Memory

If/then: a philosophical treaties on Empirical observation in epistemology 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Prologue

This poem examines what it means to observe, to remember, and to imagine within the limits of human awareness. It follows a chain of simple “if–then” reasoning to explore how perception shapes reality, how memory reshapes the past, and how expectation invents the future. It does not claim answers, but traces consequences—drawing from ideas in physics, psychology, and everyday experience—to invite reflection on what we truly know when we say we are present.

If time is a line we feel but never see,
Then now is the only place our mind can be.
If light can act as wave until we stare,
Then what we watch may change what is there.
If measurement turns the spread into a point,
Then seeing may fix what was once disjoint.
If the observer plays a hidden role,
Then knowing may shape what we call whole.
If we can only stand inside the now,
Then all that we know must happen somehow.
If each thought is bound to present sight,
Then past and future are made in this light.
If memory is built from fragile trace,
Then truth may bend as we give it a face.
If minds rebuild what they think they recall,
Then stories of self may not be all.
If witnesses often disagree,
Then memory is less than certainty.
If the brain fills gaps it cannot see,
Then fiction may feel like history.
If we imagine a future ahead,
Then we walk through thoughts, not paths we tread.
If fear can paint what has not come,
Then the future can feel already done.
If we compare ourselves with those we meet,
Then identity forms from what we see on the street.
If aging is known by watching others decay,
Then we borrow time in a secondhand way.
If the body changes beyond our control,
Then time writes its mark on the living whole.
If the mind resists what it cannot keep,
Then loss becomes a thought we bury deep.
If we observe ourselves as we think,
Then we stand both inside and at the brink.
If self-awareness splits the view in two,
Then we are both the watcher and the view.
If attention selects what we hold tight,
Then reality narrows within our sight.
If what we ignore fades into the blur,
Then absence can feel like it never were.
If focus acts like a quiet gate,
Then what gets through may shape our fate.
If perception is filtered before it is known,
Then the world we see is partly our own.
If language frames the thoughts we keep,
Then words decide how ideas speak.
If simple terms can carry deep weight,
Then meaning can grow without ornate state.
If emotion colors what we perceive,
Then feeling decides what we believe.
If fear and hope both guide the eye,
Then truth may shift as they pass by.
If logic follows what we assume,
Then flawed first steps can lead to gloom.
If we test belief with careful doubt,
Then clearer paths may sort things out.
If science shows limits in what we can know,
Then certainty is softer than we show.
If quantum rules suggest chance at the base,
Then order may rise from a shifting place.
If randomness lives beneath the seen,
Then control is less than it may seem.
If cause and effect still guide our day,
Then patterns help us find a way.
If we learn from error and revise our view,
Then growth is built from what is not true.
If each mistake can refine the mind,
Then wisdom is error redesigned.
If we live through moments one by one,
Then life is never fully done.
If each “now” replaces the last we knew,
Then we are always becoming new.
If identity shifts with time and thought,
Then the self is a process, not a spot.
If we cling to who we think we are,
Then change may feel like a distant star.
If awareness can soften rigid belief,
Then seeing clearly may bring relief.
If we accept limits in what we know,
Then honest thought can still grow.
If meaning is made from how we attend,
Then purpose depends on the lens we send.
If we choose where our focus will stay,
Then we help shape our lived display.
If reality meets us through mind and sense,
Then truth includes both world and lens.
If we question gently what we assume,
Then thought can open a wider room.
If no final answer is firmly sealed,
Then wonder remains unrevealed.
If we stand in the present, aware but unsure,
Then the human condition remains obscure.
:::

DCG

Screenshot

A Bridge of Discovery

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I’ve often asked myself just what I think I would like most in this world.  Surprisingly I found that when the question is asked every 10 years, in my case it seemed to yield similar answers every time asked.  I know we have selective memories and that we can often betray our own senses, but when looking back through all the years I have witnessed, there are only a few truly codifying moments for me to reveal.

What is it that we want more than anything else in this world?

To answer this question I went back in time to ask myself just what I thought at different ages in my life.  I used a very special time machine for this purpose to collect my information.  This time machine is an elaborate instrument that has more neural connections than the known stars in the sky.  There is no exact number, as most neurons are too tiny to be viewed with a microscope, but conservative estimates put it at least 1 trillion (10^12) connections in the brain alone.

Take the optic nerve for an example – this is one nerve that runs from the eye to the brain and is responsible for sight.  There are 1 million neurons in this particular nerve alone – so each neuron has 999,999 potential partners – but it must meet with its exact partner out of 1,000,000 for vision.

