Chapter 1: The Burning Questions Trailhead
The “burning questions trail” starts with ONE’s OWN DIRECT EXPERIENCE of life, mind, setting, universe; the nature & dimensions of existence & existence at large. Note that these aren’t primarily philosophical abstractions, but have direct & personal impact.
In terms of our earliest awareness of direct experience, life & mind come as a package, sentient being & some sentience (i.e., awareness)–at first mostly bodily feeling, sensation, found on both sides of the porous border between dreaming & awake, in utero & out into the surrounding world–providing inputs even before birth, more or less subliminally registering particular voices, sounds, states & conditions. After we’re born, we get increasing amounts of data input from perception, as it mixes with sensation. Some input may go directly to SENSATION, whether a scratch, burn or bite; feeding, snuggled & caressed. Some stays interpreted as perception of what’s “out there,” input automatically translated by the mind as being seen &/or heard at some distance from the observer.
In fact, most people are completely unaware of the complex manipulations of the input data involved in producing the interpretation made about “out there” in the first place. (In one example, the brain “flips” images from how the photons themselves are first received; fit with goggles that re-flip “upside down,” the brain eventually re-reflips to right the world. Similarly, our “ideas” of the world affect what we perceive.) We generally assume what we actually hear & see in our mind really is “out there” where the sound-waves & photons apparently come from, as if the mind were cast out there, too. In a sense, maybe it is. Many creatures seem to feel when they’re being looked at, prompting the biologist Rupert Sheldrake to postulate the existence of a mind-field not at all bounded by the human skull.
The awareness of other awareness is, of course, heightened when becoming aware one’s own awareness is the focus of another’s…. Recognition of such effects starts early for us, eye to eye, infant & caretaker, mother & child, the sight of each immediately heightened meeting the other’s sight. The quality, chemical correlates, & effects of any interaction depend on many variables, most notably potential intentions of the inter-actors, e.g., the difference between a hit of adrenaline or oxytocin. Note that the chemical correlate is an effect of the psychological reaction, not vice versa; the psychic effect of the other’s attention happens first, even before it may consciously register–felt as directly & tangibly as we feel sensation.
Effects of bodily sensation, sensory input & other attention are tips of mind’s iceberg, a part of the ocean-mind’s palette the self uses to paint its reality where experience meets world. Emergent levels of intelligence, thought, & thought-transmission systems (language, math, game, software, technology, all the arts of) reveal some of mind’s other capacities &/or dimensions….
If one set of great questions involves the nature, range, & meaning the mind might find in its own existence, a corresponding set emerges about the nature, range & meaning of the world we find ourselves in, including its apparent realities (like our own) at different scales, in which scale itself seems fundamental. SCALE & SELF make strange bedfellows, both singular & together.
We’ll take a new look at (i.e., QUESTION) self & its location, therefore, as we give a few long-term wonders of the human condition a bit of fresh contemplation. For openers, a few thoughts on the nature of nature, life, mind, universe &, most at hand, our own existence….
The idea is to expand our perspective–beyond mental maps of the territory, into a realm of richer understanding…. So welcome to the the Home Room, meant to offer an overview of the branch territory, for minimal orientation. Other “rooms” can be clicked to from the menu at the top, each representing particular questions or KINDS of question.
First, we ask, What is a QUESTION?
Note that we ask many kinds, including the usual:what? how? why? why not? who? where? when? and then? but usually at an unusual level. Asking about where & when, for example, we inquire into the nature of time & space themselves. If questioning who, we try to grasp the elusive nature of the self….
This isn’t much like those sites run by science-explainers who answer questions about quirks of nature, like why is the sky blue, in other words. There are search engines for such questions now. The questions drawing our attention tend to be both individually personal & universally significant, & about which true knowledge has a far finer texture, with answers far more elusive & tenuous.
Note the forks between the root QUEST, the word QUESTION & relatives like QUERY & INQUIRE. Though all share a sense of seeking, some are more focused on specific classes of information users are aware of. QUEST itself suggests a broader territory less conventionally pre-mapped, particularly as applied to one’s personal QUEST FOR UNDERSTANDING.
To question in this deeper sense enters a realm not subject to easy measurement, if any at all, beyond accounting for in rights & wrongs, with answers at once trans-local & emerging from within; expanding in volume, orbit, layers, spirals, yet taking up no space at all; shifting forms & fractals, digesting past into the continual unfolding, while extending connections across categories….
While not exactly the same as either believing or knowing, understanding includes aspects of both, along with suspension of disbelief; an open sense of what remains unclear; an active sense of deeper mystery within which understanding itself remains wrapped, the known unknown within what can’t be known….
