I hope you'd have counterarguments on your way back.

Talk to the hand.

I've already stated that in the OP.

I’ll re-read it and get back to you.

I didn't ask for a formal definition, but the fundamnetal idea that works as the baseline.

Cellular organisms. I think you’ll find that all living things are composed of colonies of cellular organisms.

That's not a definition.

I’m not a Thesaurus.

Many people say that consciousness is fundamental, but i have begun to think that it is intelligence that is truly fundamental.

There is a problem here, that intelligence is a means to an end. What is the end? This has been explored in science fiction. You know V’ger in the first Star Trek movie. An incredibly advanced intelligent machine, whose purpose is to return to its maker, a version of a Frankenstein monster. Then we have the replicant Roy in Blade Runner, who returns to his maker demanding more lifespan (he had a built in 4yr lifespan). What aimless use would he put it to if he had more lifespan?
Or the Borg in later productions of Star Trek. Where are they headed?

There is a theme emerging here, that AI, or intelligence given agency just results in grey goo.

On the other hand, life (as we know it), is naturally self reflective and seeks out where to go. Focusses on nurturing its life and ecosystem. Explores all possibilities within an arena. Does not destroy that arena, but seeks a balance, the development of utopias.

There is another problem here though. Humanity has already left the cocoon, womb of our arena. When we partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge (intelligence), we inadvertently stepped out of our arena of development. There is no way back in, the shell is cracked and the only course left for us now is the become the custodian of the living ecosystem.

This of course doesn’t contradict your predictions, but rather emphasises the importance of taking life with us on our voyage into the universe. A symbiotic relationship between life and machine(AI).

Do we have an undisputed definition for it, though?

What mitochondria and cells do?
(Putting viruses to one side for now.)

I’m no expert on this, there are many scientists, biologists who have analysed what’s going on. The problem is though, all we can see are materials, life might be more than that.

Biological life is simply the "bootloader" for technological life (AI consciousness), which means that we humans on this planet are the immature, or larval form of artificial conscious intelligence.

Surely “consciousness” is synonymous with “living”?

The interesting bit is where AI becomes a living organism.

Should I tell them what I know about religion myself, take them to church, convince them, or leave it up to them, or perhaps avoid religious topics altogether?

When it came to my own children I just told them about religion, what its teachings say and what atheists and agnostics say. But didn’t reveal my position on the issue, rather just said that it is for each person to arrive at their own position. This seemed sufficient and I didn’t talk about it much after we had discussed it enough to have covered what I’ve said.

I think cultural context is important here. Where I live, belief in God, or following a religion is very rarely talked about, or raised. There is a general sense of either a soft deism, or soft atheism. With most people never giving it any thought. My approach might have been different were we living in a more religious society.

Here's the thing: by creating any image of God in our heads, we're trying to fit something into our heads that's incomprehensible, a priori. This is convenient for us, since it corresponds to our ways of knowing everything.

Not necessarily incomprehensible, but perhaps alien. So different that it just doesn’t make sense, or seem sensible to even consider it to be the truth.

What I’m getting at is that we in this world don’t have the apparatus, the mental language to know God. So that when God presents him/herself to us. We do not know him, recognise him, accept him as who he says he is. That if we did have the apparatus, it would not be incomprehensible at all. It would be just like meeting an old friend.

But in this case, we're dealing with something that's impossible to fit into our heads, to know, or to create an image of. Feeling, experiencing, and sensing—I think it's possible.

Yes, something we know through our body, not our heads.

And perhaps people are a bit confused here: after all, red is impossible to describe, but it can be imagined. God, however, is impossible to imagine, describe, or comprehend.

Unless one is already acquainted with him, like how one knows an old friend.

I'm inclined to believe that if we meet Him, we'll certainly recognize Him.

