All is gossip

The only one who can know what you have done is you. Others will always and forever have partial information and faux-understanding. Let others talk about you. Gives 'em something to do, unless it comes to serious misinformation/-understanding. But even then, you can select which--actual or imagined--needs affirmation or correction.

In addition, do you fully know now or in reflection, perhaps years hence, everything about you and what you have done? This too often is an unrewarding pursuit, for what can you do now about all of that?

We believe we have the knowledge, the insight, the facts of the matter, and so we narrate based on partial info (such is as with any narrative) and subsequently believe that that settles matters related to that which we felt important enough to bother about.

Grasp now at some kind of certainty in this world in order to keep on keeping on, because living under illusions is practical if to a degree not full Truth.

Morality play

I was at the end of one hedge corridor and he, or was it she? the other. Although I could not discern in detail, I felt she had a menacing look: "Kill when I catch you." 

Whether or not to turn and run in her sight and enter or bypass the next corridor, I waited for her next move to pursue her prey. An eternity in the minute, and then she slowly advanced anticipating my defense. I had choices to make--my best bet to evade and escape. Or was it no exit no matter what?

It was with her determined, every advancing step, at the ready to alter course in order to gain her advantage, that I quickly thought to exit right and return to cross to the next corridor left. What if she ran forward in chase? or would she return to her end to exit left or right to meet me in the next lane? Either way I'd have a half length advantage if that, and how could I know if she advanced or retreated to anticipate my next position?

I exited left and quickly returned to see where she was. She stood where she'd stopped before I exited with a sinister smile aimed as if with a knowing, telescopic eye at my heart. I ran right then left up the next hedge corridor, the one leading to a door in the wall at the end. I was running fast and didn't know whether she was following. Half way up the corridor toward the door she appeared stepping slowly into view staring at me running toward her.

Must have wings, a spirit--now she was he. Escape from was hopeless and my heart beat the end was near. Survival said, "Keep trying to escape, or at a minimum prolong the chase." Reality's truth said, "Stand your ground. Let it come."

We both sang, "Fight to the end," with the refrain, "Time is, time was, but time shall be no more."

My way of--DRAFT

"Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view."

Phenomenological Descriptive Analysis

To hold experience still in order to study it, it needs recording. For this discussion that would be a text. And to study that text, one also needs words to describe and analyze and comprehend selected, specific phenomena thought to be represented by and through the text. The result of study would thus be lost to the ether if not another text with (which to de-construct and understand). That secondary text, if produced with care, valid method, and sound foundations for description and analysis, we can call a phenomenological descriptive analysis.

Writing.

Writing is the act of one person recording streams of words on-/into a medium (e.g., paper, digital document, dictation recorder). Editing, proofreading, and formatting for greater ease of comprehension are also forms of writing.

All other albeit related activities are not, in this view, writing per se. Writing is not thinking about something without recording for a reader to access. It is not the spontaneous idea one must remember to be sure to include later. It is not following a writing process such as is taught in schools and colleges. It is not some aspect of the psychology of writing such as where or when one does it, associated rituals, choosing preferences for inscription method, promoting or marketing writing-as-product (e.g., article, book), and so forth.

Evidence of having written is a text someone can read.

Subjective view.

The standard points of view are three--the position of the speaker/narrator in relation to what is written. These reduce to "the subjective or first person point of view". A text in first person point of view is clearly within the boundary of conscious experience as experienced by _I_, the first person. A second person point of view is a first person speaking, thus their conscious experience captured as it were in process, verbatim, "I am speaking to you". Access to the second person is directly from and through the first person, the one that address an other. Third person is what a(ny) speaker/writer, a first person, holds in consciousness and represents as such to communicate to an audience such as a  reader.

Description.

Any text, simple or complex, answers the question of what is/was it like to experience something.

Text is a description of a phenomenon or phenomena. Phenomena as conscious-experience-as-experienced knows no bounds. However, a phenomenon contained in a larger text may be worth holding in consciousness and studying in order to comprehend, in the sense of completeness and understanding of what and how something is or was for the percipient-writer.

Text takes countless forms. Each can be seen as description. For example:

• A letter of complaint describes a correspondent's experience and how an altered  state of that reality really would be better.
• A poem presents images and sentiments and thoughts sharable among others through its construction and words--see what I see, feel what I feel, think what I think in this special way I have made it accessible for to you.
• A personal memoir tells us what life was like at that time with me.
• The company policy memorandum makes the case for or answers the question of how it would or should be in present and future experience.
• A work of historical fiction describes how it could realistically have been in people's experience.
• The peer reviewed scientific article describes what was done/experienced and how and what happened as a result, and what the meaning of the phenomenon might be--an invitation to experience along-with and consider for yourself (and perhaps a world however large or small).

A text can be in present tense, such as I am experiencing such and such about what I have in my focus now. It can be reflexive in that I am conscious that I am conscious of myself experiencing such and such. It can be reflective in the sense that this is how it was for me when I experienced that. Although there are refinements to this mirror-like reflecting self, in process versus at a point after having experienced, the nature of the text for all practical purposes is the basis for the description of the what and the how of experience.