Not to put too fine a point on it, let alone sound like a willfully over-clever official, but there’s a difference between true understanding & most attempts to represent a subject or object in a multi-dimensional reality using fewer dimensions than postulated. A picture of a loved one can be quite evocative, yet it remains a disembodied representation even so, nothing at all like the person.
Make the picture a film to show living characteristics in action more fully & it still remains a re-presentation, although having added aspects of simulated embodiment, still “once or more removed.” Whether fictional (using actors) or documentary (film of the actual figures), we don’t get the presences themselves. Embody the represented figures & actions on stage in live theater, & both ‘presentation’ & ‘re-presentation’ happen together, the former being the actual reality of live actors, the latter being the fictional roles portrayed in the play.
Differences between any actual reality & attempts to represent it may shed light on the nature of ‘hidden dimensions,’ often less hidden than glossed over. The most fundamental ‘hidden dimension’ isn’t hidden at all, for example, but intrinsic to the attention brought to such questions, inherent to the process of thought & contemplation; feeling, sensation & awareness: being realm of the mind itself, with its various levels of depth, orders of magnitude, & orbits of trans-locality.
Conventional 3- & 4-dimensional models of reality ignore at least two domains that may be more consciously considered dimensions. In one direction there’s the realm of ideas, representations, mental formulations, impressions & conceptions, including perceptions, all part of the known reality–yet in a different direction from what’s found in the supposedly more physical spatial & temporal locations. Clearly, mind exists, & no matter how subjective, remains in some sense objectively ‘real,’ though not in the same way physical objects in space-time may be.
Another fundamental domain generally ignored in discussion of dimensions (yet which clearly exists throughout ordinary physical reality as a set of directions beyond the conventionally recognized 4) may be found in orders of magnitude. Largely invisible in ordinary experience at the organism’s scale, these other co-existent orders become visible with our lenses set at different scales, e.g., quantum, atomic, molecular, microbial, systemic levels.
While these orders remain completely unrepresented on the x-y-z-(+ time) map of conventional dimensions, they are still very much ‘really there,’ fundamental to reality & significant to our experience. While each order of magnitude could be regarded as having a dimension of its own, the nested telescope as a whole ought certainly to qualify at least, being so clearly an actual spatial direction distinct from height (vertical), length (horizontal) & width (depth).
At the most basic level, entities & their representation (whether map, image, idea or other impression in the mind) differ in essential aspects of their fundamental stuff, the nature of their composition, not just the order of magnitude looked at. The realm of the imagination may have little resemblance to the physical reality ostensibly described when considered in terms of their compositions at multiple scales.
Imagine yourself before an actual mirror, for one example. Your organic composition bears little resemblance to the mirror’s composition giving rise to the image. Neither are much like the fundamental composition of the image in the mind, consciousness, or that part of the brain where mind’s mystery lives–& where quests take place, often in search of answers to questions not always clear setting out.
Chapter 2: Expanding the understanding….
Among the ways understanding develops, questioning, pondering & explorative thought stand out, each trying to articulate key aspects in words–whether for someone else or oneself. While there may be value in formulating new questions of one’s own, much understanding develops by following the articulations, questioning & explorations of others, some of which goes on resonating with & through us.
Like language, understanding is individually developed & experienced, yet fundamentally transcends individuals. A language becomes a kind of “field potential,” drawing power from being at once held in common & individually responsive to more or less countless possible variations. This incredible “field” holds both a seemingly limitless creative potential & accessible record of much past use (what others have thought, said, written &/or been reported to have done so).
The fact that we understand each other at all, let alone across such a wide range of domains & details, dimensions & nuances of thought, is itself mind-boggling, a miracle before which the physical sciences remain mostly mute (& in awe). The nature of existence has lost none of its wonder, mystery, awesomeness or relevance for all the adventurers that have set out to explore the territory. Their reports may let us stand on their heads & shoulders to see a bit further, but height of the eyes is only one small factor where issues of depth are involved.
Even in reference to the conventional spatial dimensions defined as length, width, & height, depth is not necessarily easy to measure, or measurable at all without another frame of reference. What objective scale could measure Einstein’s understanding, for example? Any attempt would have to be based on our own understanding of potential range, Einstein’s range, & how to measure them in relation to our range….
It would be hard to make a case that we understood more about the territory than Einstein or his critics, but that’s not really the issue at all. It’s our understanding we’re concerned with here. True, Einstein’s may enhance ours, even those who (like Yours Crudely) lack any understanding whatsoever of the math & specialized concepts brought to bear only by experts.
