Dr. John Vervaeke and Jonathan Pageau in Dialectic

foreign am very thankful that John and Jonathan have decided to have a conversation with one another and I've been very much looking forward to this since I heard they would be able to make the time so I hope that you will all enjoy Dia logos between the two of them [Applause] so I wanted to start by uh uh responding maybe even resonating is the better verb to uh masterful presentation of iconography and um so I want to if you'll indulge me I want to say talk for a few minutes because I can't make the point in a couple of sentences so I've studied that's probably insufficient I have been obsessed with the problem of relevance realization at the core of my career um and it's now coming to the fore more and more explicitly in cognitive science um and for me that has been [Music] um uh I don't know what to call it's it's been it's it's encouraged me so one of the problems your cognition faces is the problem that it can't be either algorithmic or arbitrary it can't follow ultimately rules that are working in terms of just truth and falsity and certainty it can't work just in terms of arbitrary choice because for many real world problems the amount of information you can pay attention to is combinatorily explosive the number of options in your search space as many of you know a standard chess game there's on average the number of Pathways potential Solutions you have to search through is 30 to the Power 60 which is greater than the number of atomic particles in the universe so obviously you can't do an exhaustive search so you can't do an exhaustive search you can't be algorithmic but you can't just arbitrarily pick from that search space um of all the information in your long-term memory you can't search through it all you can't search through all the possible combinations that's common sort of explosive right and there's more and more instances of these um and so just gesturing to an argument you've heard me make endlessly um what's happening of course now and again and get stuff getting published as this is now coming into the center of the of so we've gone through the first debate we're now it's called the second debate about rationality Herbert Simon is playing a pivotal lawn bowl but it's coming in and it's causing us to really radically reconceive the notion of rationality we have to give up sort of the Cartesian model so that's sort of on the outside that's scientific but I want to now start to resonate with what Jonathan was talking about kind of wondered what would happen if I'd been brought up with a near Chris in Christianity that was like what Jonathan presented I wonder where I would have ended up um so let me give you a lot of instances of these and I want to show you how your biology solves this problem because it it appears on many many levels and I just want to give you a bunch of examples fairly rapidly to show you how comprehensive this strategy is I'm doing all of this because I don't think of evolution as an intentional process but I'm also not trying to insult any theists here trying to keep this as neutral as possible okay so give me some charity on that and I will return the charity as many as fulfilled as I can so you have you have to have a certain amount of arousal and put aside Freud I don't mean sexual arousal because there should be long periods of time where you're not sexually aroused uh but right hopefully that's happening right now um I mean metabolic arousal yeah and so the problem facing you is what level should you have your arousal at and the problem is you're on a Continuum and you need to make it sensitive to the context like I can't be really highly aroused that's not good I can't be and I can't take sort of an overall Canadian strategy I'll just be middle all the time oh look a tiger right so um so so what what's the solution well one thing you might try is you might try creating a system that is calculating all the variables and then taking it into like taking an input doing all the calculation doing output and then trying to manipulate a system um but instead what you have is you have your autonomous autonomic meaning from autonomous self-law self-governing nervous system it's divided into two subsystems there's a sympathetic and the parasympathetic and I'm going to and please understand that I'm going to be using these words from now some words very very carefully here the sympathetic system is biased to interpreting as much as it can of the world as threat or opportunity and trying to raise your level of arousal the parasympathetic system is biased to trying to interpret as much of the world as a safe context in which you can recover and recuperate and Digest and then what you do what you do is you put the two together like this and what's called opponent processing and they're constantly pushing and pulling on each other so you take two systems that are heuristically biased they don't search the whole Space they're very biased right and then you put them in an opponent processing together and they are constantly pulling notice what I'm doing with my left and right hands yes yes right right left and right here I'm pulling uh right like this opponent processing so that right my level of arousal is constantly evolving its fittedness to the context now is it a perfect system no it can go wrong but try to make something better than it it's really really hard so there's a difference between being a perfect system and being an optimal system okay you face another problem what should you pay attention to that's not what you do you don't do you're not doing that at least I hope not what's actually happening is you've got a point of processing going on you've got a default mode Network and a task Focus Network the task Focus network is trying to keep you on task and exclude as much as it can from the task push notice what's going on it see it yeah you see why I want to talk about this at length okay pushing away right that's and then the default mode network is making you prone to mind wandering so if I if I if I was if suppose this was not a derivately a riveting interesting talk I suppose it was really boring I suppose I was talking about well you know for quite some time I have been collecting porcelain cows and the person right and then what will happen is you will Drift Away that's right you will Drift Away and when you when you're in meditation you can feel these two all the time and you're actually playing with