Unmaking Sense

Episode 5.14: Tying together cognition, self and interdependence in our formative processes.

It is more effective to develop oneself by attending to some purpose than to concentrate on the self directly. How this relates to conscious and nonconscious cognition, and how by forgetting ourselves and living in purposes defined by objective aims and other people we find ourselves again, returned and restored. Connections to Dewey, Polanyi and Kropotkin.

Episode 5.13: Positive and negative aspects of the self in relation to others.

There’s nothing wrong with, say, supporting a team, and we derive great benefit from observing and enjoying the achievements of others in many walks of life, but if we invest so much of ourselves in them that their fortunes comes to matter to us “more than life itself”, something has gone badly wrong.

Episode 5.12: Chaos Theory and the Significance of the Insignificant.

The Butterfly Effect: what it implies and what it doesn’t.

Episode 5.11: The self is created and defined in a process of becoming; it is not fixed.

Everything we do contributes to our self-creation in a process of becoming.

Episode 5.10: If everything affects us indelibly, doesn’t that inhibit us from experimentation?

If everything we do affects us in a way that can’t completely be erased, removed or forgotten, then doesn’t that produce a very serious inhibition to the otherwise seemingly advantageous benefits of doing lots of experiments in life from which to determine what best suits us and so how best to move forward? This turns out to be one of those objections which gives the key to a much deeper point which is thoroughly in favour of properly-understood experiments in life.

Episode 5.09: Everything we experience changes us; nothing’s like swapping coats; they leave a mark.

Everything we do changes us because if we are not of a dualist persuasion everything that we do must affect the one material form that is each of us. Trying something in an experiment isn’t like putting on a coat that we can take off again leaving us exactly the same; everything changes us.

Episode 5.08: The Mutually Reinforcing Dynamics and Destructiveness of Self-Loathing.

Because none of us likes to feel bad about ourselves we should be reluctant to use our ability to make other people feel worse about themselves as a way of making ourselves feel better about ourselves. In the long term it’s always better to love your enemies than to hate them, always better to share your love with them than your hatred in a way that will make them even more damaging and destructive than they already are.

Episode 5.07: Collusions of self-interest and their potential antidotes.

Coteries of leaders and their immediate supporters must solve a kind of minimax problem to decide who is the least worst person to have at the top. Doing without self-interest through such things as Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid as a feature of human other species’ natures.

Episode 5.06: Why a leader may not be as all-powerful as we suppose.

Leaders depend on the collusive self-interest of those around them to gain and retain their power.

Episode 5.05: The non-persistence of the self; how we cannot but change over time.

Various traditions suggest that the self remains the same from conception through birth to death but that’s quite clearly not a tenable position any longer. Everything that happens to us changes our bodies and so must change us, however imperceptibly.