Each of us, I am sure, has been given information at one point or time that turned out to be false. We based decisions on information that was erroneous, that was just not so. That information established the Ground from which we based our View and took up a Path; with the Fruition of that Path and View usually being what ends up alerting us to the flase information that we based our View on in the first place. Maybe it was hearsay, conjecture, speculation. Maybe we thought we knew, we believed we knew what the relevant information was. So, we based decisions upon that information; we established a View based upon that information. Only later to find out that our Actions were fated from the beginning precisley because our View was based on information that didn't apply.

A simple example would be that we "know" we have lost our glasses yet again. We are always misplacing our glasses. If I am not looking for my glasses, I am in the process of misplacing them so I can look for them. This "knowing" of lost or misplaced glasses leads us to a specific Path, a specific form of "doing". The "doing", or the Path, is the looking for the glasses that we have lost. That is, until it dawns on us that they are riding up high on our forehead, that we had pushed them up onto our forehead earlier. Now I remember! They were nearer than near all along, but we had determined that they were misplaced someplace else. So, we looked for them someplace else. Our Path was a Path formed on a "knowing" of lost glasses. We had a View of lost glasses. It didn't matter that the "knowing" was somewhat false; the "knowing" stilll lead to a Path, to a certain form of "doing".

So, as you can plainly see, all of our "knowing" is not always made up of the best, or the correct, information --- given the circumstances. Sometimes our "knowing" is based on false information, or even information that we dream up so as to fill in the gaps of the missing information; just enough to get us to some "doing", to get us to a Path. First the View. Then the Path. Finally the Fruit.

Robert Ornstein, in his book, The Evolution of Consciousness, points out that "the mind evolved to select a few signals and then dream up a semblance..." This is uncannily similar to what Tor Norretranders says; namely that "Our consciousness is presented with an interpretation, not the raw data. Long befor this presentation, an unconscious information processing has discarded information so that what we see is a simulation, a hypothesis, an interpretation..." There are gaps. There are perceptual blind-spots; an interpretive glazing of the Real is our domain. We color and distort, omit and amplifiy. And, as Ornstein puts it, "whatever enters our consciousness is overemphasized. It does not matter how the information enters, whether via a television program, a newspaper story, a friend's conversation, a strong emotional reaction, a memory --- all is overemphasized. We ignore other, more compelling evidence, overemphasizing and overgeneralizing from the information close at hand to produce a rough-and-ready reality." In other words, we have a tendency to blow our specific interpretation out of proportion! We fill in the gaps, the perceptual gaps, by blowing up --- like a balloon --- the significance of the little "bits" of information that we do become aware of. Suddenly those gaps no longer exist. And the few things that we have noticed take on a significance and importance, that according to others, may appear totally out of proportion in relation to what is actually called for. The little we are aware of is very significant --- at least to us it is!

There is a saying I have heard oft-repeated, one that is sometimes attributed to being New Age-ish --- as if that were a put down. This saying is quite true given a bit of reflection, and in consideration of what we have just discussed. It goes like this: "We do what we know. And when we know better, we do better." Maturana and Varela say something similar in The Tree of Knowledge, when they write that "All doing is knowing and all knowing is doing."

We do what we know. When we know better we do better.

And we have seen that much, if not all of our knowing, is based upon an interpretation --- a sort of view. And our doing, or path of action, is based upon our interpretation --- our view. We do, or act on what we know; we know based in large part upon what we are able to interpret, or to translate into a picture of reality. In short, that which we are able to re-present to ourselves becomes our knowlegde, which, again, is the Ground for all of our Doings. Here is where we become newly aware that bad information is the new dis-ease. Until we know better, we can't do better. Bad information: conceptual influenza; a memetic virus. The unstable and uncertain ground of knowing = doing.

This is after all the Information Revolution, and the greatest threat to us all in such a Revolution is "bad information". Information that is inadequate, insuffcient, erroneous, malignant, becomes like the poster-child for the new disease of our times: bad information.

There are now many, many sources of information (some would even say too many!). A now global culture is teeming with all sorts of information. It is the Information Age, the Information Revolution! And all of this information is converging on us at a sometimes hyperfrentic pace, which can make it much more difficult to know which way is up!

