Žižek

Wrote The Ticklish Subject (1999), explicitly positions itself against Deconstructionists, Heideggerians, Habermasians, cognitive scientists, and what Žižek describes as New Age "obscurantists".

My New Pair of Gloves

The first thing that I remember was the prison: a crowded and noise place with people moving all around. Half of the people were guards and half were prisoners. I was neither. The prisoners all cowered from the stern abusive treatment they received from the guards. The commentary in my mind described the scene as a pool of dreaming minds: some were dreaming of power and the others were having nightmares. The center of the prison was open, and the place were I stood was on the third floor. I grabed one of the guards and threw him over the railing and he splattered on the ground. The reason I did that was I wanted to see how people would react. My behavior induced a fury of activity. Guards began running around striking the prisoners. The prisoners shrank further into the corners to avoid being hit. Nobody noticed me. I knew that they couldn't.

Bored, I saw a window and decided it was time to leave. I crawled through the window and found myself in a wooded area next to a lake. It was night. The sky was clear. There was no moon. There were street lights and light came from many of the windows. I had been trying to fly for a long time. And most of my attempts involved flying over water. I have had some success, but not to the extent that I wanted. I seemed to have difficulty control my speed and my direction. Several times I would try to fly up, straight up as fast as I could. Each time I had done that my feeling of flying turned into the feeling of falling and I felt I was being sucked into something. The fear would overcome me and cause the whole scene would disappear as I woke with a start.

I started out over the water with amazing sense of both speed and grace. It felt so right and I felt so easy. The sense of control was perfect. So I turned and went straight up. I could see the stars against the black sky and I was going right for them. The speed became intense, more intense than it had ever been, but I didn't let it stop me. I just kept going faster and faster. And even when the feeling of falling came and got strong I kept going, and kept adding speed. There was this instant which came like a flash, and I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I'm dying." And that had always been the thought that would break the fall and jolt me back. Not this time. I kept going. Faster and faster.

With no thought or intention of my own, I suddenly realized I wasn't moving any more. I was hovering above a large body of water. I knew that I had finally made it. I knew that it was my first time there. I was so happy and so excited. The body of water was endless in all directions and perfectly still. It wasn't dark and it wasn't light. There were no sources of light. If there was a color, it was a grey/green and everything was a shade of that color. There were some rugged mountainous islands in the distance. I heard a soft, gentle voice in my head say, "Put your hands into the water." Hovering above the perfectly still water I simultaneously dipped both hands into the water up to my elboes. When I pulled them out, both hands were covered with some kind of material that made them look like I was wearing long gloves. The voice in my head, said, "Powerful Stength" in Russian.

In the morning I laid in bed for a long time. The tingling in my spine came in waves, and lasted for over an hour. I knew that things were different now. After so many years of trying I had finally made it there. I got dressed and took the train Chrekizovskaya market. It's a giant warehouse turned into a kind of a mall. The tempature inside is such that walking around in a coat is comfortable. Although, since all of the sales people are also wearing coats, it can be hard to know the customers from the sales people. I wandered through the endless isles. Finally I found the a stall with 1000's of gloves. I was looking them over. The sales clerk, an older, plump woman told me to stop touching the gloves. Then she looked at me with a quizzical look and said, "Let me see your hands." I showed her my hands. She looked at my hands, went to the rack and grabbed a pair and handed them to me. "Try these." I put them on and the fit was absolutely perfect. The smooth comfort of soft black leather lined with soft fur. They were perfect. I looked at the price. They were not outrageously expensive. I told the woman I wanted them. The woman said the price wasn't right. The gloves were actually 200 rubles cheaper. So I bought them. I love them. They are the best gloves I've ever owned.

Schrodinger's Cat

One of the most entertaining things to think about is this: it’s what Jeffrey Schwartz calls the causal effectiveness of volition. It is the idea that consciousness, or volition, or free will has a hand in causing the very fabric of reality to come into being. Jeffrey Schwartz, who is a neurologist, showed how volition is what wires the brain. And volition can rewire the brain at any moment. In fact, the brain is very finely attuned to volition. This idea of volition can also be thought of as will or attention or consciousness. I think all of those words just talk about the life force.