them now if you just drifted away and be very problematic to you if you just so why don't I just stay why can't I just taste task focused the problem when you stay tax focused is you may not be noticing what you need to notice there's not enough variation so the Mind wandering takes you away it introduces new things you might think about and then you kill off most of them bring them back and then just keeps doing that that's how you evolve your attention there's no boss that's constantly doing that you face another problem there's two sets of problems two kinds of problems in the world there are problems that are very familiar to you very well defined like 24 times three you know what kind of problem it is it's a multiplication problem so you know what operations you can perform you know what the goal state looks like when you're done doing multiplication you should have a number you shouldn't have a picture of a squirrel you know and you know what operations you're allowed to perform you know that singing is irrelevant but there are ill-defined problems these are problems in which your initial State your goal State and your operations are unclear to you I mentioned that in my talk giving a good talk is a null-defined problem participating in conversation is a ill-defined problem so what should you do and what you should do is maybe divide the brain into two systems one that works to direct attention for well-defined problems so it go looks for detail step by step because if you he and I are both doing a multiplication problem the one that does it more step by step with individual care is going to do better so you've got a part of the brain that's going to be dedicated step-by-step individual right look for certainty pursue clarity that's really good for well-defined problems we're doing multiplication now an eagle swoops in towards our head I don't want to be doing that well is it an eagle what kind of Eagle is it so now right when you have you have problems that require a Gestalt that you deal with all of the problem sort of all at once processing everything in parallel and that part is designed to deal with ambiguity and urgency and that's the right hemisphere this is Ian the Gilchrist that some of you know I have a talk with him coming out soon and what's the relationship between the left and the right atmosphere opponent processing through the corpus callosum to constantly pulling and pushing on each other you have another problem how do I take all of that attention and and how it comes out in Consciousness should I should I be doing all of my processing in consciousness imagine that imagine that I need to step I need to get up right consciously attend to all the muscles in my right leg consciously contract them you do you see what I mean you'll choke this is the proceduralization the automatization versus consciousness and so what what right but you don't want everything to be unconscious so what do you have you have opponent processing between long-term memory that's largely unconscious and working memory that's a higher order relevance field and they're constantly trading back and forth so your memory because of that trade-off because of that opponent processing is not very accurate 49 of confident eyewitness testimony is false that's why we should never convict people just on eyewitness testimony there's a woman watching a TV show man broke in and assaulted her she went to the police shortly thereafter and confidently identified the man it was a person she was watching on TV and it was a live broadcast couldn't have possibly been him this was conscious she wasn't aware of this and they get fused together most of your memories like that and yes it's true your mother didn't really love you [Laughter] okay I can do more and more and more and more and more about this artificial intelligence key breakthrough 1996 Jeff Hinton it's at the core of all of the Renaissance that's happening right now trying to get a neural network to learn what do you do you get it to compress the data what's that you try and you try to get find what's invariant on the same in all of the data see what my hands are doing and then on the basis of that you internally generate variations he calls it that he says the network is fantasizing and then that interacts with the world and then you recompress and do this again the variation compression Piaget how does a kid learn kid is constantly trading between two things assimilation in which it's trying to make everything fit into its cognition an accommodation in which it's introducing variation in order to fit that cognition to the world do you see what's happening here again and again and again and again machine learning developmental psychology aspects of your biology this is the primary way I'm arguing in which your cognition is making the most fundamental sense of the World by this process you see how it resonates with everything you're saying my my big question for you is that one of the things that I'm suggesting in the talk and that I'm proposing just in general in terms of the symbolic structure is that that that aspect let's say the right hand and the left hand are the constant the concentric and eccentric yes that that is not it actually exists at all levels of things that I recognize as having being my attention but then also if I participate in anything that is transpersonal will be true as well that is that the basketball team has the same shape as this attention process that I have internally okay so let me speak to that please so again all right and and how does evolution biological evolution work variation selection variation selection within a self-organizing cycle it's the same thing right and so and that's part of What's called the Deep continuity hypothesis notice that by the way that all of Jonathan's images were embodied left and right-handedness have you ever wondered why do you have we have handedness it's an opponent processing it's a solution to opponent processing other primates don't we do at least that's one good theory of it what if this is the Deep grammar that we keep converging on on how we make sense of things how we latch on to the intelligibility of the world and what if it's a grammar that's exactly like evolutionary adaptivity it's about fitting too conforming to use older language to the intelligibility of the world now here's a proposal if that is such a fundamental grammar and we keep seeing it in fact remember you had the fractal fractal