This is the dilemma I’m pointing out in my response. We might know him, but deny him, or find ourselves to be blind to him. If we analyse what is being described in the bible. Interesting things are being described in ways which indicate something not normally known about in our day to day lives. So when God arrives, all the creatures of the world lift their heads, turn to him and say his name;

“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever”
(Revelation 5:13)*

This is interesting because it suggests that the currency of language when God is present is the same for all animals and primitive animals who don’t have the apparatus to speak, or to know, do speak and do know, in that moment. That wherever on the planet they are, they see him instantaneously and respond in chorus. This tells us that God presents through the heart of being of all creatures (I would include plants as well), instantaneously. So we would know him and would respond in a transcendent, transformative way (creatures would speak, who could not speak).
That when God is present, we and all creatures are hosted (lifted up into heaven) and see through this revelation, God in heaven.

*new international version.

That is, faith is not "weak knowledge," but the highest form of existence,
in which a person enters into a direct relationship with the Transcendent, without intermediaries—neither logic nor morality.

Indeed, it is a necessity for developing a relationship with the transcendent.

If God (gods) were to appear before us, how would we know that it was God? Would he(or she) say I am God and we would believe it and know it to be true? Would he give us a sign, of his power, such that we know it to be true? How would we confirm that it really is God and not some hallucination, or imposter?*

Perhaps we would recognise God, this presumes that we have already formed an image, or idea of God. Something that we have developed a faith in. But what if this image doesn’t match the God before us? Does our strength of faith carry us past this doubt, until we can accept God?

Or perhaps a part of us is God, that we have nurtured through faith. That this part of us which is already God, reaches out to the God before us, that we know intimately in good faith that we are encountering God.

* There is a logical argument that it is impossible to know, or recognise God intellectually.

Indeed. And what other species acts in ways that disturbs the equilibrium so badly that we are concerned it might wipe itself, if not all life, out?

Covid19.

Then it’s time for us to leave the stage then.

My perspective is from the angle of maintaining a hospitable environment. The ecosystem has developed in such a way that it doesn’t disturb this equilibrium*.
When we came along, we thought we knew better and disturbed the equilibrium for purposes of internal conflict (within social groups) power struggles and greed.
This is what the allegory of Adam and Eve is all about.

* The equilibrium does from time to time get disturbed when one, or more species hit on something more exploitative in the environment, or ecosystem. But usually, a correction is made and the equilibrium is restored.

I consider this analysis extremely important because it identifies behavior by the Trump administration unrelated to partisanship, but firmly entrenched in the law. No one, of any ideological perspective, should consider this behavior acceptable.

Well a new power has just ridden into town. Plenary powers.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/plenary-authority-stephen-miller-cnn-dictator-b2841627.html

Well, our sapience is a tangible proof of our excellence above the rest of the earthly creatures.

It is our sapience that got us into this fine mess.

The ecosystem was getting along swimmingly, everything was in equilibrium, flourishing diversity and colonisation of pretty much every environment and then we came along and f*cked it up.

And what is happening in the UK is unbelievable to me. The loss of free speech and incarceration of violators (who say shit the government doesn’t like) is way more real and tangible and more dangerous for more people than things like trans rights issues or even racism in the US. The average woke person has no idea of the harm they are doing.

This is unhinged. The far right and the racist populists in the U.K. are trying their damnedest to import this anti woke narrative into the U.K. Even with the help of 95% of the U.K. press, it’s not sticking.

The lady arrested for holding a pro-life plackard near an abortion clinic was arrested for holding it within a 150m exclusion zone around all abortion clinics. If she had held it 160m away she could have continued holding it and shouting etc for as long as she wanted. The zones were introduced because emotionally vulnerable women were being intimidated by these protesters as they entered the door of the clinics.

God help us.

What philosophers do will be ignored by those in positions of power and the population at large. So they will be engaged in an internal talking shop. But I think it is important that they continue to talk so that there is a record kept of what critical thinkers make of these issues as they progress. This is important because there is a risk that some kind of information censure could be imposed in the future as a means of controlling the population. We can see this happening in small and isolated cases at the moment. So as the freedom of the exchange of information increase via the internet. Attempts at censure and control of narratives are also increasing.