That reality condenses into a state because of attention (or awareness) is something that quantum mechanics brought to light. But people have had a very hard time understanding that. I don’t know how much math you’ve had, but reality, before attention, is a superposition of eigenstates. That means it doesn’t really exist. It’s just a cloud of possibilities. When someone becomes aware of it that cause the one of the eigenstates to become real and all of the others vanish.

There was a thought experiment dreamt up by Irwin Schrodinger in the very beginning of quantum mechanics which I'm sure that you have heard of. The point of the experiment is to illustrate the problem with how attention and reality interact.

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid.

If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

What's wrong with this thought experiment? Can you guess? It's a fascinating thought experiment because it touches exactly the most important thing: reality is superposition of possibilities until someone pays attention which causes it to collapse into being. Attention gives birth to reality.

But the thought experiment confuses something. Schrodinger understood that the cat must be either alive or dead. It couldn't possibly be both. But while he granted the cat the capacity of life, he denied it the capacity of attention. So a cat, according to Schrodinger can be alive, but it has no capacity to be aware. What does that mean?

The thing that Schrodinger missed is that attention is a capacity of any sentient being. A cat causes reality to come into existence the same way a human does. It's not human consciousness that cause the reality to condense it is consciousness, or life. You don't have to be human to cause reality, you just have to be alive.

That life is a kind of powerful magic is not a hard stretch for me. Life, it seems to me, is the ultimate magic in this world. I really don’t even know what life is, but I get that it’s something big. And the fact that it’s me just fills me with wave upon wave of mind bending joy.

Lust, Indifference and Hate

I picked up another book by the Dalai Lama.

The book is called How to Expand Love. I'm not overly impressed. It seems so very strained, so very labored. Like chill dude! Read some Hafiz.

However, the Dalai Lama did have some useful material. He says something about how you can't really love someone you feel lust for. My wife would probably disagree. She wants me to feel love and lust for her. I think the Dalai Lama lacks clarity on this point. He says lust is bad and interferes with Love, but he never says what lust is. Can I not feel lust for someone in a healthy, loving way?

Obviously the sinful state of hunger is gluttony. What is the appropriate and healthy state of lust? Is there such a thing?

But I do think that lust gets in my way. So there are some things I can do to curb it. I've been thinking of a plan. It's kind of like fasting to purify the body.

I'm not going to do this because of His Holiness the Dalia Lama. Nor even because of Der Fuhrer Pope. But just because I think I would like myself better if I had less lust.

Even if it was nothing more than a matter of etiquette.

I found this painting in a studio in Las Vegas. I like some of the art galleries in Las Vegas just because you can come across this type of art. This image is something akin to the way I feel. It captures something. I like it. The name of the Painting is:

Unpredictability of Retrospective Commitment



So what do you think?

Happy Hour

Spent the evening last night with work buddies. The PM took us all out for drinks and snacks. We all chatted. I sat at a table with Marieke, Prabha, Kamal, Ishita and Ming. I talked mostly with Prabha about India and Globalization.

Then Kamal and I went out.

Came home around midnight. Natalya was upset. She had been reading my diary. Again. I tell her not to do that, but she can't help herself. Then she gets so angry at me. But then we got cozy and she forgot all about it. We had a good time.

Today we had Pam's roll off lunch. She is going to a project in Austin. I will miss her. She was a joy to have around. And soon Prabha will be gone, too. :(

Symbolic Fairness

She moves like some Baskin Robbins dish; her long hair is like ice cream. The barriers that I remember are all still there... whispering to me all to which I'm forbidden. She seems so happy and she would love to cross the barrier that seperates us. Is this woman like Kabir? You know, can she just move in like Kabir did?

Somehow, her spirit moved in union her physicality.

I remember when I saw her naked and she was afraid that it was shameful. Then when she saw me by the lake, naked and hot, she smiled. She felt much better. It was OK. The way she looked at me, releived at the symbolic fairness of each of us knowing the other's nakedness. She likes the way we look at each other. Something mysterious. Would that we could, we would touch, make the distance short if only there was something more substantial than the thread of energy which, though powerful like a laser, is not enough to build upon. What does it lack?

Information and energy... but without structure.

Time is on our side. We will be together in paradise.