notes on alchemy

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:45:39 GMT

It's 2:37pm. Do you know where your breakfast smoothie is?

Seriously, all I've had to eat today is alchemy, and that's not very filling. I've taken to experimenting with smoothies, with mixed success. Today's effort is pretty good - an apple, watermelon, strawberries, yogurt, golden flax seed meal, whey protein, greens+. Pretty simple, quite tasty. The last one I did contained way, way too much mint extract - it burned from coldness. Other failures included trying to add ashwaghanda... mmmm... sour piss... Currently on order is some maca root, suma root, and chlorella powder, which will replace the greens+. That ought to yang it up a bit. I'm hoping the chlorella will be more concentrated, and less green than the greens+. I quite like the lovely red/pink it comes out before the greens+, rather than the grey/green it turns after. One time it came out purple, from blueberries.

Hey internet peoples, do you have any further smoothie suggestions?

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:10:13 GMT

Just call me Organic Psychosyndrome. Just call me Mr. Butterfingers.

On Purity

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:40:35 GMT

Every year, winds carry 40 million tons of dust from the Sahara desert, across the Atlantic, to the Amazon. There, the rains wash it out of the atmosphere, and the minerals and nutrients from the dust fertilize the jungle.

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:39:06 GMT

From the Berstein Lectures on Hegel...

"When I say that philosophy is always historical and cultural, I'm saying that philosophy emerges from a crisis. Which is why you can always tell bad academic philosophy, because it doesn't emerge from a crisis, it emerges from a puzzle."

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:50:54 GMT

If we take the extended mind hypothesis seriously, even in its most banal scientific formulation, it means that to understand the mind we have to look at it as conditioned by history. It has already been clearly demonstrated that the brain reconfigures itself given different patterns of use, to a dramatic degree. The brain can reconfigure itself in startling ways, that, for example, the heart or kidneys never could. To really understand how the brain works then, we would have to look at it under a broad variety of kinds of use. Generally, neuropsychology is done on 'average' people. That is, people conditioned to a dense semiotic field of historically unique proportions, and a set of tasks likewise unique in the animal world. Lots of interesting work is done on people with aberrant body-minds, of course. But given that it is such a young field, nothing so far can be done to compare, say, the neuropsychological differences between those in the renaissance and people now. Foucault's The Order of Things suggests to me that cognition is immensely mutable, and that the answer to "How does cognition work?" partly depends on which culture and epoch you're talking about. Could it be possible to take The Order of Things as a map to explore the different ways we can use our brains?

Thu, 29 May 2008 04:26:27 GMT

Did you ever have a dream where you found new rooms in your home? I had one some months ago, when I didn't have that feeling in my waking life at all. Now, at the end of one job and one degree, I've got some of that glow. This is what neurogenesis feels like, methinks. It's about time, too - I suspect I have a case of cortisol burn.

Last night was Play, an art party. Picture a bar full of people painting and drawing. Making odd objects out of plasticine and pipe cleaners. Also, a table for dominoes. It was magnificent, like an ironic twist brought 360 degrees to become sincere again.

This summer, I'd like to get to know Hegel. What I'm after is metaphysics in motion. The temptation to produce metaphysical systems is the temptation to draw in detail the shape of the intellectual horizon. However, Wittgenstein reminds us: "In order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)." But of course the horizon is not a clear and fixed point - it is both a more-or-less kind of thing, and constantly evolving. Perhaps we could become aware of the horizon, and give provisional accounts of what it may look like, based on what it has looked like in the past. We may hope for speculative accounts of what it may look like in the future.

Fri, 02 May 2008 02:47:51 GMT

It was a good solid 12 hour day today. 8 hours of making pictures frames, 4 hours of marking essays. A good balance, I think, and just enough work to exhaust but not exasperate. We should all be so lucky as to use what we have.

Something jumped out at me marking the essays on Freud. People overwhelmingly tend to focus on either aggressiveness or sexuality as the "main" instinct driving humans. They will invariably mark in passing the existence of the other drive, but insist nonetheless that their focus is the main one. And further, they will be thoroughly convinced that it was Freud who focused on the one they themselves have fixated on. Sometimes, they even chastise him for his tunnel-vision in this regard.