The fact that we form our knowings (our View) from the information that we receive, that we notice, that we, in the words of Ornstein, "overemphasize", means that the quality of the information that we "do" subject ourselves to becomes all the more important a consideration for each of us. Because the fact of the matter is that "bad information" is going to be increasingly noted as "the disease" of the Information Age, "the fundamental threat" of the Information Revolution.

The knowing, or View, that we consider to be true in the moment is the very impetus for our Path, for our Action. The Path that we follow, based upon the View that we emphasize, results in a certain Fruition, or consequences --- which is now popularized by that Sanskrit term, karma. The Fruit that each of us reaps is in accordance with the Path we had taken to realize that Fruit, those consequences. The Truth both causes and effects. And the Basis for our walking that Path is a View, a certain form of knowing, some information, a clue, hint, trace, or certainty. One is inevitably tied up in and with the other. The Fruits we reap are merely the mirrors of our Actions, which always flow from our Views --- the Ground and Basis of what shall follow thereafter.

Simple, right?

It seems simple. Yet difficulties can arise in the flood of information that we are continually receiving. How to make sense out of all that information, right? Who's voice do we listen to? What do we value and what do we deny? How do we build a proper and fitting View? How do we maintain that View? Should we? Or should we let our View crumble and fall under the onslaught of information coming our way 24-7? Content to ride with the unstable and amorphous center that does not hold?

The Information Age is seen by some to be the Information Glut. It sems that there is no shortage of information. Certainly there can not be! But the quality of the infomration is very much in question. Information, as we have already quite clearly seen, is not simply good by just being "information". That is a prevalent misnomer. Information can be erroneous, false, inappropriate, taken out of context, inapplicable, too abstract, too imaginative, speculative, opinionated --- or any number of other qualities that will make for "bad information" as we relate to our particular situation. Again, information is not "good" just because it is "information". Slouka writes, "our willingness to believe in the information made available to us is relatively harmless... only as long as the information presented to us is, by and large, truthful. When it no longer is, our faith becomes the anchor that drags us down."

It is apparent that within the seed of the simple (information) is a wholly complex organism lurking and waiting to emerge. There are many considerations that we simply must take into account --- else our faith become as an anchor! There are specific questions we must pose, and distinctions that we will continue to be required to make?

Ultimately, the question mark surrounding information becomes how do we know better so we can do better? How do we really know what we know? Why this conclusion? Why the "overemphasis" on those bits of information? These are the sorts of questions that Maturana and Varela asked of themselves, and are questions that will continue to guide our journey through the formative stages of the Information Age. Simply so that we may better understand, so that we may know better, so that we can ultimately do better. Because Lord knows it ain't always pretty --- our doings, that is.

 

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The language that we most rely on, at any given point in time, is the also language that acts as the predominant filter of the "raw data" that we receive. This is a proposition that I would like to offer. That, yes, language indeed is a perceptual-cognitive filter. And that no, in many repsects there is no direct all-inclusive witnessing that is entirely possible, just as there is no absolute objectivity that is entirely possible for us. Only objectivity as it relates to specific contexts. Only absolutes as they relate to specific contexts (which cancels out the absolute altogether). We are here-now, at this time, far, far too relative in nature to absolutely and directly witness any raw nature "in here" as subjectivity, or "out there" as objectivity. Each of us have as our conscious experience that unique interpretation rendered to us by the subcutaneous goings on, that is exuded from the non-conscious dark to the conscious half-light. The interpretation that is most effectively empowered within us at any one point in spacetime becomes our "conscious experience". The most emphatic interpretation wins the neo-cortical simulation game.

What interpretations match our desires? We see what we want to see. What interpretations simulate our greatest fear? What we have feared hath come to life. What interpretations allow us to express what we wanted to? Give me a reason. We give ourselves reasons. The interpretations offered. Which is one of the main realizations behind Buddhism: that until our whole consciousness has been purified of desires and fears we will not "truly see". Why? Because we will still see what we want to see: desires. And we will still see what we don't want to see too: our fears come to life. In other words, the intepretations rendered to us as that which we are conscious of will still be clothed in our own non-conscious baggage. There are relative levels of seeing clearly, of perceiving truthfully. The more gross levels of perception are those where we do not so much as really 'see' the world, so much as we see the world wearing the clothes that we have placed upon the world. A bigot. A racist. A sexist. A radical feminist. A revolutionary. A rebel. A reformer. An evangelist. A murderer. Each dresses up the world. The world may be naked, raw, as is; we may dress up, clothe, attire that world in a wardrobe.

