State of the Art Psychic Musings by HKCavalier

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

State of the Art Psychic Musings

POSTED BY: HKCAVALIER
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 20:14
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Wednesday, December 14, 2005 8:58 AM

Hey everyone,

I've been travelling the cyber-highways and by-ways discussing psychic phenomena and trying out various arguments and models and such and I felt it was time to come back to my Firefly home and share with you some thoughts.

A friend on another board asked me the following question:

Quote:
What if the conceptual and cognitive faculty also came as part of a new kind of sense organ that is still in evolutionary development? That means that it would receive input from a part of reality that is not accessed by the traditional senses.

A new kind of sense organ...hrm. Seems to me that in order for the body to reorganize itself so conclusively as to give rise to a whole new organ, it would require some kind of survival necessity to do so. There would have to be some revolutionary new factor in human survival to account for it. Perhaps, in your science fiction story human beings could colonize another planet and something there would change our needs so drastically that the body would have to overhaul its sensory make-up.

Let's play "what if" in the other direction, though. Thinking about what might be, always puts me in mind of how things begin. Let's think about the evolution of the fab five in the first place. What's so useful about any of the five senses in their most primitive incarnation that nature would select for enhancing and refining them to their present state of sophistication? What decisive advantage does the vaguely photosensitive creature have over the totally blind? How would the mere notion that there was "something over there somewhere, maybe" greatly improve the lot of the primitive organism? I'm thinking about "light," but this question applies to other senses as well--some utterly vague odor or something that might be some kind of sound, supposing the primitive brain were somehow able to conceptualize a meaningful difference between barely perceived sound and soundlessness. I mean, there's the problem right there: how do you evolve a sense of hearing, say, without first conceptualizing "sound" as something worth sensing?

Of course this line of reasoning traditionally takes us in the direction of (god help us) intelligent design, but let's not go there--please! Here's where I'd rather take this: what if awareness had a primal sensory capacity built in? Philosophically, what if awareness stands in need of something to be aware of? What if the fact of simply being alive implied that there is a world outside of the self? What if all perception began on this conceptual level and awareness was a kind of pull, like gravity (and just as mysterious), toward the sensible world? What if this innate "knowledge" that there was "something out there" drove the evolutionary process? In short, what if awareness were a drive, like sex or hunger?

Put another way, what if this connection between raw awareness and the sensible world were a force like gravity? As gravity pulls the physical body, so the sensible world would pull awareness. Just as the body creates complex structures of bones and muscles, peristalsis and blood pressure in reaction to gravity, so the primal organism would create complex structures to bring this raw awareness into sharper and sharper focus over millennia. What if awareness preceded its organization into five senses? What if the five senses were not the source of our awareness, but simply the way we manage it?

Touch of course would seem like a natural development of even the most primitive organism. From this a creature gains a sense of movement, of collision, of presence. But if awareness is a drive, the motive force behind the senses, then even our most primitive awareness would have important implications. What if the evolutionary process had, therefore, a predictive faculty? What if our selfish genes, could extrapolate mutation beyond a specific slight shift? In that case, the first photosensitive cell in a creature's body could be extrapolated to something that would give the organism greater awareness of its environment and the "awareness drive" would push (pull?) the organism in that direction.

Okay. Now, here we are several billion years later with five senses. But what of the awareness drive? What of the primitive predictive capacity of awareness itself? Well, if we look, we could say that examples are all around us in nature: the instantaneous schooling behavior of fish, the ability of migratory birds to travel thousands of miles unerringly without the benefit of sight or hearing easily could be accounted for by a highly sophisticated awareness drive.

Animals perform amazing feats so regularly and effortlessly we don't even think to question how (some of you will remember my examples from a few months ago, haven't come up with anything that illustrates my point better). How do deer run at full gallop through thick forest, often in absolute terror for their lives without running into trees or even tripping, when even one such injury would be enough to cripple an animal? And how do they move so noiselessly without spending the whole time staring at the ground ahead of them? Is sight the best way to predict the solidness of the ground ahead, anyway? Of the five senses, sight is the only way to encounter contour at a distance, but woefully inadequate as a measure of thickness and solidity. Do deer echo locate? Squirrels judge distances all day long with similar accuracy. If this were merely inhuman athletic ability, wouldn't all aging squirrels eventually fail a jump? Wouldn't all squirrels die from falls, and the woodland floor be littered over the years with dead squirrels?

So okay, if there were such a cockamamie thing as an "awareness drive," what happened to this faculty in humans? Why don't we all have this capacity? Why isn't the awareness drive as strong in humans as our sex drive or our need for food?