levels all levels and I haven't I can give you tons more examples and tons more argument please read some of my published papers why is this do we does this keep coming by the way this is what's being developed in predictive processing models too most of yeah I'm pretty confident to say this most of the advances that are going on in AGI right now are just taking this idea and getting it better implemented so the point I'm going to make and I'll be quiet if this is the fundament of intellect and I don't mean in our modern scent of an intellect like the snooty person who's read too much thought I mean in the ancient sense that that ability for us to grok onto patterns in the world sorry many of you wouldn't know that reference that's a Robert Hyland strangers strange but to to adaptively fit to the world and if we reject the Cartesian proposal that that's imposed on an on on on an otherwise indeterminate world but instead adopt a realist position then you have to conclude that there must be something fundamentally corresponding to that grammar in the grammar of things there has to be a grammar to grammar Conformity or else we are actually severed in terms of the fundamental grammar of the intelligibility of the world and our intelligence and then we are trapped in a kind of profound skepticism and solipsism so if you reject skepticism and solipsism then I think you led to this and that's how I would say the inner grammar and the outer grammar are are deeply deeply interpenetrating and reflective of each other that's how I wanted to address your second Point does that make sense no I mean I of course I I totally agree that's for sure it's freaky that it's in those pictures yeah I'm happy that so but so so now if we come down to it come down to specific things so if you think of breathing that seems to be what's going on at least phenomenologically that I think that's probably why breathing has always been such an important aspect of spiritual practice because it is it is a it is a um stabilization and let's say conscious participation in the Gathering and right and letting go it's an active symbol yeah and if you look at for example in the in the Orthodox tradition we have a main prayer for mystical practice which is we call the Jesus prayer and so the Jesus prayer Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner so it's and it's a usually we say Lord Jesus Christ Son of God Inspire Inspire breathe in have mercy on me a sinner expire and so that structure is there in the prayer and is there in the breathing those two things together and so it becomes this it becomes like the simplest way you could say of participating in the this pattern the basic pattern but then the that's why like especially the Orthodox Church you could say something like the entire liturgy is contained in that prayer but then it gets expanded socially and and and say in terms of all our other gestures into everything else that we do and all the processions and all this entering and exiting of the priests from the holy place and all of these movements are all these that say complex representation or complex participations in the basic invocation so if you don't like the fact of the prayer think of the prayer at least the concept of the prayer right which is this idea of the two aspects of of of prayer right this this call up and and invoking and then this let's say letting go or realizing that I'm that I'm not that right it's like bringing in and letting go it's as the basic movement of prayer and then that becomes moves all the way into all the other aspects of the of the of the Liturgy and then in the art and all that so it's like this fractal practice that is completely coherent together from the deepest mystical prayer into the final you know the the highest say the most complex aspect of a monastic life which has these daily hourly prayers that are com that are super complicated but that they all know that this is just a an explicitation of this one basic pattern so I want to I want to say two two things to that first there's something very something very similar in a progen of practice uh so as I exhale I let my I I let my attention move more and more so I'm attending more and more to attention until I get into that where I'm as in as I can possibly be and then yeah when I exhale okay okay because the attention right and then as I in because you're following you're following the movement of the stomach okay all right you see the stomach's coming in when you exhale and so you're following that right and then when you inhale you go out to the farthest you could go in a contemplative practice and then you are moving between them like this with the breath you're scaling up and scaling down of attention and then what happens is it goes from being sequential to stereoscopic and you and that is supposed to give you a state of mind prajna in which you see the whole in each part and the part right I says it fits into the hole but you don't see them sequentially like that it's like what you do in Reading where you're reading the letters to read the word and you're reading the word to read the letters and so you get the prognac awareness of the world so there's a similarity there again with the the movement of attention it's interesting though because it's the opposite because you're following the you're following the course of the breath and in the projana you're following the abdomens movement yeah it's not but but the intent is exactly the same it's to get the two movements coordinated until you get a stereoscopic integration of the two so you you so you get the you get the fractal emergency like you see the par all the parts in the whole the skinci and tuativa the hole in all the parts the part the and how each part contains the whole to see the world in a grain of sand right oh that's that I mean I think it's it's definitely similar at least to the way it's expressed in the filo Kelly or in the the mystical fathers uh for them it is it is it's to say it's very personal too but there is a sense of there is a sense that this is an existential practice which is why it's it's framed as mercy and sinfulness right so so you you inspire and you bring the spirit in right now it really is this whole image of the spirit right you inspire you bring the spirit in and then you recognize your incapacity because obviously you can't hold your breath forever and then then in the expiration you realize the the breaking like how fragmented you are