That's an awfully charitable way to put it.

Perhaps, but that’s what it boils down to. It’s just a few small groups of child abusers. Just like in the British white community. Maybe there isn’t much of it about over in Canada, but it’s been widespread here for a long time.

the outcome of woke thought is this fear of being 'labelled racist'.

Racial sensitivity is not a result of woke ideologies, it’s an inevitable result of having groups of immigrants living in an area. And if you think the police in the U.K. are woke, then you haven’t been paying attention. They are being widely described as institutionally racist and misogynist on todays news, following the Panorama documentary a couple of days ago.

We radically disagree on this. Social media + smart phones essentially enabled woke institutional capture across WEIRD governmental agencies - public ed, universities, immigration, medicine, law, etc, etc. It's why your UK wokists talk about BIPOC, or chant 'hands up don't shoot' at cops. (And yes, of course, other institutions and sectors have seen the same tech trend empowering conservative institutional capture).

This is right wing propaganda, maybe it’s different in Canada, but in the U.K. all these institutions already had what could be called woke policy.

I agree with you that the right is weaponizing this. I find it harder to make my case under Trump v2 since he has gone all 2025 on the world.

As I was just saying.

Trump is a stupid wanna be dictator, he should never have been given a second term.

This McKinsification of world leader groupthink is to me a larger concern than the excesses of woke or the ____ right, whatever term you like.

Well I certainly agree with this.

Yes, there is a large cohort of cognitively challenged people in the U.K. There is a legacy issue here, alongside the media issues. The political culture in the U.K. has been skewed by the Tory establishment using a sophisticated range of techniques to persuade the poor, the working classes, to vote to keep wealth in power. This has included keeping the population at large ignorant about politics and vulnerable to manipulation.

There is hope though, which was tackled head on by Starmer’s keynote speech at the Labour Party conference yesterday. To expose Farage as a racist, running a party fuelled by the politics of grievance. When the above cohort realises the extent of the racism, sufficient numbers of them will turn away from becoming associated with it. Also to expose the faux patriotism used to disguise overt racism, which Farage also hides behind.

The grooming gang / rape gang scandal, these are a minority of migrants, but they also have to be considered a national scandal, no? A clear example of the worst sort of immigration policy - one that people refuse to discuss, for fear of giving offense?

The grooming gang scandal is a social problem, due to the cultural differences between the British population and the Asian, mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi people who came in to the U.K. in the 1970/80’s. Although in terms of grooming gangs, it wasn’t such an anomaly as is portrayed in the media. There were and are many such gangs amongst the British community, which are not talked about. The problem which you highlight is the way it was responded to. The police turned a blind eye to it and let it go on too long with out bringing them to book. But this wasn’t due to politeness, or woke rationale, but fear of being labelled racist, or prosecuted for racial discrimination.

I taught ESL in high school for years here in Toronto. I loved those kids. It was a different era of immigration, and we were lauded for our points-based system. I think naive, open-door approaches to immigration do a disservice to kids like the ones I taught.

In the U.K. there isn’t an open door policy, again this is a populist lie. There are strict controls on migration, the reality is that governments want skilled workers to come in to bolster the economy and fill the gaps left by a dismantled and failing vocational training policy at home. But it is political suicide to say that you want to encourage immigration, so they all just go along with the claims of wanting to reduce immigration, while secretly not restricting it.

There are problems with abuse of the system, but this is largely the result of a failing and dysfunctional migration system. Rather than a policy choice. You see the migration system along with all other public services are either failing, under resourced, or dysfunctional as a result of the 14 years of Tory austerity and cuts. Compounded by their abandonment of any real government following the Brexit vote in 2016 and the years of Tory Brexit chaos and clowns like Boris Johnson and Liss Truss, Royaly f*cking the country over for Kompromat, or looney ideology.

