Using Viewtools

That there is a universe is fascinating.

Even though most of our lives are spent dealing with the familiar matters at hand, those matters get their meaning from vantage points we develop about the bigger picture, including our take on the world and our place in it.

I should try to keep my readers from being confused. What’s the difference between a worldview and a viewtool?

A clear intersection of ethics and knowledge are vantage points. An informed way of looking at something can make all the difference in the world. These vantage points often serve to buttress one another through which coherence and consistency, and as a consequence reliability and confidence develops. We seem to have a need for such surety.

Some may say that the viewtools presented here are no more than common places that are already well-known and taken for granted, that is, nothing new. Further, that the subject matter of recommending courses of action that deal with ethics and knowledge must necessarily be complicated or elevated to a level higher than what is presented. I do not question for a minute that some of the problems we have gotten ourselves into are complex, but that does not mean that the bulk of the heavy lifting in dealing with them cannot be done by applying the tools that our experience tells us we can rely on. And that it is what I am presenting. I tend to agree with John Locke (1632-1704) that the candle set up inside us shines bright enough for all our purposes. Wait a minute! Maybe I can only state this with a clarification, namely, that our native “instincts” don’t even have meaning unless we discern their consequences, usually the meaning comes by way of language or other communication which are established, even institutionalized. Following this line of thought it is institutions are the key. Make sure we don’t think the candle happens in a vacuum. Maybe I should devise my own saying…how to solve this problem? What to say to capture the main point.

 We see around us what that candle has produced. We have created language with all it has done to accent, energize, and develop our mammalian inheritance. We have shown that we can overcome many things and that a life rich in multifarious experiences is available to us.

It is through the use of our vantage points that we see how the issues in front of us fit into the whole of our lives. Arranging the ways we see the world is a core process and cherished possession that has significant influences on the way we act. It supplies the purpose of our actions and the basis for making choices. For example, they bear directly on what we think about other people, how we treat them, including those of the broader society, and humanity as a whole.

They not only help us as we look forward to navigate our way, but also in understanding what to make of what has happened. That is, to draw the meaning from experience.

And, importantly, we use these vantage points to get bearings on our need to understand our self.

Any good teacher knows they cannot switch places with their students and learn the lesson for them. Good teachers realize the students must construct their own understanding by taking new material and building it onto what they already know. When we get the feeling that something makes sense, it’s because we can relate it to our current understanding. This is the process of learning - whether we’ve just added a new trick to our use of Excel spreadsheets or gained a new way of thinking about what happens after we die.

Old Making something fit is not always easy. Sometimes the learner is faced with trying different paths. Sometimes we need to use our imagination to explore. Sometimes we are only trying to learn where a waste basket is located – trying to use our past experience to suggest where to look.  Sometimes making something new fit can be brand new and important to everyone, such as when Einstein found a way to fit time to the constant speed of light, which affected the world.

New Making something fit can be easy or hard. Sometimes the learner is faced with trying different paths. Sometimes we need to use our imagination and explore. Sometimes we are only trying to learn where a waste basket is located – trying to use our past experience to suggest where to look.  Sometimes making something new fit can be brand new and important to everyone, such as when Einstein found a way to fit time to the constant speed of light, which affected the world.

If our current understanding is extensive, it gives us a better chance to find a way to attach something new (if true, neuroscience data should support it). And its not just the quantity of material in our current understanding that makes learning possible, attitudes of being receptive to new material play an important role. This is the way it usually works, but sometimes adding something new forces a reconsideration of things we thought we had already settled. Sometimes we have to admit that something is more complicated than we previously thought, and if what we previously thought was precious to us, sometimes the gain can initially feel like a setback.

Learning has its appeal and we can get good at it. We enjoy the sense of mastery when we gain new abilities, we almost always prefer being capable to being incapable. The pleasure of empowerment that most of us feel is usually not from enabling us to dominate others. It comes from mustering more control of factors as we navigate our lives, disclosing how to get better cooperation of the universe with our purposes.

Even though we are the only ones who can draw connections to our existing understanding, the process does not take place in a vacuum, we share ideas. The process is eminently social. Meanings often come from how the new material is connected to what is around us, which is often people who are aware of the process and may offer new material to serve their own purposes, but in some cases, such as with family members, friends, or teachers, the purpose is to enable us to gain mastery, competence, in the process of improving ourselves. Or it may come from those with a love for humanity, in which the new material may come from a composer or author who died long ago. The offering of the material, which we all do, and the decision of what to accept, which we continually do, are both an individual and communicative process from start to finish.

The process can work to our great advantage, because, individually and collectively, our understanding of the world is not static. When it comes to the resources available to form our worldviews, humanity is at a different stage than it was 2,000 years ago, 500 years ago, or 200 years ago. We learn. People say hindsight is 20-20. Good. We have our lifetime to do this. We hike up the mountain and the view gets better. We advance in how we think the world actually works and how we function. Though we are astonished that there is a universe and even grant there may be some things we will never know, at least in our era, we have seen for ourselves many times that there are advantages from experience.

They come in handy in dealing with the daily events of a multifaceted world. For we observe that the world presents us with many different angles and is full of interwoven events. Since one job of worldviews is to enable us to navigate the variety of the world, our bag of perspectives too must be multifaceted and suited for the flowing set of changing circumstances. Instead of static oversimplifications, we have the ability to match our views to the world we are given and the way we experience it. To the extent we are able to manage the process to achieve thoughtful goals, we act with intelligence.

Our worldviews enable us to perceive what we can accomplish amidst the complexity. Our tendency for comfort and ease tempts us to arrange a world that doesn’t vex us, but habits of ease set conditions where the world is always closing in on us. The problem is that at the same time that the world keeps changing on us and we must deal with the world as it presents itself. Sometimes we have to find our new center to be true to the discovery of the best of ourselves, such is our integral connection [or we are so integrally] connected to the circumstances we find ourselves in. We are one and the same with our surroundings, and our surrounding are primarily social.

When we are alert to change it is appropriate to call the process growth, and we need it both individually and the way we conceive (the committee of the whole).

We do not form our worldviews in a vacuum. We are brought up by others who care about us and try to show us the way. Much effort has been put into establishing lanterns to light the way for us. But while others set the stage, it is up to us, the learner, the student, as part of being ourselves, to decide what rings true for us. It is our choice to deem what is worthy and we are all the better when the field of opportunities is wide open to explore.

Another way of depicting a core process of “living with” ourselves, in trusting our own thinking, is that we don’t just construct our understanding, we are aware of the centrality of the fact that it is we, ourselves, that make the choices. We know that it is a description of our core. Hopefully, what we’d like to do is become good enough at it to have enough confidence in ourselves. we can be at home with it

Do I want to include my story of what constitutes the height of stupidity, namely accepting whatever we are told, over and over? I think so, it has originality and it is a warning.

Some people want, or even expect, us to agree with them. Most of the time we want to get along and not rock the boat, especially if it is a bigger boat. Sometimes they want us to do what we are told. (Need this for cynics, who are right in this case to be skeptical.)

We don’t have to completely understand the world in all its particulars to have a worldview. No one understands everything. Physicists have their hands full with specific problems, nothing indicates we may expect a grand unified theory of everything anytime soon. The very notion is suspect. John Dewey wrote

about practical thinkers who “are not concerned with framing a general theory of reality, knowledge and value once for all”. We may be better off, because one of the great things about the world is that there’s wonder and discovery in it.

We can be comfortable in acknowledging we absolutely understand the world. At the same time we recognize that people still need an even keel in the their big picture of things, they want something they can hold on to. What will hold up better than to ground ourselves in what is tried-and-true, of what is shown to be of value?

We gain in the process by developing worldviews that work for us. Even if done only cursory (quickly haphazardly or (rudimentary), or even ill conceived, we all form some kind of outlook on the

world and ourself. We must have some take on what we are and what we are doing; this seems to be a fundamental need of every human being. (Describe the bad things that happen if we are lost?) It seems that most of us don’t realize (the rewards that come with more attention to this) that we are capable of doing so much of a better job of it. Examine. Is this hard, or do we just put in the effort that we are comfortable with and think it is good enough? We may think that it’s all to complicated, that we’re not up to the task, so we hand it off to whatever our parents told us, what the government wants us to think, or what might help us get along with others that can make our lives easier.

Maybe many of us think a more extensive investigation of the subject is too large a task or beyond our ability. Or maybe many of us sense the investigation might lead us to a place where others may disapprove of us, including others who are close to us, like our parents.

[Relevant: yes, at this part of the essay, I am asking that my reader understand our current situation and to believe they can do something about it.] We are not the first to face the issue. Since our ancient ancestors had little to go on, they were pretty much shooting in the dark. And the things they came up with, such as Plato’s Forms, have become accepted and entrenched, creating huge habit-hurdles for us. For example, our accumulated experience of the sub-atomic particles called gravitons and precise measurements of their affect, called gravity, has informed our understanding of the moon’s relationship to Earth. Lacking the underlying working relationships of gravity, people thought the tides were caused by the sea god. Of course, much is still unknown, and in a way, an aspect of all things is unknown, or more specifically, since all things are connected to the universe, there are aspects of all things that are unknown, including our selves. This does not need to make us the least bit uncomfortable though, because in another, equally valid sense, much is known. (insert Locke?)

Not surprisingly, the more care we put into our worldviews, the better the chances that it will reward us. We may also expect that a more deliberate and disciplined effort would have major consequences for society, indeed humanity.

 As a society, we all have a stake in this because our worldviews contain our perspective on each other, starting with those dear to us, extending to all those we interact with, and ultimately to our obligation,

or duty, to people as a whole, to what we owe to humanity, that is, the place of the biggest love.

viewtool: when determining a perspective is what is needed to be effective

Fortunately, we have an effective way to understand the world: we can see what works. We may need something to work only one time for a specific purpose, for example, we may need a special screwdriver only once. Or we may want tools to help us be effective when applied to multiple situations over long periods; the parallel is we can develop tools of thought and apply them to many situations. The more circumstances in which we can apply a tool, the more valuable it is to us. Just like determining which screwdriver tool best meets the need, we determine which perspective in a given situation would be most effective. The tools with many applications are the ones descrbied in this essay. a narrower scope of relations and a wider and fuller. A lesson learned the hard way may function as a guide for many different future settings. Such tools can have as wide a scope as we decide to give them, and can even infuse almost all of our lives. [do tools provide meaning? Yes, meaning is contingent on consequences in the real world, their import, but we breathe life into them, we construct what they mean. Our past experience would seem to not be enough unless something was noted from it, something to hang on to.] We can choose to use these tools as we look for insights in navigating our lives. They have come to be called various names, such as principles, tenets, etc. I will suggest a few fundamental viewtools, followed by their potential consequences. They are meant to describe what is already taking place and is not intended as the introduction of ideas outside of the way things actually work.

As I am using the term, a viewtool is a way of looking at the circumstances when the right perspective is what is needed to be effective. A worldview is a viewtool when the circumstances are very broad or universal.

When we see what works we see what our environment has to say. We see that our environment shows remarkable variability. For example, if we drop something from our hand, the object heads straight for the Earth, unless we’re lucky enough to be on a spacewalk. We observe that this happens every time, no matter what day we do the experiment and no matter where on Earth we happen to be. The relationships that govern the event lend themselves to us by the use of other tools, like math, that bring us to practical mastery of prediction. Other relationships, such as the social relationship of romance, involve factors with more complexity and are less easy to predict. But the difference between gravity and romance only comes from the factors involved being steady or variable. Like all other things they are but issues of interest

to us that we use to viewtools to understand.

Umhh. The above, seeing what works, is a viewtool, so why do I follow this with “a good place to start”?

These viewtools work consciously, deliberately, more so than leisure thinking or rote memory thinking for a task, we are aware of what “ideas” or “principals” we think ought to bear on our situation. As humans, it seems we get to transform ourselves more than other species and it is something that we can become proficient at, we can continually improve the way we think of ourselves and the world.

