masculine minds and selfish genes

[blackdragonwhitelion]

Most people fail to realize how dependent we are upon our conditions and environment. Choice is an illusion, seeing as we always pick the more ideal route for our continued growth. The point of origination acts as fate, and the determination of path, seeing as the environment by nature closes upon empty space,

[chriswestin]

well said, so beautiful.

[leet512]

this video sounds bizarre as hell lol... how is selfishness a male trait and selflessness a female trait?

what does one's sex have to do with how much greed one is afflicted by?

are there not instances of both greedy males and greedy females?

I've known some *very* greedy females in my life lol... was my experience statistically unusual or something?

[personwhosnowboards]

this made me feel really connected with everything

[ArmTriangle28]

fraterculae, this type of thinking in the long-run is why we seem to be de-volving as a collective unit. true many seem to admire people who will do anything to get what they want, an 'alpha male' type sociopathic attitude, but admiration should be towards those who stay true to morals, whilest achieving what they want on an individual level.

[Fraterculae]

women love men who are psychopaths dont worry. in fact nearly everyone admires a truly selfish person.

[jdogg03infinite]

Shit I'm a sociopath.  According to PNHasset.

[pietzsche]

genes and bodies are not opposing forces like male and female or yin and yang, evolution isn't dependant on their interplay, if it were there'd be no such thing as asexual organisms. You're reading science as if it were a metaphysics and it's not, for example, you say science is based on external reality, when in fact science cannot comment on reality.

You may be able to use your (mis)understanding of science to gain insight, but those insights are then only related to your version of it.

[PepperPhD]

what do you mean?

[DominoGray]

What a cock mongler you are

[PNHassett]

Feral phuk. 99 percent of human DNA can be found in chimpanzees. I believe it.

[Brasik1]

My experience of altruism is that, 'God meets all my needs and the overflow is poured out when and where needed.' People often ask why do I do these things; I tell them, "I get paid in smiles."

[ItsJustARide314]

key word there'paid' as in reward for an act, as in not altruistic. assuming we are sticking to the strictest interpretation of the word. i also recognize the answer may just be acting as a cutezy reply but in any case reward can have nothing to do with it. if personal interest & thus reward motives are to be removed then it will only be done so through removing the personal part & recognizing individuality as an illusion & all matter as a single unity within our reality (subjective or otherwise

[PNHassett]

I wonder if total masculizing of the mind ends up making a sociopathic perspective:

A sociopath's goal is to win. And sociopaths have nothing else to think about, so they can be very clever and conniving. Sociopaths are not busy being concerned with relationships or moral dilemmas or conflicting feelings, so they have much more time to think about clever ways to gain your trust and stab you in the back, and how do it without anyone knowing what's happening.

[Brasik1]

I experienced exactly the same thing with a guy I got involved with. He was a stunning display of self-centredness.

[MrXSpeaks]

this is absolutely true and well stated. I am glad other people realize this because I never hear anyone talking about it.

[timewarrior23]

Of course, this is a misunderstanding of life cycles, if the tools of war. The war will continue to repeat the birth and death.

In addition, those opposed to 'new world government' government is planning to establish huge enough to be destroyed even if I repeat again.

Because we still have a life beyond being able to do it.

[timewarrior23]

Wow, men and women do not come between us.

The significance of the war came from the castle. Gallas is out, everything. And the natural meaning of the rule with a different story. [Meaning itself]

[henryintelligence]

Enjoy your videos, by the way. You're brilliant.

[henryintelligence]

In your opinion, are religiosity and spirituality two sperate matters? What's your take on the Greek fatalism? Do you believe there's a Will that programs and governs the course of things, including evolution?

Henry

[redliterocket4]

Yes, we can distinguish between religion and spirituality. Religion tends to be the formal doctrines laid down by an institution erected to preserve the teachings of a founding and spiritually realized figure (Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, etc.). Spirituality, on the other hand, is the direct and personal realization and practice (ie, without need of dogma and doctrine) of what the founding figures taught without the need of institutions or priestly authorities.

[redliterocket4]

Greek fatalism: I think there is a certain sense in which the Greeks were correct in their estimation of the role of fate. Mechanisms like enantiodromia (the tendency for a conscious pursuit to stimulate its unconscious opposite) certainly play a large role in human life. But this doesn't mean there is no freedom. Free will and fate are always a package deal. You never get one without equal measures of the second.

