PAGE IN PROGRESS What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. Thank you for your interest and patience!
From After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: "Our entanglement in thoughts and beliefs about ourselves, those around us, and the world makes it impossible to be where we are. It is like the Zen painter who finished a life-sized portrait of a tiger on the wall of his dwelling. Returning home lost in thought some days later, he was frightened upon suddenly seeing the tiger there, having forgotten it was his own creation. As we undertake to quiet our minds through meditation or prayer, we see how much of our life is governed by these unconscious stories... We begin to see the themes of our inner dialogue, which can be ambition or unworthiness, insecurity or hope, self-hatred or self-improvement. The stories reflect our conditioning, personal and cultural... Central to the stories we tell are the fixed beliefs we have about ourselves... Because those thoughts and assumptions are so powerful, we live out their energies over and over. These patterns of thought, together with the contractions of body and heart, create a limited sense of self... An honorable practice unmasks these stories and releases their limiting beliefs, just as it opens the body and heart. We begin to recognize the patterns of these contractions and to learn that they are not the most fundamental reality... With innocence and openness we return to the simplicity of direct experience. When we step out of the current of thoughts, letting go of 'how it was and how it should be,' of 'how we should be,' we enter the eternal present." (pp. 36-37)
”Our human capacity for self-deception is almost as vast as our capacity for awakening.” (pp. 145-146).
People organize information about the world into stories in their mind. Stories are easier to remember. But stories can be traps we fall into. In fact, we often do. We tell ourelves a story to remember things (not a concious decision) and then we start believing in this strory and look for information that supports it (confirmation bias).
Stories we tell ourselves: there is logic, there is closure, that’s not so in the actual life. We crave meaning, connections, closure, clear binaries (that’s why superhero stories are so popular).
Thoughts about AI mirror It is presenting this a new problem of a problem of a scale that has not been seen before. But people have always created mirrors of themselves through stories they told to make sense of the world and survive in it (making sense is human survival strategy). Three main story-telling meaning-making strategies: science, religion, and art Religion: god did not create people in their image; people created god(s) in their image (if lions had gods, their gods would be lions)
"Courageous Conversations" (?) - we do not respond to the other person, we respond to a story we tell about ourselves, the other person, the world...
Stories we tell, like meanings we attach to things, take a life if their own
From Harari book - power of stories, fictitious language: examples: Peugeot, religion.
We all have our narratives. And then in any relationships these narratives get complicated, mixed up. If becomes more difficult to stand where my story ends asks your story begins.
[see Stories We Tell in Me, Looking for Meaning]
Stories we tell; media; media representations most cricticized (race, gender, disability); but the problem is bigger; it’s the way we tell ourselves stories about how people are are how they relate to reach other; villains and victims; closure and orderliness that is absent in life; events having purpose, reason, important connections that are easy to see and all other connections as less important; the whole idea about unicorn that is a dead horse, etc.