Weird Studies/Tarot/Wheel of Fortune

06 Mar 2022 - 18 Feb 2025
Open in Logseq
    • And now a third time because I want to know their view of David Bentley Hart who appears in the refs.
      • The I Ching is digital (binary) while the Tarot is analog
        • Sort of. I'd say that the I Ching is elegant and minimal in its structure, while the Tarot is complicated, sort of like Go vs. Chess (actually exactly like those now that I think of it).
        • The 2-element system of the I Ching (active/receptive powers) vs the 3 elements of alchemy and the Gounas(?) that appear on the Tarot card.
    • All this below-the-abyss mechanical stuff I don't like, but not sure I can say it.
      • equating of left and right is a bad sign for me.
    • Flat circle
      • Latour reference, says "scientists attribute agency to the objects they observe"
        • that is not exactly what Latour says, I think – have to reread his earlier work. He's saying that the objects of science actually have agency, or can be allies, he posits a flattened ontology where people and papers and enzymes are all agentive and compose networks and alliances of agents. I don't think he talks much about how scientists attribute agency. Could be wrong. Damn I should know this!
          • If I'm right Latour is more radical (weirder?) than the WS host (forget which one said that).
      • Tao as a source of purpose like God...?
      • "values are something you can't create" stated like an axiom, they have to be baked into creation...not sure I agree. Why can't values emerge via evolution?
        • He is talking not about mundane values, like, "that plant looks good to eat", but about transcendental values, Beauty, Truth, Goodness, etc. There is something about these that seem beyond the power of material evolution to produce. They are above the abyss, and the abyss can reach towards them but not create them.
      • "an evil transcendence is better than none at all" – Lovecraftian ka-cosmos.
    • The Card of the tenth Arcanum therefore teaches, through its actual context, an organism of ideas relating to the problem of the Fall and the Reintegration, according to Hermetic and Biblical tradition. It portrays the whole circle, including ascent as well as descent, whilst the "transformism" of modern science is occupied with only half of the circle, namely the half of ascent or evolution.
      • Meditations on the Tarot p235
    • However, it in no way changes the fact that science works on the basis of the fundamental supposition that the minimum is the ancestor of the maximum, the simple is the ancestor of the complicated, and that it is the primitive which produces the more developed organism and consciousness, although for thought (i.e. reason) this is absolutely unintelligible.
      • Sigh, this is a very old and bad mode of argument. Although I'm inclined to more sympathy in this case than I am to stubborn-minded philosophers who don't get computationalism.
      • [looking back on this Aug 19th, 2023 ] actually hits different, I see his point. "The minimum is the ancestor of the maximum" is a good way to put the evolutionary view of complexity – it emerges from the simple. Seems obvious that it does, if not how – but perhaps that is just ideology. What if the complex pre-exists in some transcendental, atemporal sense and it draws the simple towards it?
        • I am enjoying the exercise of thinking like a theist, although I am far from becoming one. It has something of the allure of the forbidden for me.
    • Interesting metaphor of ship and the stance of passengers vs. crew:
      • All determinism and fatalism—including naturalism and pantheism—places the responsibility somewhere beyond the moral human being: in Nature, in God, in the stars. . This is because all determinism or fatalism is a manifestation of the mentality and psychology of a passenger.
    • Here we have arrived at the heart of the "exotericism — esotericism" problem. Exotericism lives in "processes", esotericism in tragedies and dramas. The ancient mysteries were tragedies and dramas— it is here where their esoteric character lies. Exotericism corresponds to the mentality and psychology of a passenger, esotericism to that of a member of the crew.
    • I question the terminology. It seems pretty normie to view life and/or the cosmos as drama and narrative, nothing esoteric about that. It's the materialists who are really kind of out there (right or wrong). And there's nothing really about materialism that necessarily promotes passivity, although some people take it that way.
    • Miracles and cosmic sabbath. Gag. I really don't like this stuff (but why then am I here?)
      • I despise supernaturalism, but weird naturalism is A-OK. That may be a fine line but I'm sticking to it.
      • Leibniz – pure thought – optimism
      • Schopenhauer – pure will – pessimism
      • Hermeticism – heart – the world is sick but can be healed
    • Thoughts on teleology

      • There was a discussion in the podcast and on the Discord that rubbed me the wrong way, these people seem trapped in an obsolete materialism that requires supernatural add-ons. They despise the mechanical, flat-circle universe and are determined to be more than that. The thought that the foundations of the universe are just dumb matter following purposeless physical laws is both horrifying and also incomprehensible.
      • I sympathize, I really do, but all my training and biases lead me to a different attitude, let's call it cybernetic monism or weird naturalism. There's only the one world, the natural world, it's physical at its core but it also permits the formation of systems and emergent pheonomena, including minds, meanings, agents and purposes. The universe is following physical law but those laws are fully capable of producing mind (we have an existence proof).
      • This seems unacceptable to supernaturalists, because mind seems high and matter seems low, and there's no way the low can give rise to the high. To do so is "reductionism" in a very literal sense, it reduces mind to a lowly status, inverting the order of the cosmos and denying the very existence of the high.
      • Under this view, the endless war over what is more foundational, mind or matter, just seems like a stupid and pointless conflict that has no conceivable resolution. Something for philosophers to debate endlessly while more engaged minds (scientists, artists, designers) investigate and extend the actual relationship between mind and matter, which is endlessly fascinating.
      • So yes our minds are mechanical machines and that's OK, machines are pretty cool. We happen to be machines programmed to care about each other, for solid and perhaps crass material evolutionary reasons, but the result is down-to-earth practical love and morality. This stance may not say much about transcendent values, it's satisfied with immanent ones.
      • Well, the above is sort of my normal attitude, but this episode caused me to stretch a bit. Let's say that the material processes of evolution aren't directed at anything yet they seem to have converged not just on such miracles as consciousness, high art, morality, religion, mathematics and so many other things that seem – elevated? More than a computer could come up with even if that computer was programmed to be as creative as fuck. More than a bio-computer could come up with for that matter, although somehow we have.
      • Or have we? I'm starting to get a sense for transcendence, what it actually is, how it operates. It's less of an agent than an attractor; somehow the cosmos is constructed so that us lowly meat machines converge on these abstract and immaterial targets, which themselves are timeless.
      • God as an agent is an incoherent notion – the eternal can't act – but God as the ultimate attractor in a dynamical system...well, that almost gets past my filters. And if you believe in some sort of anthropic selection amongst possible worlds, well, it is tautological that any observed universe will be one in which consciousness has evolved.