To say we have a bent toward order might seem a ridiculously moot point to make. And in some sense, more real than we may know or care to admit, we are all scientists in continual experimenting.
The baby keeps attempting that word till finally it comes out to the parent’s clapping delight. “She said it…she said encyclopedia!”
Admittedly this bit of fancy is most rudimentary in form and example; yet how different is it from the physicist who in mind is proceeding from what he knows, is already able to do or calculate, to the solution of a problem that has troubled him? We are all at play with building blocks. Phonetics just happens to be one of our first introductions to them. And we’d be foolish to assign it any less than what it is, one of our first disciplines…and in some ways a very strict one.
Already our minds are being ordered to a function, to work according to a desired result. And do we no less now find (or then find) ideas become linked in some ways to verbalization, as though the more difficult it is for us to “put them into words” the more gauzy they are to us in mind? And do we not also find how often words appear in mind to take us on some excursion of thought(s)?
And would it be belaboring the point of influences (which to us are well beyond our control at that point and in this matter) to say, that at least on the face of it, the parents above are perceived differently than some others whose joyful clapping would follow the accepted pronunciation of the word shit? We do not even have to enter any so called value judgments here, we simply see difference. We do not, nor ever had, any choice in our parentage. Nor did they (our parents)…and on and on back as far as any care to go.
But even this matter as contention is well ahead, even so far ahead of a more fundamental matter mentioned, our perceptions of difference. The mobile twirls above the crib, yet the baby continues to cry till the mother appears and cradles it. In whatever form of knowing it operates, that baby already knows difference, some experience of need and lack, and that the mobile twirling isn’t sufficient to it. Sometimes the mobile is enough to capture attention to satisfy it, sometimes need of attention exceeds its sufficiency. And as all parents learn (along with the growing baby) what was once (non conscious action?) of expression is soon turned to tool…crying. And rare may be the parent that itself has not learned the difference between the crying that follows a “no” to another cookie than follows a toddler’s falling off a chair. We all order things according to difference and distinctions. Even the subtler ones. (Interior designers make a living off of this, as do the best surgeons)
It would probably be right to ask at this point…so what? What does this have to do, or does this even have anything to do with consciousness? After all, we all know something of differences and distinctions that is so rudimentary as to be laughable. No one tries to cut their steak with a baseball or a lawn chair. Too absurd?
Or, too soon?
Really not if we have already accepted the notion of influences, either those unbidden, even choice-less, and even go so far as to those pursued of interest, sought for the acquiring, for it should probably be somewhat clear how dim we are in accounting for our own interests and pursuits. Some will go to welding school, some to Harvard Medical. And do not be cocksure this is all and only, nor ever solely owed to intellectual capacity. Some may go to Harvard because “daddy” did and “always expected me to” while another may not go…while giving the same reason.
So this matter of seeing and/or perceiving difference and distinction, yes, even, (perhaps especially) in consciousness from which actions proceed can be profoundly affecting. And the subtleties encountered there leave all of us in (me surely, no less than any other) if not a quandary, at least some fundamental issue.
What is the real me (as a thinking/perceiving/judging consciousness)…native, pure, undiluted, unaffected in a consciousness that is fit to know anything apart from all other influences…both bidden/sought and unbidden? How could we even measure? The lightest finger (or subtlest) placement on what we may think are scales in total uninfluenced balance for rightly concluding anything, are, we might admit (might we admit…even to ourselves?) already so skewed beyond our own knowing. Yes, even if not a “problem” to us, it surely is an issue.
We might even take that rabbit trail to the place of imagining ourself able…able to so come to it, arrive at it, that the self be satisfied it has touched bedrock of knowing. But then the question always remains “just how firm is this bedrock” in the knowing of all that may be known? No matter how much, or to whatever extent a man might think he can, or does appear to himself as able to confirm to himself…anything…he will find that apart from some “other” feedback for confirming, he is quite lost in insanity. And that the weakest of all, the most useless of all to him would be to accept any confirming from those no less lost in such insanity.
All with certain finger(s) on scales but not knowing with whose tincture of consciousness they are really working with in order to know; is it daddy’s…mommy’s…teacher’s…friend’s…most admired professor whose thoughts and words were devoured…greatest “past” minds…a preacher’s?
And God forbid we neglect circumstance(s) and how those have informed.
In so much of this and these we are at a loss in discerning impacts and forming. And if these be so unknown to us, how much more our actions that spring from them?
“Forgive them father, they know not what they do”…comes to mind.
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