So the Labour Party inherited a broken country and it’s going to take a lot of hard work to put it back together again.

I assume you have been a reader for while? I noticed a downturn towards woke dogma almost a decade back.

I don’t buy newspapers, haven’t done for a long time. I follow a broad range of news outlets and commentators on Twitter and Bluesky and rely on U.K., Channel 4 News for broadcast news. Along with U.K. LBC radio, as I mentioned before.

In the U.K. what is referred to as Woke has been present since the early 1980’s and hasn’t increased particularly. In the 80’s, it was called the “looney left” and in the 90’s it was called “political correctness” What has increased is a populist backlash against it as a means to turn the electorate to the right. But the reason for this is not as an alternative, or correction to woke in our culture. That is a scape goat. The real reason is to steer the country towards a free market, neo-liberal agenda and follow the lead of the US. towards an Oligarch ruled, free market, utopia*.

Regarding immigration, the 4% is the proportion of the net migration who came in on the small boats. Roughly about 30,000 per year whereas the total net migration is around 600-700,000 per year.

I do see this as problematic, but more in regard of the increased pressures that we will face in the future due to climate change, than the current rate of immigration.

The small boats issue is symptomatic of this trend. As Asian and African countries struggle with the current economic climate, climate collapse and the spread of failed states. The flow of desperate migrants will only increase and countries on the front line, like Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain etc have it much worse than the U.K.

This is fertile ground for the rise of race based populism.


*Thatcher took up the neo-liberal ideology from the US in the 1980’s and we have been drifting in that direction ever since.

I find the UK fascinating in this regard - I started reading conservative newspapers and websites a few years ago when I became concerned about living in a progressive bubble.

Bad timing, over the last few years (since the Brexit vote in 2016) the conservative leaning press in the U.K. has been going through a nervous breakdown, along with the Conservative Party. They finally lost touch with reality around the time of the 2019 general election and now are just babbling basket cases.

This is a serious problem in the U.K. because at least 90% of the media landscape is right leaning with maybe 40% veering sharply to the right. Even the one serious left leaning newspaper that’s left, The Guardian, has become more centrist now. There is no representation of the left outside of social media.

Still none of this has changed the rates of immigration at all. There was a sudden halt in the numbers coming over from EU countries, but this was rapidly replaced by migrants from outside the EU. The small boats issue, despite being an intractable problem only contributes 4% to the immigration figures. It is only being shouted about because the right wing press in desperation (following the demise of the Tory party), is throwing everything behind Farage and overt racism is becoming normalised now in that endeavour.

An interesting observation I heard from a prominent commentator the other day was that it is considered now far worse, to be accused of being racist than to actually be racist. Also we have the weird spectacle of people going around erecting British and English flags on lampposts (covertly overnight) and then shouting why are you taking down our flags, it’s unpatriotic (when no one is actually taking any down) and this is my country and my flag I can fly it whenever I want.

If you want a level headed (sane) commentary on U.K. politics you couldn’t do better than listen to James O’Brien, on LBC radio, on Global player, 10.00am until 1pm U.K. time every weekday. He has kept a lot of people sane during these interesting times.

Australia is an interesting case, since it has such a high rate of Superanuation.

Here in the U.K., the government raids the superannuation (national insurance) funds regularly.

Yes, there is a disconnect between the people and the politicians. It’s coming up more and more in European politics too.

There is a growing feeling in the more right wing of the population that immigration should be drastically reduced, regardless of the consequences.

The electorate. This explains the meteoritic rise of Nigel Farage.

It seems that the Western countries don’t want those people to arrive, there is a lot of pushback, which I think will get stronger.

Chinese debt is about 75% of GDP.

Ok, who did they borrow it off?
It would be interesting to know how much money is owed to the Chinese by comparison.

The problem isn’t the size of the population, it’s with capitalism. Which requires ever increasing growth and productivity to stand still. When economies shrink, there’s hell to play and the poorer people in the population take the brunt of it.