Certainly each person can be considered to actually see what is there --- to a certain extent --- but the quality of perception is adjusted in relationship to each perceiver's non-conscious tendencies. We each have predilections, predispositions to seeing, to perceiving the world in a certain way. Some of these predilections can be changed, adjusted, made conscious, illumined; others are deeply ingrained and may be far from our present abiltiy to come to terms with, to alter or change in any way, shape, or form.

In the language and spirit of Zen, Ray Griggs writes in his book, The Tao of Zen, about a certain manner of perception, which is translated into English as "suchness". He writes, "Suchness is a just-so-ness that allows things to be themselves. It is reached by emptying, by unlearning, by forgetting all the constructs of thinking that have been imposed by enculturation... Suchness happens when perception is released from conceptual constructs so 'the world and all the things in it' can be perceived without interpretation through ideological, philosophical, or intellectual tampering." In other words, "suchness" is perceiving the world nakedly; whereby we cease to clothe the "world and all the things in it". We let the world be. No more do we have the desire to make the world appear a certain way. No more do we have the fears that the world will appear a certain way. The emperor is naked! And we don't need to overdress the always already naked emperor. But we "want" to. And some of us still have to.

Let me just say here that not all are concerned with such things as "suchness". Some of us thoroughly love our dramas, love to play dress up with the naked emperor of the world. Dressing up and clothing the naked emperor allows us a freedom to play and explore --- even if that freedom to play within the field of our interpretations has since long been forgotten, or never even acknowledged for that matter. In reality, then, there is no sort of grand spiritual expectation at work here, one that would consider that something like the notion of "suchness" can or will come about in an immediate fashion for even a few persons --- let alone a great many. It is very elusive this "suchness". And we will still --- many, if not most all of us --- have much work to do and plays to perform before we are going to be ready to give up our own interpretations of 'how-it-really-is'. For we have a vested interest in maintaining our interpretations. And for all we know, so too may the Kosmos have such a vested interest in maintaining so many intepretations of one world. Because, as it now stands --- just on the other side of the chaos and confusion of so many views --- are the diverse perspectives of the teeming billions that allow Spirit that glorious chance to "know" the world in infinite ways, through infinite I's and eyes. And what a luxury that is.

 

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Let's, at this point, still keep in mind Suchness, and yet go deeper into the journey of how we come to know what we know --- of how we interpret the world according to ourself as a 'subject' by dressing up the nakedness of the Garden. No worry, for the world's nakedness will be just fine (though maybe lacking a tan!). There is no threat of an 'absolute negation' of nakedness by dressing up the Garden. Just like when we put on some clothes, it in no way negates our nakedness --- nakedness is always already there. The clothes are what come and go. The interpretations are what change. Not the Naked Reality.

Tor Norretranders points out that "raw data" streams into us, via our senses, at millions of bits per second (yes, millions!). This amount of data is far too vast for the conscious mind to handle. We would be utterly overwhelmed if we had to consciously deal with and allocate all of these bits of information. Over time evolution has developed structures in consciousness which filter the flows of information, and, in a sort of haphazard best case scenario manner, present for conscious reflection only that information that is of utmost importance. Ornstein writes that we "would be overwhelmed by the world if we experienced it raw, so we select unconsciously. We live inside a set of illusions... The mind makes up its own story about reality from the... information received, reduced, and filtered through our senses." And that quantity of information that our senses actually receive is so very, very large in proportion to what we can consciously be aware of at any one point in space-time. So, to save the "self" from being overwhelmed, Nature has supplied self-aware Bodies with the appropriate simulation capacity. We get, as conscious subjects, a snapshot of what we can handle, what we need, desire, want.

Our total sensory access to information is staggering. Tor Norretranders:

The fact is that every single second, millions of bits of information flood in through the senses. But our consciousness processes only about forty bits per second --- at most. Millions and millions of bits are condensed to a conscious experience that contains practically no information at all. Every single second, every one of us discards millions of bits in order to arrive at the special state known as consciousness...

