Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Physiology

  • Out of Your Head

    Out of Your Head

    It is easy enough to empathize with addicts if, for large chunks of your existence, you have had an overwhelming need to get out of your own head.

    Out of your head and off your head come to much the same thing for the cognoscenti.

    There is a vast gulf between what your intellect tells you and what your emotions crave. Or should we call them qualia. Not that anybody knows of course; what qualia are or what consciousness is. But you certainly know when they and it have gone wrong.

    Your intellect may tell you that objectively nothing is wrong. You have a roof over your head, food, companionship. And yet you ride an emotional roller coaster, coming up for breath occasionally only to scream as you descend into the depths once again.

    Is it any wonder that many turn to drink or drugs to rid the demon from their head.

    I have been meeting up regularly with a friend who feels the need, more often than otherwise, for what he calls “space”. Headspace.

    Many an ex soldier is trapped inside enemy territory long after he has left the field of conflict. Thanks to the physiological mess inside his head, he is trapped in an endless loop of destructive, corrosive thoughts and emotions.

    In the case of a soldier, it may well be that he is now “safe”. The conflict is over, the battle won or lost. And yet years later it will still be raging inside his head even though he has lived as a civilian for decades.

    And it not just the soldier who craves space in his head. Nor just those who have been through trauma. There are people whose lives seem enviable, successful even, who harbor such trauma within that they too long to escape from their own head.

    And so to addiction. The addict wants to alter his consciousness. He wants to avoid pain and to bring about, if not pleasure, then at least the cessation of misery.

    It can’t be done of course. Or at least not with most substances currently at our disposal. For all the talk of miracles brought about by modern science, we do not understand ourselves well enough to cure a condition which has plagued us since the dawn of time and killed millions.

    The ultimate out of your head experience is one that many eventually resort to. Some extinguish life slowly through alcohol or opiates. Wittingly or unwittingly. Others opt out altogether and exit their heads rapidly and permanently.

    Should you embrace the absurd as Camus suggested? Like Sisyphus should you endlessly roll a stone up a hill, for it to roll down again each time. Or should you exit the stage altogether and choose oblivion rather than endless torture.

    We must leave aside the view of some that a crime or sin would result from a permanent exit.  We may reasonably assume that such people do not suffer from the need to escape from themselves and should thus have no voice in the matter.

    But perhaps there is light after all?

    Medical research from the likes of John Hopkins Hospital in the US, Imperial College in London and a whole trail of others is suggesting that to get out of your head is just what you need.

    The lucky few who have participated in their trials in recent years have, quite literally, left their own heads. Left their troublesome consciousness at the door and joined in union with an ego-less universe.   Courtesy of a huge dose of psychedelic drugs.

    A real exit (for a time) without finality. A break in existence. A chance for the tangled neural pathways to melt and re-form in new and less painful configurations.

    Who knows, after that, how we might approach the Absurd? Perhaps after all we may find life less so.

    Perhaps more of us should get off our heads. Or out of them. Wotteva.

     

     

     

  • I know that my Redeemer Liveth

    I know that my Redeemer Liveth

    Success in seeking the Absolute may simply be a matter of altering our minds chemically.

    I’m sorry to disappoint Job and I can not see Handel writing an oratorio about mind altering drugs but that is my belief.

    It is a belief shared by some eminent philosophers and does not represent the mere churning of a mind in chaos.

    Our small minds evolved to seek survival at any cost. Not happiness or knowledge in general.  If we have to kill our neighbor and eat him (literally in some benighted parts of the world) then that is what we will do.  In the West we achieve these aims through capitalism. In less “civilized” parts of the world physical violence still reigns supreme as it does in the animal kingdom at large.

    And yet those blessed with the luxury of reflection (and the time to reflect) may come to the conclusion that it need not always be so.

    In essence it seems that the universe is great simplicity cloaked in overwhelming complexity.  From the vibrations of infinitesimally small one dimensional strings there arises all that we see around us.

    Ourselves included.

    Under the influence of half a teaspoon full of psilocybe cubensis I have found truth in the words of Julian of Norwich.

    The petty concerns of humanity fall away and you can see your way to understanding what the mystics describe. Most people restrict themselves to reading about contentment or the sublime. Reading the words of others is, as the Buddhists would have it, a mere finger pointing to the moon.

    To witness the sublime itself is of far greater value.  No-one should seek to be a junkie. To zone out on heroin or cannabis. Or to psyche themselves up for a day in the urban jungle with cocaine.

    But we should learn that the troubled mind is a mind that is not well.  And we should accept that it need not always be so. Perhaps consciousness is designed to dig its bearers out of the mud.

    In the more likely event that no one designed consciousness, that there is no creator, then we must create ourselves.

    We do not need to live like pigs or jackals. We do not need to suffer. We do not need competition, aggression and violence.

    What we do need is to search, to experiment. Without fear of reprisal and without cease. Peace is to quiet the mind, to quell the never ending stream of pointless thoughts and worries. To see through destructive emotions, to overcome fear and greed.