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:43:27 GMT

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080423121427.htm

"By blocking certain mechanisms that control the way that nerve cells in the brain communicate, scientists from the University of Bristol have been able to prevent visual recognition memory in rats. This demonstrates they have identified cellular and molecular mechanisms in the brain that may provide a key to understanding processes of recognition memory."

A pet peeve:While these researchers may have identified a mechanistic process underlying memory, there is no reason to think that they have reduced memory to a mechanistic process.

Consider an analogy: What if I claimed that I understand the mechanism by which my computer produces video images, because I could prevent it from doing so by knocking out the video card? "Look, if I knock out this one part it stops working. Therefore this part produces video. Now, we understand it." We would hardly have explained how it works.

This kind of muddled talk pervades the popular literature around science. Things are said to be "explained" when only the barest description has been achieved. Thus, the illusion that science has demystified the world persists.

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:32:04 GMT

I've been inside a fairy tale called The Golden Key for about a week now. It's the subject of the last essay of my BA. Appropriate, I think.

I have found my golden key. I'm not sure I've fully uncovered the iron chest though. In alchemy, iron is associated with Mars - instinctual affect, drives, aggressiveness. But the casket is a distinctly feminine image, containing, womb-like. I understand the iron chest as the cthonic body, the body as a voice of the innermost, a voice of the unconscious. I know it's there, somewhere. I know because I found the key.

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:24:24 GMT

What if morally relevant freedom isn't something we have achieved yet? Or perhaps, have only achieved in the rarest instances, with a few exceptional people, or better, a few exceptional moments, when it bloomed into the world. What is free will is something in our future, something we are growing into, rather than the real conditions of our present existence?

If consciousness is an emergent property of matter, matter being temporally prior, then presumably there has been a gradual shift from a situation where our bodies were merely aggregates of matter, to the (hypothetical?) point where the mind causally influences matter. If this is the case, then there seems to be no principled reason to suppose that we're done now, that our degree of "freedom" or perhaps, causal autonomy, has ceased to increase. I'd say there is reason to believe that correlated with our own continued complexification we are experiencing an increase of internal holism, and therefore causal autonomy. How much can you actually control your body with your mind? A handful of a few hundred or thousand voluntary movements, the nuances of which are almost all involuntary? Through years of extensive training, a few individuals can do much more. What if the conditions of our existence change such that the 'miracles' of yogis seem like party tricks?

But autonomy is not enough to entail freedom. We must also be connected to the material more thoroughly. That is the prima facie paradox - we must be both independent, and connected.

The idea of freedom as a kind of amor fati has always both appealed to me, and repulsed me. You are free to embrace your destiny. Blech. But in moments of ekstasis, when the subject-object line is demolished, linguistic monstrosities like this make perfect sense. Perhaps it is possible that our experience of the relationship between mind and body will be so altered by what is to come that an 'amor fati' kind of freedom will become a psychological possibility.

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:07:21 GMT

It was time for a name change. _vitriolum_ is no more. The little underscores were driving me nuts.

The new one started off as "autopoiesis", but some bastard called autopoiesis took it. Then it became "autopoietic", but that got typoed into autopoetic. It stuck.

I think I like it, but like with a new haircut, it will take some time to know.

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:59:17 GMT

I wish this surprised me. Orgasms at the push of a button.

That, some nicotine gum and a bottle of alcohol free wine, and we'll have sucked all the goddamn fun out of everything.

in the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:25:57 GMT

Terry Pratchett has early onset alzheimers.

fuckityfuckfuck.... It is, as he says, an embuggery. But he will fight. He even gave a million dollars to Alzheimer's research.

"Personally, I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance", quoth Pratchett.

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:30:10 GMT

Yesterday, someone asked me for dating advice. I was a little taken aback. I almost refused to advise him, on the basis that my history of failure disqualifies me.

Then it occurred to me; my history of failure is precisely what qualified me for the job. I've awkwardly fumbled relationships, been unceremoniously shot down, missed obvious signals, and furthermore, tormented myself over these incidents for years. I've seen a good variety of disastrous dating conclusions, and so was able to offer some suggestions as to what not to do. I wasn't, of course, able to tell him what he ought to do. Only he can decide that. But I was able to give him some perspective on the more common ways (in my experience) that things can go awry.

I feel like my highschool years of bouncing from one disaster to another are somewhat vindicated.