The numbers are vast. The eye sends at least ten million bits to the brain every second. The skin sends a million bits a second, the ear one hundred thousand, our smell sensors a further one hundred thousand bits a second, our taste buds perhaps a thousand bits per second.

All in all, over eleven million bits a second from the world to our sensory mechanisms.

But we experience far less...

Norretranders arrives at those numbers "by counting how many receptors each sense organ possesses." Then how many "nerve connections send signals to the brain, and how many signals each connection sends a second. The numbers are vast... over eleven million bits" of data per second are what our senses receive.

No wonder we can feel overwhelmed at times! And with the pace of life increasing as it is, it only stands to reason that our conscious self just can't keep up sometimes. No wonder we shut down, turn off, tune out. No wonders we go numb, dissociate, prevaricate, obfuscate, and seek to alleviate. We are being bombarded with swarms of data every second of every day! This sheds a whole new light on why people like to "veg out" from time to time. We just want to shut down and not have to worry about making any sort of "conscious sense" out of all the data that our senses receive. So maybe we flip the switch and end up tuning out. Only because we can't take it anymore. We have been overwhelmed.

There are many ways to cope with a rising flood, such as the rising tides of sensory overload. I think we have just about uncovered most all of these "ways to cope". What do we call them, "coping mechanisms"; "coping strategies"? Measures that we use to protect our, oftentimes, fragile sense of "self" from the disorienting data fog. Means that we employ, or that nature has cultivated so as to ensure that the newly self-aware Bodies don't become schizophrenic in too great a number. So we do tune out, shut down, block it out, fragment, dissociate, go numb. The itsy-bitsy ego, having developed somewhat fragilely, has had to boundary itself off, claim some territory for it "self". This means that survival becomes more assured in the short-term, as we shut down before we splinter into so many Humpty-Dumpty like pieces.

Again, the "conscious self", as an evolutionary emergent, developed its capacity or the function which defines it, out of necessity; namely, that of limiting what we are conscious of. Ornstein points this out when he writes, "Many of the mind's works are based on biological adaptations of more than a billion years ago... Since an organisms' needs are usually immediate, the mind adapted to focus on current events and to compute changes in the world immediately... It rains; we move. Hordes approach; we grab sticks or run. A comrade breaks a leg; we rush to fix it." The necessary adaptation of the mind was necessitated by the need for quick-response time, survival-based responses. Some of the mind's adaptations no longer apply in our postmodern world. For instance, the majority of our current problems and challenges are of a far vaster scale then mere individual survival issues and needs. We have huge collective challenges facing us. And the mind is not currently adapted for these global challenges in the same way that it is adapted to deal with the more immediate survival based needs. The slow poisioning due to increasing toxicity is not often sensed as a threat until it is too late. We cannot smell the greenhouse effect. Thus, the individual is often unable to comprehend the global crises that face the species and their habitats. And Ken Wilber states "Gaia's main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, oberpopulation, or resource depletion. Gaia's main problem the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the noosphere about how to proceed with those problems." In other words, we cannot get our minds together on how to go about dealing with those problems and averting a catastrophe! Each individual mind is focused on its own immediate survival, or on its kin's immediate needs --- even if those needs are totallly irrational, even if that individual and its group have all of their needs met. The mind is adapted to deal with survival of "me and mine". The mind is not adapted (at least not in great numbers yet) to deal with global issues, issues relating to Gaia --- the whole earth and our shared future. As soon as discussions start up about what to do we often find that the dialogue degenerates into "my special interests vs. your special interests." With the long-term results being "mutually assured destruction"; that is, if we don't recognize how an evolutionary adaptation has become maladaptive.

The present consequences of the evolutionary adaptation we'll call "mind", are that this function can overly and unduly limit what "it" is willing to be aware of. Ornstein suggests that "many of the 'irrational' defense mechanisms are adaptive. Denial of threatening information often allows us to avoid unnecessary anxiety." So, do we distract ourselves from the bad news coming from Mother Earth by going out to shop, consuming more, contributing to that very condition and state of affairs that we do not want to hear about? We are seemingly caught up in a Catch-22. We feel powerless to effect any change for good, precisely because the system is so huge, the damage so vast. There is literally so much going on and what can any one of us do in the face of six billion! Ultimately, we may just end up distracting ourselves from having to feel that powerlessness. Thus, the situation becomes worse, because no one else knows what to do either; the Beast has grown bigger than any of us are alone. So, it is not out of the ordinary to feel powerless in these times. Not out of the ordinary at all.