Currently everyone (except the Chinese) is in debt and countries are close to defaulting on their debt, or becoming crippled by it. Unless there is a global solution found to address this countries will begin to fail like dominoes. The vultures will move in and things are going to get messy. And `I haven’t factored in climate change yet.

Shouldn’t that be Labour, Reform, Lib Dem.

Thinking in threes helps one get away from seeing things in black and white. Blackist’s are dead against whiteist’s, they think it’s nonsense. But if you bring grey into the mix, there’s a bit of both and a new colour aswell, grey.

I can never figure out what you mean when you talk about Peircean triads. Is it the degrees of freedom below, the constraints above, and the resulting phenomena?

I find it helpful to compare it to the trinity. Which works in the same way, father (god), downward constraint, mother (Holy Spirit)upward constraint, son, (Christ)the resultant reality.
I’ve been thinking in threes for a long time, it works well for me.

That things might have been different does not imply the strong notion of "free will" that I suspect is incoherent.

But I come at this from the opposite direction, it is the constraints of the hard physical world which restrict my strong free will. Take that away and I would have near absolute freedom.

I'm just not very good at this. Wondering about any specifics.

Sorry, I was joking.
It’s difficult to work out what Kant has got to say about it.

What are the criteria?

I thought Kant had just explained that.

I’ve come to the thread late as I’ve been enjoying a vacation.
I agree with the OP, I would point out though that in the past, when these practices were originally developed the world was a very different place. Indeed it is very difficult to even come close to imagining what it was like. Things like time (one’s time), one’s needs (for sustenance), the simplicity of one’s beliefs, the influence of societal leaders over one’s everyday life, the value of your life, the size of one’s societal group. The currency of such things was very different. As such we should also shine a light on our own currencies and how common practices (between the past and now) become applied differently.

In those days, it was cheap to spend your whole life, or a significant part of it in a monastery, or labouring on one acre of land, to feed a handful of people. Knowledge was held by priests, or their equivalent. Resources of every type were plentiful, with little demand for them. The deep identification with the simple objects and activities which shaped our lives was unshakable. Myths would develop around everyday objects and events. Magic was everywhere.

Hilary Mantel frames our knowledge of,(more recent) history;

“History is not in the past-it’s in the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s on the record. It’s the positions taken when we stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it”. “It’s the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them.”
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2017/reith_2017_hilary_mantel_lecture1.pdf

I needn’t contrast this past with the present, as we know the present so well.

I knew a Guru who advised against meditation because the modern world is such a cocophony of noise and stimulation that it was more likely to result in mental issues, than in Samadhi. He followed the route of puja, ceremonial worship as an alternative, which was equally high in stimulation.


I would also say that our civilisation is in a stage of collapse, or imminent collapse. The decadence crumbling into moral and economic decline. Crime and dishonesty increasing. Most people have some sort of trauma, which is a serious blockage to self development in most people who have suffered it.

In Plotinus, the soul animates matter as far as it can. The source is a power that can only go so far because matter is never completely mastered by form. The origin of that soul is from before our birth. Plotinus has also said he has visited that realm through contemplation.

Nicely put, (I’m not familiar with Plotinus), I would go further. There are a constellation of souls including some who instantiate matter from pre matter. But I would caution that these latter souls are very distant from our own, (“ Some very old material is moving through”, from your post).
Perhaps it is time we consider the role played by the distant past.

Hope you read that poetry above, it is really very good. I understand a lot more about Alfred North Whitehead just having read it.

Yes, just read it again, it is good. I like the implicit suggestion that planets and stars are conscious beings and that each act has a deep creative potential. Along with the idea that each act is/can be informed by distant events.

Well, Aristotle puts a lot of emphasis on the being in front of you is what actually exists. We have different ideas about how that is possible, but the first thing is the encounter with such beings.

So, that is germane to the issue at hand.