Recognize the appeal of viewtools that apply broadly in many different circumstances (eg golden rule form of justice?), in the past we have assigned to them a charged quality, a transcendence.

Where exactly do I want to first use the word viewtool? Wherever that may be, should I take the time to include this? …I hope my friends with sight impairments can allow this expression. Surely they do the exact same thing that I have in mind without physically seeing. I use the term to build on the already extensive use of the sight analogy already in widespread use. For example, those with sight impairments  may not mind the expression of whether or not they can visualize a future without war. The analogy to sight extends to such expressions as “See what I mean?” to the use of the lamp of learning used throughout centuries as a viewtool to light the way, or a beacon from a lighthouse to indicate shedding light on subject so that we can behold it better. The Show Me State. The etymology of evidence.

Also, it might be good to point out that seeing what works involves “time”. Something happens first, namely, that we have an idea (of something to try), then we see about the idea. A transaction or action takes place, it takes place in a stream, it is process oriented, it is like consciousness, or life. Animals do it. You might catch a glimpse of a single drip from a faucet after turning it off, and it might suggest the idea that maybe the faucet is starting to have a problem. You might notice that a friend made a particular movement that suggested they are having a physical problem, so you note it, and check it against further times you are with them. A person might say something that indicates to your that they are thinking a certain way, and you wonder if that tells you that they are heading in a new direction in their thinking, perhaps growing, so you keep it in mind for further use. To view something in light of a retained thought is the key. The only difference in this from “science” is that technical relationships often of necessity must quantify and measure and be precise in the observation and what will be looked for. The point being that science is not something other than what we do every day, and it involves a passage, a sequence, that things follow from one another, literally and figuratively.

there are things we like, and things we don’t like

The word energy encompasses so many meanings it has limitations. a word to be useful subcategory, within energy, is push pull (negative and positive) and pull (gravity) as forces acting on us. We experience this in our consciousness as we feel yuk and yum, attraction repulsion. We should think of ourselves as energy supported by anatomy, like the relationship between legs and walking.

A good place to start is to observe that there are things we like, and things we don’t like, with quite a few shades in between. This turns out to matter very much; it is from this that we begin to develop ethics. Just as one example, we would not be able to apply the golden rule without it. Before we can treat others as we would like to be treated, we have to like to be treated in some ways and unlike being treated in others. We observe that we like to have a point to what we’re doing, this isn’t much different than saying we need to have a purpose to our actions. (We feel) that there’s nothing more practical than to have a reason for what you’re doing. (Or) We dislike being aimless. It’s all yuk and yum, even though the universe would still exist if we went extinct, it doesn’t matter to us unless we can access it, relate to it, it cannot mean anything to us unless it matters in some way to us. The “outside” place that would outlast us if we went extinct must be accommodated but it should not be seen as having authority of an absolute. (Well what about the speed of light? Essentially, practically, functionally an absolute?) thought in a place outside other than what is felt. So know thyself? Who Am I? The answer is in our investment, we get out what we put in. Getting knowledge of the question involves our investment. It cannot happen without our engagement. Since there are elemental questions about the universe that are unknown, and we are in the universe, there will always be aspects of ourselves that are unknown, and it takes care to do a good job, some of us are willing to stop at different places along how much we are going to care about this. Some of us will think we can stop early, because a minimum understanding, perhaps a simple metaphor, will be good enough. We have large, solid, deep yums that we know are integral in determining our bearings, the things will give us yums as we pursue them as part of our life’s goals. The con-science that we pick up from others at 7-11 is felt, like everything else, through yuk and yum. What we experience is the meaning of events, their import. Some inspire us, some turn us off. It’s the commonwealth that’s valuable in that we get to exercise our yuk and yums with already extensively developed meaning. We are very keen and nuanced distinction makers. What we have yuk and yum for include alternative paths forward as we construct what they mean to us based on past experience, which includes the already extensively developed meanings. Yuk and yum do us the great favor as being the source of the initial stimulus, generating needs, showing up to us as preferences among the offerings of the real world, we get their meaning and significance, we observe, after the fact, that we can say things matter to us and other species.

As we have yuk and yum for the world, we have it for ourselves under the worldself viewtool. Phillip Stanhope’s advice to his son is really about composing ourselves. We want to become the things that appeal to us, to incorporate the characteristics of others into ourselves, to benefit from them, to live them. We change when we do this, we grow, or regress when our decisions hurt us. How free are we to do this? Education acts to liberate us, so we can free others, empower them. It is in all of our interests for others the world over to be empowered broadly and deeply. To be exposed to the max, to make choices of what to adopt based on the widest possible exposure is to benefit each and all. What we observe is that it makes us become each other, which appeals to us in the way of love and serves to result in peace.

We do not know of anything more identical to the universe than a human being. Like everything else on earth, the particles that form us were once part of the solar stream. The energy we feel adheres to all the laws of physics. (Accurate?) The sounds we hear are generated by the constant stream of interactions around us.

We observe that we like some ways that people act and dislike others. When we see actions that we admire we can try to incorporate them in ourselves, and when we see behavior we dislike, it tells us how people would look at us if we acted that way. We are the judges of how other people’s actions strike us, and it can exert a powerful influence on our actions. Advertisers are keenly aware of the process, and they don’t necessarily have our best interests at heart.

With our well-being as the goal, it would make sense to further understand where it comes from. Some actions by people, events, places, and things please us, resonate with us in ways that appeals to us. Examination of them, and why we like them, could be a means for their development in our lives. We are our own best judges of what brings us joy in particular things and joie de vivre in general.

taking advantage of hindsight

A highly significant view tool is taking advantage of hindsight.  Like Abraham Lincoln said: I’d like to think I’m smarter today than I was yesterday. Taken together, our worldviews have a broad yet direct influence on the quality of our experience. A tenets our notions we hold over time to sustain us, both of the words, tenet and sustain, have the same root word “tenere” meaning to hold. They are the channel through which we have the ability to increase the richness of our experience and take

 (C’mon, be more creative and fun than this lead sentence.) Like Faulkner said about history and Dewey about habits, what has happened is alive and wants to recur in us and other species. Amazing. (It seems that we may be more consciously aware of an ability to incorporate what we like, self-directing, than other species.)We use what has happened to indicate what is going to happen. We don’t have to wonder what will happen, we can see what happens. It’s huge. This forms the workings of knowledge (This is the first use of the world “knowledge” so do I want to describe, up front, how I use the term? Then there is this: we have hard won experience that provides innumerable examples of the preference for “knowledge” over lack of knowledge in our day to day experiences and supports the idea that we construct our knowledge based on experience.) State in some way that this was already described as learning in mentioning that our stock of understanding plays a significant role in how we perceive what unfolds in the present time. Drawing relations in constructivism is the functional use of knowledge. What has happened in the play give us the import of what is now unfolding. We remember what has happened and may recognize that in circumstance now before us the same factors may lead to a similar outcome. In a way, we could say that our memory is far more than nostalgic recollections, it is always active, even propulsive in suggesting not just what the past tells us about what is now before us, but in suggesting what we are to do with it. We recognize patterns that enable us to predict what will happen. And then we see if we are right, by looking at the consequences. Many of us have inherited the idea that knowledge is something already finished and waiting for us to become familiar with. (Explain the consequences of this misperception like Dewey did.) Instead we look to consequences. When do they take place? How, exactly, does this work, break new ground in articulating this. Consequences take place when we choose to/select to focus on them in our considerations. This is our tool, the light from Locke’s candle burns dim or bright depending on us - how alert, attentive and careful we are in our thinking.(To lead to We are an instance of the world’s running relationships) So from a pretty sound basis in the familiar, namely that we like things and remember things, ethics and knowledge form the basis of our trust and confidence. Somewere…Our memory enables us to look at event in terms of meanings, of the sequence of events in which there are consequences, and we can judge is such consequences are likely to recur . We are familiar with the term “baggage”, which conveys that are past is still operative. The term is only partially helpful though because of its negative connotation. In fact, all of our past is operative, we carry with us all of the good things, too, as Keats wrote: A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It seems our memories don’t stay put, they assert themselves into our attention, and are fully active in composing what our current situation means as it unfolds.

Our memories can be some of our most cherished possessions. Their recollection an endless source of joy and powerful contributor to our well-being.

Focusing on the viewtool of yum, we can develop what we like, this is the job of aesthetics or art conceived not as something hanging on the wall of an imposing museum, but as appreciating natural light, the ever changing sky, the world of food tastes, each other, all forms of movement, including our own. For example, the poet says reinvent what's possible There is a seemingly never ending improvement we can make in our consciously managed experiencing, and the arts are the creative aggrandizement of experience, its expansion and enrichment…something at hand for all of us and worth pursuing, for sure.

I think most of us would have a hard time trying to tell someone what time “is”, such as trying to answer the question “What is time?”. We would find it a little more familiar, however, to take a stab at describing how time works. How it works is what it means, its significance. We might say it is like a process that continues, something that runs along, like the sequence of events with one thing following another. The exercise might show us that there is more utility, that is more useful to us, in describing how time works than in wondering what time is. I am not saying that we shouldn’t wonder or apply our imagination to the essential nature of concepts, only that it does not constitute the only, or even the most practical aspect of the concept.

more than one thing can be true at the same time

Another fundamental view tool is that more than one thing can be true at the same time. By true, I mean no more than something that actually helps make things work in a given situation. I don’t see any reason to assign some kind of otherworldly meaning to the word true. Given the countless different interactions in the world running simultaneously, to be on top of our game, our takes on many of the them need to be counted on simultaneously, so more than one thing can be true. For example, in many important ways, it’s true that we are all the same, and it’s also true that in many important ways each of us is unique. (Each of us is one person, and there is no reason to defy the obvious. At the same time, the world is pluralistic, and we are composed of many different currents in the one river that is ourselves, we are also like a river in that we are formed by condensation and raindrops and dissolve into the ocean, yet we are a distinct, single river.) It is true that circumstances make being objective (what do we mean when we want to be “objective”? We want a judge to be as objective as possible) valuable at the same time it is also true that all of the world is qualitative. (Being syncretic exposes the limitations or incorrectness of the prior view.) there are ways that we are different from other people and there are ways that we are the same. It doesn’t match the world we live in to have just one way to think. The world is always changing, it is multidimensional, and there is always uncertainty.

Interactions, by definition, involve more than one component, the world we interact with is itself involved in interacting with us. In the same motion, as we act on it, it acts on us. In the same free throw shot, as we act to shoot the ball, gravity is acting on our arms and the ball. The viewtool of yin and yang emphasizes interwoven interaction.

(I don’t know if I want to include this or not: Maybe the most important viewtools are those principles that organize the world for us. They act to set priorities of interest and action to filter the onrush of our environments. A repeat here… they provide our take on what something means by how it is related, by seeing it in context, placing it in our constructed understanding. Like every form of knowledge these principles get tested by how they work, their consequences.)

worldself (not a typo)

Among the multiple view tools that can be helpful to us, that is, true, I’d like to describe one that may be helpful in addressing our need to get along better. This has to do with our identity.[Worldself] If we want to employ the worldself viewtool, how does that affect our behavior? Because it is our behavior that answers the ultimate question: What to do? How to act? Whom to be? The answers to these questions are, or should be, up to us.

Let’s suppose that we take the actual world that we are familiar with, the sky, the ground, streets, people, chairs, and literally everything else as the whole thing flows along through the day, and say that’s what we are. Without asking you to imagine that it is the only way to look at yourself, just suggesting that you try it on as one way, and see if it makes some things clearer.[Examine: our experience of the world is the meaning of the world, the yuk and yum of it applies to what things mean, the import of the actual (post-extinction) world based on what has already happened in the play, what matters about the interaction, we experience the world as qualities. We don’t know the thing in isolation, it has no distinct existence apart from all its connections. Umhh… Does that extinction of other species and world continuing come into play here? Should this make me wonder if this whole connection business] Of course, we are not the whole universe, just the part we interact with. Once I was walking down the sidewalk near London while looking sideways at a beautiful athletic field, and I ran smack into a light post. My forehead took the jolt. What I am saying is that I interacted with the light post, I have a very direct experience of how little it bends. That light post became a part of me. I have numerous minor scars on my body from other direct experiences, I have “interacted” with a diving board and a chain saw. Many of the direct results of the world are set in memories.

