Enfant terrible
Kraken
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WE ARE TRIVIAL
Interviewer: I know that you say death is psychologically just as important as birth and like it is an integral part of life, but surely, it can't be like birth if it is an end. Can it?
Jung: Yes. If it is an end and there we are not quite certain about this end because we know that there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche- that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future. You can see around corners and such things. Only ignorants deny these facts (ja - german). Its quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche- in part, at least- is not dependent on these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to....live in time and space alone- and obviously, it doesn't. Then, in .. to that extent, they psyche is not submitted to those laws and that means a..a practical continuation of life of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.
Interviewer: Do you- yourself believe that death is probably the end or do you believe....
Jung: Well, I can't say - wissen Sie ? (german translated wold be: you see ?)- the word "believe" is a difficult thing for me. I don't "believe"; I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing; and when I KNOW it, I don't need to believe it. If I- I don't allow myself, for instance, to believe a thing just for sake of believing it. I can't believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept these reasons naturally. And to say "We have to recon with the possibility of [so and so]." You know?
Interviewer: Well...now you told us that we should regard death as being a goal and to stray away from it is to evade life and life's purpose. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must, in fact, believe that death is the end of everything?
Jung: Well...you see I have treated many old people and its quite interesting to watch what their conscious doing with the fact that it is apparantly threatened with the complete end. It disregards it. Life behaves as if it were going on and so I think it is better for old people to live on...to look forward to the next day; as if he had to spend centuries and then he lives happily, but when he is afraid and he doesn't looks forward; he looks back. He petrifies. He gets stiff and he dies before his time, but when hes living on, looking forward to the great adventure that is ahead, then he lives. And that is about what your conscious is intending to do. Of course it is quite obvious that we're all going to die and this is the sad finale of everything, but never-the-less, there is something in us that doesn't believe it, apparently, but this is merely a fact, a psychological fact. Doesn't mean to me that it proves something. It is simply so. For instance, I may not know why we need salt, but we prefer to eat salt too because we feel better. And so when you think in a certain way, you may feel considerably better. And I think if you think along the lines of nature, then you think properly.
6. Determinism and Human Action
In the introduction, we noted the threat that determinism seems to pose to human free agency. It is hard to see how, if the state of the world 1000 years ago fixes everything I do during my life, I can meaningfully say that I am a free agent, the author of my own actions, which I could have freely chosen to perform differently. After all, I have neither the power to change the laws of nature, nor to change the past! So in what sense can I attribute freedom of choice to myself?
Philosophers have not lacked ingenuity in devising answers to this question. There is a long tradition of compatibilists arguing that freedom is fully compatible with physical determinism. Hume went so far as to argue that determinism is a necessary condition for freedom—or at least, he argued that some causality principle along the lines of “same cause, same effect” is required. There have been equally numerous and vigorous responses by those who are not convinced. Can a clear understanding of what determinism is, and how it tends to succeed or fail in real physical theories, shed any light on the controversy?
Physics, particularly 20th century physics, does have one lesson to impart to the free will debate; a lesson about the relationship between time and determinism. Recall that we noticed that the fundamental theories we are familiar with, if they are deterministic at all, are time-symmetrically deterministic. That is, earlier states of the world can be seen as fixing all later states; but equally, later states can be seen as fixing all earlier states. We tend to focus only on the former relationship, but we are not led to do so by the theories themselves.
Nor does 20th (21st) -century physics countenance the idea that there is anything ontologically special about the past, as opposed to the present and the future. In fact, it fails to use these categories in any respect, and teaches that in some senses they are probably illusory.[9] So there is no support in physics for the idea that the past is “fixed” in some way that the present and future are not, or that it has some ontological power to constrain our actions that the present and future do not have. It is not hard to uncover the reasons why we naturally do tend to think of the past as special, and assume that both physical causation and physical explanation work only in the past present/future direction (see the entry on thermodynamic asymmetry in time). But these pragmatic matters have nothing to do with fundamental determinism. If we shake loose from the tendency to see the past as special, when it comes to the relationships of determinism, it may prove possible to think of a deterministic world as one in which each part bears a determining—or partial-determining—relation to other parts, but in which no particular part (i.e., region of space-time) has a special, stronger determining role than any other. Hoefer (2002) uses these considerations to argue in a novel way for the compatiblity of determinism with human free agency.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#ChaDet
Jung's Archetypes
Jung hypothesized that all of mythology could be taken as a type of projection of the collective unconscious.
The persona is the mask we wear to make a particular impression on others; it may reveal or conceal our real nature. It is an artificial personality that compromises a person's real individuality and society's expectations—usually society's demands take precedence. It is made up of things like professional titles, roles, habits of social behavior, etc. It serves to both guarantee social order and to protect the individual's private life.
