Predictive power

by Andrea Elizabeth

In listening to lectures on cognitive science or origins of life, I am hearing an emphasis on predictability. Experiments are performed to see if predicted results occur and then we can say we know something. When we reach for a doorknob, sit, or take a step, we are predicting the floor, etc, will be where our senses previously told us it would be. For a truth claim to be made about the creation account in the Bible, you have to be able to predict a future outcome in order to convince objective scientists. Hugh Ross says that God quit making new creatures on the seventh day so evolutionists must explain why there are no new creatures forming. Of course imperceptible slowness is their magic wand. But objectively, extinct creatures that lived for millions of years show remarkable stability during their respective tenures. It’s weird that the various hominid skeletons show the most morphological staging. Ross has an explanation for that too, but still says we’re done. I’ve even heard an evolutionist say humans won’t change either, and that we’ll be the ones creating the next generation through technology. Elon Musk says a person with a cell phone is already enhanced with greater connectivity and information. I’ll say creationists draw harder lines between adaptation and species change. We also think Adam had as much potential as modern people, but a lot of work has to be done to mature into Godliness.

Back to predictability. We are geared towards reaching desirable outcomes. The fearful, wounded person looks for signs of upcoming danger to be avoided. The ambitious person sniffs out signs for future success to be pounced on. Animals have a keen sense of how physics works, along with memory and immediate reflexive action to intercept prey in the future.

Meditative people seek to be more oriented to the here and now, but a lot of preparation and evaluation has to go into that, depending on one’s responsibilities and commitments to others. But once the trajectories intersect, one will become more but less selectively aware of their environment. So how does one become less fearful without being naive? Or less greedy without neglecting their work and becoming lazy? Inspiration I suppose.

Lying v BSing

by Andrea Elizabeth

I don’t remember if it was Episode 3 or 4 in John Vervaeke’s new YouTube series on The Meaning Crisis where he discusses the difference between lying and BSing. BSing is a reassignment if relevance rather than misstating the facts. Looking back on Netflix’s Ted Bundy Tapes as well as Ann Rule’s book on him, I think he was a BSer rather than a liar. He would magnify his own relevance and downplay his victims’. He would just say he couldn’t talk about that. See also Netflix’s new documentary on psychopaths.

I think the serpent BSed Eve as well. He downplayed God’s words and upplayed the appeal of eating the fruit. I think I remember in his conversation with Orthodox Iconographer, Jonathan Pageau that Vervaeke said he also studied the nous and our ability to direct our own attention.

Here’s the latest

by Andrea Elizabeth

On genomic studies and how they’ve thrown over old assumptions.

https://youtu.be/fHdCuhYRHqo

David Reich: Ancient DNA and the new science of the past.

He says race is a construct, but also that we should be able to talk about the differences between people.

To Walk Invisible

by Andrea Elizabeth

The Brontë Sisters

does well to give a feeling of Haworth and their lives there. Haworth was my favorite destination on our whirlwind tour of England and Scotland in 2014. The recitation of Emily’s poetry on the moors is worth the watch.

“The drama was filmed mostly in Yorkshire with Haworth being used extensively during filming.^[7] A replica of the Parsonage at Haworth was constructed on the moorland in Penistone Hill Country Park, just west of Haworth. This allowed external scenes to be filmed away from the real Parsonage in the village. The replica parsonage was also added to with other buildings and a street to make a small set of how Haworth looked at the time of the Brontës, with at least one local councillor pointing out that in their time, the Parsonage was not shaded by trees as it is now.^[8]Interior scenes were filmed in studios at Manchester as filming in the actual Parsonage itself was not possible. Other external scenes were filmed within the city of York^[9] and the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire.^[10]” (Wikipedia)

How to be an atheist and have your religion too.

by Andrea Elizabeth

Awakening from the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke is a fascinating look at and respect for the cognition in religion and stuff. He’s released the first 3 lectures so far.

I’m developing the hypothesis that he’s focusing on the image of God in us that we can measure, while of course dismissing the immeasurable Creator. However I’m not sure how he’s going to prove meaningfulness as other than a psychological state.