but then the the the the mystical the in the Phila career they say that at some point I mean don't try this at Home Folks but that at some point the monks will actually it will be in tune with their heart and that the heartbeat will become the the Rhythm same thing and and so when you get an extended like deep projects your breathing can diminish to almost nothing and you can feel uh heartbeat and other things like that happening yeah very much so the the so the thing the thing that comes out for me then is this idea that's right of opponent processing which is the left and the right hand that you were doing and there's also the up and the down right and then I was thinking about again the whole manner of the conference because we were trying to opponent processing sounds sort of nasty but it's actually like what all these things I've been describing in your biology imagine if the parasympathetic and the sympathetic system was were an adversarial processing where the sympathetic system was trying to destroy defeat and Destroy and demolish the parasympathetic system or vice versa then you're dead imagine that the default imagine if the left and right hemisphere although image said the left hemisphere is now dominating too much but imagine if it became pure adversarial processing but have you ever thought that this that let's say a lack of understanding of these very deep truths is what has led to something like let's say Marxist dialectic where there is a sense of of opposition as the basic structure and and these these are like let's say the accusations of the that the Christians had against the mannequins for example whether or not some people might say I've said that they're not totally justified but the idea that that at the origin is opposition but it's adversarial see I'm trying to I'm trying to make a distinction no I'm saying that that a misunderstanding of what you're saying yes is seems to be at the root of this problem that we're seeing even in terms so one of the things Jordan has been doing Jordan Peterson has been suggesting is that in the political sphere the right and the left work should work something like that exactly and I've been making that argument independently in conversion which is democracy is the idea of opponent process right so the left says when the left isn't insane and I'm also going to say the same about the right the left says human beings are subject to fate I don't mean in a cosmic sense but they can be overwhelmed by forces beyond their control and we should overwhelm by circumstances by the wandering of these things on the outside which will intrude on the plan right right and then the right when it's not insane says yes but we're not animals we are called to personal virtue and responsibility and then if they're in a point of processing together we can constantly evolve our fittedness as a society and when you look at how democracy was understood it was supposed to be that opponent processing the whole checks and balance system of the United States depended on a commitment from everybody to opponent processing that the best way I can correct myself is through you the best way you can correct yourself is through me but if that gets taken over by the spirit of adversarial processing it turns into gridlock and this Mutual self-destructiveness that is now overtaking democracies in many places of the world yeah no I I think this is I think I mean I to me that we get here is a way to help understand how crucial the things that we're like how crucial these questions are that this you know when you talk about like if I talk about fractal structures of of relationships of right and left towards the center I have my own language John will talk about opponent processing in in a more scientific way the consequences of of the misunderstanding of that of how that that functions is you could say is that the root of a lot of the social problems that we have so you can understand it in different ways which is that you can understand a society that is obsessed with its identity that is that had become completely obsessed with that which makes it what it is and wants to reduce everything to that and wants to chop off anything that doesn't fit into that Central identity and that would be a problem but you can also understand another image of a society that is obsessed with idiosyncrasy that is obsessed with that which is outside that is obsessed actually obsessed with that which is strange to its own identity and hates its own identity and then you can understand that that would also be a problem now wouldn't it and so this the the right possibility of these two interacting together of a love let's say an understanding of the need of identity for anything to exist you need an identity for anything to exist but then also to understand like when I talked about Saint Peter and Saint Paul for example it's like the problem of identity is pride right if if identity holds itself too much like that then it thinks it's self-sufficient it closes itself off and it becomes prideful and that the problem with that is that then it falls because it because it it it will shatter like you can't hold things together like that forever and the opposite problem or the opposite of Saint Paul which is the one arguing for the stranger remember what Saint Paul is arguing for we don't need circumcision we don't need all the law we don't need the law we don't need circumcision we don't need these things you're not caricaturing a little bit but I'm trying to show two tendencies in already the setting up of the church in the first century but that if we if we can we can see that these two structures these two sides these two pillars work with each other then we can have a we can I think we can help heal to the extent that I don't know if it's really possible but at least create an alternative an alternative space to the to the gridlock what we were facing in the world right now sorry for that speech there it was a good speech um so I guess um what so you know deep deep down you can you can you can I can talk about other things self-organizing criticality in the brain I can talk about small world Network the brain is constantly trying to trade between being as efficient as possible and doing all of that and then being as sort of uh as evolvable as possible this is also called the stability plasticity problem and and you can see the brain and so we now have this idea emerging of meta stability that is the two constantly