Our Daily Qualia

May 312012
 

There are untapped forces wherever the order of things is imperfect. In any society, certain people exist on the fringe or outside the mainstream. Living in the in-between, the fringe dweller takes on a dangerous quality in our imaginations, and is even thought to have magical or occult powers.

Traditionally, it was the shaman who knowingly, with conscious intention, exploited the in-betweens and fringes of the order of things. But today we have no shamen. For a while artists tapped into this dangerous quality, but most art is no longer for art’s sake, but for money, and artists now are no more dangerous than any other professionals; they work in the mainstream, not on the fringes.

Who, then, can cultivate the in-between; who dares experiment with disorder; who, even, really questions authority? It is one thing to expose the collusion of greed and power, and to shake up our monolithic traditions a little bit; it is something else entirely to doubt the validity of the way we know what we know. So, who, then, are the shamen of the 21st century? The homeless? The mentally ill? You? Well, who else?

Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.

Our Daily Qualia

May 302012
 

As the Zen wisdom has it, if we think we know, we probably don’t.

True. And yet, not true. We all ritual — unconsciously perhaps — but we all do it and so we all have moved, from time to time, beyond the boundaries of what we know. Such is the nature of crisis, when the mindless routine falls apart and we are forced into ritualing. Suddenly, we must become aware any qualia which might help us put things back together. If we were a finch we might notice a seed we once ignored as too big; a business man might have to find a new kind of customer, previously overlooked. We step out of the known and our habits and our traditions are transformed.

We all have had this experience; we have all felt the Zen moment. But because we were in crisis, and looking for results, we don’t notice it; we let it go without acknowledgment; our focus was on the new seed, the new customer — on surviving — not on the Zen moment or the qualiadelic experience. Artists (and all conscious ritualers) don’t wait for crisis to happen before venturing out beyond the known. The result we are looking for is the qualiadelic experience, not some material reward.

The reason that we are probably wrong if we think we know, is that ritualing, by its very nature, takes place in the unknown. Once we know we are no longer in the unknown — we are not so much ritualing any more as we are falling into the routine again.

Our Daily Qualia

May 292012
 

Ritualing is a controllable ride into new ways of being, a way to begin living the symbols that appeal to us, a way to “hang ten” as we surf over our traditions and flow into the spirit of the moment. If any single feeling can create a bond between the ordinary person and the artist, it is this sense of ritualing at the edges of the unknown. Making reality is not an experience to be taken for granted, even by an artist; it is one of the greatest feelings we can have, yet it is something we cannot really know. As the Zen wisdom has it, if we think we know, we probably don’t.

Our Daily Qualia

May 282012
 

There is a nexus in the qualiadelic experience where knowledge meets the unknown. In a state of crisis, when things fall apart, we resort to ritual. Ritual is the nexus.

Our Daily Qualia

May 272012
 

Matter and qualia, qualia and matter — that is all there is in the universe. Matter is attracted to qualia, and moves toward it. Matter rituals around, and with, qualia. Matter gets into qualiadelic relationships.

Like ones and zeros, the entire cosmos is made up of matter and qualia.  From the vacuous reaches of outer space to the mindful alienation of inner space; from molecules to planets to galaxies and from thoughts to cities to civilizations; and from all that is in between — life is nothing but qualiadelic relationships between matter and qualia.

Our Daily Qualia

May 262012
 

If we want to understand how to fix the world we must understand how it got the way it is. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to know about, say, carbon emissions, or about contraception, or about biological weapons; but this knowledge doesn’t really take us back to the essence of the problem. The essence of the problem is that somewhere along the way we forgot to pay attention to our ritualing. All we know of the world comes from our ritualing — ritualing and qualiadelic relationships made the world the way it is. When we become conscious of how ritual works again, then we can change our bad habits.

Our Daily Qualia

May 252012
 

Yes, we keep chasing the ideal love, the utopian society, the actualized self — and other perfect thoughts from the human qualiascape. Such ideas have evolved with the human race, and they never lose their attraction; it is open to debate whether they existed before our ancestors began to notice their inner qualia. Certain it is, however, that there existed complex qualia in the universe long before the human animal came into being.