[redliterocket4]

Is there a Will tat programs and governs the course of things? I have a certain degree of affinity for the likes of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but I am not sure. I definitely reject the self-important dichotomy some materialists impose on reality that separates the human mind and telos from natural randomness and stupidity. If there is telos at all (which it is hard to deny), then it exists in nature and not just within human skulls. A certain kind of entelechy seems to operate in all nature.

[henryintelligence]

The reason I braught up these questions is that the discussion of evolution or other sciences naturally begs the questions of meanings as well as the final cause. If natural processes can be conceptualized into such theories, whence are the theories come about, and why? This leads lots of scientists to devout faiths in various religions. I don't know if by entelechy you're trying to describe all the processes in nature as a kind of organic self-actualization, instead of "written" from without.

[henryintelligence]

Free will, especially the emphasis of choice, then, seems to emerge from an antithetical urge to disagree with an unknown, ordaining power that lurks and haunts the human psyche. There is that sense of cosmic helplessness or loneliness that catalyses human dignity or will power, as seen in the Greek tragedies. To the Greeks, fate can even result from one's character, usually hamartia. However, free will is also socially, culturally and liguistically constructed; "determined", in a sense.

[henryintelligence]

By determinism I mean that our will can never be completely free when both will and the concept of freedom are constrained and conditioned, not only by the physique, psychique and chemique of the soma and mind, but also by the natural and social selection of the environment. For example, phylosophic specualtions are almost impossible when one is physically ill or in pain. Psychologists have found out how the smells, lighting or sounds condition or control the human psyche. Where's free will?

[elgaed42]

Freedom/Freiheit is self-determination (Selbstbestimmung). Thus, freedom arises from self-control, not from wanton animalism.

[henryintelligence]

I agree. Yet, self-determination or self-control can hardly stand when the "self" itself is determined. What we call self has a phisical existence composed of microscopic cells and organisms ("selfs") whose "actions" are beyond the control of consciousness, and conditioned by natural laws as well as the environment. Consciousness is cultrually and socially constructed; one's whole noetic structure is constructed through education,in the linguistic, cultural and ideological framework.

[elgaed42]

This reductionistic approach ignores/denies the self-evident fact that coarse matter and fine energy, matter and mind, instance and abstraction, are necessarily contained within the same spiritual reality-boundary.

[henryintelligence]

I wouldn't necessarily call it "reductionistic". By saying the body is composed of cells and organisms that function independently of consciousness, I mean to deterritorialize the totalizing concept of "self", tease out the polymorphous dynamics within this unit, and highlight the potentiality towards a state of "becoming" that lies in the forms of each component part of it. The potentiality of change, mutation and becoming can then deconstruct the trite binarisms, and even determinism.

[henryintelligence]

Freedom as signifer can be easily mytholozied, linked to different signifieds in various ways. Usually, only when placed with constraints and restrictions does freedom has meaning. I'm not advocating "wanton animalism" or objecting freedom. I'm just pointing out other aspects, like the unconcious (which mustn't be oversimplified as animalism), that should also be taken into consideration when discussing free will.

[elgaed42]

This is essentially true with regard to constraints. Freedom (Freiheit) is really a matter of a thought-form being self-motivated in the sense that it draws upon spiritual potential or pure idea as its birthing source, whereas something unfree is determined wholly by external circumstances with respect to the framework in which it lives. A free being is a being who is self-motivated; and in this sense nature could be said to be, in its instinct-intelligence, 'free', collectively.

[henryintelligence]

You've done some fantastic videos on autonomy and perception/cognition. However, they can be overly sollipsistic. Determinants such as language/ ligual-mentality, culture and education, and natural environment all determines how one thinks, perceives or make choices. One can not pocess or process concepts that connot be formulated in one's language. Psychologically one cannot escape the influence of childhood,and it would be pointless to discuss freedom with someone who never knows restrictions.

[henryintelligence]

Good point. I couldn't have phrased it better. Seems to me then, your dinstiction of religion and spirituality can be placed into the larger dichotomy of transcendence and imminence. In religion the source of strength is transcendental, deriving from an absolute Other, whereas in spirituality the person seeks the strength from within. There is some interesting fusions of the two in mystical experiences, where everything merges into one, and the distinction of inside/outside dissolves.

