Bard - too kind. I tend to agree that there are more connections between
the intellectual worlds of the east and of the greeks than is usually made
allowance for.
But I think that I can raise one objection, which might also be taken as a
positive proposal about how to understand your point, and how to understand
both Anaxagoras and Lao Tze. I'm goind to bring in Simone Weil in one of
her many brilliantly lucid moments. I'm going to suggest that we both agree
that Mind is not *personal* but is *impersonal*. As we both agree to *that*
- the question of whether mind is individual or collective will be a rather
different question......
> BARD:
> Dear Elephant, I must commend you on a truly clever response. As I write this
> I will try to avoid the various logic traps planted therein, but I fear that I
> may fall into one. Well, here goes;
>
>> ELEPHANT WROTE:
>> Bard. About those ancient traditions. The greeks were a diverse and
>> inventive bunch, so practically any tradition you can think of is an ancient
>> one. The precise forbear of the theory you just expounded is Anaxagoras:
>> the theory of intermixture. This can be expressed as that a minute part of
>> butter is honey, and that a minute part of honey is butter. OK. But what's
>> the attraction? What's the quality in such a view? How does it help me
>> prepare a tasty breakfast?
>>
>> Another thing about Anaxagoras: he said that everything is [mixed up]
>> together, *except* for mind [nous]. I would guess that if you go and ferret
>> his reasons for thinking that mind is different, you may be interested and
>> surprised.
>>
>> Oh - and on the
>> hamlet-and-laurence-olivier-as-distinct-awarenesses-in-the-same-skin-togethe
>> r-is-ok-because-of-quantum-mechanics-argument: "really?". You *really*
>> think that Quantum Mechanics requires one to project the behaviour of quarks
>> onto both consciousnesses and medium scale molecular structures such as
>> human bodies?
>>
> BARD:
> Before I respond, allow me to make a few observations. Your reference to
> Anaxagorus is right on! However, as one who does not believe in coincidences,
> I am convinced that it is no coincidence that Anaxagorus and Lao Tze were
> contemporaries as their philosophies, although separated by culture and
> thousands of miles, are nearly identical. It is apparent to me that the Tao of
> which Lao Tze speaks IS, in fact the "Nous" of which Anaxagorus waxes
> profoundly. And for that reason, the "Nous" refers not to an individual's
> mind, but to a collective mind. It is not certain, although many of us profess
> so, that we each really have any individual minds. And, in that lies a trap.
> If we have no individual minds, then you might argue that we have no
> individual awareness, and therefore, neither do the atoms of which we speak.
> However, I would suggest that we and atoms are both individually and
> collectively aware, but that atoms tend to be more consistent in their choices
> because they are just a bit smarter than the human organisms who discuss
> whether atoms are aware, in that atoms seem to want to do what is in the best
> interest of the collective "Nous" rather than be swayed by individual desires
> that have little concern for the effect on the satisfaction of the collective
> organism (e.g: industry prizes profit over the adverse effects of pollution).
>
> Which leads me to the Hamlet/actor paradox:
> Who says there is more than one consciousness? Maybe we all share the same
> one. And I prefer to call THAT consciousness by its name, "NOUS."
SIMONE WEIL:
So far from its being his person, what is sacred in a human being is the
impersonal in him. Everything which is impersonal in man is sacred and
nothing else.
Gregorian Chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad, the invention of
Geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being
and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.
Truth and beauty dwell on this level of the impersonal and the anonymous.
This is the realm of the sacred; on the other level nothing is sacred,
except in the sense that we might say this of a touch of colour in a picture
if it represented the Eucharist.
What is sacred in science is truth; what is sacred in art is beauty. Truth
and Beauty are impersonal. All this is too obvious.
****If a child is doing a sum and does it wrong, the mistake bears the stamp
of his personality. If he does the sum exactly right, his personality does
not enter into it at all.****
Perfection is impersonal. Our personality is the part of us which belongs
to error and to sin. The whole effort of the mystic has always been to
become such that there is no part left in his soul to say 'I'.
ELEPHANT:
That's right Simone. Mind is not personal. But you had something that you
wanted to say to Bard on the question of "collective" mind, that although it
isn't personal it isn't collective either....
SIMONE WEIL:
.....the part of the soul which says 'we' is infintely more dangerous still
[than 'I'].
Impersonality is only reached by the practice of a form of attention which
is rare in itself and impossible except in solitude; and not only physical
but mental solitude.
A group of human beings cannot even add two and two. Working out a sum
takes place in a mind temporarily oblivious of any other minds.
A collectivity must dissolve into separate persons before the impersonal may
be reached.
The human being can only escape from the collective by raising himself above
the personal and entering into the impersonal.
Every man who has once touched the level of the impersonal is charged with
responsibility towards all human beings; to safeguard, not their persons,
but whatever frail potentialities are hidden in them for passing over to the
impersonal.
ELEPHANT:
All Good. I beleive that RMP would have agreed with you there, Simone -
atleast his behaviour and thoughfulness towards Lila at the end of the book
demonstrates this, as does his internal dialogue.
May I sum up your contribution for the benefit of our Lao Tze scholar?
Thank you.
Bard, it seems to me that Simone has a point. It's really quite low-quality
to call the devotion and discipline of the Monk or the Artist the activity
of "collective" mind. It's just this collectivity, the tyranny of the
social, that they are trying to escape. Hell is other people - or rather it
is ordering your thoughts in relation to other people, rather than in
relation to the truth. What's true is true, and no group-thinking is going
to change that. In fact it will most likely lead away fom it, because in
collectivities we are in a conglomorate of *persons*, with all the dangers
that a *personal* need for esteem implies. Perhaps it would be best if the
monks that get together so dangerously in that monastry just stayed
silent..... It was once objected to Descartes that "I think therefore I am"
is inadmissible as a foundation because for a consciousness devoid of beleif
in a social reality, there is no "I", no personal identity. That's right:
and it has a corrollary: that for those dedicated participants in a
*collective* mind the person and the "I" is amplified a thousand times.
Lisa, to her Brain, in the Pool episode of the Simpsons: "Shut up brain. I
don't need you now. I have friends." Profound.
I've rather laboured the point. I guess what I'm really saying is that
whatever you are trying to say, "collective" is the wrong word for it.
"Impersonal"? "Universal"? Perhaps. But the impression *not* to give is
that you are confusing "mind" with "body of truth". The truth is
impersonal, good is impersonal. And both are universal - but that's not
quite the same as saying that a mind which *apprehends* the truth is
universal. Do you see?
The apprehended and the apprehender are not *quite* the same thing.
For us to be conscious of a thing, in my view, is always for that thing to
be something outside of us - this is what the "of" in "conscious of"
signifies. The good is something infinite - no consciousness is ever more
than finite. The latter relates to the former as a supplicant to god.
Well, I hope my suggestion is not wholy useless,
And I doubt that anything Simone Weil says could ever be unhelpful,
Elephant
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