A text taken as a whole is a description or an as-accurate-as-can-be image including feeling-tones and the like. Such may include other elements as narrative structure, chronology, attitude toward one or more parts of an experience, factual details, and so forth. And that whole is primary data to disclose or uncover an object or objects in consciousness--phenomena. The choices for which phenomena should be the subjects for analysis and description depends upon the need to fix more certain than in generalized fashion the understanding of same.

Meaning.

". . . [P]henomenology is the study of . . . appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience."*

Integral to understanding meaning has to do with the structure and content of primary data word streams constituting the phenomenon, and this can only be known by a methodical taking apart and putting together what and how of the experience including considerations of whether or not the given data is comprehensive enough to reveal in clarity and fullness and boundaries of the phenomenon we would know and understand better. Structure refers to parts and how they interrelate in order to comprise the whole. Content refers to themes and qualities that are deemed to be essential to the understanding of the experience of the phenomenon.

To be continued.

_____
Sources.

* Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy. 2021. Plato.Stanford.Edu. https://plato.stanford.edu.

"Phenomenology Online » Writing". 2021. Phenomenologyonline.Com. http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/writing/.

** Illustration source. Husserl. (2021) Optionals IAS Mains Philosophy Phenomenology (Husserl)(History and Problems of Philosophy) Questions 1 to 1 - DoorstepTutor. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://www.doorsteptutor.com/Exams/IAS/Mains/Optional/Philosophy/Questions/Topic-History-and-Problems-of-Philosophy-0/Subtopic-Phenomenology-Husserl-6/Part-1.html

Rabbit hole

Hypothesis:

A. Creative illness (Freud, Ellenberg) = dark night of the soul (Christian mystics) = spiritual emergency (Grof, S. and C.).

B. These similar psychological phenomena grow out of a similar "cause" or process: phenomenological-psychological reduction (Applebaum), contemplative meditation (e.g., Dominican prayer), altered states of consciousness (Wilber, Tart, and others), and Freud's psychoanalysis (in his case, his self-analysis).

Next step: Go deeper, including comparisons among descriptions for each concept (e.g., columns and rows mapping(?) characteristics).

References (partial list, draft form):

Which The Phenomenologist. (2021) Key ideas: Applebaum on the phenomenological reduction - PhenomenologyBlog. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://phenomenologyblog.com/?p=616

Ellenberger, Henri F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Grof, C., & Grof, S. (2017). Spiritual emergency: The understanding and treatment of transpersonal crises. International Journal of
Transpersonal Studies, 36 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2017.36.2.30

Itself Because Not. (2021) The Concept of ''Creative Illness'' - Physicists and Artists Have Found a Common - Sleep and Health Journal Chicago. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://www.sleepandhealth.com/concept-creative-illness-physicists-and-artists-ha/

Charles Rycroft. (2021) Freud's Creative Illness | by Charles Rycroft | The New York Review of Books. Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/05/30/freuds-creative-illness/?lp_txn_id=1232790

Smith, David Woodruff, "Phenomenology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/>.

Now, sort them!

Freud (1859-1938) was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire (now Příbor, Czech Republic). Freud wrote phenomenological descriptions  of psychological phenomena--the conscious perceptive experiences of people. Freud theorized and stressed the importance and functions of the unconscious. Graduate of the University of Vienna, Brentano was academic advisor.

Husserl  was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of  Prossnitz, in the Austrian Empire  (now Prostějov, Czech Republic), 1856--1939 died Freiburg, Germany. Husserl pioneered the philosophy of phenomenology and methods of isolating the content and themes of intentional objects of consciousness. Husserl legitimized and stressed the importance and reality of the imagined, streams from the unconscious? Graduate of the University of Vienna, studies with Brentano.

Did Freud and Husserl "learn/develop" in some truly parallel ways, naturally enough because of where they came from, who they were, who they studied under, where they lived, the time they lived, etc.?

Additionally, 22.02.23.

The answer is yes. For an engaging read about these giants, see https://aeon.co/essays/brentano-who-taught-freud-and-husserl-is-a-lesson-to-us-all.

Black dung beetle or?

Will I return after this? and if I have a choice, who would I be? come back as?

One, I have to take a look at what this life has been and if I demonstrated the highest and best capabilities known and available to me to match or exceed. After all isn't it about that? to be all that you can be and more before saying, "See ya next time"?

If it is not about this, life is for whatever reasons we come up with not all of which are lofty. There are those who embrace whatever and hell with all else. Consider the effects of that; don't look too hard. Not that this always leads to messes and worse for others or the world, but this posture or belief or whatever it is has no other reason but satisfy-me-here-now.  

Of course aspiration and just-let-fly and points between assume we can make rational choices, although even in full awareness, we surely don't always make the best ones. We just live, and without 24/7 vigilance, because this is impossible, drift along--mostly--the easiest, most convenient byways. Some have embraced the me-path, mostly. Some have chosen or drifted towards more other- or ascent-oriented paths.

