u00a0mind, life<\/em> &amp; <em>self\u00a0<\/em>meet, including <em>sensation<\/em> (comfort, discomfort; pleasure, pain; etc.) along with a sense of <em>relationship<\/em>\u00a0&#8211;felt on a spectrum from wholeness to abandonment, being lost &amp; disoriented to being part of a functional whole, with infinite variation in associated emotions between.<\/p>\n<p>Although we feel aspects of it in experience, the\u00a0<em>IDEA of\u00a0<\/em><em>life\u00a0<\/em>is mostly a conceptual abstraction.\u00a0<em>Self,\u00a0<\/em>being so close &amp; personal, seems to end up being just as elusive &amp; hard to pin down. <em>Setting (<\/em>location in space, time, &amp; scale) at first seems to be the most objectively definable&#8211;until reality shows us the many degrees of otherwise, i.e., the many forms of trans-locality, psychological &amp; technological,\u00a0possibly being tips of that quantum-scale iceberg-ocean with permeable borders, if any. About as local as we get, the very air drawn in with each breath is from someplace else, many places, with molecules from anywhere &amp; \u00a0everywhere. Same for most foods, clothes, supplies in your chains.<\/p>\n<p>Even more so for language, communication, technology, ideas, science, culture&#8230;our own thoughts&#8230;. But what does &#8220;our own&#8221; mean? <em>Inside our heads? In our immediate surroundings? Typed onto the website that exists anywhere?\u00a0<\/em>When it comes to ambiguity in location,\u00a0<em>mind\u00a0<\/em>takes the cake. Whether <em>thinking of<\/em> or <em>speaking with<\/em> a far-off partner; contemplating light-sources billions of imagined light years distant; chasing a high fly ball; or simply gazing through a window at birds coming &amp; going in the backyard, it&#8217;s not easy to define the exact extent, location or limits of the mind. A <em>brain<\/em> may be precisely mapped &amp; located in conventional spacetime&#8211;not the mind, which roams dimensions real, conceptual &amp; imaginary.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mind<\/em> is actual, at hand, &amp; directly observable at this very moment you use &amp; experience it now, yet remains intangible, hard to put one&#8217;s finger on, let alone grasp its ultimate source, mechanisms &amp; meaning in the universe. In the case of air, we can describe the relation between an individual&#8217;s immediate air source &amp;\u00a0\u00a0the surrounding air drawn from &amp; returned, along with the complex global patterns in constant flux. In the case of mind, there are analogous volumes of variables affecting minds in relation to one another.<\/p>\n<p>In the relatively simple case of the birds in my yard, awareness each has of the other overlaps the mental space, affecting feelings, states, &amp; actions. I move slightly to catch a better view&#8211;one flock bolts in unison, having picked up a quick glance of being seen by a being for whom intent&#8217;s unknown. On the other hand, various others have remained behind, more familiar with their seed-&amp;-suet source. The flock that left did so as a single mind, expression of a single shared thought &amp; sense of movement in space, returning more like one-by-one. Our minds affect each other as they interact in countless ways.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mind, life\u00a0<\/em>&amp;\u00a0<em>self\u00a0<\/em>melt into (&amp; out of?) each other, but seem essential parts of all organisms. Need we specify\u00a0<em>living\u00a0<\/em>organisms? All three terms, as well as <em>organic<\/em>\u00a0nature of organisms,\u00a0already specify <em>living<\/em>, however imperfectly defined, let alone <em>understood. &#8220;We know it when we see it.&#8221; &#8220;We&#8217;ll see it only after we know it.&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0I love many origin stories, some possibly as insightful as we get. But in the end, who really <em>knows\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0<em>mind-self-organism meatball,\u00a0<\/em>what it is, where it comes from, what happens when the self goes out (a night on the town, an eternity of all-in-nothingness, or something in between)?<\/p>\n<p>Who truly knows the nature, purpose, extent, &amp; implications of life or mind in the universe. (Presumably a small percentage of those who\u00a0<em>truly believe they know&#8230;.<\/em>)\u00a0The <em>mind&#8217;s\u00a0<\/em>own capacity to know is likely the biggest, deepest mystery, even to itself. A blind-chance materialist may follow its evolutionary emergence from &#8220;natural selection&#8221; &amp;\/or from neuro-genetic translations through form &amp; function, structural &amp; metabolic correlates, with or without grasping larger meanings &amp; their implications, including the nature of the mind, whether seeking to know, or believing it does.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of life, for example, from a purely <em>mental, conceptual, objective perspective<\/em>, life may be no more than a planetary infection, however common or rare in the cosmos at large, more or less routinely disinfected by cosmic forces, whatever you want to call the rays. We\u00a0<em>feel <\/em>earth-life\u00a0is far more &amp; better, however, even\u00a0<em>sacred,<\/em>\u00a0beauty-filled, with wonder, grace &amp; even love, starting perhaps with mother &amp; place, land &amp; companions&#8230;extensions of the semi-sentient self time flows through awhile&#8211;blink of an eye&#8211; (then pie in the sky) (beat our wings &amp; off we fly) (dust &amp; ashes by &amp; by)&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Ah! Now (i.e., <em>soon<\/em>) we can ask a <em>super\u00a0A.I.! (to be continued). [11\/1\/2023]<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What really are\u00a0THE BASICS&#8211; nature of the world we are born into, the reality experienced, observed, felt, contemplated, studied, contemplated, felt, known 1st hand, unknown 1st hand: &#8230;mind&#8230;life&#8230;setting&#8230;self&#8230;? One fundamental seems to be not just\u00a0SCALE,\u00a0the fact that multiple scales exist, each order of magnitude more or less distinct unto itself in that location, but that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/?page_id=292\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Fresh Start&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-292","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/292\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eco-wing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}