interweaving and right and again we this is what I right because I made my career out of seeing all these convergences and then getting people to talk to each other about it that's and and then you did this and I was like right and because it's the convergence of like if I'd gone into these church I would have went pretty pictures that's Jesus yeah maybe those right I went on the cross right yeah now the thing to me is there's there's two there's two things there's two things to be considering here one is so the idea that most of what most of our learning is implicit learning most of our learning is we're picking up on complex patterns uh without awareness and that's what the basis of our intuition and when we like it we call it intuition and when we don't like it we call it Prejudice or our bias um and so I can see doing this is a way of constantly surrounding people with this so the implicit learning is picking up on all this and they're get people are getting a deep sort of intuitive sense of this that seems no but I think it's more I think it's more than that I think it's is it that though too no it is definitely it's definitely that but I think it is also the this is people are going to think this is weird but it is the most natural space that is it it is the space in which we are say the church in this context would be the space in which we are the most human because it has condensed this process which we experience all the time every time we grab a cup we have this we have these implicit with these implicit uh engagement with these processes whether it's like how our nation functions or whatever but there's a manner in which that is religion yeah yeah there's a man in which that gets smashed I just grabbed and brought together and then just like a can I say this just like a story right so like a story is a bunch of stuff like you know you're the story of Your Love relationship last I don't know 10 years and there's all these these down times in them and there's all this like more stuff or whatever like whatever how long it's lasted but it's like there's this down stuff that has nothing to do with the love relationship that while you're also going through this love relationship you're also working and and then cleaning your room and doing all this stuff and then what we do is we take the Salient points we grab them we put them together we compress them and then we're like here so it's like right and all of a sudden I'm in the pattern that I recognize to be true and I'm experiencing as the most real because it compresses the real into a thing but so that's in terms of story but now in terms of think about it in terms of something like the think about the Christian church as this the the what it's representing is this image of reality it's compressing it together it's linking it to the relationship we have with each other and then it's making us engage in behavior that is Chris that is bringing all this together as well so you're standing in this space you've got this structure you've got these people that in like in Dante are manifesting the the goods and the virtues to you and then you are standing you're acting together you're singing you're processing you're noticing hierarchy you're participating in hierarchy you're doing all these things and so it actually ends up being it ends up being the it becomes like the the root in terms of experience of all those other subtle less explicit versions of it so two things to that first I could say that about pretty much I think that that's true for all religious rituals yeah I think I think of course in terms of of the Christian church I can explain it to you more clearly because I understand the symbols right right we'll we'll come back to the that that point you just made about ritual um but I just wanted to draw one connection to what's happened here um because this was also an Ecclesia it was a kind of gathering and it's a gathering in good faith and and one of the ways of understanding Dia logos is to try to replace adversarial debate with opponent processing between people so it doesn't mean that the the two sides of this autonomic nervous system don't homogenize the differences have to be maintained but they actually thereby afford each other the most mutual self-correction and then together not him not me but together we're better at getting towards the truth fitting reality that's deal logos as opposed to debate and when it gets into the Flow State and he's having insights that are priming my insight that's deal logo so there's co-emergence and and the Brilliance of the designers of this conference is they gave they gave opportunity to present positions and then they put them into that kind of opponent processing and deal logos that's what was happening here you were participating in it you were witnessing it and you also got to participate in it and this right Jonathan just a few minutes ago in his speech you know it was almost apocalyptic we're on the right we're we're in a very bad place and I want you to see that you are participating in not some Airy fairy Utopia you're participating in the real alternative to that that can re-ground democracy [Applause] and it's really cool that it comes with these beautiful beautiful pictures I mean so um and for those of you who know me beauty is not a Sentimental thing for me it's a profoundly platonic thing so so I just wanted to say that because I thought that connected what yeah what you and I are doing to what is happening here so the only the point that I wanted to make or to help people maybe see or understand that the way that I described it from this concentration yeah you can you can but I was going to challenge you on that right go ahead go ahead go ahead because I get it but but the point and this is the this is the relationship with ritual right right there's something about the ritual that's unchanging but this the work that's being done I'm doing a lot of work now on ritual knowing knowing uh thinking through rituals a great Anthology and how we know through kind of knowing we do it's not a big surprise it's non-propositional um and what it's doing is trying to constantly if you're trying to do this compression in the ritual but rituals evolve they don't even your picture is evolved yes yes yes yes and I'm thinking of Paul right that you know trying to evolve between the now and the always right right um and so what I wanted to get is yeah you get the compression but it's also varying