The fact that experts often turn out to be wrong provides scant comfort, though probably shouldn’t surprise us. It may be considered evidence of the progress made in a field that prior shortcomings keep being revealed, & perspectives revised. New instruments go on expanding the range of observation & of information processing, at what seems to be a compounding rate.
Meanwhile, anyone who has taken advanced courses in almost any subject knows that the paths prescribed toward acquiring expertise involve methods already suggested: 1st learning the questions, including the history revised answers, the explorative thought, observations, experiments, & reasoning informing the daily practice of professionals, whatever skills the field involves. To know a field means knowing its questions, in other words, on tests & in practice, with a learned flow chart of what to ask to refine any particular understanding–if a, ask x; if b, ask y….
Some question are of a different sort, however. You might say they have a life of their own. However widely felt, they are not widely articulated in a useful way, or if they are, must still be discovered, savored & digested by individuals to become part of their own understanding.
A library contains a collection of such explorations, from the world-wide legacy across time, from distant past to contemporary. Not all materials will be equally useful, or even trustworthy. In our case, at least, there are no known ulterior motives or intentions to deceive adding warp to the woof of what’s offered. Still, you remain judge & jury, provided you’re not a principal in the suit.
Assessment of answers & their basis must reside with the seeker who asks the questions in pursuit of understanding–allowing time for digesting. Understanding, like nutrition, can be cumulative without being stable, permanent or a process ever finished. While some questions can be answered once & for all, others expand with answers, as well as with the practice of pondering. Practice needn’t “make perfect” to make better, deeper, wider, richer, more open, as part of one’s “2nd nature.”.
Chapter 3: Knowledge Areas (KA)
An overview on areas of human understanding suggest the following Areas. Though not necessarily how content on the site is organized, the perspective itself may have some value, if mainly for questioning. Incomplete in itself, it’s only one way of taking a cross-section for organizing areas of interest. I note the absence of sports, for example, as well as of concepts like cooperation & conflict. Asking where in the list should these be found suggests how arbitrary our categories are & how much dynamic cross-over exists under the surface.
~~~~~~~~Knowing Areas (KA)~~~~~~~~
~~~Religion, Arts, Science & History: humanity’s winged quartet;
~~~Economics, Education, Ecology & Evolution: life down-to-earth;
~~~Sentient Experience, Mind & Universe: basics of our given existence;
~~~The Creative Mysteries: language; generation of synergy; compounding; orders of magnitude & dimensions; origami of time-space & imagination…..
Humanity’s winged quartet (R-A-S-H, above) continue having meaning beyond the tangible moment & lives of those focused on their practice. They may be essentially one initially, religion & art emerging with group expression in song & dance, science passed along as (&/or with) history, whether how-to or what-not-to. Religion & art never really separate. Religion maintains its imagery, architecture, music & liturgy, along with its stock in rite, belief, science, history & economics. Art takes the sacred play of representation & transmission, world-view & sense of transformation with it even when leaving church, mosque, temple & religious iconography behind.
The 4 E’s of down-to-earth life all involve change & exchange in living systems–education in ecology & economics (initially much the same) giving rise to learning, adaptation, transmission of prior learning-from-experience, growth, development, learning from experience (in competition & cooperation). Maybe we should add a 5th E here–Exercise–a learning of both cooperative & competitive skills from structured experiences, as with those in the form of sports, games & group training exercises.
Sentient experience, mind & local universe may be considered the most fundamental “things” we encounter from our own point of view. However much noticed when first coming to consciousness as a young human, these also seem to come relatively late to the party as a body of knowledge, area of intentional study. We have sentient experience long before we consider it as a phenomenon in its own right. We use the mind long before it becomes an object of study or focused attention on itself.
Attention to, & study of, the local universe may go on from earliest awareness as an infant, a subject of attachment (mother) & object of exploration (crawling, looking about, grabbing, tasting). For human groups, however, developing bodies of knowledge in practice, study of the mind & sentient experience per se may tend to be advanced studies reserved for the specially trained (e.g., the shamans).
The creative mysteries are most basic, yet also a catch-all for the most fundamental characteristics of encountered existence, possibly easiest to miss or take for granted –e.g., the nature of space-time; synergy (wholes greater than the sum of their parts); compounding (the cumulative ability to make &/or gather more, whether a snowball rolling downhill or an ecosystem reinvesting in itself over the ages); fractal dynamics (scale-crossing forms); resilience (ability to bounce back, revitalize, recreate & re-generate); action at a distance (projection of mind, tools & signs); imagination (whether “seeing” what’s there or what’s not, weaving threads from memory, anticipation, play & purpose…); & greatest tool in the evolutionary tool-box, language.