    My normal state of mind is not “necessary”. It is not useful or kind or nice. To me or to anybody around me.

    I will change. I will become better, kinder, more peaceful. Not just today or yesterday but for all days to come.  I live in the physical world and I need to recognize that I need to take physical actions to achieve my objective.

    I do not shirk from the task and I do not hesitate to step outside the bounds of convention to achieve this.  Remember Edward Jenner, the founder of vaccinology in the West.  Avoid potential harm to others (unlike Jenner) but do not seek to avoid experimentation on yourself if you seek “Truth”.

    If you wish to see the universe as it really is you need to stray from the prison cell in which you have incarcerated yourself.

  • Mindfulness vs. Physiology

    Mindfulness vs. Physiology

    Much is made these days of the concept of “mindfulness”.  It is the cure-all of the new age. Depressed? Mindfulness of your moods, letting go, will cure you. Poverty, illness, famine, death, disease will all bow to the mindful modern man.

    To a large extent it is wishful thinking. Mind-less bollox, if you will pardon my vulgarity.

    I was much captured by the concept as part of my endless search for answers some 20 years ago. The original Buddhist texts, the Tao, Zen and the whole gamut of wishful thinking captivated me. I was about to be transported to Nirvana. Except I wasn’t.

    There is nothing wrong per se with mindfulness but to imagine it will raise a victorious flag over the flaws and imperfections of a disastrous genetic inheritance is pure nonsense.

    Mindfulness does have it place. I try to be aware of my moods and my behavior.  I try to correct and govern my worst excesses.  I know that poverty, cruelty, disease are wrong; I mean well and would like to eradicate them. I know that racial and any other form of prejudice against the rest of the poor sods on planet earth is wrong.

    Despite my intense irritation with the busybodies and mealy mouthed fools who push political correctness, they are right in part and I do my very best to embrace brown, yellow, gay, red, blue, whatever it is I am supposed to welcome as “diversity”.

    And yet despite heroic efforts I can not alter the very bedrock of my personality. I can not help my intense irritability and frequent bad moods. I can not help my obsessions with the supposed wrong doings of others when all I have to do is ignore them and mind my own business.

    I can not rid myself of sometimes overwhelming depression by being mindful of it. Bollox. It just doesn’t work.

    I would like to be better, kinder, more enthusiastic, more successful, less curmudgeonly.  I would like to save the world, be a light unto the gentiles, lead the rest of my days wandering the paths of righteousness. But I won’t.

    I was born with a certain physiology and there is only so much I can do to moderate it.  I might try magic mushrooms or the latest unction promoted by the press but in the end utopia can only be achieved if we can change our very nature.

    Until such time I will not listen to some foolish though well meaning clown who tells me that mindfulness will save the universe. It will not.

  • Facing down the Black Dog

    Facing down the Black Dog

    Perhaps it is best to acknowledge the endless pawing of the black dog at your door.  For some, it is a rare day that the gentle scuffling can not be heard.

    There have only been two (albeit quite lengthy) periods over the past 60 years where the dog has torn at my throat and the pit has lain open before me.  But it is all too rare that that he leaves the neighbourhood entirely.

    I have sometimes called it existential anxiety. I have sometimes wondered whether it is a mere personality trait – a tendency to look for meaning and explanation in a deeply puzzling universe.  An apparent need to question anything and everything in the quest for answers.

    The answers must be there somewhere but not all in one place. You can not expect to go to your local corner store and buy a remedy.  It is here, there and everywhere, all in bits and pieces.

    There are aspects of my personality I would not do without.  It has placed me in an ivory tower, endlessly seeking knowledge. Or perhaps more accurately “understanding”.   And that is where I belong.

    I have known people with great “knowledge” but very little “understanding”; they may be clever people, but they merely accumulate facts. The do not analyse or interpret them. Wisdom comes from the ability to find meaning in facts, not from merley collecting them.

    Over the years I have been driven by a restlessness; endless change driven by a mistaken belief that the answer lies in some sort of physical externality.  Changes of career, moving around the world. From distant cities to cold snowy mountains.

    And yet eventually a clarity of sorts has emerged. The first is the ever stronger realization that the answer can only be found within, in both a philosophical and physiological sense.

    I have become a viewer from far, far away of the Pale Blue Dot.  Almost a quietist.  I have become amused by the endless hamster wheel of existence, the blind futility which so many seem so unable to escape.

    The amassing of wealth, the worship of prestige, the laughable pretension and snobbery.  Violence, cruelty, greed. Lust, envy and hatred.

    Once you have seen that the emperor is naked, there is no going back.

    There is undoubtedly a strong physiological element to it all. In time, the answer to that too will be found. In the meantime it is a question of quiet acceptance and great, great care in everything one does and says and eats and drinks.  Both physically and philosophically.

  • Happiness and Genetic Bingo

    Happiness and Genetic Bingo

    We are born from a giant genetic lottery and there is little we can do about it.  We can not “change our mind” we can only make the best of it.