Our practical, everyday sense of the viewtool that what-we-are-is-the-world can be found in our common reaction to the common question of how we are doing. To the extent we want to put any effort into the answer, our first thought is often to say what has been going on lately, what are involved in.

Our bodies, of course, are part of the world, sometimes giving off heat, other times absorbing it, inhaling and exhaling, taking in subtle changes in air pressure as sound waves play on our ear drums, smelling and tasting food, and, you know, all the other things, like bumping into people on the dance floor. We are not in any way wholly detached from the world, it is flowing through us, literally in the case of neutrinos. The gravitons in the atoms of our cells see to it that we are related to the world through gravity, not much doubt about that.

To follow on just for a moment more technically, to satisfy our need to know what we are, we can ask if it makes sense to describe ourselves as among the vast interactions of the world, with our body providing the capacity for processing meanings (through a process of applying what we have retained in a way that likes or dislikes our present). The meanings do not lie dormant but act, along with our bodies’ needs, as propulsive habits that interact with our circumstances resulting in felt likes and dislikes. All of these processes being just as real and open to observation and discovery as any other interaction, though, granted, there’s a multitude of interactions simultaneously running that compose ourselves.

As with anything we understand, we understand it by what it does. Plato articulated an ancient Greek view that sent us way off the mark by saying there is a realm above and beyond this tangible world where all the things we experience have their true Form, and these Forms are the essence of each thing. This line of thinking has come at the enormous cost of an assumed world view of a mind and ideas that are separate and distinct from body and what we call the physical world. Like everything else, we are enmeshed in the seemingly infinite interactions of the universe. It presents us with the problem of trying to put the pieces together) of something that is actually intact, for example, the supposedly separate pieces of a mind and a body. We have been hugely sidetracked by inherited notions that there are two separate worlds, the “physical” and the non-physical, we are then saddled with the unsolvable job of reassembling what is not separated) supplied with all sorts of attempted explanations of how to re-combine them (which may seem like to some of trying to find our place in a cold, alien, and indifferent world). But the problem lies in the inherited assumption that our felt likes and dislikes are somehow outside the world, and the further assumption that the world is objective and indifferent to us

Remember, I’m not saying the worldself is the only thing that’s true, just that to the extent that it holds up and is pertinent, it could come in helpful and rewarding.

To say that what we are is the world is not a fall from grace. Doesn’t it seem the world holds as much magic as we do? The viewtool enables us to make full use of our intelligence by removing a fundamental misconception. We are not separate from the world of birds and bees and birches and beaches. By studying our ancestry, we know that the birds we see flying overhead have the same fundamental bone structure in their wings as we do in our arms.

Of course, each of us has our unique biology and unique interactions with the world, which explains our unique identities. Much of that uniqueness comes from the specific interactions we have had with the world and no two people have the same precise interactions because all interactions are unique in place and time and in other aspects.

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With this perspective, the world is still the world with all its pushes and pulls, and forces that are interacting with each other whether or not we are around, and of course I am not saying we are identical to the vast universe. But we are a subset of the world, an instance of the whole, real, churning, energetic world. And, importantly, our interactions are just as open to investigation as anything else, though they are so multi-dimensional, multi-variate, and unique that surety of prediction is hard to achieve.

Since it is through interactions and relationships that we can know something, we can learn about ourselves. https://soundcloud.com/lsepodcasts/a-beautiful-question-finding around minute 52 talks about seeing the same thing from a different perspective, in a different dimension. Plato was wrong when he thought that to know something we needed to understand it in its pure, detached essence. There is no basis I know of to think there is something separate about us that is outside the world’s interactions. Historically, this has been more recognized in the worldviews from Asia. We could think of ourselves as a worldself (not a typo). (Somewhere, I could add that under the worldself viewtool, death is not final. It’s just our time to get off the magnificent, continuing ride that has been our piece of the greater life to make room for someone else – someone who will be born that very same day, hurray!)

The meanings that I like and dislike come from all of humanity over our long history, and they come from our shared human biology. I am composed of all, and I literally am all I interact with. I am in a cumulative process, what things mean to me grows. We share the experience of consciousness in the same fundamental way that we share inhaling oxygen, the same way we share vision. One thing we surely share with other species is that we exist in time. We all carry with us something of what has happened, what is happening, and what is about to happen. A street address locates along a line.

By analogy, the worldself is expressed by giving some thought to where we are located, it answers a fundamental question: where are you? We cannot be anywhere without comparing our position to those of others. We can only be placed when placed in context of what is around us.

Of course, the most important part of the world to many of us is each other. We share with others what means something to us. “With them we know” is another way of saying “con-science”. And though I don’t want to confuse the terms conscience with conscious, consciousness is something we also share. We can think of consciousness as sort of like electricity.

They both flow, and as they run they have potential. They are like fields in that they are ready to go and might just do it. They may sort of have a basis in a tangible thing that has mass, such as an electrical wire or a brain. But the more intriguing part of the analogy is that consciousness may be like electricity in that it is essentially the same - where ever and whenever. If you have an adaptor for a wall outlet, the electricity to run your saw or charge your battery is essentially the same stuff. When we are born where ever and whenever, our consciousness is essentially the same – in whatever kind of human. This may seem obvious to some, but there is hardly another subject on which we have inherited more baloney than to “type” people. The world that our consciousness interacts with is both different and the same. We all have the same exposure to gravity acting on our bodies, and photons striking our eyes, varied air compressions on our ear drums. A single day is composed of 24 hours.

Ubuntu recognizes the interconnections between us, though I need to learn whether or not it lets me equate myself with nature as does the Indian or Buddhist idea – see Eastern Philosophy page 57 where Buddhism at least to start had the self in its interconnections as an innovation on Hinduism where the atman was transcendent.  Umhhh, then there should not be the modern version of Buddhism where the spirit lives on in reincarnation.

Ask yourself if the worldself concept rings true with your experience. When many people think about their lives, or their self, they would claim that the things that matter to them are their spouses, children, parents, friends, mosque, or temple. They may grant you that these things compose them, are part of them. The worldself idea is only a description of this.

When we think of the world in any connection to humanity, we should cast our net as far and wide as possible. We should not just think of the “physical” world at a given moment. We know that our experience is full of our past ideas that being alive and having needs/desires is a process in which we traverse meanings. We experience was is past. The world, and our instance of it in life, still moves in full force if we close our eyes and don’t move. The world, as far as conscious creatures are concerned, is filled with consciousness. In humans, we are honed/become used to dealing with the symbols of meaning presented to us. Our world cannot be separated from thought, yet we know it’s out there separate from us, we know that the world has gone on when other species go extinct, so it doesn’t need us. Thought, through our bodies, is our experience of it.

Yet, in a way, the world is always closing in on us, that is, it is interacting with us in ways that serve to define us, but the more we are aware of the process and consciously do not accept simply having the accident of our surroundings form us, (events are taking place and are going to take place, the question is for us is, as always, what are we going to do about them, subserve them, acquiesce or act for a goal we want to see achieved) the more the larger, older, perhaps more deliberately formed components of ourselves, especially including our deliberate worldviews, will exert themselves, as habits, even good habits, operate. The less we bounce between what our environment, including advertisers, try to conform us, the more we could be said to become the people we want to be, the yum, the more we become the ideal, get to live in nirvana today (and love our food everyday).

We have yuk and yum for all that is, that is all that has occurred. For the things we have yuk for, we have to decide how much we will acquiesce in to them. They may come in the form of others’ expectations of us, perhaps even codified into law. We may become convinced that the course of a war is such that it would be a great wrong to perpetuate the harm that it is doing by being part of the military action. We may not want to acquiesce in other aspects of collective norms, such as going along with the communist party, or saying something nuanced to the pool manager where a new sign has been posted that Jews may no longer swim.

This line of thought breaks down the distinction between the public and the private, it’s all one process.

To believe in the ability of the people to manage their own way is the heart of democracy. To trust that people can make economic decisions for themselves is the heart of the free market. Both of these statements are true, but that does not mean it is easy, or that it will go smoothly without giving any thought to it. How much better our democracy would be if we, the people, were more deliberate learners, that is, if we cared more about selecting what we interact with for the purpose of enriching our lives, that is, changing ourselves for the better. And not just interact with whatever is on tv.

Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, page 31, John C Turner, …We help others, apparently selflessly, because we perceive their needs and goals as those of our social category and hence as our very own. Social organizations which extend self-definition beyond the individual person provide a simple and elegant mechanism for bypassing the supposed ‘egotism’ of human beings.  Page 34 Ingroups may discriminate or compete against outgroups not because there is any realistic conflict of group interests but simply to differentiate themselves and maintain a positive social identity for their members.

From gratitude to humanity springs action, because we recognize where our debt lies… to each other writ large. And we know from DeStefano’s work at Northeastern that gratitude improves our well-being.

question received wisdom

We need a viewtool to regularly employ to effectively question received wisdom. When you come to a Y in the road, how many choices do you have? …Since hindsight is 20/20, we have an advantage over our ancestors – the same advantage posterity will have over us. Our ancestors formed viewtools when little was known about the how the world works. Soccer style field goals, fosbury flop, a mind-body dualism, a world of ideas not of the physical world. We have received long ago misconceptions that are down the stem of Y and accepted as if solidly given. That the mind is different from the body. Because the mind, or thinking, are is some other realm, and other species don’t think, we are superior to animals and should not respect them. Because the mind is in this other realm, outside the physical world, and we have a sense that the source of the good is outside the physical world, in a heavan. We are not a species, members of a species die and that’s it, but we have an afterlife.

Instead of saying “It’s all one” because everything’s related, it might be better to say “Everything’s related”. Saying it’s all one not only grates against multeity it also sounds like an oversimplification.

We observe that we like or dislike something, or the way we feel about something we did? We can hardly like it for itself. They are the starting point. If I accede, then there is reason to place more of a focus on the tangible world of interactions, where we can gain control of factors and influence the course of events. All is emotion, but it is emotion about the tangible, measurable, quantitative and objective world…what about the feel of ideas…the ideas must ultimately be about something if they are going to mean something, that is, elicit a feeling.

To question the worth of what we are being told is an affirmation of our judgement. One source of confidence is the acknowledgement of effectiveness of what we bring to a given situation, clearly this includes our viewtools. If we have seen a perspective repeatedly pay off for us, we have a basis for relying on it. Since our lives are so multifaceted, our education systems should provide students with many skills, including many effective viewtools.

flicking water on a house plant

How about as a viewtool individual to ourselves to call to mind the preciousness of the moment? Some physical action to remind in all our striving to not forget to enjoy the process. The mood of the light, the color of a fabric, the sound of a voice, the recollection of a memory, the style of a person’s movement, the turn of a phrase. We don’t want to miss ways of appreciating what is around us. the flicking of water on a plant? Consequence…? A frequent opportunity (ritual) of actually, physically doing something that calls to mind the uniqueness of experience, to cherish it. What is more central to well-being, we could ask our friendly economist, that the act of valuing? So this viewtool is not so inconsequential, especially since it is ever readily at hand. A goal of education should be appreciation. Finding, describing, refining, and solidifying pleasure can be developed. One way is through the arts, as they uncover an ever-greater richness of our experience. All teaching, art, writing, architecture, dance, etc is essentially teeing up something for people to interact with on the hope that the recipient may find it helpful. Constructivism recognizes that the job is inescapably in each of our hands, every single one of us, but that does not mean it is a job without a social context.