[elgaed42]

This is not so much the actual distinction I would describe, as a description of another process called spiritual evolution (geistige Entwicklung und Entfaltung) in which the consciousness of humankind slowly disembodies as it becomes too great to be contained within a coarse-material body, then becoming a spiritual lifeform which slowly evolves toward concrescence with the universal being and form, Creation, the boundary and being of all things.

[elgaed42]

Have you ever heard of Rupert Sheldrake? His book, "A New Science of Life", describes many of the pitfalls of molecular/genetic reductionism. Even if his theory is not entirely correct, these errors in reductionism certainly do require explanations of some kind.

[redliterocket4]

I have not read Sheldrake's book, but I have listened to many of his lectures. I am pretty familiar with his morphic field idea, and while I am certainly open to is as a testable scientific theory, I have my doubts as to its reality. I think self-organization and complexity theory can rationally describe the same things his theory tries to in a less mystical fashion. I definitely agree that the sciences, especially biology, need to balance reductionism with holism. Neo-Darwinism is imbalanced.

[elgaed42]

Morphogenetic fields originated as a metaphor for understanding biological systems. Sheldrake shows that they are probably more than a metaphor. It is not 'mystical' in the sense of being based on belief. All of the phenomena that it attempts to explain (including telepathy and life-energy) are empirical facts of which only very isolated persons (such as many academics) are ignorant. The model itself is just an attempt to explain these facts.

[elgaed42]

In one sense, morphogenetic fields as an objective reality is tautologically true, if it is taken to be the statement that form is an abstract logic which comprises all logics. In this sense, there is no question of scientific experimentation, since the idea that science would ever work to begin with depends upon the fact of morphogenetic determinism (logic).

[redliterocket4]

I think we should distinguish between morphogenesis, which is a well-established field in biology, and Sheldrake's ideas about morphic fields. They are two very different approaches. I have experienced telepathic phenomena, and I am by no means dismissing Sheldrake's model. I'm just saying I tend to think adequate descriptions (I don't think science is about explanation, that is religion) will come from other theories, such as the already mentioned complexity theory (see Goodwin, Kauffman).

[redliterocket4]

To be more clear about science v. religion... science is about describing the HOW of phenomena. Religion/spirituality is about explaining the WHY. A scientific theory may be an attempted explanation, but no theory is ever proven correct. Spirituality offers explanations on a non-rational level for WHY certain phenomena take place, such as the fact that anything exists at all. One cannot remain strictly empirical about the WHYs of reality, only the HOWs.

[elgaed42]

You confound religion with Geisteswissenschaft. Religion is in one sense a system of metaphors developed by primitive peoples in order to understand their environment, in another sense a degeneration of doctrines and teachings, and in another sense a form of mind-control and suggestion involving illogical beliefs. Geisteswissenschaft is the study of meaning in all senses, but more specifically the spirit and spiritual evolution.

[redliterocket4]

German has many words for concepts English can only clumsily render. I would agree that geistwissenschaft is a more appropriate term for what I was calling "religion/spirituality."

[elgaed42]

Yes, but religion is also a word in german, Religion, which means the same thing as in English. Geisteswissenschaft would be more like "spiritual science". With regard to wonder--yes, anything in reality logically must contain both a form and a being. Thus, there is reducible logic and irreducible, morphing meaning/being. This is part of the reason why there is anything at all--and that can be rationally analysed, just not empirically. If it were for rational facts, there would be no scienc

[elgaed42]

The fact of the matter is that because all logical things are forms, and language is a form, language absolutely can be used to understand and predict the behaviour of other forms. Everything in the universe reduces to thought, and there is no thought which is ultimately hidden from the human 'Geist'.

[elgaed42]

One can never understand why there are natural laws or why there are laws of logic with the material senses alone. One must use rationality and inner senses (feelings and Empfindung) to divine these absolute truths. Absolute truth, which is universal but may be perceived according to various isomorphisms, is certainly something which will always have the same form.

[elgaed42]

I recommend reading Christopher Langan's paper, "CTMU: A New Kind of Reality Theory" to see the absolute reasons why the universe must reduce to thought and why the universe must be both reducible to these absolute truths as form, and irreducible in its being. He doesn't necessarily use the most semantically-connected terms, though, so I recommend translating into personal theory. He uses theological terms quite often, which don't really apply to the Creation.

