there is no mind. it's a myth.

[mopinko]

only the brain. no separate entity, isolated from and different than the brain.
there is no "mental illness"
there are thought disorders.

lots of folks have poked holes in the sickness/neurochemical theory for good reason. it is less about science, and more about easing the stigma of these thought disorders.

that's why they are still scrambling for effective pills to take.
it's only neurochemical in the sense that chemical changes run on electrical sparks.
some of the most effective drugs we have started out as drugs for epilepsy. electrical.

it was a great framework as a first step at using our brains to understand our brains. but it is a bit like me describing who i am by telling you what color my hair is.

the term "mental illness" needs to find it's way to the dustbin of history.
take freud w you.

[Chainfire]

1. Oh, come on

the mind is as real as the soul.

[mopinko]

2. it's construct of the brain. of our search for answers.

but i could also say the same about this "soul"
yes, i know what you mean when you say it, but point out to me where this resides in the body.

i'm all for tossing religion, and even spirituality for that matter, on that pile as well.

i could give y'all a tedtalk about evolutionary psychology. you prolly shouldnt make me.

[Newest Reality]

9. There are some...

There are some who see it the other way around, that is, everything is consciousness. The Hard Problem is still a mystery. Awareness/consciousness, (they are technically different) still cannot be accounted for in the Western paradigm.

From inside the mind, (no soul required, especially if it is objectified) where is the brain? Subjectively, there is not a hint of one. Objectively, where is the mind? You open up a skull and look at a brain, you see no mind.

Metaphysical realism, reductionism, positivism and hedonistic nihilism have flaws, as do eternalism, etc. The mechanistic model is debatable.

[Chainfire]

35. Humans have had a long history

of inventing phenomena to explain things that our science has not yet conquered. We can not admit that "we just don't know" so we create cover stories. Evidence shows that it goes way back in our history, perhaps even preceding our species.

We have given supernatural powers to rocks, trees, rivers, mountains, old white men with long beards that live somewhere in or above the clouds, and the list goes on and on.

As you mentioned, the brain is real; we can open it up and play with it, cut out rotten parts, manipulate it with drugs, but we really don't know how it works. The "mind" is just another invention to explain what we don't understand. If there was a mind, who is to say that it exists in the brain, why not the heart, the liver, or the rectum; all very important organs?

[Newest Reality]

36. That's the thing.

Have you looked for the mind, carefully and intently? Can you find it anywhere at all? You can also look for where it comes from, (you know where your car or food came from) or where it is now and even where it might go.

Who then, is interpreting any of this if it is a fiction? I take it that the hidden flaw of mind is universal and there is nobody, not even scientists who actually has one if it can't be found.

If all the data and science is based on the instruments that are used by minds in order to discover and explain them, then are they just all doing themselves? No-mind, fact, indicates that a self or separate identity is merely an illusion in itself and yet that subjective phantasm is what does the investigations and reports the findings. That would include the interpretations, models and anything else that falls in the realm of the mind itself.

Free will, in that sense would be a fallacy in that respect, based on subjective notions of some form of actual self-control that is predetermined only by previous actions and reactions that are assumed to be of an agent with volition.

[Alwaysna]

23. Can we point to the location where the immune system exists?

[MousePlayingDaffodil]

3. Correct . . .

The original poster, with their materialist "there is only the brain" conceit, couldn't be more wrong. Wholly apart from any philosophical considerations, they are very much behind the times when it comes to where neuroscience itself is today.

[mopinko]

6. dude, you dont know me, so let me give you something to chew on.

this is coming out of my decades long search for a small chink in my own brain that i not only figured out on my own, but found an effective treatment for.
last week i talked to one of the top neurologists in the country for an hour, and he went complete bobblehead on me. he ended the call w that look you get that says- yeah, well, you've got me there.

so, you were saying?

[Maraya1969]

37. I believe what you say and there is an entire spiritual philosophy that says the same.

It is called Advaita. Or Advaita Vedanta.

And yes, by practicing that philosophy somewhat I have realized that the "mind" is just a collection of thoughts and some visual pictures that come and go. If you are upset and ask yourself, "Who is it that is upset?" and look inside you will see that there is no one there.

What we have as an identity is just a bunch of characteristics that we have gathered through the years. Like our name, race, family, job, ideas etc. But if you think of yourself as a brand new baby before you added any of these things you were just a bundle of awareness. The goal of Advaita is to get back to being that bundle of awareness and let go of all the other stuff.....which happens to be all the stuff that makes us miserable. And from then on their is spiritual stuff which I am still trying to learn.

Two books on the subject at called, "I am that" and "Becoming nothing"

It's all about that.