Stone Tools and Cognition: Lessons from Australia

by Andrea Elizabeth

All this to say that the huge difference between the use of sticks to extract food by primates and the manufacture of stone tools requiring multiple steps by early hominids is the ability to plan ahead and not be motivated by current stimuli only. Delaying gratification and avoiding distractions allows for advancement.

Evil and Tragedy

by Andrea Elizabeth

Peterson addresses every point in my past few posts this video on Evil and Tragedy.

He’s brilliant because I agree with him.

Shadow work

by Andrea Elizabeth

If one is going to be the Other then one must also respect one’s own shadow, and that that person has one too, so neither of you can be trusted. I suppose someone who is pretty enlightened about one’s own shadow and how to recognize it in another will be able to engage. I liked how the psychologist talked to Ted Bundy (see previous posts). Truthful but encouraging of dialogue.

The one Florida official associated with Ted said that he’s ashamed of how gleeful he was at Bundy’s execution. That’s properly respecting one’s own shadow. One should not be joyful in the destruction of another, even if they need to be stopped. “But for the grace of God go I”. Peterson is able to put himself in the other person’s shadow. It has to do with indulging one’s compulsions. Do we restrain them out of fear of reprisal? Bundy had no fear. He was motivated by domination. You can tell in his court interactions. He would not yield. When over his head, he would complain about the conditions of his cell – his safe spot that he then tried to exert more control over. And he knew nice people would be compassionate. Ann Rule was, very. That’s the problem with over-identification – you can be manipulated. And what about how lots of women in therapy need to be taught how to uphold boundaries? Boundaries has become a paradoxically bad word. The same people who say The Wall is immoral are promoting the Me Too movement. There needs to be more context and less simplicity.

 

A Jungian’s View of Psychopathology

by Andrea Elizabeth

Forgive note format.

25 minutes in, Dr. Terrance Wapshall says Jung said western Christianity is missing a place for the feminine, matter, sexuality, and evil. Called it the neurosis of meaninglessness. This was right after WWI where Christian Europe fell into atrocity.

Jung turned east, not Tibet but inside. Modern Man in Search of Soul. Saw relationship between east and west – synthesis?

Till 50’s the unconscious was emphasized. Inkblot test rare now. Says consciousness inadequate to provide understanding. Need to be aware of how we are motivated outside our consciousness. Aaron Beck, cognitive psychology, noticed depressive dreams in recovered depressed ppl indicated recurrence. May need to revisit the unconscious.

Dark matter analogous to unconscious. More massive than we can see.

Jung saw sane people as source of evil. Western civilization and Christianity became his patient. Says the west became fearful and aggressive towards separate Others. Compassion feels connection. Then came WWII. Psyche stands between creating life or death.

Culture designates what’s acceptable to express or repress. The repressed becomes perhaps unconscious shadow that’s projected onto others, who then must be stopped.

A person brave enough to withdraw projections onto others becomes aware of his own shadow. Becomes a problem to himself. Removes They”.

*end notes

I think this is an antidote to the xenophobia of the last century, but it can be taken too far if viewed too simplistically. There is a difference between me and you, and between cultures, and epi-genetics. Still, I want to think more about my bad dreams.

The part about how our psyche stands between life and death goes along with Hamlet:

To be, or not to be? That is the question—

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—

No more—and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

 

Rightness

by Andrea Elizabeth

In this video of John Vervaeke speaking on Foolishness and self-deception, he grounds foolishness as the absurdity and meaninglessness reached for when one’s home has been destroyed. Home is the framework one was raised in. One example is the death of the Christian framework in culture and how it leads people into the void of meaninglessness that can be filled with other magical thinking.

He offers the Buddhist 8-fold path as an antidote. I looked that up and it’s basically right thinking, being and acting which I suppose eliminates wrong feeling. The problem with this is that it is based on reincarnation, and if that’s not magical thinking, I don’t know what is. Do he and Sam Harris think they can achieve perfection in one lifetime?

I can identify somewhat with the domicide that he speaks of, though. When you find out things aren’t as you thought. I’m wondering if what comes across when encountering people who are still caught in what you know consider delusion, if you get a condescending, patronizing attitude, sort of like a psychologist can be seen as having. When what feels like a legitimate, emotional reaction is explained as “acting out” some dysfunctional view. Or when you can objectively rationalize why pain exists. Yet, “Jesus wept.”