Redbook

I have a sneaking hunch that maybe I am not going to get that much “progress” going on my Tarot/Qabalah research for a while yet.  The sun is out, and the weather is fine.  Progress is difficult during these conditions.

But during the frequent walks necessitated by the weather, it does give me time to ponder just what the progress is I have made and how that ties into the long-term program.  What I have come up with is that maybe I have put the cart in front of the horse to a certain degree.

When you look back in the archives of this blog, you will see that for more than a couple of years, I cast a I Ching hexagram every day with the thought in mind, “what should I watch out for today”.  

I just looked at the notebook where I kept the results where I did this almost daily from 2017 to 2023.  Overall, the effort was worth it, but after a while, I started realizing that the results were not all that satisfying.  I still consider the I Ching to be a valid and useful tool to get what you are trying for, but perhaps it is not exactly right for me or in fact what I am trying for.

Strict materialists will probably not understand where I am coming from here, but my feeling is that the “randomness” seen in our world and highlighted by the I Ching and the Tarot and other methods of accounting this randomness is a way for me to figure out the nature of the world and how my brain processes the information the world provides me.

It was the first time Daniel had ever seen the Doctor show annoyance. “I am a philosopher, not a watchmaker. The philosophickal problems associated with the Arithmetickal Engine have already been solved…I have found my way out of that labyrinth.”

“That reminds me of something you said on your first day in London, Doctor. You mentioned that the question of free will versus predestination is one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What, pray tell, is the other?”

“The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space? Euclid assures us that we can divide any distance in half, and then subdivide each of them into smaller halves, and so on, ad infinitum. Easy to say, but difficult to understand…”

QUICKSILVER. Copyright © 2003 by Neal Stephenson.

I suppose that I am fortunate to have a friend who is taking the time and effort to work on the “composition of the continuum”, even if he is working at it from an unusual point of view (the “hard” problem).  

I think that the problem of free will versus predestination is the more interesting problem from my perspective.   But again, even in the simple action of choosing one of the two entrances into the labyrinth, one is choosing a fundamental way of thinking and a specific set of of preconditions in order to even begin working on the problems

Now, I just want to make certain that everyone who drops by here understands that I am in no way certain that there is a right or wrong way to approach the problem…..both methods lead into the labyrinth and once inside, no one knows the path.  

Coming in through the composition gate is more of a materialist view.  “That’s a fucking tree” is about as materialist a statement as one could ever hope for.  I also think that this is the more difficult route (which is why I am pleased that someone else has taken it up) because not only do you have to solve the hard problem of the consciousness, but I have a sneaking hunch that solving the hard problem of consciousness will require a separate solution to the hard problem of matter.

So I am plowing cluelessly into the labyrinth through the other entrance, I am not all that prepared to address the problem fully and a lot of my time is taken now by figuring out just how huge my ignorance is.  While I am glad that the “Composition” problem is being handled by others, but I am coming to the conclusion that there are just as many intellectual land-mines in the path that I have chosen.

The big problem that I will be facing is the super-thorny, super contentious problem concerning the existence of the soul.  There are a shitpot of folks out there who will be sneering and mocking the idea that I take such an outdated idea seriously, but there is no proof either way as to whether such a thing exists or not.  

Now, if you think that this is going to turn into a homily for a “christian” or a “monotheist” god and that religion as we know it here in the land o’ the free is moral and correct in thought and deed, I am taking this time right now to disabuse you of that preconception.  I rejected christianity and especially the capitalist-based christianity prevalent here in the US a long time ago.  

But since nearly every culture in the world seems to have a concept of “soul”, I tend to think that going into the labyrinth from this entrance might just work.  Now this doesn’t mean that I am going to find my way through the labyrinth and get to the promised land of guruship, it just means that I think that I might have a better chance coming at it this way rather than the way of the continnum.

What I am trying to address is the simple idea that the reasons for the existence of the different entries to the labyrinth is due to a faulty and/or incomplete understanding of the way that the “mind” or the “self” or “consciousness” or “soul” is described/defined.  Coming after the problem requires that you adopt a set of postulates either way.  

But how to begin to address navigating the maze is where I am right now.  So the next week or so is going to be plowing through Carl Jung’s “Red Book”.  This might offend some out there, as Jung is as passe as anyone in the Academy and, even worse, he might even be a bit of a mystic.

But truthfully, the reason that I am working through the issues of outlining the problems right now is that, by selecting the nature of free will, the studies involved in with my choice to pursue the Taro will become more usefult.  I am going after the esoteric and mystical approach to the problem because, simply put, the mainstream philosophical and scientific/materialist worldview is how we got the point in the world we are at now.  I hate to use the latest and greatest buzzwords, we are facing what has every indication of being a worsening polycrisis.  In other words, it looks to me like the world is in a bad place and is looking to get worse.  Truthfully, I think that my descendents will rightfully despise where we landed them.

So, at the end of the day, the reason that I am entering the labyrinth the way that I am is that, in my opinion, the scientific/rational approach seems to be failing.  That being said, starting the approach using that as a set of intellectual lenses seems to me to be be doomed from the get-go.