All animals, even one-celled animals, sense and move toward qualia such as light, temperature, flow (wind and water), not to mention texture, color, smell and vibration. These are hardly simple forces, and they existed before humans began to think about them. On the other hand, one wonders whether or not some of the complex qualia which humans have thought up existed before we began to ritual with them.

There is God, of course, about whom it has famously been said, if He didn’t exist already someone would have invented Him. Real or not, God is worth ritualing with. But people have invented other ideas, ideas of which nature has not provided us examples; and the question is whether we ought not to be consciously ritualing with them. By playing with qualiadelic abstractions, will nature finally reveal them to us? Or, alternatively, will they manifest themselves in nature because we are ritualing with them?

My opinion is that these questions, and the possibilities they suggest, ought to have us pouring over math texts and learning about non-euclidean geometry, and physics texts, too, trying to imagine quantum entanglement and curved space. The thing is, we do not need to be able to do the math — no fish ever needed to study fluid mechanics and no whale ever pulled an all-nighter for an exam on deep water acoustics.

We merely need to develop some imaginative sense for these ideas. We can get all we need by watching videos on YouTube. There ought to be software developers making games to get us playing with projective geometry and optics. Should we develop even the slightest sense for such complex qualia it will begin to appear in the real world, and then we can really evolve. If we want to change things, this will get us a lot farther than electric cars and recycling…

Check out this video of a Klein bottle. I think the Klein bottle makes a nice analogy for the way we look inward to discover and create complex qualia which is then manifested outward in the “real” world — by ritualing with the landscape, both we and the landscape evolve…  The Adventures of the Klein Bottle

 

Our Daily Qualia

May 242012
 

Whether or not there really is a God, the word “god” is here to stay. It is the most qualiadelic word in any language, and it is the sum of all the good (and good ideas) for which we humans strive. It is the totality of all the best we can imagine. As we evolve, it evolves; it is always out of reach, beyond the horizon, unattainable.

Isn’t all qualia like that — unrealizable? Nonetheless, can we resist moving toward it? Aren’t we always searching for the perfect red, or the fragrance which unleashes the sweetest memories? What of the ideal love, or the utopian society, or the actualized self — give up the chase? Impossible!

 

 

Our Daily Qualia

May 232012
 

The world we have created is full of traditions, and they all have their dark sides as well as their virtues. Should we hold such traditions in awe, as if they were sacred forces?

Our ancestors held their traditions in awe, but we resist; it is just not in our nature as thinking and intelligent humans to merely accept things as they are, especially when it comes to things that have power over us. We have an uncanny ability see how traditions can be improved.

The problems is that, like all living things, traditions need only to survive, not to be perfect. This we can see easily; we are not satisfied with the fittest because we can envision the best. The trick lies in making it so; how do we evolve traditions when it is in their very nature to resist change? It is easier than one might think — the first thing to recognize is that it is not the traditions that resist change, but the people who control them.

Although the “powers that be” will always try to hinder and restrain the rituals of traditions, forcing them into fixed routines, they do so at their own peril: an inflexible tradition eventually decays and falls, becoming a relic of the past. On the other hand, if we rebellious imps monkey around and play with the rituals within traditions, we can evolve them. And no mere authority figure will ever be strong enough to suppress our qualia.

Our Daily Qualia

May 222012
 

Questioning authority goes hand in hand with democracy. However, it also robs us of the pleasure of allowing someone to guide us through new experiences. So, although we need never scrape off that faded old bumper sticker that reads “Question Authority,” there is a reason why authority rules.

Alas, the responsibility that goes along with authority tends to inhibit the adventurousness of leadership; most authorities tend to lead us into the safe zones. This happens, at least in part, because authority is usually conferred for reasons other than the ability to lead. But authorities, whether they be parents or Nobel prize winners, can lead successfully enough. They need only create the space for ritualing.

Conscious ritualing inspires controlled spontaneity; it provides a framework which can unleash the play and the daring of leadership. Authority comes from knowledge, which often leads to control — but knowledge may also lead to play. Authorities become leaders when they invite us to express ourselves beyond the boundaries of mere knowledge.

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