[henryintelligence]

Science tries to work out the material and efficient causes of things, whereas religion seeks to provide the formal and the final causes, assigning purposes and meanings to the seemingly ransom happenstances. However, I don't see a clear division between the two, for a lot of scientific materialists have to resort to some kind of "law", which, itself conceptual and metaphysical, indicates the existence of a higher order, where speculations about the funal causes are inevitable.

Henry

[elgaed42]

Language is a picture of reality. It has to be a mirror reality, in order for it to work at all.

[elgaed42]

Although you are basically correct, I think you should try to be more thorough and logical, and not simply imagistic.

The law of positive-negative duality is provably a necessary foundation of mathematics and logic in general, and therefore a necessary foundation of science; but it's not quite as you describe. Similar, but not precisely the same thing. I recommend reading Billy Meier's material when you can.

[redliterocket4]

I suppose I have read too much philosophy to agree with your view of language. Not saying this makes me more qualified to describe the nature of language, just that my background has made the "mirror of reality" image of language impossible to hold. Language is for communication, not representation.

[elgaed42]

Regardless of how much philosophy you've read, the basis of philosophy is logic--and one of the best logical models we have for the interaction of systems is cybernetics, thanks to Norbert Wiener. Conan and Ashby proved the Good Regulator Theorem; as a consequence of this theorem, the brain must be isomorphic to reality. Language is by definition an isomorphism to reality, since these models work at all--that's for absolute certain.  I recommend you learn more mathematics.

[redliterocket4]

I would say the basis of philosophy is wonder, not logic.

Mathematics does not mirror nature, but breaks it up into manageable chunks that can be measured.

I am not a subjectivist, I would call myself an enactivist (see Francisco Varela, et al). There is a middle ground between naive realism and idealism. I think we find it by studying the brain, which has no need of being isomorphic with reality. It has evolved based on its own internal dynamics of organization, restricted only by survival.

[redliterocket4]

Cybernetics was a great start, and it has many wonderful applications in the computing world. But I think trying to apply the information-processing model to biological systems is basically wrong. I'm willing to discuss my reasoning about this with you certainly, maybe through email... but basically, as an example, the brain processes only what the eyes respond to, and the eyes are by no means objective spectators. And even if they were, the visual thalamus is always already influenced by...

[redliterocket4]

...at least half a dozen other brain regions before any perturbations sent from the retinas arrive to be relayed to the visual cortex. What we actually see has more to do with the brain's own internal and ongoing dynamics than anything existing independently of our bodies. Don't mistake this for idealism, it is in fact as biologically realistic as one could get. But we will have to discuss this further I am sure : )

[elgaed42]

Philosophy requires that one formulate one's cognitions in language, and therefore it is utterly dependent upon logic. Even multi-valued logics and probabilities, fuzzy logics, etc., are based entirely and necessarily upon two-valued logic, which is the basis of thinking and perceiving at all. That's what it is, fundamentally, in one sense. It is also fundamentally the aspect of form which determines that there is a boundary and that there is consistency.

[redliterocket4]

I don't disagree, but I would still say that with just logic there would be no philosophy. An element of wonder is required.

[elgaed42]

Logic is not confined to mathematics or language, either. Logic is the law of form of any perception whatsoever. When a painter paints, they employ the form-logic of colours; when a comic-book artist draws, they employ the logic of lines; when a musician writes a song, they employ the logic of harmony; when a chef mixes flavours, they employ the logic of flavours; when a tailor designs a suit, they need employ the logics of space, texture, tension, etc.

[elgaed42]

Everything unconditionally depends upon the fact of form; and form is logic.

[elgaed42]

The most basic form of time is cognizance--cognizance can move along form in a given path, but logic says that that path will always be consistent. It is impossible to perceive a form which contains a contradiction of itself. It is impossible to perceive a form and its absence simultaneously.

[elgaed42]

You see, perception is necessarily the basis of our concept of reality, and perception itself necesssarily conforms to logic.