Those adaptive coping mechanisms that worked so well at one stage of development often will end up becoming redefined as "pathologies" at a different, later stage of development. Ken Wilber would have us be mindful of this fact when he writes that "The emergence of a new level solves or 'defuses' some of the central problems and limitations of the previous stage, but it also introduces its own new problems and new scarce resources." We can see, here, the possibility of the "mind" emerging as a necessary answer to an evolutionary dilemma that was posed in the process at some point in time, but which has now come to be maladaptive, as somewhat pathological, i.e., as a sort of regressive limit on intrinsic awareness. In short, the previous adaptive capacity (in this case, the mind) becomes increasingly burdened over time and a new emergent faculty is required by necessity in order to deal with the "evolutionary overwhelmingness" of the times. And it is the Body, I propose, which will collectively (if at all), through individuals, grow and unfold that increasingly necessary emergent function, that yet remains unknown to us.

Then, at that time, the "self" can take a much needed holiday.

That poor little ol' conscious self. We have demanded so much of it, and have not really known the tasks that it has had to deal with on a second by second, moment to moment basis. Go ahead, take eleven million bits of information per second and whittle it down to about forty or so; just so you can communicate anything at all. That's what we do day by day, moment moment --- all of us do. (Of course this is a general synopsis of what we each encounter. There are those whose life-challenge is to live with one or more sensory impairments, such as blindness of deafness.) Literally, we as a "self", a "mind", are forced to make sense out of the overwhelmingness of the data fog. The tides of information are rising. The rate at which we are being forced to make 'conscious' decisions is increasing, and yet the 'conscious self', or 'mind', is forced to rely on the adaptations that were cultivated on the savannah, in the jungle, the forest, the swamp, the field. As Fredric Jameson puts it once again, "there has been a mutation in the object unaccompanied as yet by any equivalent mutation in the subject. We do not yet possess the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace... in part because our perceptual habits were formed in that older kind of space." With that older kind of space being the space which the adpatation was a functional fit for. Now, the object has indeed mutated, our environment has changed through our very own hands, so to speak. But the subject has yet to catch up; has yet to evolve the capacity to map itself in relation to the new global constitution. Still relying on the adaptations that are not at all a functional fit for our current lacks and present needs.

 

99

Language serves as a sort of filter for those 11,000,000 bits of information per second that we receive from our senses. Thus, taking that vast amount of data down to a more tidy and manageable 40 bit consciously languaged simulation, one that captures what we deem to be most essential (with essential being what we are necessarily focused upon at that moment in space-time). This interpretive filtering --- the reduction of the 11,000,000 bps that we receive whole bodily to the 40-bit simulation --- occurs at a less than conscious level. It is a non-conscious process that has been inferred and deduced, based upon experimental findings.

In order to make conscious "sense" of the 11,000,000 bits of information per second that confers on our senses, translative neurological filters and simulators are employed. It is language, as far as one can currently tell at this point, which turns out to be our chief noopsheric translative filter. This can be verified simply by our noticing any view of our surroundings that we happen to be in. We can consciously focus on our tactile sense, like our butt in the chair, or our hands as they hold the pages of a book open, or move, point, and click a browser. Meanwhile, there is sensory information from the world that we are being impressed with but are not conscious of until we turn our attention to that sense or organ. It is not that we are not being impressed with information at some level of our Being. It is more so that we are only able to direct our attention, in a conscious manner, to a certain set of data --- it may be visual, auditory, tactile --- but one at a time. We can even flip back and forth from sensory channel to sensory channel. But we cannot be conscious realizers, in the moment, of all the data that comes to us. We are not adapted, as Being-humans, for such a capacity. What the "conscious self" or "mind" gives is a very economical version of Naked Reality. What we end up getting is a reduced and marked down simulation, a roughed-in snapshot in time. Most often constituted of only that which we have been trained to notice, and what we continue to train our "self" to be aware of.