Well, let's say that all these drives exist to improve our survival; so, what if our survival no longer depended upon awareness? What if humans had moved beyond normal evolution and so evolved beyond awareness as a need? A more primitive creature's awareness of the world around it is the key to its survival. What if modern man's ability to manipulate his environment were to replace awareness as the guarantor of survival?

The efficacy of and need for an awareness drive presupposes many and constant unknowns that directly and grossly affect the organism's viability. For most creatures on this earth, there are thousands of transactions with their environments which they must "get right" on the first try or parish. But we humans have created so many alternatives and back-up plans through agriculture, technology, and medicine, that there is very little in our existence that we have to get right the first time or even the tenth. Our bodies have obviously retreated from direct importance in our survival (hence our clawlessness and fanglessness; our relative physical ineptitude when compared even to the common house cat). What if our raw awareness, in the form of the "awareness drive" were similarly to have atrophied? Insulation from every form of weather, an utter absence of predators and the absolute assurance of finding sustenance at the local Safeway would render the awareness drive obsolete.

We can see the consequences of our evolutionarily weakened physical bodies easily enough, but what would be the consequences of an atrophied "awareness drive?"

The most technologically dependant societies might see a marked decrease in the pursuit of knowledge, many people putting their focus instead into acquiring wealth to better manipulate their environment; the great majority of people in a society might be grossly ignorant of how anything worked. We tend to think of "self esteem" as a function of our human minds alone, but what if a primitive form of "self esteem" was nascent in a creature's awareness that its actions have effect and that the animal itself therefore, is effective? Technologically advanced societies then would experience a profound crisis of self-esteem.

But how could self-esteem be connected to primitive awareness? We all know the story of the baby elephant that is tied to a post. The baby elephant learns from trial and error that it cannot free itself from the post and stops trying. Later, even when the elephant has grown large enough to uproot whole trees, it doesn't try to escape when tied to the meager post because it has already learned that it can't. "Learned helplessness," we call that. We also know that wild animals in captivity often simply die, many displaying the outward signs of depression in the last months of life. So, by negative example at least, it would seem plausible that a sense of effectiveness, an awareness of being able to meet their needs through direct action exists and is a sign of health in animals.

But what if such an animal were able to devise technology, or were given technology that would prolong its life regardless of its personal effectiveness? What then would become of its "self-esteem?"

Which leads me (maybe not you, but it does me

) to a discussion of the subconscious. No one studies psychology for long without running across the provocative notion that much of what we do and feel happens subconsciously. Objectively speaking, animals are said not to be conscious. But are they then subconscious? Certainly they experience emotions; certainly these emotions are a reaction to some relation between themselves and the world, some awareness.

It is further interesting that something like my "awareness drive" could account for a great many "psi" phenomena. People with such abilities would simply be expressing an atavism, comparable to webbed feet. The vast majority of such "anomalous cognition" would take place entirely at the subconscious level and would, therefore, resist observation and investigation by conventional laboratory study; as a survival mechanism, the awareness drive would tend not to work under controled laboratory conditions, just as it would have shut down nearly completely in the environment created by modern western culture at large. It's likely that the membership of the western scientific establishment would be drawn from populations with the greatest technological advancement, and therefore the greatest remoteness from this awareness. If, as I’m suggesting, the major factor in the loss of this awareness were environmental, then very young children might be expected to experience some aspect of this awareness and lose it as they became more and more subject to their environment. Remnants of this awareness, though lost to modern man, would exist in literature and folklore from the remote past. It would stand to reason that populations having the least contact with modern technological convenience would have a much greater tendency to express atavistic awareness to the point that such cultures might take "psi" phenomena for granted.

Any thoughts?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2005 10:55 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

WOW. That's a lot to think about.

But here are some initial thoughts - the prokaryotes called bacteria to start. They are by far the most successful life form on earth (looking at total mass). Their senses are primitive - mainly chemical. Their actions and responses tend to be literally chemical/physical. For example, they have chemicals on their outsides that will anchor them onto chemicals on an organism's cells (in order to start the colonization/infection process). They will secrete chemicals in response to other chemical signals they receive (biofilm formation, toxin secretion). The pathway from input to response is short and automatic. In the case of conflicting inputs, the stronger input 'wins'. (Some bacteria are also motile, I don't know if they move in response to chemical stimuli, or simply bump along till they contact something they react to.)

On a slightly higher level of organization, like all eukaryotes, singled-celled ones have small organelles in them (mitochondria, plastids like chloroplasts). Some of these organelles are light sensitive, creating another sense (light) besides direct chemical sensing.