in each person in the church that is seeing right right the point that I want to make in terms of understanding because I'm trying to help people to understand why this would exist because it's not just like we're going there and there's pretty pictures the the people that you could see how that experience of coming together and and having that experience together in this in a context like that with all of these elements would be seen as this the source of my experience you see what I'm saying it's like it's the it's the or the culmination culmination and source of yes and the anchoring of the more mundane aspects of my life okay can I give you an analogy from the platonic tradition I know you're not hostile to it no not at all right so and this is from DC Schindler's book Plato's critique of impure reason um which is the the so Plato many of you are familiar with the parable it should be called a parable not an allegory the parable of the Cave the people trapped in the cave and they're only right the the shadows and The Echoes by the way why are they less real because they they're not multi-esspectual they're not multi-spectual they don't they can't open up with inexhaustible intelligibility so the shadows and The Echoes are less real remember the people come out of the cave and they see the sun and the sun's supposed to be the metaphor for the good but the thing about the sun is you don't just see it if you if you're in a Cartesian frame you think the point is to see the sun the point is to realize that you are made by the Sun that's just what yeah the sun makes other things visible it's it but not only make other things visible it's it's made the energy that is literally running your body right all of it the sun is making you and making visible and so you are not looking at the sun you are participating in it the very processes that are organizing your life are right are participating in that so that that's exactly the the idea that no I'm not looking at it I'm because you often use that word I'm participating in it it's not only coming down to me it's also emerging up through yeah yeah and what's interesting is that in the right those who know the traditional literacy whatever in the Liturgy you see those two movements yeah happening at the same time and so we have these moments where we lift up our hearts right we lift them up into the Lord this idea that we who represent we their images like we who represent the cherubim we're Gathering all these things into us and rate and moving up or offering it up and that's why the priests right offer up the host these movements that we do where we offer up and then there's an influence from above which comes down upon it so the the staging of that is there I think to represent those two together where we come together we offer up and then it comes back down on us the two movements that you talk about right and and then that goes to that notion of participation goes to the argument I was trying to make about our cognition is not just representing the intelligibility of the world it's participating in the same fundamental principles yeah okay so now if that's the case I want to make a proposal to you yeah which is right and this is sort of making use of uh Jennings and showbrock and Boyd and a lot of people writing about ritual right now it's a ritual is actually going through an innocence one of the arguments that's coming out is rituals are and so just give me a moment because it'll rituals are in a sense useless Behavior you're not doing anything right you're not like making a house you're not transporting groceries you're not reproducing you're not even conversing with people to building social you're just doing this thing right um and then and it but in another sense that people they're Universal and the proposal that's coming out of this is the idea that what I what you're we're doing in ritual is we are finding like what you're saying we're finding these the these condensations of all of this that have the greatest capacity to transfer to as many domains of our life as possible right right yeah that's I think that's exactly the right way to see it okay so I have a metaphor for that so I'm just going to stand up for a sec so I'm going to go I'll be off mic right well just generally but if you're in a bar and people are doing this the gorilla thing you're pretty safe they don't know what the hell to do for a fight you're gonna fight John's gonna fight they go like this they take the route they're in a lot of trouble and and I talk about looting and meditation that you don't ever fight with this it's called your stance and there's different Arts have different stances Obi-Wan does a really weird thing okay to wipe that you'll see the metaphor in a second that is a condensation here's a here's here's a bunch of things there's a bunch of positions I need to get into that actually do something they off they fit me to that or that what I want is I want to condense them each one of those is an optimal grip on that situation that situation that situation yes what I want to do is condense them to the perfect Nexus point that gives me the easiest place from which I can get to any of the places I need to get to does that make sense yeah that's your meta optimal grip see that yeah rituals are condensing to give a meta optimal grip that gives you the greatest chance of transfer that's the proposal yeah no I think I think that that's exactly the right way to understand it and it's also so you can see it how can I say this so you can see it represented in the way that people talk about it's a the in the Christian liturgy they will it would be something like let's say the communion meal right it's a it's a condensation of what it means to eat together but it's also a sacrifice at the same time and it's the relate it's this relationship between Heaven and Earth and so in the image all the image of the Eucharist is like a CR insane condensation exactly like it there's there's there's the normal aspect of eating a meal there's the transgressive aspect of eating flesh and blood there's a normal aspect of eating bread and wine there's there's the fact that it's a table it's a sacrifice it's all these things and it's like it's just so crazy that you would condense all these categories into this space like in the middle but it's like yeah but that's it yes right that's the that's the source of reality like that's how real that's how you notice the convergent point of all these