[elgaed42]

I only recommend mathematics because it's the easiest on the brain and the easiest to communicate of all studies of form--since it's not very complex. It's designed to be quite simple. That's what formal language is--the study of form using reductively simple formal languages. It's simply realising the fact that syntax is isomorphic to form of any kind, and going from there. It's a lot easier to plug an equation into a computer than to study a painting, but it helps less with meaning.

[elgaed42]

I think that the objectivists need to stop projecting so much, while the 'subjectivists' need to stop believing that everything is just a matter of viewpoint or opinion, since both of these approaches are false and unproductive. We can divide our models of the world into two categories: knowledge and belief. That which we know is that which we can logically explain. This can be divided into certain knowledge (1 or 0 probability) and uncertain knowledge (0<p<1).

[elgaed42]

Belief is just arbitrarily accepted non-sense which has been 'allowed' to enter the mental model of reality. Furthermore: Human beings have a left and a right hemisphere for a reason: one specialises in Love, the other in Logic. If one denies oneself either of these, one becomes an idiot incapable of doing anything of significance with one's brain. If one thinks one is the centre of the universe, or if one thinks that there is no form to anything, one cannot understand anything.

[ramas0012]

Great vid, thnx for the invite, i'll add you to my Gaia account

[iurak6868]

the filter on your video is very distracting.

but as allways it is interesting to hear you

[StevenErnest]

Very interesting, Matt!

For more poetry, in Hermeticism there is an image of the Universe, as a woman dancing with a snake. She is consciousness -- our imagination. He is matter and growing things -- our snaking, spiralled DNA. Their dance is where matter meets imagination, because that's the whole universe right there.

(Slight paraphrase from Alan Moore in "Promethea" #13.)

[elgaed42]

93 You must be referring to the Universe card in the Thoth Tarot deck. 93 93/93

[StevenErnest]

Precisely! ^_^

[CPLains]

The masculine is more invariant and enduring, the feminine so changing and transitory. I know at least within philosophy there seems to be a drift away from eternal truths; context etc. becomes more important.. even essential and irreducible. Would be interesting to see the explicit thoughts behind the "poetry", you covered a lot of ground :]

[redliterocket4]

Maybe you have these archetypes mixed up? Usually, the masculine is associated with the transitory rising and falling of the phallus, while the feminine is seen as enduring and invariant, the eternal ground of all thatis temporary.

Explicit thoughts: when discussing evolution, we have to take all factors into consideration, including chance, selection, and self-organization. All three play a role, and biological variety depends on each (it cannot be accounted for by chance/selection alone).

[CPLains]

Dno. That's the only way i can make sense of it. I've always associated femininity with appearance, connectivity and context - the transitory; the present feeling becomes the highest value. The masculine on the other hand has value only in light of eternal judgement; unveiling truth, being noble - death for eternal values. I guess I could make them compatible, in the sense that the feminine realizes eternity in the moment; whereas the masculine perpetually fails reaching for eternity. Depends..

[henryintelligence]

Good observation. Essentialist distinctions between feminniity and masculinity should be liberated to the concept that gender itself is performativity, a repetitive and compulsory actualization of arbitrary discourse.

[henryintelligence]

Of course, for political reasons (politics of opposition/difference/identity­), sometimes such dinstiction has to be reiterated. Usually the side that has long been in the absence, as femininity, will be emphasized.

[elgaed42]

This is somewhat of a shallow view of it. Masculine is simply positive, feminine negative, in the simplest sense; but relating to what you have said, actually, masculine would be 'form' whereas feminine would be 'being' or 'meaning'; the feminine is deep and veiled, whereas the masculine is evident and crisp; the masculine is active and imposes itself, the feminine is passive and perceives; the masculine protects, the feminine nurtures; etc., etc., etc.

[elgaed42]

Positive-Negative Polarity is a law of logic and does show itself throughout the universe in a variety of dimensions and manifestations.

[elgaed42]

Masculine and Feminine also, according to natural law, must neutralise eachother to form a unit; thus, for instance, with regard to what you mentioned, a form persists while its being, its meaning, its actuality, does and must constantly change. They are just two aspects of the same thing. The Wu Xing and Taoist symbolism might show you more about this. It can only be fully understood, however through semantification, that is, through observation of instances and coagulation into a symbol.

[CPLains]

That looks intuitive yeah.