The more solid our viewtools are, the more confidence we have in scaffolding from them when we are adding new material, that is, the more we feel we can trust a new understanding to store away if it is fastened to fitting in with other trusted views (beliefs) that are borne out of our experience.

the pivotal role of knowledge

Humanity is in its early stages of doing a good job of forming worldviews, and one way to advance our grasp of them is to recognize the pivotal role of knowledge. There is not one thing that encompasses all. No single factoid or relationship is all we need to know because living is multifaceted, we are in numerous different situations, the world brings much uncertainty in what comes our way. Which, of course, we may be thankful for in piquing our interests and making things so fascinating. If we can first establish a secure enough economic foundation, we are just set up to enjoy the process of discovery. Just as our exploration of the mechanical aspects of the world may never come to a halt, so to understandings that form our worldviews may never be finished and tightly wrapped up. We never know what is around the corner.

One of the great things about knowledge is that scrutiny only improves it.

In trying to be clear, when I use the term world I mean it to say that there isn’t anything that is not the world. If it were not the world, it would not be related to the world, and be irrelevant.

As we wonder about the universe and our place in it, we observe that other species have become extinct and the world has carried on without them. Acceding that the world would go on if our species became extinct places us in the context of a world larger than us, and suggests, what may seem obvious, that there is a world taking place outside of us and our knowledge of it. This can be an important contextual marker, or reality check, serving like an iron pin in the ground that marks a boundary to runaway worldviews. At the same time, this world is not outside of us, we are intertwined with this world, its oxygen, water, and nutrients flow through our arteries. Some of its sounds and sights are routinely familiar to us.

What we experience as our consciousness seems akin to what other species experience, with the big difference being that our development of language has enabled us an almost infinite variation and refinement of how we are doing in meeting our needs.

We have observed that, like other species, we have evolved amongst conditions that thwart us, causing us to think “yuk”, and conditions that sustain us, causing us to think “yum”. These needs, which come from our ancestors, among other things are expressed through the structural adaptations of our bodies, reach far back in time and provide both the distinctiveness of our species and our kinship with other species, our lovable relatives. Like some other species we are aided by the use of retained meanings, as experience teaches us about avoiding yuks and pursuing yums. Having been born a member of the homo sapiens, a lot of my yuk and yum is how an idea feels, its meaning. Our yums can be developed into deliberate goals and our yums can aide us along the way to determining if something fits as we try to realize our goals. Again, the process is retained in what we call knowledge???

We not only choose between existing yuk and yums as presented from our immediate environment, we have the ability to use the past to imaging possible future courses of events, and we choose among the yuk and yums of our imaginings. We can then act accordingly. In this context I am my own, guided self, I feel the results of the choices I have made, I am not a simple mirror reflection of my environment, I certainly feel like I am doing the steering, I participate in the world and affect it, I am not simply whatever my environment is, I am an active ingredient in the mix, a catalyst. There is nothing otherworldly in this process. We observe it, in degrees, in other conscious species, for example, dogs as our familiar friends show us they act with intent.

The con-science that we pick up, that is, remember, from others at 7-11 is felt, like everything else, through yuk and yum. Some things in our environment inspire us, some things turn us off. We yum ourselves to new imaginations of the way things might be.

We have learned that an effective approach to understanding something is to see how it interacts with other things in the midst of the ongoing world. We create and construct our knowledge from the consequences of the interactions with a view to their function in helping us towards our goals. Knowledge is best viewed not as something that exists intact separate from us, it’s not something that comes before us as something waiting for us to realize. Yet, knowledge and the universe can be distinguished…Examine We are a subset of a universe that will survive our extinction. There is much about that universe that is outside our subset, outside of human knowledge. Knowledge is an attempt to adapt to the workings of the universe so that we can be effective. Knowledge is our construction, but we cannot, upon release of a ball, will the ball to fly up in defiance of gravity. It is not a construction liking painting on a blank canvas, that is, we cannot make it do whatever we want. The behavior of electricity will survive our extinction, there will continue to be lightning strikes, our constructed understanding of it can help us from being electrocuted….But, by definition, we don’t know anything about what is outside our subset…so is it useless? Of course, I am not so sure there is anything we can’t find out about. We can go after those things, as yet, outside our knowledge.

I shouldn’t spend time, at least in this piece, criticizing Plato, most people have no idea what he said in the first place.

In comparison to the absolute truth some of us have come to expect, reliance on the functional interpretation of knowledge as our most secure foundation may seem inadequate. But it puts the responsibility where it belongs, on our shoulders and the factors with which we have to interact to make a difference.

Making progress in understanding what the world is gets us closer to understanding what we are.

If one viewtool is true and another is true, it can be helpful to combine them. Our memory provides meaning of the current scene and helps us refine our yuk and yum of it. Much of our scene is social and we have knowledge of it by seeing how the relationships work. We observe that we have yum for the actions of some people and to the extent we welcome them into our sphere, we become them. Same for the opposite, we see acts that turn us off and think yuk, and we do not want to be part of it or for it to be part of us. We observe that we have ingroups and  outgroups, those on the inside and those on the outside. And we further observe that we use individuals and events to (as examples, or proof (confirmation bias) of our ideational yuk and yums into real life). Though much of our thoughts are with others, there is also the post-extinction world, that washes over us, and through interacting with it, it becomes part of us. The Milky Way does not have ingroups and outgroups, those terms don’t apply. In order to have an ingroup, (for some, that is, to know what they are), they must have an outgroup, because the easiest way to have an ingroup is to have a readily identifiable outgroup. (Is it a little baser, more simplistic, easier,  and less generous to think of ourselves in our ingroup by what we are not, the outgroup that we have yuk for?) Is human development the march toward inclusiveness of how we see ourselves, no longer thinking of Africans as savages, or of women as being dumb?

We always have a choice of whether to enjoy something for itself or whether to involve it’s use toward some other aim. Of course, we should take full advantage of experiences that are complete in themselves, but we have available to us the ability to further revel in perceiving things in their integrative functions, in this way, we come to know them. We can enjoy a skyscape without knowing what we are seeing. In knowing it, we get to see into what changes it, what explains it, what it does.

Over the past few centuries, we have realized that the functional conception of knowledge is effective in the real world. Instead of chasing some exterior, ultimate definition of things, we have learned to understand them by what they do. We can apply this critical viewtool for a fundamental, even profound, purpose: to know ourselves. Understanding what the world is and what we are (well, ok, but remember we are only able to generate hypotheses about ourselves that include imagining ourselves, we will never be able to know ourselves completely, know how we work, any more than we will know the universe completely) by understanding that we construct our interpretation of the world [THIS IS A SEPARATE IDEA, AND WILL CONFUSE PEOPLE]as a central element of how we function, that is, that by forming knowledge we become effective, is an essential acknowledgement in understanding what we are.

KNOWLEDGE IS A HUMAN CONSTRUCTION, ALL OUR THOUGHTS ARE OUR CONSTRUCTIONS. ALL OUR KNOWLEDGE IS SOMETHING WE HAVE FORMED. It sure helps when what we have constructed is effective in the world of our interactions, rather than misconceptions.

We learn what we are by what we do, Forrest Gump’s right: stupid is as stupid does, more specifically our role in relationships. Our interactions with the world, principally with other people, are the matter that we make, our affect, how we are known, without them we cannot matter, or mean anything to anyone, even ourselves.

As part of the interactions of the world, we are of the actual, tangible world - we are explained by it, evolved in it, expressed from it, dependent on it, and woven into it, and involved in forming it. It’s bigger than us, yet we are legitimate parts of it and influence that part with which we interact. When we see a documentary of a Nigerian army unit brutalizing a village in the hunt for Boko Haram, it is we that are diminished. When we see a ballet dancer perform a magnificent turn, we all triumph. We are the wind and the Milky Way, maybe literally, since we are in fact related to them. The wind blows our hair, dries our skin, rustles our ears, makes us tired. The Milky Way stimulates our wonder. How could it be separate from us? But more literally, we are each other. My parents, and all their genetic ancestors, all of them, compose me, as well as all the meaning they and others have brought to me to incorporate.

Each individual at a dinner party composes the occasion, even if they don’t say much, they are an element, and the event would be different without them. This is a two-way street, a yin yang. As we compose the event of the dinner party, as part of the process, and the event is composing us.

This method grows out of experience, observation, so when we observe matters of interest to us, we should see the viewtools manifest. They should be corroborated.

Tennyson has his Ulysses say: I am a part of all that I have met. And of course all that he has met is part of him.

Honesty, courage, and confidence are all mutually reinforcing and result in acting on what rings true, that is, what fits us as a whole, with less attention paid to pretense as an attempt to gain acceptance from others.

It explains our uniqueness at the same time that it explains our sameness.

What do humans do? (piece by front door of the hare Krishna place on Lindell)

We experience yuk and yum and make choices accordingly

We focus on each other

We aspire, we lay around, we think about ourselves then act accordingly, we form ingroups and outgroups, we inquire, we play, we can be industrious, a lot of times we act with a certain amount of foresight…this is what we do. If we want to know what we are individually, making a comprehensive list of what we do will tell us what we are (thinking counts as doing something, of course).

This conception of what knowledge is, that is, placing an emphasis on the consequences of interactions, when applied to ourselves, clears the way for full and thoroughgoing examination. Insofar as we are consciously guided by our ideas, the repercussions could far-reaching. The pursuit of knowledge leads us to understand new working relationships, enabling us to open new doors. Realizing how things are related can liberate us by putting us in a new place with new factors and new potentialities.

We can hypothesize ourselves as the retention of ancient-to-current biochemical interactions that have yielded a conscious body with propulsive habits interacting in the form of the yuk and yums with the environment as we navigate our way. Compared to much of the worldviews we have inherited, this hypothesis moves the locus of ourselves from a duality of an interior domain mysteriously juxtaposed onto an indifferent, outer world to an ongoing process that includes the world as a running whole. Compared to much of the worldviews we have inherited, this moves the locus of ourselves from an entity in and of itself, (For the sake of stopping to smell the roses, we are can be viewed as complete, for the sake of doing the work of solving problems, we need our functional view, both are completely legit) to a process of interactions that are part and parcel of the world. We realize our place as the world of interactions includes us, the self is composed of and is flowing with the world. We are a worldself (not a typo.) And these interactions, like all interactions, are open to observation and understanding. With this hypothesis, our thoughts and actions are an expression of the world in which we are participants.

Our biologies enable us to interact with the world, of course we cannot be alive without a functioning body. And it is my strong hunch that eyes and thumbs have overwhelming similarities, at the same time as their uniqueness. Likewise and for the same reason, my strong hunch is that being conscious is also overwhelmingly similar, at the same time as our uniqueness.  When we are born our ability to be conscious, indeed how consciousness is experienced, is in many ways the same. I cannot think of a stronger case for the feeling that other people are on my team. We all interact with different elements of the world and those differences express themselves in us. But what we plug into the world at least starts out as very similar. We get our energy from the universe and are composed of its wash. Like other species, ancient past selections have given us agency to pursue yuk and yum, including the capacity to choose our influences, and when it comes to our worldview, we choose people or events to incorporate that serve as guiding stars which help keep us from being adrift or deteriorating.

Here I could ask the philosophical question: So what? Answer: Make the case for knowledge What to do? Attain perspective and act accordingly.

We act from an understanding of our situation. We can improve our understanding, and from a long-term perspective, this is the path we are on.

To me, the unknown is largely irrelevant because my attention is on the tasks at hand. My experience encompasses all that I can garner about this wondrous world and our cherished humanity that inhabits it. What is outside my experience does not get much attention.

The first step in that journey is to recognize that a person cannot possibly be ethical in this modern world by simply being sweet and kind and fitting in with others. To be filled with love is not only wholly insufficient; the record is increasingly demonstrating it can be dangerous. To be ethical requires a person to know what they are doing. To be ethical we are increasingly being required to have the discipline to do the work to not only discover the full consequences of our actions, but to have the courage to continually seek new understanding to first set our objectives and also question ourselves to see if we are part of the problem. We need to develop, mature, evolve, and rise up ethically. Our history tells us we can do it.

Ideas have consequences because we act from ideas. We act with a purpose in mind. We can get the ideas right, the viewtools.