things and that is what when we look at the story of Christ so one of the things I'm not going to do it here but one of the things that I've done is I'm trying to show you how if you actually look at the story of Jesus it's it's a crazy it's an insane story and because even if you know traditional storytelling it's like Jesus can't you don't have stories where someone is like a warrior and a king and a shepherd and uh and and a worker and uh and a monk and he's like all these categories jammed into this one story like this doesn't make sense this character doesn't make sense but that's the point the point is to is to like grab all these story structures you know all these sorts of descent and ascent and all these different these aspects of the of the Gods it's interesting because like a lot of the people that have tried to criticize Christianity will say well Jesus is just a copy on all these old gods and it's like yeah I mean all of them like every single one of them like he's the he's all these weird like things that don't that would never for a pagan be brought together and it's like well he's Apollo and he's Dionysus at the same time he's all these things gathered into the one and so it's like that's it so it's like you look at the image of that person on the throne and it's like it's that right that condensation right and it's like and then that person that's a condensation of all these things he is the source but he also ends up being the judge right because he's the standard by which all the multiple aspects get get let's say compared to or the through line the through line there you go through line is found in the multi aspectual yeah and notice so Freud noted that a long time ago that religious symbols and dream symbols have a tremendous amount of condensation but he saw it as an Evidence of PR of a primitive form of thought but if you pay attention to what a massive powerful neural network is doing in deep learning it's doing tremendous compression from which it can then create new variation that then gets recompressed it's doing it so many people are now saying no no maybe the compression or the condensation is actually especially in ritual studies is people are taking a lot of they're using propositions and pictures I'm not denying that but but people in rituals are taking a lot of non-pr propositional complex patterns and then doing this compression and meta optimal grip so that that can then vary out back into their lives in ways that it is helpful and insightful does that land for you no that lands that that lens I think that's exactly what it is and I think that at least for I think that at least for a secular world and a secular audience I think it's a way for people to to at least re-understand why these things are exist okay good good good good okay okay so here's so you know and we're introducing ritual and I consider Tai chichwana ritual in this deep sense and of course there's there's also I was static there but and you're also moving you're also you're evolving one one I'm trying to do tai chi while I'm sitting in a chair right and you evolved but there's also the evolving that I'm talking about and it gets you to so you're trying to find the through line so you have all these different moves you might do but like but what's the through line between them right and that's what the form is there's all these aspects of fighting but I'm finding the through line through all of them right and all of that's going on so the meta optimal grip but it's a flowing meta optimal grip what's the difference between that in our everyday lives and the sacred do you see do you see that because we're saying this is at the this is how I walk around the room but it's also in the ritual I I I I could in a very realistic sense I could be using everything we're talking about to fight you yeah like martial arts yeah I don't want to I love you right right but right I'm sure you could take me John but what's the difference right do you see what I'm trying to do no idea what you're trying to get and so I would see it as so I would see it as a hierarchy like a fractal hierarchy that's the way that I see it yeah so let's think of uh let's take another ritual which is closer but Jonathan I've heard you say the sacred reaches from the very top to the very that's right so you can't locate the sacred just at the top no no definitely not okay what I mean so let's let's take an example because I talked about the Eucharist before so think about a family meal right so a family meal is ritualized and it does exactly what you're saying right because what it does is it is it creates a common space and a compressed moment in which you are compressing the relationships that exist more in flux and subtle of a family into a ritualized moment and so we're sitting around the table you know we set the table we we learn how to talk to each other we don't want one person to talk too much you don't want one person to take too much food you want to share you want to to to attend to what the others is doing and so you're actually ritualizing the the behavior of your entire family into one moment like one one one activity okay so there could be other versions of that but that's definitely one version Oh that's a great right and so what you would let's say that meal will also have a higher version of it which will be something like a wedding Feast let's say yes so now you have a wedding feast in which we all come together to eat a meal together in the celebration of an important event in our high larger group so there will be all these rules and rituals about how to function in that and to properly function and to not take up too much attention to focus your intention on the riding room blah blah blah et cetera Etc excellent so then you keep going but then if you raise that up to the last highest rung you will come to the altar table and then the altar table will become the meal of meals it will become the meal of the entire Cosmos in the imagery the cosmic Meal which brings all these different like rituals together anchors them but then contains them all together so to me there's like a there's a scaling question and so I don't know if Tai Chi can do that but what I mean is that so you can understand that there the sacred exists at the in the family in the and will pray obviously you'll pray before the meal you do all these things so it exists at the level of the family and then it scales up at different levels and then there's a