I chose and drifted and was guided to follow less-me paths, although I had to learn lessons that put resurgent-me (a horribly selfish ego) back on a better way, or the best I could find at the time, too often having strayed from what worked best and was, in hindsight, the decidedly better.

So the question: What worked, or what conditions did I find myself in and how did I use or advantage my better self given what I forged or came my way? Given that honest and accurate assessment, I can begin to answer who would I be, or who I would come back as?

It would be nice to know in awareness some options and future conditions before finding a new self with years and years ahead as a black dung beetle in sisyphian hell.

I have no complaint about living-to-thriving this time round. But the purpose, the meaning . . . would that next time I could see that part more clearly and live like or as that. And the form and life's necessities would fit that function.

Is it possible that those who believe this is it and all we will ever have will not come back and we who have questioned, perhaps believed in the possibility of coming back and the like or the as of it will be afforded the opportunity? In other words, the promise is you get what you expect or hope for. Those who take care in this go round get another go.

Rest in that still point, for now.

Draft from a 2011 computer folder

[. . . slightly edited and excerpted. What got me going then? vs. now as it would be more obviously justified.]

 In street and alley what strange tongues are these,/ Accents of menace in our ear.
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Unguarded Gates, 1882

I refer here not to different languages but to language distorted, seemingly intentional and decidedly intentional. These voices have gained greater and greater prominence. The slants this way and that on who and what and when and where and why have directly threatened and struck the alarms of coming terror and pending totalitarianism, although the speakers are not the ones we fear but the energies and machinations behind these messengers.

Are the messengers themselves part of the conspiracy? To be sure in that they speak the distortions, contrary to facts and accurate memory. So those to blame, if blame it is, are these mediums as well as the nameless making up the hoards who would move us off center and towards an agenda of uncertain rationality and often insanity. Can we speak of particulars? of people and events in detail to support this claim? Surely, but my beef is not with these things but with the accents of menace who would fill our ears with rotting offal and outright garbage.

[Long quotation about socialism here from Wikipedia, including this, "Created . . . with the purpose of building a classless society."]

Those people and forces at play to move us in a direction counter to fact, to reason, to the most accurate understandings of things past, they wish to build a one-class society in the image of imagined or contrived truths and skewed values. Danger. Therein lies our peril, while at the same time the mediums abhor the notions of socialism, including efforts at reforms that look at what is and pose what could be. Reform to these is less and regress, but less means more and regress means what it was, which is to say how it is, some imagined status quo as they would have it. Such entrenchment under the guise of adjustment and change merely keeps them on their podia.

Would they stop talking were their pictures of what is or what should be become manifest? Once a distorter, always a distorter. Or, in normal parlance, probably not. The power felt by creating discord seduces; they will ride a new horse warning that the red coats are coming without ever having seen one, or substantiate-able evidence that that (new) menace lies in wait. They will do so because of that power, or the felt power that the attention, money or other "gain" has brought them.

Goofballs we can dismiss. Clever twisters and those who reinforce common misunderstandings and half truths--they are evil and we should also dismiss.

Where are the champions, that is to say, experts in knowledge, who tell it as it is and was and can correct the accents, the distortions? Without making the same performative error by killing off the opposition, literally or figuratively, how can we interrupt the most influential flows of misinformation?

I have long said that if you want to change the relationship with the other, you have to change the pattern of communicating with them. The usual approach is to try to directly affect them; doesn't work. People convinced they are right do not change. Talk till the proverbial come home merely consoles you and makes you the opposite "right", and thus not open to understanding, and change--if that is what is warranted.

We change our understanding on any side not by direct frontal assaults but by undermining the strength of the floors upon which the other stands. That is to say, if what has been distorted is left to stand on a weak foundation without attack at what's below, history will eventually make error fall. However, in whole or in part the process can be accelerated.

The time has come for acceleration, and in the case of accents that menace--

Two conditions must prevail along with undermining. One, a greater than and opposite offensive needs to be mounted to change the direction of the onslaught as, two, the onslaught needs to be exposed for what it is. In the case of accents of menace, this means to tell the most accurate truth in the most convincing fashion and to explain the errant ways. Take the stage away from them.

[Long rant here, unintelligible.]

I suspect, on the other hand, that in the case of political impotence or inability, you find new things to direct your feelings toward. And thus you find yourself changing from reading the news and the leaks to reading other things. After all there is more to the panoply of phenomena than power influence and preoccupation of what the other should or should not be doing. It is then about me and my small circle. It is about what we do and experience outside this more public and fractious world. It is about different truths and realities, more personal and private ones. And if not about health or physical well being, it will be about culture and beauty.

So it is I find myself turning again to what I will call art and expression and the richness of what I see, hear, taste, smell, and can touch. Life and living become important again. I bottle up emotions in certain aspects of my life and my history and what I can see if I look outward and find disturbing. I let them, my emotions, have free reign in matters of beauty and love and appreciation and understanding. I do not have to understand a mendacious world, only a world that is immediately around and inside me.

I have this peace now. I wish it for you.