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:17:52 GMT

Walking to work through the ice and snow this morning, I lifted my head for a moment to contemplate the great lazy snowflakes that were falling. I thought about how spectacularly complex they must be, minutely articulated in interlocking lattices vast beyond the human capacity to survey. And just then, one smacked me in the face, melting on the heat of my lip.

I guess you had to be there.

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:23:21 GMT

I'm in download mode again. I woke up this morning with a hunger for data, and I've been feasting all day on Hume, Freud and Aristotle. Some days, I can't read more than 20 pages before my mind refuses to absorb any more. Today, I was insatiable. This is good. I was worried that I would run out of steam and be relatively uninspired this semester, but that does not appear to be happening. I've felt this kind of hunger for data before, and it usually foreshadows something brewing. In it's most extreme form, the kind of data I consume becomes virtually irrelevant. Anything, everything becomes suffused with meaning that I can taste but not quite touch. The pattern I'm looking for is everywhere, if I can only look carefully enough to see it. Holism and teleology... there is something there that I can taste, but cannot yet touch.

The insidious thing about the causal [I'd say mechanistic] point of view is that it leads us to say: "Of course it happened like that." Whereas we ought to think: it may have happened like that - and also in many other ways. - Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 37e

An essential part of explaining what is, is explaining it relative to the field of possibilities, the infinite yet constrained set of things that aren't. Another way of saying this is that what is absent is always part of the constitution of what is present. What does that have to do with anything? I don't know yet.

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:04:24 GMT

We begin with the Fool, of course. The blundering Stork starts the whole thing off, purely by accident. A wee little ego rolls out of the night into the world. But very quickly Mother shows up, and becomes both a circle of protection, and containment. This happens at night, before consciousness begins. There is no mention whatever of Father. But little Lambert seems to have a pretty positive mother complex. She's drawn as a little odd (not as odd as Lambert) but she's kind and supportive.

The seasons are interesting. Lambert shows up in spring, of course, when generative energies are at their height. The time frame only makes symbolic sense, because by fall they are all adults. In spring, Lambert is confronted with the fact that he's different than the others... he's been touched by the Fool. As any homogeneous group will, they make sport out of his Foolishness. In spring, of course, Lambert can't keep up with the social world he's in. By fall, he's learned that he's helpless. He could tear them all to shreds, but he can't get out from under fear.

And one can't help but get the feeling that his Mother isn't helping. He needs to go running to her at first, because he is genuinely outmatched by the social world. Her support and protection are required. But after a while, her protection becomes what keeps him from becoming who he is, and allows him to remain stuck in fear. At this point, it would've been useful to have Father around. The adult male lion is the one who pushes the males out of the pride, out of the circle of protection. But absent Father, Lambert is stuck. The thing that breaks this learned helplessness is the threat of Shadow, the wolf.

The wolf is a horrible nasty thing, of course, slobbering obscenely over the thought of a mouthful of flesh. But he's also exactly what Lambert is: a predator, top of the food chain. Lambert has to deal with the dark side of what makes him who he is, because that's exactly what is threatening his cozy (maybe too cozy) relationship with Mother. And by dealing with that dark side, he's able to finally integrate into his collective. I have to say, I found it a bit annoying when he baaaaa'ed at the end. But part of who you are is where you are, I suppose.

Much more troubling is what happens to Shadow. He's stuck halfway down a cliff; that Shadow energy is just "hung up". And furthermore, he's forced to give up being a meat eater. He only gets a few berries in spring, when generative force is at it's strongest. A far better ending, I think, would be if the wolf had simply died. At least then that energy is freed up.

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:09:44 GMT

"The wound and the eye are one and the same. From the psyche's viewpoint, pathology and insight are not opposites - as if we hurt because we have no insight and when we gain insight we shall no longer hurt. No. Pathologizing is itself a way of seeing; the eye of the complex gives the peculiar twist called "psychological insight." We become psychologists because we see from the psychological viewpoint, which means by benefit of our complexes and their pathologizings." - James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology

The point, I think, is that the deep down parts of the psyche are so different from consciousness that the only way to make contact with them is to navigate by those stinging feelings; a sore spot here, a burning compulsion there... The raw spots of consciousness being like another sense, through which we can feel out the inner terrain.