Then there are the motile single-celled eukaryotes that definitely move along gradients of light and/or chemicals. They also seem to have a sense of touch - the paramecium will motor along until it bumps into something, then back away.

Multi-celled sponges may have specialized sensing cells (under debate). Organisms like soft corals and jellyfish have a nerve net, but no 'brain'.

The planarium (or planaria, flatworm) is the most-studied multi-celled organism with a primitive cluster of sensing organs in the head - a 'brain' and nervous system.

So the development of varied senses is not necessarily applicable to all life forms. At some point there is simple chemical reaction, and the responses tend to be genetic.

That leaves out the whole question of awareness, which I will need to think about quite a bit more.

Thanks for the interesting post.

Sincerely,
Rue

Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2005 4:56 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
What if humans had moved beyond normal evolution and so evolved beyond awareness as a need? A more primitive creature's awareness of the world around it is the key to its survival. What if modern man's ability to manipulate his environment were to replace awareness as the guarantor of survival?

I'd always taken that as a given, however, your words spread it out for understanding better than mine ever could!

It, of course, goes back to what you said on another thread about removing yourself from this buzzing, electromangnetically charged human bio-mass, and seeing who you were and what you were capable of alone in a forest or on a mountain.

Some things long forgotten can be remembered....

Wow, can you write!!!!!

Chrisisall

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Wednesday, December 14, 2005 6:33 PM

DREAMTROVE

I'm too lazy to read the whole post. it was real long and late, so sorry HK. I did feel I would put in my ignorant two cents though.

The 'telepathic' sensor in ants is just a highly evolved neuron, it's nto particularly different in an 'organ' sort of way.

Also, we do have one, called the Vomero-nasal organ, which takes in pheromones. It operates on the basic mechanism of chemical signature which sends signals to the brain, alters thought processes.

A variety of these might work. For electro-magnetic pulses I think there's a serious problem. There's so much electro-static noise in our environment that you you exceeded the shield of the skull and were able ot send brain signals through the air, I don't see how you would deal with all the noise.

Not just the buff 3.18 earshot problem which is one, but also the infinite random noise of the universe.

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Thursday, December 15, 2005 3:03 PM

RUXTON

HKCavalier,

Man today is at the top of the food chain, and has little need to fear being eaten. However, in many places on this planet, such as deep in the African bush, native Africans still have a good chance of being eaten, say, by lions. So do such persons have a higher-developed sense of being in touch with the subconscious? I think so. In that situation, the native African does seem to have more frequent psychic experiences than, say, New Yorkers, and the African takes them for granted. Many an explorer has remarked on the native bush African's uncanny ability to know where the game is, and to know that danger lies in yonder direction and won't go there, and the like. But of course, Africans are still eaten on occasion....

Another thing I've read was when human predators in, say, New York, are looking for a mark, someone to attack, they pick the easiest marks available, based on the look or aura of the potential mark. In one study, some potential bad guys picked out easy marks, but they all avoided a completely normal-looking and normal-acting guy who was, as it turned out, a former Special Forces guy with vast knowledge of personal self defense. So how did the thugs know to avoid him?

Good post, Cavalier, and I wish I had more time here. Best wishes to all the thoughtful posters on this thread.

.........Ruxton

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Thursday, December 15, 2005 6:29 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
However, in many places on this planet, such as deep in the African bush, native Africans still have a good chance of being eaten, say, by lions.

Natives of central africa are eaten by west africans with a frequency many orders magnitude more commonly than africans are eaten by lions. A million people were eaten over the last decade or so by people, vs. only a handful of scattered cases of people being eaten by predators.

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Thursday, December 15, 2005 11:24 PM

CITIZEN

Studies in parapsychology have shown that hit rates (which are still significantly above chance, sometimes a billion to a trillion to one against) are not effected by electromagnetic shielding nor distance.

Therefore it seems unlikely that 'psi' phenomena are dependent on some classically understood mechanism such as Electro-Magnatism or Pheromones.

This isn't as fantastical as you may think, unless, for instance, you can explain how Quantum entanglement is facillitated by EM or Pheromones

.

My general point is that there's a lot going on in the world that we've observed that we simply don't understand. The funny thing is even though there is LESS evidence to support Quantum Entanglement it is more readilly accepted.

Quote:
Natives of central africa are eaten by west africans with a frequency many orders magnitude more commonly than africans are eaten by lions. A million people were eaten over the last decade or so by people, vs. only a handful of scattered cases of people being eaten by predators.

I'm not sure what your point is here?

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Friday, December 16, 2005 10:23 AM

HKCAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by Ruxton:
So do such persons have a higher-developed sense of being in touch with the subconscious?