Seeing ourselves through the functional interpretation of knowledge yields the following: in very important ways, we are the same, that experiencing the world, processing ideas, for most of us having sight and hearing, being conscious, breathing, would seem to be roughly the same if you are young, old, female, Canadian, white, gay, black, straight, male, Egyptian, etc. The need to come to an understanding of our world and our selves, to not be lost, is something we all have in common. And increasingly the options that we have for adopting view tools are becoming similar. I suspect our consciousness is the same because the subject matter of our consciousness, the world of meanings we interact with, itself the product of a great amount of effort, is the same MAJOR PROBLEM: also true is that each person’s world is unique, and the meanings that surround us are different, which is, or at least has been, heavily influenced by location. I cannot experience anything that is not the world. All is an interaction of the world. Therefore, I am composed of the world and am universal, and as a human, you are composed of the world and are universal.

This world, as we experience it, is chock full of meanings through which we interpret all with which we come in contact. My suspicion is that in the same way that flying is for many practical purposes the same thing for all golden eagles, thinking is the same for all humans. Since meanings are shared, and they are primarily what we interact with, in a way we are those meanings, and we are shared with each other, and also in a way, we are each other, which is wonderful. At the same time, the world is varied, and we interact with different parts of it, making us unique, and each of us is different from one another, thank goodness. These things can be true at the same time.

(Each of us is universal, but it takes a view tool to see it. We are all composed of the same great swirl.)

What would be an example, from ordinary life, where you gain some ability because of an acquired viewpoint? It would be an instance where one thing applied to many things.

Even in our uniqueness, as we learn, as we transform ourselves deliberately in so far as our actions are in accord with our new perspective, we have shown a tendency in some important instances to intentionally gravitate towards incorporate experiences that turn out to be similar with each other’s efforts to do the same thing , does something appeal to us about others, or the world as a whole, learning itself, as we learn more about them? We observe that many of us can care about the committee of the whole, we observe that as we consciously guide our actions, or lives, the path is often interwoven with the needs of humanity. Be Careful, but is there a basis to say that the wider we comprehend, the more we encompass, the greater the diversity of perspectives become incorporated, the more we overlap with others and can share those norms, including forming them into laws?

The more we identify ourselves with the whole world of interactions, the more naturally and easily will we be able to form a public to address humanities problems. The more we misperceive ourselves and close ourselves off from the way we actually work, the more susceptible we will be to the ingroup versus outgroup, insiders and outsiders.

(what resonates with us a yum, may resonate with others, perhaps on a large scale, same with yuks, Examine.) (this make systems of justice possible, to share in a custom, a more), in other instances the more we pursue our ends, that is walk to the beat of our own drummer, the more unique we become and at the same time often the more cherished by others for that uniqueness, the valuable they hold us each person wants to grow, do we observe that what appeals to one person may appeal to another? Yes, depending on what it is. that also demonstrate traction with others, to share in the greatness of the arts, to share in our appreciation of the mountains, perhaps more importantly to share in a stake in justice, in the spirit of the whole. In so doing, we advance, we elevate. We have an idea of what others would like and offer it to them and to the public for acceptance, and in so choosing, progress is made. Curiously, as we advance individually we become more distinctly ourselves.  WORK ON THIS! (This is an outright statement of the arts, maybe not a bad thing.) In some ways we are the same, in some ways we are different. This necessitates complexity, it cannot be denied in order to reach simplicity. (The complexity must be made explicit in this piece of writing.) Each person has a unique DNA, so each person is unique. Over history, we have wanted to come to an understanding of what exactly we are. We can be described as an instance of the world’s interactions in which the structure of our bodies has evolved in a communicative society to provide a capacity for retaining meanings which act to inform our bodies’ needs, resulting in felt choices as we navigate our current circumstances.

If I am not known, then nothing is. I have first hand, direct, continual awareness of worldself or worldview. The worldself can be described as energy that has qualities. Consciousness is active, flowing qualities.

I don’t need to be the great definer, I am positing this because I think it is a question: What am I?, that people feel a need to know.

I am all world, that is, I am completely composed of the world if you consider my yuk and yums from evolution part of the world, (which of course they should be). But it is more complicated than saying I am simply the external washings over of me.

I am not composed of the wind per se, I am not the same thing as the wind. But the wind influences me, my take on my interaction with the wind becomes part of me, and it is the wind on its own terms that I interact with. I am not the rock in my hand, I am a participator in the experience of the rock in my hand, the interaction of the rock and my body.

I may deliberate in a yoga position and come to understand something that changes my mind about something, so that afterwards an event in my environment may be considered a yuk whereas before it was I considered it a yum. Also, an event in my environment may be considered a yuk to me and a yum to the person sitting right next to me.

My experience is my consciousness and my consciousness is the processing, the comparison, of ideas, so where is the world in this? It is in what gave rise to the ideas and how the ideas will square when put into use, plus maybe the “natural” world is a flowing energy and my ideas are an instance of the natural world. (They can’t be anything else.)

The actual, tangible world-we are explained by it, evolved in it, expressed from it, dependent on it, woven into it. It’s bigger than us. (Ok, agreed, what is also true is that this world gave us a choice of what we want to be become (this is just a fancy yuk and yum), and that does not at first glance seem to be akin with a rock. So there is variation in the composition of the world, for example a rock is a different thing than a dog. Is that so mysterious, that dogs should “think”, that is, have retained preferences felt to them as yuk and yum?) As such, we are not strangers to it, alienated from it. It composes us and all that we are is as real as the world is. And by “this world” I mean the world that will go on existing if or when we become extinct. What holds for knowledge of that world, holds for us (or I could maybe say better, the rigorous approach that helps us be effective with the world can be turned to put a spotlight on ourselves). [This part of the world is not of our individual making and it is the same world for all and it composes us, so we are the same, other than we have interacted with unique aspects of it.] This world yields knowledge (described as what we use to get what we want in addition to what is pleasing to come to learn, - Dewey’s description of what we use to solve problems suggests that everything is a problem and there are no delightful ends that need knowledge, the quality of which depends on how careful we are in creating it.

I sense that our experience, our consciousness, is nearly the same, maybe in the same way that golden eagles fly the same way. (A movie director/writer knows how their audience will react to slight nuances on the screen, they know the whole audience, or nearly the whole, will react a certain way to a certain action. They know our consciousness is the same.)

Through meanings and their combinations, we have more than specific yuk or yums say when we bite into an apple, we also have yuk and yum when we assess our own performance say regarding the past season’s crops, or our lives as a whole. We can apply knowledge, and the intelligence it suggests, to bedrock issues of our lives. It can be powerful and transformative, integral as the fundamental (big philosophical) issues are to any process of growth.

This reality just makes our job more complex: 46 They are not concerned with framing a general theory of reality, knowledge and value once for all, but with finding how authentic beliefs about existence as they currently exist can operate fruitfully and efficaciously in connection with the practical problems that are urgent in actual life. My job is to take this big time complexity, that we cannot escape, and present it so it can be digested enough to solve our problems. This is especially hard because we are used to the simple explanations of, for example, monotheism. So I have the uphill climb of convincing people that they have to work harder…I’m not so sure, learning is quite natural and we are curious. We will be much better off if we throw off all the inherited misconceptions.

Maybe one viewtool is that there is much to the world, not just one thing that can be thought or stated all at once, that life for us is a moving, expanding mosaic of plural meanings, all of which can have validity, many things can be true at the same time. It is helpful to not only acknowledge complexity, but to embrace or relish in it. (Maybe we have gotten too used to our religious or philosophical systems trying to hand us something nicely bundled up, simplified, and this is what needs to be addressed.)

I said this was pivotal, so let’s look at why it matters so much.

Provide an example of knowing something(s) by what they do. Maybe we (especially the technical community) does this all the time without realizing it.

Possible ending: The functional description is the end of the process that begins with an acknowledgment of the value of information and knowledge and an effort to think critically about knowledge in the Somme sense. The process requires confidence that we can handle it and, toward that end, I feel that for my own purposes in living my life, I am up to the task, and I hope I have made a contribution for others. So a precondition of any of this is a willingness to learn. To care. To acknowledge the value of knowledge, this is the first important step, the next big challenge for humanity’s rise. Maybe a precondition of that is confidence we can handle it. (I think this is close, but I have to acknowledge that knowledge (defined as what works) is not enough, that we lean heavily, critically on imagination.)(I am close to Goodenough’s point here, though she was talking about the scientific method itself. So, more work to do for me to relate the functional description to the scientific method.) With this tool, we can apply it to anything and everything. Everything we think is true becomes open to improvement through the richer understanding that comes from investigation. We can test The factual basis of how bad the Kaiser is should not be determined by a flyer.

We have learned to consider these relationships from experience as probabilities, from the consequences, which places the “seat of authority” after the fact and dependent on our reading of it.

This is transformative in a major way. It is honest, it allows us to see ourselves for what we are, puts us in working possession of the actual factors involved.

How we are doing, which is of great and immediate concern to us, is almost the same question is what are we. What we are underlies how we are doing, it is our identity, we compose ourselves from our social milieu, and our allegiances are actually to ourselves as part of the broader milieu which is fed by all the symbols, metaphors, and interpretations involved. Allegiances and support of leaders, or at least willingness to acquiesce to leaders, are the keys to power and the way broad swaths of humanity move.

What the world is tells us what we are. And knowing what we are can have a large effect on what we want to do. So what the world is can be a key component in addressing our most relevant question: what to do. It can be pivotal, both for the individual and the public, because knowledge doesn’t leave us where we started, including knowledge of ourselves.  We have an incrementally better hold of our environment, of our future. If we apply the viewtools at our disposal including use of the functional view of knowledge to our current problems, the path for addressing them becomes clearer.

What Reagan did was make people feel that their real core was at a certain place - his true blue American place. He was making the case for the way we really are, the viewtool that goes with that, the way we feel most comfortable that we are in the right, our most genuine, confident self, and from the agreement goes the support, and for a leader support is power. In doing so, he moved the center. There was an appealing identity for us to see ourselves as a member of the greatest nation on Earth. To get to the core of the way a person views themselves, you have to awaken what is already acknowledged only inchoately, it’s potentially there, it is available for an articulated expression. A car advertisement once said: It’s not just a car, it’s who you are. Hitler knew how to pull the levers and ISIS seems to be effective at it with the certain segments of the population.

So, if these viewtools are as pertinent and persistent as I am suggesting they are, when we turn to examine our real world problems, they should manifest themselves in the dynamics of those problems. As we understand the world and ourselves, we set the basis for solving major public policy problems for humanity.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of acquiring valuable viewtools is the serenity and happiness they bring to our experience. But since they determine how we treat others, including the public, they are pivotally important for public policy. Here are some examples: (For each example, write about the vested interests, the positions of the opponents of my positions and describe their shortcomings? Eg Putin and Xi do not want an open marketplace of ideas and trust in the people to guide the process based on knowledge. Climate change has been fought by the fossil fuels industry.

1. War as Somme love, we see our self in relation to our surroundings, we want to be part of something, otherwise we are susceptible to drift, angst, loneliness, despair, isolation, we want to “fit in”. Ok, let’s just be more advanced and assured, questioning and discerning in deciding what to love, a relative’s whiskers? 9/11, Rhouhani (identity plays out powerfully in the Shia Sunni split, but it is not the only motivator… some of us are less devout and more opportunistic – willing to marginalize the importance of a former identity to take advantage of shifting allegiances to the winner, Mark Twain steamboat captain at the start of the Civil War short story), All You Need Is Love The viewtools here attempt to contribute to an ever improving discernment of the multi-dimensional, pluralistic world and ourself, an ever maturing and workable take on the world and our own identity that will continually hold up and reward us when tested. When viewed from a wider perspective a sense of proportion follows and a context deepens the understanding, and so we recognize that our love of our great uncle’s wiskers is naturally also felt by the German in their love for the alpine meadow.

