The Myth of the Given

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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others. ~ Ambrose Bierce

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[Francis]

I've been trying to understand the concept of the myth of the given. This is what I came up with:

Perceptions are composed of cocktail of both sensual data and conceptual data. The ‘given’ experience is like a sculpture, where the sensory data are embedded blocks of quarry-stone and the conceptual data are the hammer and chisel marks of the sculptor that form the ‘given’ experience. In this way, the mind and its concepts fabricate a reality from a more-or-less blank slate. This all happens in the blink of an eye, behind the scenes, in the subconscious.

We can dramatically alter our experience by accessing and affecting our subconscious concepts, through art and science. We can also radically alter our experience by abandoning our subconscious concepts altogether via mysticism.

We grow as individuals when we take more conscious control of, and responsibility for, the subconscious concepts that shape and inform our experience. Such is the awesome power of our personal and collective 'myths'.

 "Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!" ~ Midsummer Night's Dream


See also:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/epis-per/

[Jana]

Belief in the given is mythic thought.

[Justin]

Wilber sort of fumbled around describing this in Marriage of Sense and Soul. I am sure he's touched on it and refined it since then, but basically I have come to understand it as:

A world 'out there' that is to be innocently perceived is the myth of the given.

[Jana]

  Hi J!
but the word innocent is disturbing.
Perhaps we could try from the negative approach.

"The Given" is the zeitgeist...it is the subconscious and conscious presumption of the known world that we have assimilated from the totality of our experience to date. The Given has the potential to expand infinitely with new data, new experiences and new perspectives. The Given seems solid, along with the habitual fixity of our nature, but it is only as solid as our resistence to expansion and depth. In reality we are as large as the Universe and at One with omnipresence...if we could let go of the artifical sphincter of our heartmind.
The Given is only the given, until it is given over.

[Justin]

Your absolutely right, the word 'innocent' is disturbing... which accurately reflects the 'disturbing' quality of this presumption. Yuck

[Jana]

I often use the word naive in place of innocent...but pupael seems to work best in most cases.
We need to create some new words around metamorphosis to speak in evolutionary terms rather than black and white.
Since our language is fundamentally dualistic...we really gotta work at it.

[Jana]

The Russians seem to do the best subtle science, perhaps because they are more of a marriage of East and West, left and right brain...and yet if you consider the energetic of the country as a whole it seems more reptilian. The West still haven't completely married matter and spirit yet except at the forefront of theoretical physics...and yet the West compared to Russia seems more old mammalian brain as an operating whole. Any insight into this?

[jimtzu]

Russia is more culturally diverse than most of the western countries, spanning many time zones and cultures. what part (s) do you think have a more reptillian energy?

[Jana]

Yes...that is an overall impression of this uninformed virgin Ruska individual bod machine...The wholistic flavor of the overall Ruska dish virtual reality style.

Here's what my bud Wilboy says:"The rulers of Russia are obviously reptilian, and the people are still suffering from the shell-shock of the past 100 years of brutal subjugation. They need a bliss-fix to get them back to what's important."