"Karl Popper blamed Plato for the rise of totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century, seeing Plato's Philosopher-kings, with their dreams of 'social engineering' and 'idealism', as leading directly to Stalin and Hitler (via Marx and Hegel).[1] In addition, Ayatollah Khomeini is said to have been inspired by the Platonic vision of the philosopher king while in Qum in the 1920s when he became interested in Islamic mysticism and Plato's Republic. As such it has been speculated that he was inspired by Plato's philosopher king and subsequently modeled elements of his "Islamic Republic" based on it.[2]"
interesting; didn't know khomeini was a fan of the republic; reminds me of hannah arendt's theory that rationalism was the origin of totalitarianism.
my father gave me a book by eckhart tolle, which seems to be a sort of watered down u.g. / radical honesty variant; the writing is bad in comparison and the idea less forcefully stated, but the basic idea is the same: that seeing the world dominantly through abstract thought, through the filter of forms, and letting those abstractions take priority over sensory observation such that observation itself becomes bent by that filter of abstractions is the origin of evil and the problem of the times -- which is true but i don't think there's much we can do about it because it's part of our nature and brain structure.
he thinks that just through force of will and spreading the good word and giving people good practices like meditation humanity at large can reach another state of consciousness. i don't think that is possible. people have been trying that for thousands of years, it hasn't done much: monks in monasteries still have petty squabbles, and even the dalai lama is too abstract in his orientation, as is eckhart tolle's writing itself: all solutions are the problem, the only answer is to stop asking questions and stop looking for a solution, as u.g. said, the harder people try to reach higher states of consciousness, the more they stay where they are;
thought is physical, it proceeds with a physical machine, so it follows that higher states of consciousness would require a change in that machine. sometimes this is accomplished through a stroke. just by chance, strokes can produce enlightenment in people, as they did
here, and with (i suspect) u.g.
there is only
one method i know of which can permanently alter the structure of the brain in a controlled fashion currently available to me*, and it's of course the method i've been experimenting with, quite blindly and helplessly, like searching in the dark. maybe something will come out of it, maybe not. some people did seem to get a positive effect from immortal defense, but i don't know if those are statistical aberrations, a placebo effect, or something actually in the game itself. i've seen a lot of changes in people from other games though -- xenogears and ff6 are commonly named. but of course we can't see into the brain to see what is changing, so it's guesswork.
(*not really true, books also work, although i like books less because they're more abstract, and because i've lost the ability to read books lately; i only read one book a month on average now, instead of one every few days as was common in my early 20s)
but we can to a degree see into our own brains, observe our own changes after doing certain things. through this empirical method we can learn what changes consciousness. abstract systems can be used to weaken abstract systems; words can be used against themselves. but it's not easy to measure it this way; memory is selective, a lot of people say something changed their lives but it actually didn't, or vice versa -- but it's probably better (for most purposes) than trying to guess from the outside: easier to see changes in consciousness in oneself than in others
there's also a casual direction problem: who knows if it's wise works which cause the wise, rather than the potentially wise which are attracted to wise works? the latter seems just as common, maybe more. and an immune system problem: many people are closed off from things which may help them, because rationalism guards itself, doesn't want to let the default state of sensibility take over again, the way it was when they were young; rationalism is a tool which doesn't want to be just a tool, like agriculture and automobiles it changes the old ways so much that going back is often impossible
i've been watching the x-files lately. the show is really strongly about epistemology: empiricism/scully vs deduction/mulder. because it's a show and fiction mulder is usually right and scully wrong (although often she has something which is right too, even in the show). but in real life, scully would always be right and mulder would be crazy, because in real life most of the stuff in the show doesn't exist and is just imaginary. the show is pretty great but it also has a pretty dangerous message: that wanting to believe in stuff despite the evidence always turns out to be the better path than going by observation -- but to give the show the benefit of the doubt that could be interpreted as an expose on the human tendency to do that rather than a recommendation that people actually operate like mulder does
my sister has two ferrets in her room, i can hear them scratching the door occasionally. she bought them in in secret, in a box, hiding them from our mother (though she told her eventually). they're not in a cage, as we don't have one. they poke around, trying to search every nook and cranny of the room; they tried to sneak into my shirt a few times, it's cute. if only there were a way to have the sensory focus of a ferret combined with the intelligence of a human -- why do people (as a whole) have to give up sensory reality so much in order to think about general categories and concepts? no reason why not. i don't even think it's our brain's fault anyway, really. i imagine a superstructure of rationalism from above, an overmind of it is a possibility: systems self-organize, and if totalitarianism and the state are essentially rationalism writ large, perhaps it itself is the cause of rationalism writ small (through instruments such as media, school systems, and
the like)
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