[mopinko]

38. karma has decided smile on me lately, and

a doctor of divinity that was very strangely placed in my life and i have been talking about this.
i never took anything on faith, but saw that taking that leap made a lot of things make sense.
we were talking mostly about karma, and reincarnation.
i told him that i felt i must have lived before.
we talked about buddhism, and he looked at me, and i saw in his face that he recognized i was a buddhist, however much i had ignored the idea. he didnt even have to say it out loud. i just saw it.
then he did say it, and all i could say was- i know that is true.

the idea of the mind is a clue to how it all really is, but it is a poor one, and not a real truth.

[Newest Reality]

4. What do you mean...

What do you mean by real?

[mopinko]

8. i mean a concrete thing you can point to.

i can point to my brain, and i can drill down to where language, movement, my very heartbeat originate.
can anyone point me to the spot where this mind resides? the best you can do is say that it is globally located between your ears.

[Newest Reality]

12. Good response.

Then are you merely an illusion? That's one perspective. You are an aggregation of various parts that identify as a self, perhaps? A case of mistaken identity?

Upon investigation, what is "concrete"? The basis of a substance is atomic/Quantum, therefore, it is a sensory experience of a complex field of charges that give it the properties of being concrete. For instance, an atom is mostly space and has very little substance/matter to it. To scale, if you had a proton enlarged to the size of a baseball, the electron would be a mile away.

The reason you can't put your hand through concrete is largely a matter off energy/charges in essence.

From where modern physics stands, objects "out there" are not actual in that sense.

[Laelth]

5. Illness presumes a cure.

There is no cure for a Cluster B personality disorder. Therefore, it’s deceptive, at best, to call it a mental illness.

-Laelth

[I_UndergroundPanther]

7. I agree with your assessment of

Cluster B personalities,that is not mental illness.

Trauma is a psychiatric injury.
I literally have scars on my brain from it.

[mopinko]

11. not untrue.

but it has a physical mechanism that plays out across your neurons, and leaves actual scars.

these issues that i am grappling w, that you, old friend are grappling w, are both simple and complex.

[Newest Reality]

14. I just wanted to note...

I agree with the idea of questioning the older models about "mental health" and the terminology use.

There is a bias towards norms, which can be cultural and even faddish. Mental distress or emotional afflictions might be a more apt descriptor because it boils down to that. Not being able to function properly can be distressing and debilitating. Some models end up being overlays of terminology and differ.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

15. Simple and complex

I agree. Thankfully for therapy to help me grow new neuron connections around the scars. It's hard work and painful. But than the rerouting isn't a guarantee you'll function better, I would be happy to get rid of symptoms.

[mopinko]

21. i'm not one to tell other people what to do, esp

when it comes to matters of health, but i do try to share what i have learned from my experiences.
what got me here was mmj. been a toker since i was 16. the more i smoked the better i did. the lowest points in my life were where i didnt smoke at all.

always thought it was weird that i never, ever felt "high"
i swore edibles did nothing for me, and it is hard to smoke enough to help. but i started looking for a dose that might make it work and at about 4x the usual recommendation, it started to work. i started w vaping, which gave me access to refined strains, and helped me pick those that was doing something, so i got edibles of those strains.
i started getting better about 6 mos ago, and again, we have a fucking fractal.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

22. I'm still mulling

Getting a pot license.

[mopinko]

24. do it. pm me if you want to talk further.

and yeah, who knew fractals were good for anything but a backdrop to a dead show?

[mopinko]

30. one more thing-

my youngest had hidden epilepsy from a head injury as well. was told that there was a genetic thing here.
now, my kids are all "crazy"
i wondered about my middle kid who was an exceptionally clumsy toddler, and i was kinda, hmm, wonder if a half dozen black eyes before 2 is enough to cause this.
i have been posting about this stuff on my fb, and a friend piped up that she knew a very similar story, only this one was a about a guy who had nearly drowned at 5.
dingdingding.
middle kid was my only wonky birth. she has the cord wrapped around her neck. my labor kept stopping and starting, and she got a 2 pt ding on her apgar for color.

she has migraines and compulsive vomiting.
she's has a half dozen neuros, and has tried everything including botox for the headaches. right now that is failing too and she is trying new drug.
talking near daily crushing pain. i have wondered how she held onto at least one job after all the times she told me about being curled up on the stockroom floor in tears.

i have started substituting the word insults for injury or trauma.
seems like a small word till you remember your history. i mean, just the history of duels show how these fractal can play out.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

31. Your compulsive puker

Would freak me the fuck right out.
I'm emetiphobic.

[mopinko]

33. bet that's on the same circuit.

i could go off on a tedtalk about how emotions are just a flavor of thoughts.