We recognize our love for what it is, an intentional favorable bias, a positive prejudice. (Maybe each of us would like to feel that our own characteristics actually are worthy of other people’s appreciation, even specially recognized appreciation that is positive prejudice. How nice to have someone we like, we want to idealize, return the favor and think highly of us.) And we also recognize the gratitude we have for all of those that came before us, deep into human ancestry. We recognize how much our inventiveness has benefited all of humanity. We recognize how the arts, for example music, can be enjoyed by wide segments of humanity. Knowledge allows us to operate with the benefit of hindsight, a cognizance of the transformative appeal of knowledge, getting more comfortable and familiar with knowledge in an enlightened sense, can lead us to become aware of other instances where the danger of nationalism ran amok, WWI (why call it that?), where lax approval of chemicals such as asbestos led to devastating health consequences. A respect for knowledge will make it less likely we can be sold a bill of goods from someone peddling a worldview without inviting scrutiny.

The conditions for justice are set when a public is formed through shared norms. When we view how we function more accurately, we see how interwoven we are, we are all interwoven into the great gratitude of humanity. When the public exercises its influence in justice, we have nonviolence, which 99% of us want. Ask the people and they will tell you they want their leaders, or future leaders, to figure out ways to get along without having a war.

1a National identity, nationalism, as a cause of war in Japan and China. If you want humanity’s future to have fewer or almost no wars [how are we using the term “war”? Is it the complete overrun and subjugation of another society]. I think we can set up/actually establish a system where the norms of supporter-then-leader are established in a way that makes it hard for a dynamic to develop where a group of people will try to overrun and subjugate a people that sustains for the next100 to 200 years. I mainly mean the leading handful of the world’s powers staying out of such full-blown war. if you think that the constructive energy of the arts and the willingness we have shown to achieve justice can exert itself, then you can place such arrangements into consideration of their particulars, of  how that can be. Can we create a way where there is good-hearted, positive, informed, love-filled assertive action to carry the day? What kind of actions would it take? Artists are not the only ones who expand what is possible, others include educators. Well, wait, think about Art as Experience wherein we all have aesthetics. Add joy, an informed, rich joy that feels it should be shared, like my take on the U of I alumni statute. Maybe we need more emphasis on positive criticism of certain kinds of allegiances. hold can be Allegiance and power, yuk for what turns us off and yum for what inspires us Chinese, Serbian nationalism. If it was not shortsighted and incorrect in the Gettysburg Address to think that democracy was ours, a possession of our ingroup, that is, individual self-definition, when it is also part of others, it surely is without basis now, a point that needs to enlighten how the US views the world, such as maybe we should do less proselytizing.  The viewtool of what we are affects our allegiances. “The Sunnis in Anbar and other provinces are facing oppression and

discrimination by the government,” said Mohamed el-Bajjari, a sheikh in

Anbar who is a spokesman for a coalition of tribes. “This government must

be changed to form a technocratic government of nonsectarian secular

people, or the battles and the anger of the Sunni people will continue.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/world/middleeast/isis-iraq-airstrikes.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A6%22%7D

In so far as good governance is bound up with the well-being of the people, it must be acknowledged in order for us to perform the central core of ourselves, to be confident thinkers guiding our actions, we realize that we must have clear accounting of the factors we are dealing aided, hopefully, with the contributions of others in our common tasks. Our well-being requires an open exchange of ideas and vigorous, honest, reporting of the facts. Otherwise we cannot trust we have in our thinking, we know that our mastery over conditions, our freedom, is denied us. We know we lose our ability to bring to guiding our actions by our thoughts

2. As these viewtools advance our understanding, they enlighten and transform prior, limited conceptions. The recognition that we know things through their relations and so everything we can know is related to all other things, that is, there is no walled off, separate realm, can be applied to our prior conception of “nature”.  Understanding that our thoughts are every bit a part of the world as a waterfall or an acorn, places us in the world. Caring for the world is caring for ourselves, we are the world, it is us, what is good for the world is good for us and vice versa. A passage from Ursula Goodenough states that being at home with our natural selves is the prelude to ecology. A central function of our worldviews is to become comfortable with the grounding of the relationship between the world and ourselves. A whole new vocabulary may be needed here, which is beyond the scope of this piece. The word “nature” as commonly used does not include us, and this is almost surely a mistake. The word “ecology” designates a field of study, like chemistry or economics, and does not capture the non-academic love or wilderness. And term “wilderness” itself denotes something practically untouched by humans, so designating a place distinct from where we are, ipso facto making such places of limited practical utility to us. (Our interaction with the post-extinction world opens the door to the whole, to the timeless. Advertisers are not competing for our attention to their specific here and now.)

3. Equality. Good thinkers with well-developed priorities are less likely to fall for shammers advertisers who want us to buy their product or service to be happy. Talk about economics/well-being. We want to be comfortable with ourselves, and to do it, we like to have an organized core of ideas that provides coherence to our actions. An important element of the core is our sense the way things ought to be and we recognize that we are more comfortable with ourselves when we are aligned to an acceptable degree to it. Once the demands of our conscience are satisfied and work their well-being, we are also free to go about our days getting as much enjoyment out of them as possible.  Another important part of our organized core is our need to have a sense that we understand what is going on. That we have a take on the world, enough knowledge that we are able to get by. We love those on the inside, the in group, we love our family over our cousins, our cousins over our neighbors, our neighbors over those of the next neighborhood over, and those of our town over those of another town. We have yum for our own relationships and the preference for them makes a positive distinction in favor of those close to us as opposed to those not close to us, which by comparison makes those more distant from us less appealing, and for some of us the less-appealingness translates into comparative dismissal and possibly even a yuk of dislike. And this can even be exploited by those gaining the advantages of hailing the in group from in group members by distinguishing the in group from the out group. And this goes for what is unfamiliar in non-social factors as well. This approach to knowledge is non-divisive, can be non-threatening. This worldview is open and imminently accessible. It is as welcoming as the feeling we get when we are curious and learn something or the chemistry that takes place between a good teacher and a student. Since we are an interchange with the world, including our social world, we have a built-in cooperation and gratitude. With the worldself we have a big love for the whole, and we are part of it, as a player is on a team.

perhaps the greatest thing about being human, we get to appreciate the uniqueness of each other, which is the epitome of aesthetics. I can’t think of any better argument for political equality.

Identifying with the whole leads to actions in concert with the whole. The more we mature into realizing the interplay between the collective and the individual (more than one thing can be true at the same time), the more we will realize that our debt to prior generations of people making the world a better place translates into us thinking about future generations. If we recognize that it is the juice/energy that we are given at birth that is the explosion of life and all that that implies as a human, our gratitude (this concept, if so central needs to be developed, articulated into new realms of specificity and understanding) in being able to participate in this grand parade, on the positive propulsion to act, how can it not tell us that we want others to get on board and permit this wonderful thing to keep developing as long as possible? To do so, it is imperative that we provide the life support systems of the earth to allow it. Is this not obvious? On the negative propulsion to act, our current trajectory is imperiling those that come after us, and our kinship to them should mean something to us and affect our actions. The nature of the problem requires action by all people and all governments around the globe.

6 Everyone who inspires us is someone else, we want to pull them into ourselves, that is, to become them, to make them part of our ingroup,… and not just people, but all things that are experienced, eg the sound of rustling trees, or crickets. And it’s not just the post-extinction world (aka the physical world) either, it’s the world of ideas and purposes that we identify with as we herald them, it is purple mountain majesties, and bombs bursting in air, and Aunt Bee. We want them to be part of us. Idealizing is inherently positive prejudice (love?) which is kind of constructed/categorized/put in context/assigned meaning by positive placement upon the experience but in a way mindful that it re-circulates back to define us (is this always?, undoubtedly people do not consciously think they are creating their identity when they see someone else, something else, they like, but maybe they just don’t realize it) I want/need to see myself as a good grandfather embracing and inculcating the social or public (well, yes and no, because idealizing is also something I am projecting on to the person (but why?, because we have yum for it, the Iranian girl in the movie who needed her father to be a good guy), it is as much about them as me, (is there such a thing as selfless love?, people can surprise us, bring something new and unexpected  that we appreciate in them, making it harder to say we like them because of the way it makes us think about ourself, but that newness of something cool is bringing something new to our self, eg the ballet move, the great catch) both things are true at the same time and it is a mix), constructing ourself the way we want, fitting our notion of that through the use of yum for the ingroup and yuk for the outgroup. (Is there an ascertainable or quantifiable process of constructing the other, idealized entity, that is, can I support this?) If humans have a hierarchy built in, maybe this is how it works. An enlightened view of the construction of knowledge and self in the modern, interconnected world should serve to dissipate centuries old yearning for a prestige of being the number one country, or a country that gets respect, because through enlightened viewtools we realize where our gratitude truly lies, in the broader swath of humanity, (our very language we constantly use is an example, and it is not so high blown, but comes as much organically from the people) which was the point of my campaign web site foreign policy section, that we are interwoven. Gratitude itself is another recognition that we are the world, we are the way we are because of someone else. In the information age, the things that are wonderful, such as the enchantment of remote places, great stories in literature, music, and the (culmination) of nearly every form of learning imaginable are available to us on line. This can serve to reduce envy (see advertising below). Am I Ukrainian or am I Russian? Who am I? (I need to know so I can tell who to kill.) The non-zero advancement of knowledge can answer this question. I need to bring to bear all the goodness and wisdom of the older of the two U of I alumni statue shaking hands, I need to claim that as my support. Who am I? I am the person willing to fight for the shared goodness that has been developed with ISIS, that we need to have respect, Buddha style, for all people for it to work well. A lot of people want to belong to a group, to see themselves as members involves thinking well of the group, which can involve that positive prejudice of romantic love. Romantic love and love of family, and self-definition in its most salient form. The group and I are, to an extent, one. This does not take brains from the person, it is just the way things are. The group can be humanity. What takes brains is perceiving equality and its derivative, justice. Asking the person to understand language could be a vehicle for perceiving, because neither they, their romantic partner, their parents, and surely not the beloved kids, invented language. Understanding language points to gratitude in its rich fullness and complexity. My hunch is that all people’s consciousness have similarities, a school teacher should present learning activities for all learning styles, and the material will be uniquely understood, because each of us is unique. Nonetheless, at some fundamental level, the feedback I get from people is that their consciousness and mine are mainly the same. My hunch is that this comes from the biology of being human. My hunch is that that the conscious experience of other species, bluebirds or zebras, are mainly the same amongst that species. They seem to act that way. This supports that idea that we are very similar to each other, regardless of time and space. So that each of us is all races, both sexes, and all ages. It’s all one thing we get to plug into as humans, the great and growing pool of meanings. (But, we’ve got to exercise it.) If you were videotaping a group of twelve different people, and a loud sound went off, the face expressions would tell about the same story. There must be something to this. This is what makes art possible, it works when it resonates. We join, add on, a new way of thinking. It all comes from others and the world that wash over us.

4 Obama said Pickney understood “Justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other, that my liberty depends on you be free too.” What is he saying here? My guess is that as I like to be free and secure in justice, I’ll bet this other person would like to be free and secure in justice. Clearly “in a way” that is “using a viewtool”, when looked at from a certain perspective, we are the same, there is equality. I need to trumpet equality, investigate equality, such as asking where does it end, at a country’s physical boundary, or the ingroup, but not the outgroup? The notion of respect or regard comes into play.

Knowledge is something we can agree on. It’s as objective as anything gets. (Goodenough)

8 Economics and who is determining the dreams, the desirable. Describe the actual mechanics and how that can be sustainable. To what do Chinese aspire? It turns out that knowledge plays a big part in ethics. I suspect that making headway in knowing what we are and being well-informed has a lot to do with what we want.

9 Getting deliberated progress and hopefully cooperation from the “nones”. We are better off having a reason for what we are doing, having a goal in mind when we act. Many people are selecting None from a list of religions, what if confidence in intelligence were to earn an investigation? What can take the place of what traditional religion has offered? we must first have an idea of what the world is in order to have an idea of what we are (unless you are a dualist), Trusting in your own good judgment to draw from the best in humanity, the community. An accurate, balanced proportion of gratitude, would make us realize that it is the whole human family that has been working for our benefit. An informed ethics.

