Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Four Parts of "Seeing" (Introduction)

  There are multiple ways of thinking about the idea of "seeing" an object. It is too simplistic to say that when when we see an object with the eye, that it is the eye doing the "seeing." This would be like saying the view we see through a clear window is the product of that window.

   Seeing is a mental activity much more than a visual activity. Every glance, even if we try to avoid it, conjures up a hundred thoughts, a thousand ideas. For the eye is no instrument, but simply a lifeless vacancy, save for the mind that guides it both in its direction and depth of vision. The ability of the human eye to see depth is unparalleled in Nature. The human mind's corresponding ability to imagine a world, a "vision" beyond the world that is perceived by the physical eye, is unmatched and scarcely imagined by other beings.

   There are four aspects to "seeing" an object. First, the object being seen is actually in the eye. It occupies space in the eye. This is true both in the functioning of the eye as an organ doing the "work" of seeing AND it is physically true. It is physically true in that the light from an observed object, the product of that object, literally occupies space in the eye. Our observations are, in this sense, the physical acquisition of at least some elements of the object being observed. (As an aside, this physical occupation of the eye by an observed object is why we receive a rush of emotional pleasure when we see a loved one after some time of absence. It is an emotional thrill because that person has literally entered our mind through our eye and occupies a portion of it. For instance, observe human behavior at an airport when loved one's greet each other off of a flight.)

  The second aspect of vision is that the observed object is correlated by all of one's senses.This means that sight becomes related to the other senses. For instance, when we see a triple chocolate ice cream cone with a cherry on top, we can taste and smell the chocolate on our tongue and smell it in our nose even if we cannot physically approach the ice cream and imbibe it into our senses. Therefore, through vision and the mind, all the senses can be molded into one. So that when we see an object it becomes a complete object, not just a vision but a fully formed object in our mind.

   In this instance of the correlation of the five senses around an object, they unify into what might be called "human sense." The five senses become one, briefly, in relation to the object being observed. The object becomes a unified whole that exists not only in space, but in time, and in one's mind.

   The third aspect of vision is that the envisioned object is fixed in space-time at a given point. In this sense any changes taking place to the object cease to be observed, temporarily, because time is fixed by the mind in relation to the object. Likewise, any movement the object may be doing is temporarily disregarded as the mind fixed the object into a given point in space.

  The fourth aspect of vision is that the envisioned object is fixed in the space-time of the mind. This is generally called one's "memory" of an object. Memory, among human being and perhaps some other being, can be conjured up spontaneously or through stimuli. Stimuli are usually other perceptions such as auditory or smell that one experiences at the same time that the object is envisioned. So, here we can thus understand the terms "smell of death" or "sounds of battle."

  In the context of the unity of the four types of vision through the integration of all sensory experience, we can understand the close relationship between perceptions and memories. Perceptions are both "over there" in the world and "over here" in my mind at a given moment. In the same way memories are both "in the past" AND "in the present." Their existence in the past is brought forward into the present by the actions of one's mind and through action can affect the future. So, we here see the existence of what one might describe as the "past-present." This is the melding of the transitory moments we exist in with the depth of our memory that is constantly enmeshed and intertwined with past events, people, ideas etc. We can thus imagine a present that is much deeper than the superficial flashes of meaningless sights and sounds we often lament it to be. We can live in a past-present, integrating our memories and those of others into a deeper, more meaningful, and more fulfilling present that thus propels us into a future that is at once more challenging and more hopeful.

  This "past-present" is, I suspect, a field of existence that human beings tend to forget and then remember in the oscillations of time and change that our species has lived through. In periods such as the one that we can sense is now ending,where we live in the present only, technology is viewed as something we "interact" with, but it exists in a fundamentally separate way from our minds. This creates a disconnection and disruption between the present of the technology that we are using and the past that our mind is constantly inventing, rearranging and remembering. Thus technology tends to do the work for our mind, in many instances, tending to enervate it.

  I suspect we are moving into another age of the "past-present." We will remember again that technology and mind are one and the same thing. They do not interact so much as act in concert. If one is off key, the other creates disharmony, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened it imagines itself to be. The mind, through its ability to connect to a past, can bring technology up to a level that can allow it to be the tool of transformation for the individual it potentially is. Technology, with its ability to master the present moment in an astonishingly powerful wide range, can propel this transformed individual into the broad sunny uplands of a boundless future.



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Dominus Vobiscum

 In the light of day
I saw the world as it would be when night befalls
And when dusk fell
The wail of a thousand voices pierced the air
And prepared the spirit for the coming trials

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Had the pleasure of reading recently.....

The famous history by Jacob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. This is an excellent study of Italian culture between about 1350 and 1550. I begins with Petrarch's brilliance.

  In Petrarch we see a man who was the first person since classical times to ascend to a mountaintop and describe what he experienced. For Petrarch, nature became Nature. Nature took on a beatific and aesthetic quality. It became sublime.

  Also Niccolo Machiavelli's two greatest works The Prince and The Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli's most sincere warnings in both works were his admonitions to avoid the implementation and use of a standing mercenary army. He especially uses the Carthaginian example in this. The mercenary army of Carthage turned against its patron city after its defeat at Zama by the Roman legions of Scipio.