there's in church especially in the traditional Church we're saying like this is the equipment like the church is the kingdom it's the whole thing it's the final moment it's the eschaton we're at the end of times all of this is a gathering in into the final moment of everything that's what it's represent that's what if you don't believe that it's actually happening it's at least presented that way okay and so it becomes the anchor for all these other things and so I'm sure there are versions of that like let's say in other yeah there are yeah but we can we don't even maybe we'll tackle the pluralism I'm not I wasn't bringing that up for that no I'm trying to see I'm trying to get to the scaling part of the Sacred like how it but but so but you brought in something really really interesting let me see if I'm getting it right so we've been doing a lot of horizontal condensation and opening right transfer appropriate processing is right uh the the the Cog PSI term right and and that but you now just said you know but there's also transfer appropriate up and down yeah is that is that oh yeah and so is the tutoring oh sorry that's the wrong word is the education in the sense of educing going also up and down namely does what happens in the family meal it goes from bottom up too if you have yeah yeah you won't if you have improper family is any proper family meals then that wedding will go back but it will go bad and then people will hate each other in church like it's gonna build it's gonna go up it's gonna go up that way too that's 100 sure yeah so so so now we're trying to find so a really powerful I don't that's not quite the right adjective but I'll use it as a placeholder a really good powerful ritual is one that would be the Nexus both of horizontal transfer and vertical transfer is that is that right so would part of what it is to be a wise person is to be able to either find create or participate in that kind of Nexus ritual because if this is the Machinery of intelligence and the Machinery of intelligibility and we need it to do optimal this way and this way a wise one way to distinguish a wise person from a less wise person is that they could find the Nexus point and share it with others is that is that a reasonable proposal I think so I don't know I'm not saying that's the only characteristics no no no no I would say that in terms of wisdom which is a which is a let's say I don't know a moral virtue or it would I don't I don't regard wisdom on some moral virtue okay so we might be using the term slightly differently go ahead so I would say I would tend to see what you're saying in terms of of of the goods in terms of human interaction that's the way that I would see it mostly it's like a person will become a Nexus for a virtue and then we'll we'll become like a Rippling Pond for the world like an anchor and will Ripple but I'm not sure like you have to find yourself to that point like you have to find your way to that right uh I mean you if you'll allow me to complimentally to you you're displaying a kind of wisdom and pointing this out you can find your way through a lot of this yeah you don't just know it you grasp the significance of it and you have insight into it so you can right yeah the reason why I'm hesitating is that my experience is that most people who make up rituals they don't succeed like the rituals have to be anchored somehow in something which is given no no no no no no that's my but I think I think you're agreeing with me but okay if you're not let me let me know but this is how I think you're agreeing with me most attempts at ritual fail yes yeah yes yes which means there's a normativity in them yes and I'm proposing that the normativity is this sort of meta optimal grip on these two Dimensions that enhances transfer is that is that okay yeah yeah and I agree I agree right and so an individual who was better at getting the meta optimal grip horizontally and vertically and coordinating them together would be somebody that presumably can help other people get to the place that sort of optimizes what we've everything we've been talking about is is that okay yeah yeah that's fine okay so you are still agreeing with her okay okay and so what I'm then saying is the why wisdom to see to have insight to to zero in on what's most relevant to to find a meta optimal grip these are I think these are all consonant with each other I'm saying the wise person succeeds precisely because they are Guided by the normativity that distinguishes a good Ritual from a bad ritual and they have learned to track it well that's what I'm proposing okay yeah I mean maybe I'm not sure what the corollaries of that are like I I'm like I don't know what that means what would it look like let's say what would it look like it would look like the person who could move between who could do this at the family dinner help coordinate the condensation and then how it also re-particularizes so the family flows well and then and then when the kid gets married knows how to right educate his kids so that they go into the ceremony the wedding ceremony right and then also can participate perhaps at your altar table in a way that other people find wow that was and they can move between them and and you get and and they are conducive to other people being able to participate in depth that's what I'm proposing to you no I agree I think that would definitely be that would be an aspect let's say of a wise person yeah I'm not claiming that's the essence of wisdom that I I said that before I think there's a lot more to wisdom but I'm what I'm what I'm I'm having a realization about a dimension let me call it a ritualistic in the good sense of the word Dimension to wisdom that I hadn't thought of before yeah yeah no I think that's a good it's a good it might actually be a good place to to stop as well because I'm looking at the time everybody's just quiet as if as if this discussion is over it's not or this discussion is never over we can we have to stop the discussion but there's no way this discussion is over the only good thing that start ever said was you never complete anything good you abandon it foreign thanks everybody thank you so very much thank you everyone for coming if you could give our speakers another round of applause

Channel: Consciousness & Conscience

Views: 12,546

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Id: nxlMW1ddaes

Length: 59min 46sec (3586 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2022