I should not hide from religion, because that is how the world is addressing my issues right now. So…If we go extinct, the universe will continue. That which will go on without us is bigger than us, older than us, but it is not alien from us. We are tapped into it, like being plugged into an electrical socket, we participate in its energy while we are alive. We observe that we make choices which exert control on many aspects of it that form our immediate surroundings, and while agriculture is an important example, more immediate is our communication environment with its commonwealth of meanings and insights. Yet, taken as a whole the universe extends almost infinitely beyond us, and we are right to be thrilled by it, to even hold it precious, to even revere it, captured in the feeling, for me at least, of looking at the Milky Way. It’s so much greater than me, and I am awed by it. I love it. If some people would say that this is sufficient to make me religious in my own way, that’s fine with me. If others say to be religious a person must have faith. The kind of faith that appeals to me is to have faith in the team I’m part of. From history, we see the way that each generation has worked out its macro-public problems, and while there have been points of enormous tragedy, there have also been innumerable, interpersonal kindnesses. And as we empathize, we realize. I have faith and reason to think that knowledge is cumulative and that the kindnesses in dealing with each other are worth building upon, such as in systems of justice or in our ever evolving economic systems. I cannot be sure that humanity will continue to work out its problems, but there’s reason to think we will get even better at it.

Conceiving of our self as the world carries with it the benefit of knowing that we are not set, because the world is characterized by uncertainty and is always moving. To navigate it we need a sense of direction. And while we benefit from checking to see what works, that is not enough. We need imagination.

Everyone generates their own understanding of the universe. We need to not only provide all the latitude possible in allowing them to walk their path, but to encourage them to do so. At the same time we cannot afford to simply leave it at that. To quit and be hands off. We are all better off if the discovery of an individual’s worldviews are done with intelligence. Indeed, it is paramount that we encourage, but not require, people to be conscientious about the process. Given the role that the committee of the whole plays in our lives, given our love for humanity, let’s act for its benefit. Let’s help each other in the process of growing. We already practice this in a big way with the importance we attach to public education of the young. We need to extend it to everyone, especially ourselves.

More than one thing is true at the same time: there are ways that we are different from other people and there are ways that we are the same. (Don’t be foolish and shy away from “elevated” or “poetic” descriptions eg MLK, Thoreau, or Lincoln, remember Keats was right, everything is quality, all is aesthetic, all feels like yuk and yum, truth is beauty. And new relationships need to be described, in all their amazing aspects in order to capture their significance.) Imagining the future, discerning what we want, deciding the great question, what to do? is qualitative, it is too big, it involves too much, it involves everything, it is beyond us, so it can only be imagined. There is a way in which our posterity and ourselves are the same, not related, but in a very real sense the same. One of the great things about being human is identifying with, caring about, the whole of humanity from a feeling that it is where the value truly lies. As individuals we are only a small part moving in the big, energetic current. Others are plugged in to the same juice as we are, it was him in me and me in him that raised the veil (a recognition that the U of I statute is always true for each generation, it’s the big process, in union, that we are all a part of) yet the interactions will, of course, be unique, and each instance of humanity can be quite different or special, especially if we go out one or two thousand years. Thoreau’s veil: in a less poetic sense, it is true in the way that if that person gets the same meaning as me, particularly the feeling of a love for humanity, then we are on the same page that the distinction between myself and a woman or a child can be of practically no significance. Everything that someone else has placed you in. I am not saying I am in fact a woman, or a five year old, I am saying is available to them in life is available to me, they express it and convey it, and I participate in it fully (or full enough for all practical purposes). We are the world we interact with. (I am less definitive about this the more I think about it, I think we are on more solid ground to say that the worldself is a viewtool that is available to us.) This is what we value, this is what’s important, and in this paramount theater, we all derive/drink from the wellspring. It is no more open to one kind of person than to others, Huck wants to tell his story to all who will listen, the older statute wants to shake hands with the younger. It is us in them and them in us that suggests an equality between us. Indivisibility suggests equality. I wanted to tell the elderly Jewish man at LSE that we were the same, that he was not distinct from me. Some of the Jews in Israel think they are different than the Palestinians, that they are not equals. (It would be nice if we could show this. Public, participatory art?) Also arguing for equality is that no one of us made the greatness of being human, each of us gets the opportunity to drink from the wellspring of human accomplishment. Because it is greater than us, that it is the source of our advantage/privilege, the greatness is with it, not us, … maybe I’m saying the distinctions separating us are from our own devising (social construct), not inherent., it is up to me to determine the significance of this. So we should act to provide them with a debt free budget, healthy ecosystem, and inherited systems of justice and nonviolence. Examine the way I am all ages at once and both sexes and all the other distinctions that purport to place us in different categories (this came out in the campaign, as I said throw away the continuum of left and right). In some ways we are the same and in some ways we are different. We want a justice system that treats people fairly, that is, doesn’t hold any category about them against them before a hearing begins. It is important that everyone be treated the same. It would be wrong not to do so. The external, post-human-extinction workings of the world are the same, so interacting with it, plugging into it, is the same, no matter what category

Much of this has been just to say that we act with an idea in mind. Nothing is more practical than to have a reason for what you are doing. The frontier for us it so improve the ideas that drive us, individually and collectively. Movement is possible by appealing to the better parts of it, the better angels of their character, to create a newly composed center with the trust and confidence to in our judgment to call into question previously held notions. Humanity has a lot riding on whether or not we can awaken to a broad and carefully discerned process of self-discovery and that if the truer selves we find will be wise and compassionate enough that we and our posterity can (do well), claim our better self as our actual self. But, paradoxically it’s not all hard work, one component of what we’ll find when we get there is genuine joy, and as a component of that, silliness, playfulness, jest, and whimsy which are freely and spontaneously expressed.

All experiencing is felt as yukyum, our viewtolls are felt as yukyum..

All interactions are unique so all of our viewtools are unique, we will all have our own nuanced perspectives, including that of the ideal. At the same time we are, of course, free to adopt whatever appeals to us and general overlap frequently happens, and a broad sense of the ideal can take hold. If that ideal is process-oriented, and is intelligent enough to recognize that humans are not perfect, it can in fact be ours in our lifetime. When we internalize an ideal, we come to possess it. In our view, we become more ideal.

If humanity is to have a bright future, we will need to make further progress in understanding what we are…and this is quite doable. Fortunately, it is an engaging task. C’mon, let’s make the effort.

Possible ending : The world we want to live in, the way we want things to be, must be imagined, articulated, and communicated to be enacted. It has been my objective in these words to further this end.

Tilda Swinton:  I’m always fascinated by the way in which society encourages us to decide on an identity, like nail it into place and stick to it and don’t veer off the track.”

Maybe we should follow Dewey’s notion of forming a public of all humanity as the Committee of the Whole to address the problems that we all face together, eg environmental degradation. Do we have the power to force people to comply? Do we raise taxes? Maybe we start out as purely voluntary, donations only, but conduct ourselves in a way that earns people’s trust, so that we can evolve into an entity that is given the means to be effective. We generally do not need to be compelled to do good (think of KDHX dj’s).

70 in an unwillingness to surrender two ideas formulated in conditions which both intellectually and practically were very different from those in which we now live. These two ideas, to repeat, are that knowledge is concerned with disclosure of the characteristics of antecedent existences and essences, and that the properties of value found therein provide the authoritative standards for the conduct of life. (He’s right again, and this is very, very important. This keeps us from thinking we are capable of what we actually need to do.)

Dewey says that experience is double barreled, it can be viewed either as a quality to be enjoyed in its culmination (perched) or as a means for an aim (flight). If it is enjoyed for its quality, aren’t we getting close to accepting it as a priori? Not if what we mean by a priori is that it dictates to us from outside us, sets a standard for us without our participation. All things have qualities that are felt, if we wish to stop to smell the roses it does not mean that we assign to them or to our experience of them an isolated detachment of nature’s flowing relationships. 97 The remarkable difference between the attitude which accepts the objects of ordinary perception, use and enjoyment, as culminations of natural processes, and that which take them as starting-points for reflection and investigation, is one which reaches far beyond the technicalities of science. It marks a revolution in the whole spirit of life, in the entire attitude taken toward whatever is found in existence…Nature as it exists at any particular time is a challenge, rather than a completion; it provides possible starting-points and opportunities rather than final ends. 98 There is nothing which a scientific mind would more regret than reaching a condition in which there were no more problems. That state would be the death of science, not its perfected life.

What was I really asking my students when I said to ask themselves if their answer made sense? Maybe this is all we can really ask of the “scientific method”. (I guess the answer is that a notion under consideration or an interpretation of consequences is harmonious with what we already “know” about the relationships of the world.)

100 Experimental knowledge is a mode of doing, and like all doing takes place at a time, in a place, and under specifiable conditions in connection with a definite problem.

118 Inquiry proceeds by reflection, by thinking; but not, most decidedly, by thinking as conceived in the old tradition, as something cooped up within “mind”. For experimental inquiry or thinking signifies directed activity, doing something which varies the conditions under which objects are observed and directly had and by instituting new arrangements among them.

130 For purposes except that of general and extensive translation of one conception into another, it does not follow that the “scientific” way is the best way of thinking an affair….131 There is something both ridiculous and disconcerting in the way men have let themselves be imposed upon, so as to infer that scientific ways of thinking of objects give the inner reality of things, and that they put a mark of spuriousness upon all other ways of thinking of them, and of perceiving and enjoying them.

123 mass varies with velocity   With the surrender of unchangeable substances having properties fixed in isolation and unaffected by interactions, must go the notion that certainty is by attachment to fixed objects with fixed characters. For not only are no such objects found to exist, but the very nature of experimental method, namely, definition by operations that are interactions, implies that such things are not capable of being known. Henceforth the quest for certainty becomes the search for methods of control; that is, regulation of conditions of change with respect to their consequences.

196 The quest for certainty by means of exact possession in mind of immutable reality is exchanged for search for security by means of active control of the changing course of events. Intelligence in operation, another name for method, becomes the thing most worth winning.

132 The disconcerting aspect of the situation resides in the difficulty with which mankind throws off beliefs that have become habitual. The test of ideas, of thinking generally, is found in the consequences of the acts to which the ideas lead, (this is almost identical to saying that the question is always the same: what to do? We approach this question by consideration of what our doing will mean, a projection, always in the running moment, of the most likely consequences, and a good way to be accurate is to base the projection on experienced trajectories.) that is, in the new arrangements of things which are brought into existence. Such is the unequivocal evidence as to the worth of ideas which is derived from observing their position and role in experimental knowing. But tradition makes the tests of ideas to be their agreement with some antecedent state of things. This change of outlook and standard from what precedes to what comes after, from the retrospective to the prospective, from antecedents to consequences, is extremely hard to accomplish. Hence when the physical sciences describe object and the world as being such an such, it is though that the description is of reality as it exists in itself. Since all value-traits are lacking in objects as science presents them to us, it is assumed that Reality has not such characteristics…The authority of thought depends upon what it leads us to through directing the performance of operations.

133 Idealistic philosophies have not been wrong in attaching vast importance to ideas. But in isolating their function and their test from action, they failed to grasp the point and place where ideas have a constructive office. A genuine idealism and one compatible with science will emerge as soon as philosophy accepts the teaching of science that ideas are statements not of what is or what has been but of acts to be performed.

271 the solution cannot be found in “thought” alone, it can be furthered by thinking which is operative – which frames and defines ideas in terms of what may be done, and which used the conclusions of science as instrumentalities. William James was well within the bounds of moderation when he said that looking forward instead of backward, looking to what the world and life might become instead of to what they have been, is an alteration in the “seat of authority”. (Perhaps because it puts the power in our hands, when we address the questions that is always the same, namely, what should we do?, we are recognizing in ourselves that we are the authors of our actions, not some antecedent authority.)