The "raw data" that we all receive, yet order and translate in so many unique and diverse ways and manners, is like a sensorial plenum of potential and possibility. That penultimate potential and possibility is brought to order by less than conscious processes, and given to us as a definitive statement on Reality. When, in fact, it may be far from it! Root assumptions, beliefs, tendencies, and concepts --- all informed by the language that we lean on --- nourish and constitute our Tree of Knowledge. Beliefs; the trunk. Branches; our concepts. Leaves; our seasonal opinions which come and go.

Much of what goes on and takes place as our Tree of Knowledge we cannot see and grasp in a conscious manner. For instance, we cannot directly see psychological sap flowing upward, and a priori roots reaching downward. We cannot see the emotional nutrients travel from trunk of belief to branch of concept, from root of assumption to sky of context. We know that there is exchange and process taking place in a continuous manner, but we cannot see directly into our Tree of Knowledge; that is, unless we are willing to kill the tree, cut the tree, undermine the tree, negate the tree so as to understand the tree.

What we do have in regards to the Tree of Knowledge is this: Those who have made great sacrifices on behalf of future understanding. Though our Tree of Knowledge may not be exactly like theirs, there are, as we have noted, structural similarities that do apply. We cannot see directly and totally into our own Tree of Knowledge. Unless we negate the process of that Tree to begin with, it is even very hard for another to see into the innermost workings of our Tree of Knowledge. To see into our own Tree of Knowledge, in other than a contemplative manner, this we can, perhaps, never do.

We are that process, as the observer is the observed in the act of observation. We are the functionality of the Tree of Knowledge questioning and inquiring into its own processes. We are like the reflective capabilities of the Tree of Knowledge newly manifest. And now we are inquiring into what makes the Tree of Knowledge a Knowledge Tree. How has the Tree come to know itself; and to make proclamations in relation to what lies outside of it, the world? It is much like being the result "of" a process and then questioning and inquiring into that very process that we are the current results "of". In a contemplative sense, we can certainly inquire into and observe the results of the process that we are the results of. But in a materialistic sense we can only deduce and draw inferrences based upon the structural similarities that may or may not exist between us and a corpse, or another experimental subject. Maybe with the technological evolution of devices like MRIs and the PET scans we will be able to directly see into our own mind at some point in the near term --- without having to be a corpse! Up until now, however, that has not been the case. Death has had to accompany observation. Sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly.

Our eliminative observation requirements have left us wanting. We now know that doing away with one aspect of the observer, observed, observation triumvirate --- so as to understand one or more of those aspects better --- in the ultimate sense, does not work. But we have built much of our knowledge base upon such practices. We have killed what we are wanting to observe, just to get inside it. But now it is no longer living, so we can only make logical deductions and draw inferrences based upon the structural artifacts that are left behind, as a corpse. We do come to understand some structural significances, but the livingness quotient is no more. Hence, our knowledge base --- if solely reliant on such means --- will be incomplete and insufficient. This is changing, though. We are coming to understand that such means are quite limited. That killing in the name of the act of observation kills part of the observer, which kills the observed. That killing that which is being observed kills part of the act of observation, which kills part of the observer. And that killing part of the observer in the name of the act of observation kills a portion of that act of observation, while also killing the observed. On the other hand, living/letting the observer live the act of observation lives the observed. And living/letting the act of observation lives/allows the observed which lives the observer. Empower one; empower all. Diminish one; diminish all. These three are inseparable; like knowing that is doing; like View that is Path that is Fruit; like Tree that is roots, that is branches, that is leaf and so much more. Inseparable.

In summary so far: Interpretation and rough-inned simulation is a far better description of "how" and "what" we perceive, than assuming that we directly "see" and "sense" what is always absolutely, and actually, just so.

It may be strange, indeed, for us to understand this initially, and to come to "know" this readily. Because, still the world "appears" to us as it has; perceptions still is. Some of that will never change for us. But maybe... just maybe our response-ability to those worldly "appearances" can be just a bit more compassionate and wise. Knowing that "intepretations" are not Absolute, that simulations abound, just might free us from having to seek the definitive, the final solution. Then we can really get together and celebrate the expressive and the creative, which is really what intepretation is all about, isn't it?