[mopinko]

20. a bit of personal history here-

my father was an alcoholic. i think, think, that was where this model started.
it was a worthy pursuit to explain his behavior as anything but a character flaw, or a sin, or a disgrace. as all fail all day.
worthy. very worthy, and such a comfort at the time for my family.

when i started my little farm 8 years ago, i found myself re-examining my da.
i get my gift w plants and animals from the genes of my farmer ancestors, and he fed that gift some high powered food.
we were all at least grudgingly grateful for the brains in that gene, but that is about the only thing anyone could find to put on his side of the ledger.
but i'm the only one of us 7 who had a real daddy/daughter relationship w him, or much more than a little fondness.

a film school student did a short documentary on my farm, and it really surprised me that the parts he used were when i was talking about my da. in the film i keep saying "my father". when i was little, he was dada. for all of us he was and is dad. never da. but somehow that irish word inserted itself in the conversation, and dropping that d made it a much better descriptor.
the money bit was me saying that i think about how much he would love to come sit at my farm. what peace he might have finally found here. even w a healthy life, he would be gone now. but i lost him when i was 17. it was really a sort of selfish wish, because that would have given me so much peace too.

i told him that i loved it and that the story he built was totally true, but it wasnt the story of my farm so much, which is what i thought we had been talking about.

(that little 8 min film got accepted by the city for their "movies in the park" series. a bunch of independent shorts, and a studio movie. i think they showed it in 3 different parks. just took a quick look for the link, but didnt find it. will look later, but i started scrolling through the vids on my fb page, and realized i was seconds from the event horizon of a black hole, so i got the heck out of there. will find it and add link)

[wcmagumba]

10. OK, just joking here...

but you realize we and everything we see/feel/do are just holographic constructs of our alien overlords (which some theories say are ourselves in the future)...oh, for the simplicity of a "red pill"...Neo had it easy...

[mopinko]

13. lol

point to me where these "overlords" you speak of reside.

however, i have been saying for decades i have struggled to nail down one point, find another point, nail it down, and draw a little line segment between.
in this way, i have gotten somewhere.
and i looked around and shouted- is everything a fucking fractal here or what?

[I_UndergroundPanther]

16. Branes and fractal holograms

If you cut a hologram into pieces
You get 2 copies of the hologram. How does an escape from a hologram,fractal and branes happen through all these theoretical strings?

[mopinko]

25. lol. w the light saber that is ja's gift.

[Newest Reality]

17. Indra's Net

Last edited Sun May 10, 2020, 10:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Some of our ideas are not new, but become a more technical version of ancient ones.

"Indra's net" is an infinitely large net of cords owned by the Vedic deva Indra, which hangs over his palace on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. In this metaphor, Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels.[5]

In the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, which follows the Avatamsaka Sutra, the image of "Indra's net" is used to describe the interconnectedness of the universe.[5] Francis H. Cook describes Indra's net thus:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.[6]

he Buddha in the Avatamsaka Sutra's 30th book states a similar idea:

If untold buddha-lands are reduced to atoms,
In one atom are untold lands,
And as in one,
So in each.
The atoms to which these buddha-lands are reduced in an instant are unspeakable,
And so are the atoms of continuous reduction moment to moment
Going on for untold eons;
These atoms contain lands unspeakably many,
And the atoms in these lands are even harder to tell of.[7]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra's_net

[I_UndergroundPanther]

18. That's beautiful

We are caught up in Indra's net.

[Newest Reality]

19. Yeah...

It's an ornate allusion. They went inward to explore in the East while the West went outward. Even God was thought of us "up there" or "out there".

A nice image that illustrates that net is when you see drops of dew on the grass and leaves. There are some close up photos where you can see the dew reflection the other drops and each of them is doing the same.

[mopinko]

26. welp. i had a conversation a while ago, w a man, of course.

he was positing some woowoo nonsense theory about how we are being influenced by some cosmic force or something.
me- leave it to a man to look right past 20m years of evolution of an amazingly complex genome, and think it's strings of something from outerspace.

[Newest Reality]

28. Woo woo!

It isn't easy to discern the difference between woo woo as a skeptical bias and potential, alternate views. There are people who propose scientism which is a certain philosophical view based on interpretations of scientific findings.

Evolution does not rule everything out, it has a primary focus and explains one aspect of existence. Not all explanations require some force "out there" controlling things. In fact, in the sense of emergence on could say that nothing is under control, which is rather Zen in essence.

If you get a chance, read the book Biocentrism by Lanza. It is scientifically based and proposes a compelling and interesting model that can bring one to reconsider conventional notions about reality and life.

Also, The Case Against Reality by Hoffman is a radical, new theory.


There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

[mopinko]

27. having a bit of a belly laugh right now.

26 replies and zero recs.
it's all fucking fractals up in here.

[Newest Reality]

29. Would you like...

Would you like a side of Mandelbrot or Julia with that?

[mopinko]

32. would you like to define 'joke' and 'whine' for me?

kinda opposite things. mirrors of each other even.

[mopinko]

34. your reply just stuck out cuz the same thing played out w my family.

shared a few of my recent writings in the family fb group.
kudos here, on my own timeline, but in that group, most all the 30ish members read it, and i didnt get a single click.
when i pointed it out just like i did w you, not crying, more pointing and laughing.
armaggedon ensued.