The shadow is the negative or inferior (undeveloped) side of the personality. It is said to be made up of all the reprehensible characteristics that each of us wish to deny, including animal tendencies that Jung claims we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors. However, when individuals recognize and integrate their shadows, they progress further towards self-realization. On the other hand, the more unaware of the shadow we are, the blacker and denser it becomes. The more dissociated it is from conscious life, the more it will display a compensatory demonic dynamism. It is often projected outwards on individuals or groups, who are then thought to embody all the immature, evil, or repressed elements of the individual's own psyche.
The anima/animus personifies the soul, or inner attitude. Following a person's coming to term with their shadow, they are then confronted with the problem of the anima/animus. It is usually a persona and often takes on the characteristics of the opposite sex. The anima is said to represent the feminine in men and the animus is the comparable counterpart in the female psyche. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, and even argumentative.
The great mother archetype would be expected to be almost the same in all people, since all infants share inherent expectation of having an attentive caretaker (human instinct). Every surviving infant must either have had a mother, or a surrogate (common experience); and nearly every child is indoctrinated with society's idea of what a mother should be (shared culture). Mother is the source of life and nurture and the images are nearly inexhaustible: Mother Earth, Divine Mother, deep water, womb (both literal and symbolic), a vessel, the sea and the moon are but a few.
The child archetype represents original or child-like conditions in the life of the individual or the species, and thus reminds the conscious mind of its origins. This archetype also takes many forms: living creature—child, god, dwarf, hobbit, elf, monkey; or objects—jewels, chalices or the golden ball. It becomes a necessary reminder when the consciousness become too one-sided, too willfully progressive in a manner that threatens to sever the individual from the roots of his or her being. It also signifies the potentiality of future personality development, and anticipates the synthesis of opposites and the attainment of wholeness. As a result, it represents the urge and compulsion towards self-realization.
The wise old man is the archetype of meaning or spirit. It often appears as grandfather, sage, magician, king, doctor, priest, professor, or any other authority figure. It represents insight, wisdom, cleverness, willingness to help, and moral qualities. His appearance serves to warn of dangers, and provide protective gifts, such as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. As with the other archetypes, the wise old man also possesses both good and bad aspects.
The self, according to Jung, is the most important archetype. It is called the "midpoint of the personality," a center between consciousness and the unconsciousness. It signifies the harmony and balance between the various opposing qualities that make up the psyche. The symbols of the self can be anything that the ego takes to be a greater totality than itself. Thus, many symbols fall short of expressing the self in its fullest development. Symbols of the self are often manifested in geometrical forms (mandalas) or by the quaternity (a figure with four parts). Prominent human figures which represent the self are the Buddha or Christ. This archetype is also represented by the divine child and by various pairs—father and son, king and queen, or god and goddess.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Collective_unconscious
Ray Kurzweil: the ultimate thinking machine
"We humans are going to start linking with each other and become a metaconnection we will all be connected and all be omni-present, plugged into this global network that is connected to billions of people, and filled with data."
At what point do humans cease proliferating? How many humans can Earth reasonably accommodate?
We can actually accommodate a greatly expanded biological population. We have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs. The total amount of solar energy produced each year is doubling every two years and has been for thirty years and is only about seven doublings from meeting all of our energy needs.
There is a similar analysis with water and food and production of housing. The vast majority of land is not used today for human habitation. But ultimately – about a century from now – we will be more concerned with resources for our non- biological brains and bodies than our biological ones.
On a similar plane: when do humans cease propagating? Will having babies even be allowed?
Old technologies fade away very slowly. We still have horse and buggies and vinyl records.
Will space travel ever become real?
A century from now, we will send swarms of intelligent nanobots to explore other celestial bodies. There is no reason to send large squishy creatures like humans.
What is the next step for computers?
Over the next decade, we will see realistic virtual reality that is ubiquitous as well as augmented reality. We will gain mastery of our biology and will start to update the outdated software that runs in our bodies. Computers will master natural language. They won’t wait for you to ask them a question, they will be watching us and listening in and will offer help that they see we need. They will know our needs before we do.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-the-ultimate-thinking-machine
Some final quotes:
"In the olden days men were brutal, now they are dehumanized and possessed to a degree that even the blackest Middle Ages did not know." - Carl Jung
"There is no reason to differentiate virtual world from real world because reality includes that virtual world." - Satoshi Kon
“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.” — Carl Jung
"For the main character, the past and present tense could exist at the same time, even though such a thing is irrelevant for other people. For Ordinary people, past is past, present is present" - Satoshi Kon
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." -Albert Einstein
Interviewer: I know that you say death is psychologically just as important as birth and like it is an integral part of life, but surely, it can't be like birth if it is an end. Can it?