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:43:48 GMT

I'm increasingly of the opinion that "spiritual achievement" is a contradiction in terms. In the most spiritual moments of my life, I've been struck by the impression that everything is exactly as it should be, and the idea of achieving anything becomes superfluous nonsense.

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:31:04 GMT

The Golden Compass movie wasn't what it should have been. Lyra was precious. Asriel was warm. Coulter was innocent.

And it had a feel-good ending.

That's not how it should have been. Some edges shouldn't be softened. But hopefully, people will be interested enough to read the books.

Also, chimps are smart.

the stereotypes of star trek

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:53:17 GMT

The following is a totally serious and hard-nosed semiotic analysis of the totally wrong and evil racial stereotypes underlying the dominator culture narrative of the Star Trek universe. If you derive any entertainment value from it, you're a bad person.

Clearly, being the good guys, humans = anglo-saxons. We are the normal, and all else is either freaky in a scary way, or freaky in a sexy way. Scotty (obviously Scottish) is human enough, but being that he has a funny accent, he doesn't get to work on the bridge. Rather, he mans the machines, as is appropriate for peoples of lesser blood.

It seems equally obvious that klingons = black people. They're strong and aggressive, which makes up for the fact that they're not that smart. Back in the 60's they were the bad guys, but now they're officially our friends. I mean, officially our friends. We've still got to keep an eye on them, because they're pretty unpredictable. Worf is one of the good ones, which means that real klingons make fun of him as something of a lap-dog.

A little less obviously, vulcans = asians. They're the smart ones, but a little stiff and unemotional. They're also slightly pointy in subtle ways that we are not, and you can expect straight black hair. They don't like fighting, but watch out because they know some crazy pressure points and stuff that will kill you with a touch.

The merchants of the universe, the ferengi = jews. They're really only interested in hoarding money. And though the ferengi have regular sized noses, they do have some pretty considerable ears.

Now that we've dealt with the most obvious unjust and reprehensible stereotypes, things get a bit more speculative. It seems simply too easy to equate the romulans with the romans, as the references are too conscious and explicit. I would suggest rather that romulans = germans. They look and act almost like regular people, but imperial ambition lurks behind everything they do. Their dreams of empire must be stopped at all costs however, because the ideals of freedom and harmony require that we rule the universe rather than them.

And finally, the borg = gay communists. Without the ability to reproduce themselves, they must constantly seek to assimilate others. They want you, and resistance is futile. Picard spent a little while as a borg once, but that was just due to the borg conspiracy, not any kind of latent borg tendencies. Once assimilated, your individuality is erased leaving only the collective. They're also very keen on technological advancement (ie. the means of production), and have a very utilitarian sense of style.

you are being watched

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 01:45:55 GMT

Also, if you're starting to feel like things make sense and everything is normal, read this:

http://www.sheldrake.org/articles/pdf/36.pdf

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 22:17:04 GMT

It's been a good day. This morning I woke up from a dream in which the search party found where the bodies were buried in the wintry forest. And when we got back, I met a very pretty girl whose name meant "all is gone wrong".

On a related note, I'm no longer ill. (huzzah for qi-gong!)

This was of course presaged by the dream I had the night before, where I learned to move stuff with my mind.

Also, I handed in an essay on Descartes that has been hanging around for weeks.

And this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7086986.stm

which is not only bad for the far-right, it's also amusing. and man Mussolini's granddaughter has some big lips.

Yeah, a pretty good day.

[edit: ok, it was not entirely good. I know better who "all is gone wrong" is though.]

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:27:09 GMT

I'm either sick or lazy. It's not entirely clear which. Or there is a third possibility: I may be feeling intensely nostalgic for a sickness long past.

"Ah, my dear Throat Infection, how I've missed thee. Shall we lay together on my futon once more, and watch cartoons as did we did in our misspent youth?"

Also, it's important not to underestimate the deliciousness of tea made from peppermint, echinacea and too much honey. (too much honey is in fact just enough)

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:03:45 GMT

The trick is, you can see her as either turning clockwise or counterclockwise. Both interpretations work, like with the classic Necker cube. The people who produced it claim that what you see is based on right brain/left brain difference, and your ability to see both is correlated with the ability to solve insight problems. And even if you don't buy that, it's still fun watching the silhouette of a slammin' body spin round and round.