This is a response to a recent, awesome  PowerPoint TOK presentation.

What do the following have in common?

1. The enlightenment gap, the divide between the two cultures (science and
humanities)
2. The chasm that divides cultural and biological evolution.
3. The mind- body / subject- object problem.
4. The now- time, or time- identity problems.
5. I and Thou, self and other,
6. Even analog and digital, and I could go on....

I find it so beautiful how many names and contexts this one problem has,
and compelled to combine them and see if a new angle or bigger picture can
be found.
Could it boil down to mere form vs formless, finite vs infinite? These
would apply to all but #2:

"What in the final analysis joins our genetic and cultural evolution?".

I'd say a number of truly great mysteries are required to fully join
cultural and biological evolution, with more than one potentially beyond
just 3 dimensions.

I'd start with the usual...
Apes growing individual TOK's (memetic machinery, Dennetian Cranes, Joseph
Henrich), from memetic sex with one another, cultivating the expansion of
cooperative group and individual complexity around the globe..
As culture domesticates our genomes, guiding our value-economies, norms,
sexual selection, etc....

What is human culture? I don't think it's definition can be finished:

A) In one sense, culture just IS psychology. Culture is the individual's
operating system, their individual psyche.
     Yet, the ToK model suggests culture residing both within the personal
mind3, and also enveloping whole society as our evolutionary norms, trends,
tropes...the collective (un)consciousness.

B) Language is innately argumentative, dualistic, hence the problem of
justification.
   The most relevant communication, even pertaining to cultural selection,
has nil to do with explicit justification or explanation, but what goes on
inside the person, communicated energetically or emotionally, secretly
manifesting in unseen ways on the outside, leaving awkward nerds cold and
confused as subconscious self-punishment for even asking themselves how
they "should" act.

Tao Te Ching - morality is the root of evil, the first betrayal of the good.

When Tao is lost, you have the good,
 when the good is lost, you have morality,
  when morality is lost, you have ritual,
   ritual is the husk of true faith,
    the beginning of chaos...

Jamie

PS:

Watch "Sam Harris & Rupert Spira debate the primacy of consciousness
(excerpt)" on YouTube
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__youtu.be_Dpr6WhJEnIs&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=1bvUwW49PtxmxJMVKN7_uStpOb_c4PVzKb2onmiPiAs&s=pzEkMaEs6rhuZDuW5nmGsGbgnvGJwqCsHIieRIpUB-0&e= 

I've been reading of how mind is merely the act of endlessly claiming
thoughts as one's own, literally in-forming a made-up person, an identity
from the stream of incoming forms, names, labels, words, stories,
identifying with this not that (the real tree of good and evil, some say)

"You are the self, not some imaginary person having thoughts" (though, I've
yet to discover how to live even mostly without thought...i haven't even
learned to stop imagining my (imaginary) self from (imaginary) other's
pov....what freedom would that be...im just afraid i'd die or worse,
because that's at the base of my own ToKoGaE

Also, mind doesn't exists when you seek it, the mind is only thoughts and
semi-artificial systems of thoughts (systemic feelings?)

Thought is not itself intelligent but literally "artificially" intelligent.
Each person (source awareness or whatevs) builds their own artificial
identity from their available culture and thoughts from within...to "fit
in" to their culture and survive...

...but it's a lie, the self made matrix...

Anyway, at some point this inner quest work should connect with the TOK,
metaphysically, except it would likely be too huge, because the ToK
encompasses an "idea" of billions of lives, years, miles, .....and
physically describing our own continuous, indescribable self in relation to
the ToK, as if we could be pointed out in truth, as if we were atomic
creatures...is clearly more than most can openly discuss.

I'd just say that introspection isn't dead, as Dennett and the Churchlands
would have it.
Try again with the tools provided by Ramana Maharshi, Rupert Spira, or this
channel: and
Samanera Jayasara on youtube.

My own inner self is like ...new to me....only less estranged... not more.

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