Jung: Yes. If it is an end and there we are not quite certain about this end because we know that there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche- that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future. You can see around corners and such things. Only ignorants deny these facts (ja - german). Its quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche- in part, at least- is not dependent on these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to....live in time and space alone- and obviously, it doesn't. Then, in .. to that extent, they psyche is not submitted to those laws and that means a..a practical continuation of life of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.
Interviewer: Do you- yourself believe that death is probably the end or do you believe....
Jung: Well, I can't say - wissen Sie ? (german translated wold be: you see ?)- the word "believe" is a difficult thing for me. I don't "believe"; I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing; and when I KNOW it, I don't need to believe it. If I- I don't allow myself, for instance, to believe a thing just for sake of believing it. I can't believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept these reasons naturally. And to say "We have to recon with the possibility of [so and so]." You know?
Interviewer: Well...now you told us that we should regard death as being a goal and to stray away from it is to evade life and life's purpose. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must, in fact, believe that death is the end of everything?
Jung: Well...you see I have treated many old people and its quite interesting to watch what their conscious doing with the fact that it is apparantly threatened with the complete end. It disregards it. Life behaves as if it were going on and so I think it is better for old people to live on...to look forward to the next day; as if he had to spend centuries and then he lives happily, but when he is afraid and he doesn't looks forward; he looks back. He petrifies. He gets stiff and he dies before his time, but when hes living on, looking forward to the great adventure that is ahead, then he lives. And that is about what your conscious is intending to do. Of course it is quite obvious that we're all going to die and this is the sad finale of everything, but never-the-less, there is something in us that doesn't believe it, apparently, but this is merely a fact, a psychological fact. Doesn't mean to me that it proves something. It is simply so. For instance, I may not know why we need salt, but we prefer to eat salt too because we feel better. And so when you think in a certain way, you may feel considerably better. And I think if you think along the lines of nature, then you think properly.
6. Determinism and Human Action
In the introduction, we noted the threat that determinism seems to pose to human free agency. It is hard to see how, if the state of the world 1000 years ago fixes everything I do during my life, I can meaningfully say that I am a free agent, the author of my own actions, which I could have freely chosen to perform differently. After all, I have neither the power to change the laws of nature, nor to change the past! So in what sense can I attribute freedom of choice to myself?
Philosophers have not lacked ingenuity in devising answers to this question. There is a long tradition of compatibilists arguing that freedom is fully compatible with physical determinism. Hume went so far as to argue that determinism is a necessary condition for freedom—or at least, he argued that some causality principle along the lines of “same cause, same effect” is required. There have been equally numerous and vigorous responses by those who are not convinced. Can a clear understanding of what determinism is, and how it tends to succeed or fail in real physical theories, shed any light on the controversy?
Physics, particularly 20th century physics, does have one lesson to impart to the free will debate; a lesson about the relationship between time and determinism. Recall that we noticed that the fundamental theories we are familiar with, if they are deterministic at all, are time-symmetrically deterministic. That is, earlier states of the world can be seen as fixing all later states; but equally, later states can be seen as fixing all earlier states. We tend to focus only on the former relationship, but we are not led to do so by the theories themselves.
Nor does 20th (21st) -century physics countenance the idea that there is anything ontologically special about the past, as opposed to the present and the future. In fact, it fails to use these categories in any respect, and teaches that in some senses they are probably illusory.[9] So there is no support in physics for the idea that the past is “fixed” in some way that the present and future are not, or that it has some ontological power to constrain our actions that the present and future do not have. It is not hard to uncover the reasons why we naturally do tend to think of the past as special, and assume that both physical causation and physical explanation work only in the past present/future direction (see the entry on thermodynamic asymmetry in time). But these pragmatic matters have nothing to do with fundamental determinism. If we shake loose from the tendency to see the past as special, when it comes to the relationships of determinism, it may prove possible to think of a deterministic world as one in which each part bears a determining—or partial-determining—relation to other parts, but in which no particular part (i.e., region of space-time) has a special, stronger determining role than any other. Hoefer (2002) uses these considerations to argue in a novel way for the compatiblity of determinism with human free agency.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#ChaDet
Jung's Archetypes
Jung hypothesized that all of mythology could be taken as a type of projection of the collective unconscious.
The persona is the mask we wear to make a particular impression on others; it may reveal or conceal our real nature. It is an artificial personality that compromises a person's real individuality and society's expectations—usually society's demands take precedence. It is made up of things like professional titles, roles, habits of social behavior, etc. It serves to both guarantee social order and to protect the individual's private life.