Thus, this time machine I call upon produces the memories that populate my mind and sends me back to the time I wish and I ask myself just what it is that I wanted?  After I reviewed the most popular 3 answers for each time I asked this question, there was always one that stood out which you see below.

  • 7 Year Old: The love of my parents and brother
  • 17 Year Old: The friendships and acceptance outside of my family
  • 27 Year Old: Starting my own family
  • 37 Year Old: The love and acceptance from my daughter
  • 47 Year Old: The acceptance and forgiveness of myself

It is an interesting set of answers to an interesting question that spans forty years and demonstrates the quintessential desire in human relationships for me at least.  Of course these are based on my circumstances for each time, my disposition toward the world for each time, my personality and ego’s assessment at each time, and a subconscious presence in these times were evaluated for content in those contexts.  I chose to begin with the age of seven years old because around that time I have memories that began to question such matters.

The notion that memories can be considered as mental time capsules; a snapshot of time that you can again review is as sound as the memory if indeed the memory is stored accurately.  The truism that I am exploiting may just have a duel edge; one that can teach us a history lesson (if we have learned it), or one edge that defies the lesson we still need to earn.

For me I am fortunate to have sources other than my memory.  The memory of my friends, family, and that of my journals can give much information when asking the right questions.  What I found to be striking is the preoccupation with this topic of how I fit into the social arena.  I am perplexed at the matter because on a casual observation, it seems that I am just that, ‘preoccupied’ with those around me, or how I seem to relate to them.  But further analysis indicates that I have a fundamental disconnection with some of the people in my life, that I am searching and have always been searching for a greater metaphysical connection than what I have been able to make during this time in my life.  I do not take into account the material wants, as I seek a deeper question that involves more than this physical world can provide for us.  I edited my answers above with this in mind, and I am left with still a perplexing question for anyone to consider.

It is the reason for my Enneagram personality and orientation to the world growing up as a small child.  It is the reason for the disposition in my relationships through-out much of my life and the yearnings for deeper connections.  It is also responsible for much of how I handled and mishandled the emotional events and the coping strategies used when going through my personal endeavors.

You can take any life and extract out of it any meaning you wish to make a case for, but for me, I am, and always have been one that has sought out some measure of truth I can feel deeply.  Not a religious experience, or beliefs that will satisfy a mind’s logical analysis, but rather to engage in a deeper experience that is felt in your entire being.  Much talk of this is found in many religions, and from many mystics around the world.  For reasons I do not completely understand, I have a need to open the doors that have not yet opened for me.  I somehow feel there is more than what I am allowing myself to see given my disposition.

It is that reason that I have always looked but have not yet found in the course of my life.  I am like one of those blind men in the parable of the elephant….

In the Udana (68–69)[7] the Buddha uses the elephant parable to describe sectarian quarrels.  A king has the blind men of the capital brought to the palace, where an elephant is brought in and they are asked to describe it.

When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’

The men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephants’ head), a winnowing basket (ear), a plowshare (tusk), a plow (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail).

The men cannot agree with one another and come to blows over the question of what it is like and their dispute delights the king.  The Buddha ends the story by comparing the blind men to preachers and scholars who are blind and ignorant and hold to their own views:  “Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing…. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.”  The Buddha then speaks the following verse:

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.[8]

The Moral….

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” – Werner Heisenberg

Therefore one must ask the right questions and out of that reasoning comes my metaphysical problem which can lead one to break through the reasoning barrier by uniting with another human intention and energy of perception.  Hence my lifelong solution may just lie within my perceptive abilities.  Abilities such as the mystical encounters by which many may have transitioned over their rational realms to reach a deeper understanding given their conditioning.  A psychic gap bridged by other features of our experience in this world, one that can be ‘felt’ and not just thought!

This gives a whole new outlook when rereading works such as …

For the obvious reasons my search is still on.  Differences on how we learn best is evident in many of the studies I have read that can be found in the current psychological literature.  Some people are more verbal, some are more tactile, some are more visual, and some are more abstract, et cetera, so by virtue of this analogy I may have not done justice to the materials I was working with on a very rational level.  My accounts must also seed my other inner senses to fully grasp an experience in this life that appreciates much more of it.  I must also live in the practice of undoing my former conditioning that prevents me from aligning with a deeper self, one that ‘knows’ it is connected to all that is around.  The bridge I build is one for the heart, one that will further my journey into discovery.

a post dedicated to LLW