Posts by jst2laws

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Hello again Didier,

The intuitive idea of "events" happening to "things" is completely artificial, we know it, still we haven't (yet?) developed the linguistical and conceptual tools to dispense with it -- although some literary "cases" like Kafka and Borges insistently point to that possibility. Will it be the next collective "step"?

We seem to be speaking philosophically about the same thing. The catch is that the reality found inside the atom forces it's leading researchers to sound like philosophers. It's not a choice they make. There are simply no words to describe nor familiar concepts to relate their finds to that gives us a handle on this quantum stuff. The electron/nucleus planetary illustration is an example of how trying to describe it actually misleads the listeners.

Have a great week-end, all

Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Six,

Thanks for the welcome, and the lipstick smudges.

Thinking for instance, about solid steel, in past years, I knew little personally about the chemical makeup of steel, but I knew it was solid. Common sense and observation told me it could be melted, and seem less solid.

What you are observing is only a change of state, not a chemical change to a different element. None of the physical states (solid, liquid or gaseous) change the fact that the atom has the same number of given subatomic particles in the same arrangement. To change the number of electrons, protons will change the chemical make up and it will no longer be steel, but it will still be what we refer to as 'solid'. The solidity comes not from the stuff in the atom but is an impenetrability that experience due to the strong electro/magnetic force that keeps our atoms (tip of our fingers) from encroaching on the space of the steel atom. Actually the space inside the steel atom is 99.9995 % empty by our sense of what we think of as empty (it is actually filled, apparently, with unmeasurable energy of the ZPF)

So think about that, by every measure we use in our macro world the atom is almost completely empty and yet what fills the small .0005% that we say is NOT empty is only a couple of waves of energy that we can measure but when we do the change state, into a particle. Nothing there but a little bit of organized energy, and yet these atoms are the combinations of events that make up a pound of steel that to us is solid, heavy and so totally real it can be formed into a hammer that hits me in the head, as Terry says. Yes, that is real, but it's composition and why it seems solid to me is almost spooky. As I have said, this makes reality all the more wonderous to me, not less real.

Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Hello Tophat,

What strange discoveries?

Everything we experience is actually a wave, traveling and behaving as a wave until something, usually us interacting with them, causes the particle/wave collapse. Particles pop in and out of existence unexplainably, and like the quantum leap of energies, we do not know where these wave/particles go between these jumps. There is a Zero Point Field that should have no energy in it yet it seems to be boiling with energy at zero degrees. We could talk at length about the Bells inequalities being proven by John Aspect that demolished Einstein's objections to QM. It proved that entangled particles do communicate/interact somehow while moving away from each other at twice the speed of light, which by laws of classical physics is impossible. Neils Bohr answered Albert E's objections and probably accurately explained the phenomena 50 years before Aspect proved it: "They don't have to communicate. They are connected". Even worse is the 'delayed choice' experiment where the observer unfailingly predicts which screen a photon will show up on defying the law of large numbers. Even the concept of electrons orbiting a nucleus is a mental construct trying to explain what is happening, all the while we know they probably do NOT orbit, and they are NOT little 'things' but rather events, We do not even know what mass is. We do suspect it is a form of kenitic energy but why we perceive it the way we do defies science. Chaos rules in the atom and yet it is overall steady and makes up are reality we wake up to each day. That' s just a start. Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Terry,

Remember how our old friend the WT used to take a piece of a quote and building an argument against the out of context quote? Yes, I said "THERE IS NOTHING SOLID ANYWHERE." It seems solid to us because, as I continued:

We simply perceive (interpret) it to be solid. It IS our experience that it is solid and that makes it real to us.

Why, considering the facts is it '"downright silly to say "THERE IS NOTHING SOLID ANYWHERE." Just silly!" as you say.

Like different levels of consciousness, which may be the problem we are having here, we are talking about different levels of the physical world that make up our reality. A human body is made up of many organs, made up of different tissues, made of different cells made of different molicules made of different atoms. But when we go lower than that level EVERYTHING CHANGES. Even the rules that govern their behavior. No more classical (Newtonian) physics, no more matter as we know it. Just E=MC squared. If this change took place at the organ or even the tissue level you would not be able to avoid it. All things are made of atoms and atoms are made of NON-stuff, it is NOT solid in any way.

Our eyes see patterns of photons emited from or reflected off the atoms of what we know as 'objects', the eye converts these Waves to electro/chemical messages and sends them to the brain. The brain INTERPRETS these signals into an IMAGE of something that we think of as REAL. Yes, it IS REAL because it is our human sensory experience of what is happening, the only way we can experience it at this point.

Yes, it has to do with language, because we touch what has mass (in our world of perception) and we do not fall into the empty space of the atoms (only because of the electro/mag force) and we assign a word (language) to describe that reality: "solid". Yet, contrary to our macro experience, it is actually as 'hard' as a holograph. We are simply talking about the difference in our space/time experience and the non space/time components that give us this experience. The only way we can avoid this quandary is to ignore the science of quantum physics and close our eyes to the strange discoveries raising questions about our reality and what comprises it.

Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Terry

You are confusing language with the reality.