More powerful than fire, languages make all the rest possible. With them, new orders of reflection, thought, anticipation & relationship open–at every conceivable level, from exchangeable bits of practical info to mathematical equations; metaphysical speculations to mantric (vibrational) & aesthetic effects. Although an empowering agency, language would be meaningless by itself, however, without the human capacity to imagine the sense it seems to make.
Both language & Imagination remain at the heart of our sense-making agency therefore. Except in the broadest sense of the term, imagination isn’t the only functional sub-tool in the swiss army knife of the mind, nor the only part of the mind using a language with the ability to represent & refer to more than itself. Still, the ability of language to shape imagination (& vice versa!)–to abstract, distill, expand & mediate understanding–makes our inquiries possible.
Chapter 4: Expanding Knowledge Areas
The nature of mind, imagination, & language transcend the topic areas in which we put them to use, in other words. They can’t be ignored in our attempt to interpret any data–whether received from outer or inner sources. Similarly, there’s plenty of “mystery” implicitly embedded in humanity’s winged quartet–in religion & science, as well as in the arts & histories.
Some may say the greatest mystery remains the existence of anything, others the existence of sentience specifically, the ability to sense, feel, “know” anything in direct experience by means of a mind that feels a sense of its own identity–a sense of self, in other words, a highly variable concept factoring in a variety of dimensions, particularly for a complex organism with many nested orders of magnitude or scales of being (cellular & organismic being just two of the many).
As sentient beings embodied in physical organisms, the range of information received is limited for each by our forms & instruments, inherited & developed. Nevertheless, the cumulative thought & astoundingly creative tools developed by the species as a whole have expanded the understanding potential into fundamental realms some might call “beyond our pay-grade” as earthly organisms. Let’s face it. Other living forms exceed us in countless capacities, even, until recently, the ability to adapt their environments, but none we know of have gone nearly so far in developing tools to explore & discover the universe beyond. Beyond what?
Beyond the immediately sensible, locally relevant, naturally inherited range of perception–crossing orders of magnitude in our search for fundamentally meaningful stuff, from quantum potential to atomic & molecular powers to all the levels of organic, social & cosmological organization; & back to the nature of the inquiring mind, & the self interpreting it, trying to translate that into understanding.
Again, the paradox: the more we understand, the more we realize we don’t. The physicists may have it about right when they say that all the discernible matter in the universe makes up about 5% of the total suggested by interpretation of the data, the rest being mostly dark matter & dark energy, where dark essentially just means unseen, unknown & almost entirely not understood. On the other hand, it was not so long ago that none of this was “known” at all, neither black holes at the center of galaxies, nor galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
In every age, it seems, some believe, think, & are even often utterly convinced that just about everything important has pretty much been figured out. The capacity for surprise can itself be a surprise to those who have been taking such understanding for granted. True understanding includes the sense of how much more there is to understand– the dual sense of mystery & exploration, in other words, the urge to know more & the seeking to do so.
Ironically, a case can be made that those who think they’ve figured out everything that’s ultimately relevant & important have a good chance of being among those more objectively judged most ignorant. As Master Twain might have put it once don’t know, but in what you think you know that isn’t so.
Socrates put the same issue about as concisely, equating his own wisdom with knowing how little he actually knew. His method of teaching was not just the back & forth of the dialog, therefore, but asking questions, then questioning the holes in answers, a process making exploration & examination one….
The idea that questions linked us with sources of deeper understanding goes far back into the roots of human exploration in about every domain, from Delphic Oracles in Greexe & I Ching (Book of Changes) in China to Native American Vision Quest. Note that the first two of these are consulted with specifically articulated questions, whereas the last exists as an open question, answered only as revealed, in the experience.
Put all three together & you’re not so far from how science ultimately proceeds–formulating questions, finding new questions revealed along the way, discovering the unexpected, often something not looked for. For the seeker, it’s not the found that gathers attention, meanwhile, so much as the practice of seeking, sporadically reinforced by satisfactions of discovery & the sense of yet more comprehensive satisfactions to come….
Chapter 5: ~~~Menu Areas (MA)-intro to Neo-Topical Questions~~~~~
Black Rock Desert has its Burning Man. We have our BURNING QUESTIONS. Not all TOPICS burn at the same scale or intensity, but sparks can set other flames going across fire-breaks. Like the KNOWLEDGE AREAS above, MENU AREAS aren’t ultimately separate from each other; any one lead to each of the others, weaving a multi-dimensional exploration that extends its range & depth through time.