[plenipotentiarius]

yes I agree but this is quite simple logic about selfishness, figure/ground, there is no need to couch it in a mystical way thus escaping further grounded exploration of this selfishness Vs altruism debate. For example, why the division selfishness Vs alruism. Did Darwin divide things this way. Does the very idea of organism already presuppose this? Is it only our culture that divides it this way. Did this division appear in another form for previous biologists, Aristotle?

[bipolarcooksoldlady]

maybe we need to revise jacob's statement "the dream of every cell is to become two cells." lol.

i was the one who pointed out the number of papers on epigenetics, there are about 10% as many on systems bio. but its newer.

on the reading: i'm afraid i don't really get into the poetizing of science much. i like to keep it cold. :D

[GeraldP1983]

Well done! Thank you!

[cosmanthony21]

Great reading Matt, who's the author?

[0ThouArtThat0]

the cells composing yours truly authored that piece of work.

[cosmanthony21]

Nice.

[Mork5]

only after gary's left hemisphere will have saved the northern hemisphere objectively

his right hemisphere and the southern hemisphere will reunite,

the wall will fall,

the writing will disappear

and the fruit will be shared by all

in eternal juicyness

:o)

[HumanTruth0000]

Respectfully, Those cells did not make conscious happy choice to interact. It is just dna programming/protein interactions/markers, etc. That guy is messed up. You see nothing/everything, not "what u are". We just see....we are the ones add judgement, preference or thought. That guy is full of illogical bs and does not even understand the spiritual, let alone the natural.

[AdityaK96]

You have alot of the same views as me....trust me your really going to get interested in learning about Kabbalah. Look into it for me and tell me what you think.

[Mork5]

the mind mode is enhancing creativity by forgetting about existing relations and thus dramaticly increases novelty.

but all knowledge is still meant to be verified by some collective action.

in our society knowing and doing are now separated and father sky cannot find mother earth any more.

so even the benevolent thinker ends in hubris and the actor being aware makes no impact.

[0ThouArtThat0]

i agree, mork. forgetfulness is a major part of creativity. Sort of the same situation we find in nature with extinction...

[matrixcmitech]

views: 111

[Mork5]

views: 212

(waiting for 2012 ;-)

[2bsirius]

Excellent video, Matt.

[9macrina9]

i paint on the wall 5 stars!

[armando3210]

"Know the male, hold to the female. Become the world's stream by being the world's stream. The Power will never leave; this is returning to infancy."

"Know the white, hold to the black. Become the world's pattern by being the world's pattern. The Power will never falter. This is returning to limitlessness."

"Uniting the Forces" - Tao of Leadership

[jogayot]

oww, lovely. the part about the point and whole space, especially. almost equals the bit about single-celled organisms having sex because it might be a moment when they together have single conscious moment in their existence [in last favourite vid if you haven't seen it by any chance, of having the same subscribtions or different interests].

[armando3210]

Well said. But this comment of cellular "chosen to participate" and "giving rise"? Rise? where is this rising? Right now? isnt "it" just "is" no "rise" in the now? This smacks of science and aleap of faith and form my view not per se problemmatic but should be disclosed as such.

Grammer and psycological attitude is not a reflection of nature. Well said and something i will take with me after watching this video.

[0ThouArtThat0]

It is the only way I can describe it in language meaningfully. The cell "chose to participate" scrubbed of poetry becomes "the cell, through symbiogenesis, became part of a larger cell"

[armando3210]

Scrubbing is ok so is disclosure of intention.

[redliterocket4]

(Do you see it?) The writing on the wall, that is...

[armando3210]

If i ask which wall i will concede i dont see... so which wall?

[0ThouArtThat0]

i am referring to the strange fact that every figure has a background. There is writing and a wall, never just one or the other. so do you see the "writing-on-the-wall," the yin and yang that are both always present in any revealing of reality?

[armando3210]

oh yes. But like politics and poetry that expression is like coffee..some have it black others with cream and sugar. What is bonded are those with similar values not different than an compound bond.

[armando3210]

My favorite book of passages on this subject and one i consult from time time is the Tao of Leadership by John Heider if you have not read a passage from it i encourage you to do so I think it will speak to you.

[zezt]

so this is seeing/feeling the 'conscious' and 'the unconscious'

what separated them? cultural indoctrination

--which they also did in ancient China and are still doin it