Perhaps, but on a deeper level we all tend to confuse the energy (waves) that our mind interprets to be auditory and visual as the reality. We see things, we hear things and this makes up our reality. The key there is "makes up". What we see and what we hear are not comprised of sound or by things out there that we think we see. Over one hundred years ago we thought there was solid 'stuff' inside the atom. THERE IS NOTHING SOLID ANYWHERE. We simply perceive (interpret) it to be solid. It IS our experience that it is solid and that makes it real to us. That is good enough for most people. But isn't it fun to dig deeper to see what things are made of only to find the components do not remotely resemble what they make up. It makes it all the more awesome to me. LT

I smile at this fact every time I see discussions such as we have on this thread. Whether an individual is a rationalist, materialist, believer, evolutionist, etc., etc.; we all bring our biases to the table to discuss.

Yeah, but add to the list monistic idealist. At least it fits the findings of QM. Auldsoul Thanks for the hugs, man. But no more blowing kisses, OK? Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Narcissos and Terry,

By this definition (which may be debated, admittedly, I use it conventionally), the WT doctrine strikes me as highly (not perfectly) rational. An answer to each question, optimal imaginary consistency, avoidance of paradoxes, mysteries and formal contradictions, ubiquitous either-or and tertium non datur formulae. Rational, but wrong. I have not forsaken this kind of rationality since. I have entered fresh data for it to process, and I welcome more. But from this experience (which is a part of the data) I also learnt that a reasonably working rationality can yield wrong results, depending on the available (or chosen) input. More importantly perhaps, I learnt that not everything, and especially not what I most enjoy, can be backed up rationally. So I accept being only partly rational, iow, being also consciously irrational.

If I may put these thoughts back into the context of what I originally referred to as levels of consciousness: The differences in the mythic level (or color as some prefer) of consciousness and the rational level of consciousness do not exclude rationality from the former nor myth from the later. It is the level, state or color of our way of looking at things. What was not rational about our WT experience is not that the arguments of the WT were totally irrational, but that we set aside rationality in choosing what data to include and who to trust for accurate information. Believing the GB spoke for God was a myth. Those in the mythical level WANT to believe God speaks to them and will trust the message without question. When we begin to question the message we are at least becoming more rational about the source of truth. We, at least some of us, irrationally swallowed a lot of concepts without even testing them for rationality. When we finally did test them we had to dispel a myth from our belief system, that the WT was God's spokesman. But people in the mythic level in any religion must eventually question the same regarding their belief system and the source of truth whether it is the Torah, Koran or Dianetics. STeve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Hello Jeff,

there were caveat-comments that perhaps some of it 'we weren't ready for yet'. That statement proved to be true - but now I could read any of those materials with much clearer vision than at the time. I had begun to break the filter - but was 'blinded by the light' [wasn't that a song?] for a time.

Yes, that is a good example. Shortly after I tested the WT literature rationally for logical integrity I did the same with the Bible. One of the first books in this part of my journey was Rescuing the Bible form Fundamentalist by Rev Sprong. I WAS NOT READY for it. I was offended and put it away. but after learning more and growing more, I picked it up 8 months later and it made perfect sense. This is a process that occurs only if one is willing to challenge their belief system and open mindedly consider difference. And even then it must come in steps or stages that we can handle.

Good to see you Jeff. We will have to talk some time.

Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

JamesThomas,

Good to see you here too.

When I was a JW,. . . . I only allowed in those things which supported and sustained "me".
May I suggest that there is no real evolution or arising to higher consciousness, so much as removing or seeing through, what blinds us; which amounts to everything we believe "self" and universe to be.

As humans with perception limitations from the womb to the grave, we seem to go through a gradual process of improving our thinking ability and broaden our world view. As you noted, you "only allowed in those things which supported and sustained you". Data and experience that did not support your world view was either consciously thrown out or unconsciously dismissed. But why? Were we less honest with ourselves in the past or did something change that made it possible to 'remove or see through what blinded us'?

What you point out, a new perception of "self" and the universe, is the inevitable outcome of the progression and what many arrive at serendipitously through a study of quantum physics. The closer you look at stuff, the less it looks like stuff.

Always good to have your participation.

Steve

123

Out of Mythic into Rational consciousness, the EX-JW Journey

by jst2laws in

i have been absent much for almost a year, reading, learning and breaking out of boxes, figuratively.

i'm hoping that sharing some thoughts and asking some questions might be fun, and maybe helpful for a few.

have you wondered how two people can look at the same information, go through the same experience as you, perhaps even be party to the same conversation yet come away with an entirely different perception?

jst2laws

Auldsoul,

Are you energy only? I think not. You are an Auldsoul, much more than mindless energy. Are you not what we associate with "mind": THOUGHT! At least? . . .

Seriously, physicist lump forces (what they define as energy at work) into their world of physics (STUFF) just because it ACTS on stuff. I'm wondering philosophically if this is where quantum physics will eventually have to separate itself from the study of stuff (objective reality) and face the fact that energy is actually beyond our space/time continuum. Perhaps it should be the beginning of a new science that acknowledges that philosophical/spiritual/metaphysical/non-local effects are already an accepted part of our reality. Yeah, this is what makes HS puke. But I'm going to get to a response for you, if you are still there.

JamesThomas,

I'm working on a response for you too but I have to go to a meeting (NO, NOT AT THE KH). I will get back later this evening, I hope.

Steve

28

Posting elders names involved in your dismissal

by Tyrone van leyen in

jw
friends

i have been reluctant to post my bio because when i wrote it, i was angry.

it's not that bad although a little long.

the one thing thats stopping me is i have posted their names on it.

jst2laws

Tyrone,

You already have some good reasons for not posting names. Go with that.

And your right about anger. You came by it legitimately. But use caution when emotional.

Steve, a former elder who regrets much