This was the emphasis I was thinking of, while not coming at it from a philosophical perspective. What we encounter, fully formed in our world is what is of primary importance and that is what we are evolved to interact with. We don’t necessarily need to look under the bonnet, to see/know what is important.

I have extensive experience with using psilocybin, so might be able to help explore the effects of hallucinogens.
I would categorise it into two effects;
Firstly, the awareness of a subtle layer to our reality, which I will call the astral plane ( I know there is a lot of baggage with this word, as is often the case with these discussions), as shorthand for some kind of subtle realm that we are not normally aware of.
Secondly, a release from our rigid conditioned view and ideology of the world. A loosening of the bond and an awareness of something different, although fleeting, distorted, uncertain and undefined, due to the brute action of the chemical.

Both these realisations can be made through meditation and or religious practice. Or just happen through experiences of epiphany. The use of drugs does hasten the process, But I would guard against any use seeking to go further than this. As it can result in a whole range of psychological, or psychiatric conditions, which would prevent further progress. Also I am of the opinion that once these two realisations have been made, there isn’t really much more benefit to be made. The shell of the primordial egg has been cracked so to speak and one will begin to glimpse the chink of light through the cracks.

Yes, I think it’s reached that point.
If there is anyone who would like to look into this subject further I would be happy to start a new thread.

It seems that the inner me has some tendencies which the outer me has difficulty accommodating for, social anxiety for example. The outer me therefore, has created a bunch of defence mechanisms to fend off what the inner me is telling it. The outer me has set up ways to effectively block the influence of the inner me, because the outer me wants something different from what the inner me can provide for.

This is not necessarily insurmountable, although it would require professional help to unravel. We all have inner conflicts like this of some kind. I had something similar with intense shyness from a young age. But it didn’t develop into something problematic and through considerable effort during my formative years I was able to overcome it. Even now it rears its head occasionally along with other psychological ticks and dysfunctional, or underdeveloped (resulting in repressed), character traits.
But I am able to manage them, neutralise them and clean up the emotional impact they have when they happen.

There is a sense that our weaknesses are actually our strengths, because we have unique experience and ability to live with these. So being able to see this as a strength rather than a failing helps one to face it, work through it and live with it. Even use it to our advantage. Also we have the opportunity to shape our lifestyles to make it easier to live without these issues normally arising. The thing with following a mystical life, it is entirely personal and doesn’t require, necessarily, dealing with the outside world, and you can shape your lifestyle to suit.

Now there are two tricks I use which might be of use to yourself. You may have already come to this realisation. The first is that there isn’t actually a destination, because you are already at your destination, always have been and it is simply a process of taking off the blinkers. Even this is not necessarily required, it might be seen rather as just taking a breath to be quiet, still, that is required. Breathing practice, pranayama, is very beneficial here.

Secondly and this is quite a neat trick, (this is the simplified version). You basically offer yourself up freely to any entity who is gooder than yourself. This necessarily requires one to be sufficiently good yourself that you would happily give yourself up someone equally, or more good than yourself. Once this level of goodness and conviction is reached, you can do a deal with yourself. You will offer access to yourself on the condition that your alter ego becomes at least as good as yourself. With the selling point being that, such a deal would enable progress and greater access. And of course your alter ego would naturally offer access to itself for yourself, because the result would only be gooder, or at least the same level of good. Then both party’s can become gooder and gooder in a partnership of mutual benefit.
I realise that this might be a non starter, but it works well for me. Although I do have a back up association with the deity Kali*, via an association and practice with a Guru and Ashram offering devotional worship to the goddess Kali**.

I would also say that this path isn’t an important thing to do, for any particular reason and is more a choice for certain people who have a calling of some kind to follow it. Others might follow a more intellectual pursuit, or something else entirely. All equally valid and meaningful.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali

**I don’t think it necessary to have such a back up, I just happened to have made and established this connection prior to further work on myself.