Absolutely! There are pockets of this level of awareness throughout the western world as well--you and I, Ruxton, are living proof of this! I think my piece is more a study in western psychology than in metaphysics. I'm trying to describe the reality you and I take for granted in as logical and reductionist a way as possible.

All the same, I believe that to a certain extent psychology is metaphysics (consensus reality, that sort of thing). You see, to my understanding there is a single overarching purpose to all life on earth: namely, the marriage of Spirit and Matter.

(***Woo-woo alert, hardcore materialists proceed with caution***)

At the beginning of time Consciousness decided that Spirit and Matter were to become one and all of history reflects this ongoing project. Everything was going fine until about the time that all the world's major religions cropped up. Apparently, as our Couple was walking down the aisle, Spirit got cold feet and tried to get out of the marriage. So all these major religions started up with the notion that we're all really "spiritual beings" and Matter is just an empty shell or an illusion, not really important at all in the "grand scheme of things."

And what happened then? As history proves again and again, when a spiritual community reaches a certain critical mass of "otherworldliness" Matter gets "mad" and pulls Spirit back down into the mud. We get the dark-ages, we get the conquistadors, we get the holocaust. To the extent that the New Age is really a rehash of anti-materialist propaganda, that movement too will suffer. Spirit and Matter, or if you like, Mind and Body need finally to be integrated and the method chosen by Consciousness for this integration, like it or not, for better or worse, is Science.

Today, we are in the critical last stages (but of course on the scale I'm talking about the "last stages" could last another million years, or it could last another 50, or as few as 7 if you hold with the Mayans). The whole project has boiled down to the agon between our left and right brain hemispheres. The left brain, which holds sway in 3 dimensions will not believe anything it can't prove in the most literal reductionist way possible. The superconscious purpose of science is essentially to find God (or a reasonable facsimile there of). I think that's why there's so much activity of late coming from the skeptic/debunker side of the debate. Subconsciously, these folks are drawn to this subject, deep down they know that this is the most important issue in the universe. But science isn't quite ready to cross the threshold into real knowledge, so they're stuck at the freeway entrance, so to speak, and people stuck in traffic get cranky and start honking their horns.

I've observed that before these folks will accept the existence of a world invisible to modern science, they must accept that such a world might exist. The purpose of my last post is to outline in as rationally grounded a way as possible, the plausibility of this important gap in modern scientistic thought.

Quote:
In one study, some potential bad guys picked out easy marks, but they all avoided a completely normal-looking and normal-acting guy who was, as it turned out, a former Special Forces guy with vast knowledge of personal self defense. So how did the thugs know to avoid him?

In my shamanistic work, I've come across a curious but very consistent phenomenon. The police stand at the boundary between the worlds. Are you familiar with the practice of power-walking as practiced by Native American men of knowledge? Try doing it in a city and the first thing you'll encounter is a police line of some kind. Without fail. There are lines all over any city between the daylight places and the shadow world. Non-whites, drug addicts and criminals tend to live outside the comfy world which the police protect. Anyone with any intuitive awareness at all can sense it, it's the part of town where nice people lock their car doors and most people above a certain income level never ever go except when they want to get drunk or high or when they've lost their minds, maybe gotten in their cars after a particularly nasty fight with a lover and they just drive--suddenly they awaken from their rage trance and realize what part of town they're in.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, December 16, 2005 11:33 AM

CITIZEN

HK:
I think you've got a good point on science, except nobody practices real science. If something falls outside of current scientific doctrine it is not possible. That is scientists don't say its possible but unproven (which is the scientific approach) it is not possible.

Like parapsychology they don't look at the evidence, they don't need to, it conflicts with what they know so it MUST be wrong. To me a lot of modern scientists are more like priests than true scientists.

I'm not against science, btw, just the attitude of sceptics who feel they don't need to even look at the evidence before dismissing something, because they are more scientific than those who gathered the evidence. They seem blissfully ignorant of the fact that their attitude is about as unscientific as you could possibly hope for. Really winds me up.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Sunday, December 18, 2005 9:09 PM

RUXTON

Dreamtrove, "Natives of central Africa are eaten by west Africans...."

Well, that too....

Cavalier, I think the guy who was an ex-Special Forces was emitting an aura the thugs could pick up. I'm not sure why they could, except that as predators, they would be attuned to survival in a very keen way.

Again pressed for time...Whole day spent trying to get driver upgrades for the ol' box.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2006 8:13 PM

LIMINALOSITY

ditto

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Tuesday, January 17, 2006 8:14 PM

LIMINALOSITY

Hey HKC, too much affect on the site for me, I'm ditchin' for a while.

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