False equivalencies

Continuing from the last post, here's more on the topic.

See this article from Ornstein and Mann. As Ornstein noted in the previous article, it's not partisan to state the facts. Or in kennilingus, it ain't mean green meme either, especially coming from Ornstein. The following excerpt makes clear what one is dealing with in the current regressive party. And there's much, much more evidence contained therein. There's no constructive or 'trans-partisan' way to work with that. To think otherwise is as I noted in the last post.

Integral trans-partisanship

The Institute for Cultural Evolution blog has this article on a trans-partisan meeting as Esalen. I found it quite interesting that Ornstein, of the hyper conservative American Enterprise Institute, said this: "To say that we have asymmetric partisan polarization is not a partisan statement but a description of reality.” Phipps translates that to mean: " It’s mostly Republicans who are causing this mess." Of course others disagreed, seeing the rise of rabid conservative partisanship a reaction to the excesses of the liberal, countercultural, free speech movement. Yes, God forbid should we have free speech. I can see why that created such an uproar.

What wasn't discussed is that this is not an equal an opposite polarization, with some solution lying in the middle. It is a progressive v. regressive cultural shift, with the regressives wanting to go back to a feudal oligarchy and progressives wanting to maintain and develop the fragile democracy that superseded it. Yes, there are some liberals guilty of PC groupthink, but overall the progressive agenda is to move forward with our cultural evolution.

Robert Reich on progressive/regressive worldviews

From this FB post:

"What’s the difference between progressives and their opposite – regressives? Progressives believe we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure, and from efforts to reverse climate change. We all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a progressive tax system. Progressives worry that the middle class is shrinking, a quarter of our nation’s children are poor, and the rich and privileged have become powerful enough to undermine our democracy. The issue for progressives isn’t the size of government; it’s who government is for: It should be for all of us, not a privileged few.

Krugman on Walmart raising its minimum wage

See his blog post today. Therein he debunks the typical regressive talking points about raising it. Doing so it a political choice that goes beyond the mechanical supply/demand dynamics of a supposed free market. Regressives pushing the latter have made predictions about what happens when minimum wages are raised and exactly none of those predictions have born out. Such raises have had little to no effect on employment numbers. In fact, "paying workers better will lead to reduced turnover, better morale and higher productivity." In States that have implemented higher minimum wages, those in this category will spend that extra money on goods and services, thereby boosting the economy and increasing employment to meet the extra demand.

Ipseity revisited

Continuing the discussion on self-designation and semantic nominalism, here's a series of relevant, past IPS posts starting here:

Another interesting discussion in the meditation/neuroscience paper is on ipseity. On 45 it is described as "bare awareness" without an object. On 64 it is described as "the minimal subjective sense of ‘I-ness’ in experience, and as such, it is constitutive of a ‘minimal’ or ‘core self.’" It is also "a form of self-consciousness that is primitive inasmuch as: 1) it does not require any subsequent act of reflection or introspection, but occurs simultaneously with awareness of the object; 2) does not consist in forming a belief or making a judgment, and 3) is ‘passive’ in the sense of being spontaneous and involuntary." This is distinguished from our narrative self.

A couple of points for now. This bare awareness or ipseity is directly related to a sense of I-ness, ipseity itself referring to this autonomous individuality. So while it might be before the narrative self with its sense of egoic history, it is a self-awareness nonetheless, unique to its apperceiver and I-centric. It is even associated with "bodily processes of life regulation" (65), generally the most primitive brain. So in itself it is not enlightened consciousness but lizard survival awareness, and only through training is this self-regulatory attentional baseline modified and refined.

Thompson, Candrikirti, semantic nominalism

Following up on Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being, this article seems to support the notion of self-designation as necessary for humans to perceive something. It notes that the color blue didn't appear in languages until much later than other colors. We may have seen it but couldn't identify it. Or maybe we just couldn't see it until we could designate it.

"But do you really see something if you don't have a word for it? [...]  [B]efore blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they didn't know they were seeing it. If you see something yet can't see it, does it exist? Did colors come into existence over time? Not technically, but our ability to notice them may have."

Thompson used Candrikirti regarding self-designation. It is consistent with this article by Sonam Thackchoe: "Prasangika's semantic nominalism: Reality is linguistic concept." An excerpt:

Spock's wisdom

Progressive and regressive policy results

Which is better?

Waking, Dreaming, Being, chapter ten concluding

Continuing from this post:

Thompson offers an interesting recontextualization of subtle energy via the bio-electrical charges produced by cells and their organization, including the neuro-network of the brain. This is an embodied version of prana or chi that provided a material substrate for consciousness. Our evolved neuro-structure transforms from being a self-specifying system into one that is self-designating. The latter can designate itself as a self that can conceive its own subjectivity. This capacity is limited to humans, apes, dolphins, Asian elephants and the Eurasian magpie. (Remember the magpie?) This capacity is paired with the ability to see oneself in the third-person perspective. However it is only developed in intersubjecetive relation to another and not inherent in itself. Which of course reminds me of Mark Edwards' work on the so-called exterior developmentalists like Vygotsky and Mead. (See his three-part series “The depth of the exteriors” that begins here.)

The above capacity of called self-projection which gives rise to a historical self that Damasio calls the narrative self and phenomenologists called the autobiographical self. We can conceive of ourselves as a unique identity that exists through time. Specific brain areas are activated when the narrative self is functioning, particularly the frontal and medial temporal-parietal that relate to planning and memory respectively. The default network is also involved, which happens when outward-related tasks are low. Hence when meditation commences one immediately becomes consciously focused on this stream of self-consciousness. It also teaches one to observe this stream of I-making from a background awareness, which I've long proposed is the witness of the third-person perspective unlinked from attachment to objects, including the narrative self sense.

Waking, Being, Dreaming, chapter ten continued

Continuing from this post:

It's time to interject some posts in other threads, like this one and several following:

This article by Thompson & Davis relates back to my earlier ruminations on memory and the five aggregates. A brief excerpt with further study and commentary to follow:

"We outline here how the traditional theoretical context of mindfulness practice can offer important suggestions for scientific research. In particular, the five aggregates model draws distinctions that are not always clearly formulated in contemporary cognitive science, but that are crucial for a scientific understanding of the function of mindfulness meditation. We suggest below how empirical hypotheses about the role of memory and its relation to attention and consciousness in mindfulness meditation can be refined in light of distinctions suggested in the Buddhist five aggregates model" (586-7).

There were a lot of technical terms, both Buddhist and scientific. He tries to bridge them to find correlations but admits they are at times questionable or approximate at best. Nonetheless to translate, we've seen some of this earlier in this thread and elsewhere, the aggregates being, body, emotion, base mind or core attention, volition and consciousness. He relates the 3rd and 5th to open monitoring and concentration meditative techniques. Granted both have a focused attention and monitoring function and activate both aggregates. The latter monitors wandering away from and return to a selected object of focus. The former monitors wandering away and a return to focus on whatever is present. It activates more the base level and inhibits selective attention.