    Deep into a scarcely imaginable future, we may be able to adjust our qualia, to choose our emotions.  To elect to suffer or live in Elysium.  I believe that day will come. Kurtzweil and gang, the redoubtable David Pearce – their day will come.

    “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” as it says in Matthew 6:9-13.

    Except of course it will not.  Not unless we ourselves make it so.

    In the meantime we must fend for ourselves, struggle along as best we can with what blind fate alloted us.

    I have argued elsewhere that we can expect limited success in our endeavours to change but some change is better than none. And if we learn what drives us we may be able to tip the balance in our favour.

    On really, really “bad hair days” go and lie in a darkened room and switch the world off. Part of meditation for some of us is the ability to tune out.  Tubby old Siddhartha may not have approved of this use of the technique, but what do I care. You shouldn’t either.

    Part of my “meditation” technique is to almost physically switch off what passes for my brain. To simply refuse to function. It is a difficult discipline but works a treat when you can get it right and is probably rather better for you than ketamine or quaaludes.

    It also has the advantage of being legal. I don’t think even sharia law bans it, although I would have to check that one out; it seems to ban much else in life.

    So next time you feel like god has got you in a vice and is squeezing your extremities, give it a go. You usually wake up the next day feeling no end of improvement.

     

  • Positivity

    Positivity

    I was going to call this article “Negativity” and then realised my mistake.  I wanted to write about the subjective experience of having one’s well being affected by concentrating on “negativity” and then realised this was precisely the damaging behaviour pattern I was telling myself to avoid.

    Instead of talking (or writing) about “negativity” there are two benefits of instead writing about “positivity”.   The first benefit is that it demonstrates the point I was going to make but in reverse: you life will feel subjectively better if you concentrate only on things which are positive.   The second benefit is that by actually writing about “positivity” I will myself feel subjectively positive and also be taking my own medicine.

    I reviewed some of the recent posts I had written, mostly about the financial markets.  Some of those posts are positive and helpful: in particular 8 Steps to Profitable Investment and Profitable Stock Market Investment is Very Simple .

    After more than 30 years in the financial markets these two posts represent my view as to how stock markets work.

    I then looked at a few other posts and realised they were horribly negative: in particular Fundamental Analysis – Expensive and Futile ,  Where are the Customers’ Yachts? and Technical Analysis – Embarrassing Nonsense .

    In a sense this presents me with quite a difficult problem.  These negative posts represent deeply held views based on long experience. The problem is they trash almost the entire industry.  The fact is also that so many industries can (and probably should) be similarly trashed (at least in part).

    The question is: should you do it? Morally speaking, if you are sure enough of your grounds for criticism, the answer has to be yes. Warn people of the dangers. But on a personal level the answer has to be a resounding no: any sort of negativity seems to create (subjectively speaking) a destructive feedback loop. The negativity may spill over into your life as a whole.

    The common sense answer may therefore  simply be to ignore the negative and instead guide people to what you believe is the positive.

    Instead of telling people what does not work in investment (or any other aspect of life) tell them what does work so that they will be able by default to avoid what does not.

  • Happiness

    Happiness

    Happiness is perhaps most usefully described as the absence of unhappiness.

    Happiness is not to be found in self help books.  Happiness is not the reward of an imaginary god for following the ways of righteousness.  Happiness is an emotion.  It is a consequence of consciousness. It is a quale.  It almost certainly has a physiological basis as well as a subjective and more elusive cause.

    It is helpful to distinguish happiness from a state of euphoria.  States of euphoria are often described by mystics and can be seen as a transcendence of normal reality – an elevation to another plane of existence perhaps, real or merely perceived.

    Happiness is best thought of as a more “normal” state of affairs and certainly more “easily” achievable.  But perhaps less easily “sought”.  We know how to seek euphoria. We know that it can be attained through meditation and sometimes through an intense reaction to something physical such as music, nature or art.  We know that euphoria can be achieved through the use of drugs such as DMT or psilocybin.

    So far as we know states of euphoria are temporary phenomena – not sustainable over long periods of time. Although we may wish it were otherwise.  Happiness by contrast (certainly as defined by the absence of unhappiness) can continue for prolonged periods.

    If happiness is the absence of misery then we need to eliminate misery. Misery can be caused by hunger, pain, loneliness and many other negative emotions such as envy, hatred and anxiety.

    Hunger can be avoided by meaningful work – meaningful because a lack of meaning in our work can in itself be a cause of unhappiness. Physical pain can often be treated by medicine but sadly not always.

    Hatred and envy may be a matter of choice: do we have to feel envy? Do we have to feel hatred? These may be areas where we can change our mind and our behaviour for the better.

    Above all we need to realise that we do not fully understand emotions and can not entirely explain them. Modern science tends to take a reductionist view of the matter – emotions are physiological and the neural correlates of happiness can be read by an MRI machine.

    You are left therefore with trial and error.  A satisfying occupation, good nourishment, health, physical exercise, beneficial social interaction are all factors which may help to combat negative emotion.  Being fully engaged in a satisfying life may be as close as we will ever get.