The shadow is the negative or inferior (undeveloped) side of the personality. It is said to be made up of all the reprehensible characteristics that each of us wish to deny, including animal tendencies that Jung claims we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors. However, when individuals recognize and integrate their shadows, they progress further towards self-realization. On the other hand, the more unaware of the shadow we are, the blacker and denser it becomes. The more dissociated it is from conscious life, the more it will display a compensatory demonic dynamism. It is often projected outwards on individuals or groups, who are then thought to embody all the immature, evil, or repressed elements of the individual's own psyche.
The anima/animus personifies the soul, or inner attitude. Following a person's coming to term with their shadow, they are then confronted with the problem of the anima/animus. It is usually a persona and often takes on the characteristics of the opposite sex. The anima is said to represent the feminine in men and the animus is the comparable counterpart in the female psyche. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, and even argumentative.
The great mother archetype would be expected to be almost the same in all people, since all infants share inherent expectation of having an attentive caretaker (human instinct). Every surviving infant must either have had a mother, or a surrogate (common experience); and nearly every child is indoctrinated with society's idea of what a mother should be (shared culture). Mother is the source of life and nurture and the images are nearly inexhaustible: Mother Earth, Divine Mother, deep water, womb (both literal and symbolic), a vessel, the sea and the moon are but a few.
The child archetype represents original or child-like conditions in the life of the individual or the species, and thus reminds the conscious mind of its origins. This archetype also takes many forms: living creature—child, god, dwarf, hobbit, elf, monkey; or objects—jewels, chalices or the golden ball. It becomes a necessary reminder when the consciousness become too one-sided, too willfully progressive in a manner that threatens to sever the individual from the roots of his or her being. It also signifies the potentiality of future personality development, and anticipates the synthesis of opposites and the attainment of wholeness. As a result, it represents the urge and compulsion towards self-realization.
The wise old man is the archetype of meaning or spirit. It often appears as grandfather, sage, magician, king, doctor, priest, professor, or any other authority figure. It represents insight, wisdom, cleverness, willingness to help, and moral qualities. His appearance serves to warn of dangers, and provide protective gifts, such as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. As with the other archetypes, the wise old man also possesses both good and bad aspects.
The self, according to Jung, is the most important archetype. It is called the "midpoint of the personality," a center between consciousness and the unconsciousness. It signifies the harmony and balance between the various opposing qualities that make up the psyche. The symbols of the self can be anything that the ego takes to be a greater totality than itself. Thus, many symbols fall short of expressing the self in its fullest development. Symbols of the self are often manifested in geometrical forms (mandalas) or by the quaternity (a figure with four parts). Prominent human figures which represent the self are the Buddha or Christ. This archetype is also represented by the divine child and by various pairs—father and son, king and queen, or god and goddess.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Collective_unconscious
Ray Kurzweil: the ultimate thinking machine
"We humans are going to start linking with each other and become a metaconnection we will all be connected and all be omni-present, plugged into this global network that is connected to billions of people, and filled with data."
At what point do humans cease proliferating? How many humans can Earth reasonably accommodate?
We can actually accommodate a greatly expanded biological population. We have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs. The total amount of solar energy produced each year is doubling every two years and has been for thirty years and is only about seven doublings from meeting all of our energy needs.
There is a similar analysis with water and food and production of housing. The vast majority of land is not used today for human habitation. But ultimately – about a century from now – we will be more concerned with resources for our non- biological brains and bodies than our biological ones.
On a similar plane: when do humans cease propagating? Will having babies even be allowed?
Old technologies fade away very slowly. We still have horse and buggies and vinyl records.
Will space travel ever become real?
A century from now, we will send swarms of intelligent nanobots to explore other celestial bodies. There is no reason to send large squishy creatures like humans.
What is the next step for computers?
Over the next decade, we will see realistic virtual reality that is ubiquitous as well as augmented reality. We will gain mastery of our biology and will start to update the outdated software that runs in our bodies. Computers will master natural language. They won’t wait for you to ask them a question, they will be watching us and listening in and will offer help that they see we need. They will know our needs before we do.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-the-ultimate-thinking-machine
Some final quotes:
"In the olden days men were brutal, now they are dehumanized and possessed to a degree that even the blackest Middle Ages did not know." - Carl Jung
"There is no reason to differentiate virtual world from real world because reality includes that virtual world." - Satoshi Kon
“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.” — Carl Jung
"For the main character, the past and present tense could exist at the same time, even though such a thing is irrelevant for other people. For Ordinary people, past is past, present is present" - Satoshi Kon
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." -Albert Einstein