Ending? When you understand something, it tends to have an effect on how you act. This is our great promise, that we can improve the way we see things, and act accordingly.

Self

We should take our best, most effective thinking and apply the focus to ourselves. What are we? We are mammals that have purpose, desire, aspirations, frustrations, etc. Compared to others species, we have gained a significant ability to shape the environment that we interact with, thus forming our lives deliberately. We are the moving interaction between the environment which we have had a hand in selecting and our biological heritage. Our environment can be viewed as churning, transformative energy. So, energy can have flavor? Energy can have yuk and yum? We have knowledge at our disposal.

Walden: Reading

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.

Math problem solving strategies as a list of viewtools:

https://www.google.com/search?q=math+problem+solving+strategies&espv=2&biw=1680&bih=881&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=W3KiVcmNCZC2ogT5i7xA&ved=0CCkQsAQ#imgrc=w1TuZnFe5fK4nM%3A

Though consciousness is one flowing event of relationships ( or at least, that’s how we know it), both with our non-body environment and with our consideration of our past and our projected future, our worldview allows us to vary the modes we want to be in. We can be in nirvana mode or in construction mode, perching and flight. One of our modes is attending to the consequences of our actions. It makes operational sense for us to consider if we were right about something. Our experience tells us that we are more effective when we do so. In fact, we have learned to assign authority to the way things really turn out. We have the expressions “we’ll see”, and “Show me” as they like to say in Missouri. Another seeks new vistas through discovery and liberation, such as attending a concert or a play or meeting a friend. We can place our perspective at our choosing, and vary between them at will.

Evident: late 14c., from L. evidentem (nom. evidens) "perceptible, clear, obvious," from ex- "fully, out of" + videntem (nom. videns), prp. of videre "to see" (see vision).

ate 13c., "something seen in the imagination or in the supernatural," from Anglo-Fr. visioun, O.Fr. vision, from L. visionem (nom. visio) "act of seeing, sight, thing seen," from pp. stem of videre "to see," from PIE base *weid- "to know, to see" (cf. Skt. veda "I know;" Avestan vaeda "I know;" Gk. oida, Doric woida "I know," idein "to see;" O.Ir. fis "vision," find "white," i.e. "clearly seen," fiuss "knowledge;" Welsh gwyn, Gaulish vindos, Breton gwenn "white;" Goth., O.Swed., O.E. witan "to know;" Goth. weitan "to see;" Eng. wise, Ger. wissen "to know;" Lith. vysti "to see;" Bulg. vidya "I see;" Pol. widzieć "to see," wiedzieć "to know;" Rus. videt' "to see," vest' "news," O.Russ. vedat' "to know"). The meaning "sense of sight" is first recorded late 15c. Meaning "statesman-like foresight, political sagacity" is attested from 1926.

It is part of “conscious” experience. I strongly suspect that when I opened the kitchen closet door at certain times of the day, the cats gathered in anticipation of getting food. Connecting a human opening the door with the prospect of food, was a viewtool they used, they knew its import. It was a tool on the road for something they wanted, namely food.

Ensuring peace, sustainability, and a successful economy cannot happen without widespread shared understanding and subsequent action. If articulated through clear-eyed acknowledgment of the actual circumstances and the statement of the series of the steps to be taken based on experience of what can work, provides us with the best chance to provide what the overwhelming majority of people want. The dynamic link between leadership and support has shown itself as the way to get things done. It may seem daunting to mature into achieving these goals given parts of our collective history, but there can be no denying that the overwhelming majority of people would choose the prospects for an individuals life today than at anytime in history, from barbarous edicts, food insecurity, illiteracy, and short life spans, our ancestor have met former challenges and we can meet ours.

1.       War and Peace

Clausewitz wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Each war is different (in part because all experience is unique) with different leader/support viewpoint dynamisms flowing on all sides and within all sides. Dewey chronicles some of the classic reasons. Large mistakes can be made with large regrets, leaders wishing they would have had better information or, if they’re honest,  wishing they would have looked at things differently. All of us trying to contribute to improving public policy should realize that there is no more important challenge than avoiding war. Such as not looking at prior consequences, ie history. When we do look at war we see the yum of Somme’s whiskers as a factor in some leader/supporter dynamisms, supporters wishing they would have questioned authority.

John: we have needs to be met (ok, but be very careful here), they are propelling, for example, we need to be comfortable with ourselves and if our peers think of us as timid and weak, we may act to show them and ourselves what we’d like to think about ourselves (youth caught up in African violence)

The consequences are compared to the iuri consensus juri, or the

We have seen the way it works, we have experience with the monopoly of violence. But that is not to say that it is simple, and there are obviously problems and risks with making it a sole reliance. We need vehicles for good hearted and intelligent people to rise up and solve problems before war is even considered. We need our writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers to offer their viewpoints, preferably over the spectrum and entirety of life’s experiences. To the extent they strike deep chords, they might resonate for all people, in all locations. But we need more than the select few, the more people that work for peace, raise their kids with a clear-eyed view of the history and horrors of war, the less chance we’ll stuck in the vortex…

Where do we put our allegiance, to ideas we care about? to principals, tenets? Does it affect our actions, ie support? What do we acquiesce to? How bad would things have to get before we actually did something, what would we do?

A Identity

b Let’s show some advancement on how we form our ethics and not be swayed by hot-head egomaniacs who want power and will tell us anything to stir attention them, including telling us how bad some other group is, eg Hitler criticizing the Jews. When we mature, like after we’ve graduated, we are inclined to claim that new ground in our measurement of ourselves, to have confidence in ourselves.

C All other things being equal, wouldn’t it be preferable if we were good to all people, not just some?

2.       Sustainment, the word involves time. Nature, as the Chinese use the concept means that it can go on its own (with no help from us), but this may suggest that humans are not part of nature. How every much I enjoy the wonder of the non-built environment, I am not only in favor of protecting wilderness, I want life to go on, ours in particular, but all of it as well. Of course, wilderness areas are supportive of sustainability. We should not undermine what supports us, so that breathing air is healthy. It is unethical to damage the earth’s sustaining processes in a way that those of ours and other species coming after us have diminished conditions. I have no more deep and extensive yum than for a future that includes care of Allow the worldself concept to run its course, that is, allow it to force other notions, eg nature, mind, to come to it rather than vice versa. In damaging the world, I am damaging myself. In damaging the well-being of untold future generations, I must bear the weight of what I am doing – once I realize it. Riding around in my automobile with no particular place to go. What if it’s an electric, driverless vehicle powered by solar? That is, very little contribution to climate change? Why live small? For the happiness it brings OR for the reduction in damage it causes? I don’t want to be small. I want the fullness of all that being human has to offer, I want to be comprehensive in my experiences. And it is essential that I be the one to decide what life I live, that the choices be mine, all the better if I make the choices with full awareness of my options with their consequences or even dare to create new options that seem right to me. Fortunately, I have lived in places where this full exercise has been within the law, well, other than intentionally inhaling the smoke from burning leaves in the 1970’s. I am sure I can do this with much less addition to landfills than manufacturers and advertisers would like to see from me. As much as I like to travel, now that I see the imperative of reducing my carbon footprint, I bend my actions to participate in the larger whole. I suspect that in the not too distant future we will be able to generate electricity sustainably, and more freedom of movement will become available again. Humanity and all of its accomplishments, towards knowledge, justice, and in the arts, is dependent in the long run on physical processes of the planet of which we are one evolved expression. We jeopardize all if we alter these processes away from what we and other species are evolved to tolerate. One example is the harmful ultra-violet radiation coming from the sun that the ozone layer guards against. Fortunately, our ability to damage the ozone layer with CFC’s was matched by our ability to understand the harmful effects of radiation and the ozone’s physical properties is sifting/blocking radiation. We made the laws that reduced the harm we were doing and averted serious consequences. <= specify consequences? Of course one of the reasons we were able to act so successfully is that not that many people had to change their behavior, just the microscopic number of people who were leading administrators and engineers at refrigerant companies and aerosol makers worldwide. Climate change and protection of biodiversity will involve an incredibly greater number of people who will have to change their ways. The viewtools function as a picture of how things could unfold going forward if the perception guided action. We are able to project and examine alternative courses. Here are some of the ways viewtools can function: By using the worldself, it is not someone else who must relocate from a drought-ridden part of the world, it is part of ourselves and are legacy. It is we who must leave the coastline for higher ground in Bangladesh, southern Florida, Pacific Islands, and many other places of forced removal. It is we, seen in the place of the future generation we are affecting, who must find a way to survive fierce storms. We can apply our hindsight to the methods of science, We have seen what happens when we take measurements, and examine the patterns. Applied to the ice cores, etc. More than one thing being true, multiple variables in climate change and the loss of biodiversity.

3.       Go down the stem of the Y, that’s where I can be valuable. What is the subject under consideration? Maybe even before that, am I sure we need another subject when we already have so many other irons in the fire? Getting a living, making money, is a problem or a puzzle that is a huge activity of humans around the planet. If we understood it, with all we can muster in a comprehensive way, including clarifying our goals in the first place, could we do a better job of getting a living?

Staying alive, having a mental state of security regarding my metabolism. Could there be any value in restricting economics (or whatever word you want to use) to this sense?

One way to look at economics is through of all things, Mr. Smith, value. We determine how much we want something. We then know how much value we must give someone (assuming only that the other person will want an equal exchange). We then try to find someone who agrees on the price and give them that same value, by say marrying their daughter, or painting their garage, or doing something else that has equal value in their eyes, maybe a bag of grain. Or the person we are exchanging with wants a bigger bag of grain, or two bags. Value can be quantified and stored, and we can have the convenience of not hauling the bags with us everywhere, instead using money to stand in the place of the value.

Then there is the value of the commonwealth and the value of the ubuntu love. We need to sort this out and articulate it.

Where does economics end? Does it have anything to do with how we determine what contributes to our well-being? If we decide we don’t value something anymore, it’s price goes down.

Clearly, people want possession of enough stored value that other people’s actions will unfold for them in a certain way. Say, someone will do their taxes for them, or mow their lawn, or serve them food.

Justice, Equality suggest a concern for well-being

Exchange of value.

To know how to attain our own well-being and bring it into being, not listen to what the advertisers tell us will make us happy.

Dignity or respect that comes from work, even if it is a self-assessment of a job well done. Apply to the important self-assessment of how we have done at the job of our life.

Discover mechanism’s for deciding what to do and executing it. How do we use our resources, that is, the people’s ability and willingness to do good? Leaders should live the example, and then not shrink from inspection of their lives that comes with leadership.

How do we get leaders? What is the sieve to leadership to work for peace in the above paragraph? Freedom of expression would seem to be a prerequisite.

In Summary

We have at our disposal ideas to help us address whatever is before us. These ideas function as tools, and I have tried to supply tools for you to judge their worthiness.

We are already acting, we already have a sphere of control of our own actions. It is almost impossible to act with no idea whatsoever of our purpose. A great deal of the improvement to be made comes from examining the worth of our existing views and throwing off assumptions we complacently accepted long ago. We will be more inclined to see the value in the effort if we are presented with improved viewpoints.

To have a solid identity that functions in the context of our environment, we need to have worldviews. To have worldviews that hold up, we need to have a view of knowledge that holds up. Worldviews are viewtools that act as tenets that we can trust to the extent we have questioned them, examined them, and seen the consequences of putting them into action. 

To address the problem of war, our viewtools affect our support or allegiances – the source of power.

To address the problem of sustainability our viewtools…

To address our economic problems our viewtools…

Why write this? I want us to grow.

This essay is a description of what I think would be helpful, perhaps even most helpful to humanity facing its challenges. Being a description, it is not a narrative, it doesn’t have characters, and lacks the yuk and yum of a good story. It can be helpful, but has this limitation. It asks my audience to be patient and then thoughtful, its appeal is more to those who love learning, and maybe not the broader public.