crisis » Conscious Ritualing

Our Daily Qualia

Apr 152013

If we notice the wallpaper when things are good, then we shall notice other things, too. When the weather is good, we pay attention to all manner of things in the landscape that we often overlook.

Perhaps we are suited to ideal climates, not because we have evolved into routine symbiotic relationships with them, but because they heighten our senses and continually attract us with new qualia. A copacetic ecosystem can tempt us out of the comfortable known.

Nature knows her resources are limited; this is her way of making us adapt to crisis ahead of time.

Our Daily Qualia

Feb 232013

Pleasure gives us the urge to experience again, creating more lasting neural constellae inside us as we play upon the pathways and landmarks on the outside. This may seem obvious, but aside from the pathways and landmarks all the rest of the world is so much wallpaper which may as well not exist until we take notice of it. For the most part, in our lives, we exist upon foggy bridges.

Our Daily Qualia

Feb 222013

An escape from crisis provides pleasure just as surely as a new food, a novel experience, or an attractive idea.

Our Daily Qualia

Dec 302012

We often mistake our daily routines for rituals, but routines are weak rituals at best. Habits and routines put our senses to sleep, while ritual brings us to life. Ritual is an instinct which comes alive when we are in a crisis. The problem is that, if a ritual works, people tend to repeat it, and eventually it becomes a routine. As a ritual hardens into a routine, we stop noticing new qualia or exploring new pathways, setting ourselves up for failure when the next crisis arrives. So, ritual should not be confused with routine.

Our Daily Qualia

Dec 072012

Qualia Happens!

Our Daily Qualia

Dec 062012

The controlled spontaneity of ritual allows for the appearance of qualia, which sometimes appear in form of momentary gods. A momentary god appears during a crisis, a savior or deus ex machina, which gets us out of a sticky situation. Our reaction is grateful, and we return to it, we ritual with it again and again, in order to remember, relive, or enjoy that experience again.

But momentary gods are — momentary. Repeated ritualing with them can turn them into a tradition which may create problems of its own (if nothing else, traditions are hard to change). A perfect example of this occurred when Alexander Flemming returned from a weekend off to find a strange mold growing in his untidy laboratory. He played with it — ritualed with it — and there, like magic, appeared penicillin. Now penicillin is a momentary god indeed, having saved many a soul; momentary, alas, but for a century, until the rise of resistant bacteria.

Our Daily Qualia

Dec 042012

There is a reason why crisis is good. Crisis keeps the body moving, continually adapting in order to manifest new qualia for survival.

Our Daily Qualia

Dec 022012

All matter moves toward qualia, but the qualia isn’t manifested until the matter moves within its form. The hexagon doesn’t exist until the rain freezes into the snowflake. For us humans, all manifestations of qualia begin with the body. Until we move toward ideas, and begin ritualing with them, they don’t exist in the world.

Our Daily Qualia

Nov 262012

A crisis can mean life or death, and for those who haven’t got the good traits, death it often is. Intelligence, or vision, or fast limbs alone don’t guarantee survival — ritualing is a full-body activity. Inevitably, one encounters crisis, and unless some stroke of fortune (genetic or otherwise) saves the day (that is, saves the DNA), they all may very well be lost.

The ritual of survival is one that engages our full attention, body and mind. Of course, it can be done in an armchair, with a book, or a computer, but ideally, we have to fully put ourselves into it.

Our Daily Qualia

Nov 102012

All animals leave trails as they move through the forest; even a tree leaves trails — of leaves on the ground, of smaller flora living in its shadow, of symbiotic fauna — as it moves toward the light. We see the imprint of all life upon the landscape.

All qualiadelic relationships change the environment, but when does the landscape become a qualiascape?

Is it when the imprint becomes intentional? Does a maple tree choose when to change the color of its leaves? Does a crow choose where to build its nest? Does an alpha baboon choose to back down in a fight? Is a human choice between watching TV or reading a book really a choice?

Perhaps there is no choice, except in moments of crisis; in a crisis we are forced to notice new qualia, or we fail and die. The landscape becomes a qualiascape when we consciously ritual with the momentary gods who have saved us. Alas, as these rituals harden into traditions, their qualia solidifies into habits of perception and our choices once again become mindless, symbolic instincts.

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