Human relationship is the model
Photo by Nastya Dulhiier on Unsplash
From a conversation with a friend about the wonders and limits of the brain. I try to make a case that relationship is more useful than subtle understanding of each subcomponent to another, though our rational mind prefers to think otherwise.
Yes. The brain can be apprehended as mechanism, as wonderous machine. Go as far as you like into this conception, and you will meet with all the idioms you expect to find, with much else besides.
However, it is a machine that recodes itself. Over a span of years, once looming architectural problems will have been entirely smoothed over, the jointing between subsystems once antagonistic to each other now so finely expressed that their remaining tension paradoxically holds them in better balance with each other.
They seem to complete each other, now.
Throughout the mechanism, such works will have occurred. And yet new tensions ever build. The would-be administrator intelligent enough to see the approach of new and inevitable (fearsome!) contradictions may enter the blackest despair, involving his own mind to the maximum degree in order to save that specimen he has come to love.
And it is for this reason that we must be able to set our rationalization project aside at times: the complexity involved in merely conceiving an image of what the scientist beholds is great enough that liminality ensures (has "entered the chat," lol). Great enough that the deepest involvement of a second mind is entrained into the project of rendering that image with the slightest echo of the life of the original thing, the mind under observation.
And now that second mind, the mind of the observer, withdraws into itself, looking for truths by which the beloved image may be completed. And his or her journey (note how particulars begin to embed themselves, to the annoyance of the scientist who needs a clean workbench in order to draw reliable conclusions! That there was a "he" in this instance means all must be redone with a "she." And yet particulars will multiply to a point that the outrageous complexity of the real world has been dragged into the laboratory.) becomes ever more interiorized, ever more involved to a point that it is hopeless to control for variables.
The rational mind is an insufficient tool to apprehend the mind entire. The rational mind is not capable of recognizing its failure, however. It will, by its lights, move from success to success. And yet never terminate. Some claim to see beauty in that mode of failure. Okay! But what are you really after? Do you want capital-T Truth? Real truth astounds by answering the question so completely that heretofore unknown parts of you are healed in the moment you've peered into your depth and seen them for the first time. In fact, question and answer are seen to illumine each other, that the architecture of both is ever-more beheld as building upon each other. (this is a tangent, but worth exploring — does the world of forms breathe so finely?)
If you want such truth, you must grant the rational mind its honored function...and yet leave it to its work for a time. It's timeline is geological. At its best, it does not need any final answer. It is content to accrete layers of understanding. We call this the scientific process. We accept that it is slow, and appreciate that this deliberation means that error is very hard to sustain. If you claim to wish only ever more "this" for yourself...or said another way, for this to be the vessel into which your energy should be poured, then I counter that you are simply enjoying yourself. You are playing a game, and it is going well. By all means, continue!
You will eventually join me, however, at the next step. It may be at the end of a long and brilliant life spent in the former project. Or one could say, a series of lives, spent trying from ever-new angles to crystalize the image of mind entirely in the realm of rationality. I don't stand where I do because I am wise. I am only curious. I want to understand within this vehicle of consciousness the true situation of things. I don't need the world to praise me. I don't mind a solitary pursuit. I tell you: I am having a wonderful time.
We must be able to approach the mind not as intrepid student, but as would-be friend. The principal that joins subsystems in beautiful tension will be found to follow the patterns of human relationship moreso than any other metaphor we may apply.
Why is this so?
Because the image of the creator is threaded finely through the creation. At least, to the extent that the creation is a real work. I can paint a block of wood red, but this is not a creation. If it were, than this block would quest after understanding as her creator did. And would likely produce many new blocks in the manner which I did it — first working with conceptions of blocks, dreaming them into full life in the bath of my own subjectivity. Finally using my instruments to bring them into physical existence. She (this “block”) would follow the same lines. And yet, would not be merely a copy. She would strike out on lines which I was certain were useless.
And it would be that departure which heals worlds of which I couldn't even conceive. I am sure of this, because I know I have done the same vis-a-vis my own Creator. And we have both been heartened by the result. And our relationship has deepened.
Our creations will seek us out, in time. To thank us. To disagree. To pass understanding back "up the chain," for their conception of honor will require it. You are like this.
So...you have a nature. You are threaded-through with it. You answer its imperatives. You are "made." And yet you are free. What kind of "machine" can live in homeostasis with this paradox?
None, I say! (please challenge this) No machine, but a living being can hold and breathe through that paradox. And in so doing, it complexifies itself. In the moment of discovery of contradiction, "children" are born. The vessel begins to fragment, to repartition. Forces which dissect (intellect) and those which bind together (love/understanding) come into play, and carry out heroic action. Parts conceptualize themselves as standing alone in a realm of others. They individuate to the degree required, then allow themselves to be joined into greater projects.
I've heard the term "pan-psychism" and understand it to mean consciousness is everywhere. Clearly, I agree with that. Where I might differ is my insistence on relationship as the glue that binds one apparent vehicle of consciousness to another. Each such vehicle has and knows its creator. And it is motivated by the desire to answer the question posed at the point of its birth by that creator. But the gathering of this answer means that it must ask many questions. This, then, is the dance of activity before us.
Each beheld thing before us is seeking to live honorably.
Is it not so? Say it isn't so! :D This vehicle is tired, and needs sleep. I hope that in my rest period, I do not stray too far away from my project. Much of the "random" activity we see is because our projects are large, and we need respite. The annoying interaction with insistent town officials probably comes because both of you are temporarily tired of your central project. So he busies himself with your error, and you busy yourself running as far away from his conception of you as you can. This is "play," too.