The tragedy of beauty is that no one can speak its name. She is not persuadable by tongue and he is illusively mute. Why —oh why? We may speak of a beautiful thing, a beautiful collection of things, the spaces between things. Everything we cannot capture in the eyes; feelings that shed themselves on park benches in conspicuous doldrums, when nothing else is calling. But for all the poems and mediums of inspired prose and spoken word, beauty is irrevocably private; forever getting ready in the powder room, but never turning up for the show.
The beauty of beauty is not merely that we cannot translate 1 to 1 the subjective phenomenological inner world into dialogue or text, but that beauty eludes us in the most existential sense. The act of transcribing her song actually closes the doors and windows of her house. Such that she moves further away on the circumference of my attention. The harder I chase, the more distant her gaze from the window of her country house appears. No, it's only when I am not reaching, not wanting, that I feel her presence settle behind me; the faintest bouquet of her perfume greets me, and when I turn to greet her, only a spectre of that presence lingers. She isn’t ever what I think she is, and she never leaves the same impression twice.
In this sense beauty is forever entwined, composed and born with loss. Beauty may only stay in one dress so long as her image is ripe and untamed. Before our senses collect. Before the tendrils of the mind have her. This ceaseless fleeting and re-emergence is only possible because she is not in ‘things’ as we know them. She wears them. She wears the context of your attention like a cloak —flowing herself through the gauze precisely when your wits and cleverness are down, dormant and vulnerable. It is her vanishing without having touched our minds that leaves the haunting trace that only heightens her allure. I will never find you and know that I have you simultaneously. I lose myself in you when you touch me. You are never truly mine.
“Losing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife —is sure to be noticed." —Søren Kierkegaard
When I am intoxicated with you, I am lost. I am a flag in the centre of open space. There is no space to reflect, no time to compose what I know. I am enlivened, but what I know as me is gone. I am as much a human being as the light reflecting off the surface of the sea.
What I know is always hungry; what I am is like the trace of the bird's wing in the sky.
Somehow my heart is connected to yours. There are strings between us, and the hidden element of this is what you play as your lyre. The distance provides each string unique expression. You are distance without distance. Intimacy without privation.
It is the ungraspabilty of beauty which makes him sweet; he is bashful and unapologetic. He has no rules by which he takes shape. He can be a cat, a can of tomatoes, a condom or an ashtray. The hesitation before speaking. He is the substrate, the catalyst. The life force coursing the spine. The fire in the nerves which allows these eyes to see. Every crease and curve of existence is aligned with him, but you cannot touch him.
Like a gift, there are many layers to him. I appear to see him on the surface, but this is a mirage. What I am really seeing is myself. I am seeing all the world I put between myself and me. Every surface and texture I need to feel, the pressure of body, the ripple of skin, the verve of impulse —desire, and the metronome of time that gives my mystery a home. The light that bounces from one surface back to me.
But I cannot see me. There is no interior to me I can find. For everywhere I go, there I am — bejewelled and bereft on my throne.
Note: This is an ontological and philosophical article, not a technical deep dive into AI technology and its history.
Artificial intelligence, the words can feel disingenuous compared to the limited offerings we’ve seen this century. The field has a long dark shadow of missteps, trial and error and tortured design philosophy, but this year we have been witnessing what seems to be a breakthrough; an uptick in the typical S-curve of innovation. An inflexion point where the linearity of our parapet of expectation is defied. Now is the perfect moment to interject, reflect and speculate as to where it might go. [...]
Read more →
To make an item of acquired and delicate taste requires a degree of love and care so formidable that it would be a crime to sell. Purchasable taste is rare for this reason. Moreover, the item in question will naturally suit its maker in perception and wear, making the act of selling sting like a bittersweet breakup. The cost for the acquirer is therefore commensurate with feel rather than analysis. The high cost is additive, not subtractive to the experiential valence of the ceremony of purchase. One feels the same sting in the blasé and all too simple nature of the transaction, that pulls painfully from one's pockets and flaunts meekly on the counter or clinically beeps from one's plastic. This feeling shares the same root and creates an invisible but oh so beautifully intangible connection between the acquirer and the creator.
The ambiguity of our own freedom is humanity's greatest challenge; it's why we build complex systems.
Formal logic is an axiomatic system where inputs run through a series of precise transformations according to the ruleset of the framework. We use formal logic systems when we can no longer leverage the resources of a group casually, for a variety of reasons such as geographical location, confidentiality, democratic processes and so on. They are highly functional catch-all rulesets that ease communication between uncommon peoples when disputation and ambiguity are common. We also use formal logic to grapple with reality in a reliable way, where past notation translates into semi-predictable outcomes, and those outcomes are noted for further experimentation; effectively buttoning down the variables one step at a time. This is how the mind gains powerful traction over the environment. [...]
Read more →
I’m sitting across from Andrew at a Sheffield cafe. Urban trinkets are twinkling on post-industrial white-washed walls, but his eyes are not. Something has passed my lips that has transformed his energetic demeanour on a dime. “You know” he softly bemoans “there are healthier ways…” his voice tapers off, and though the space between unchanged, he appears at a distance. His eyes water the paintwork. “What’s done is done.” I quip defiantly. “I can’t undo it.” A passing barista awkwardly adjusts the mood. “Why didn’t you just read the texts?” he says a second later, with a note of desperation. I elaborate. “I always knew something was off.” “Oh, it didn’t feel so obvious five minutes ago” I retort, but the cascade of thoughts swirling through his mind is damage enough, and friends no more we were. [...]
Read more →
What constitutes reasonable vs unreasonable? I suspect that (emotionally speaking) what is reasonable is what aligns with my opinion and what is not is anything contrary. How else might you define it? You may claim that there is such a thing as objective reason and factual analysis, but to agree on that we may need to get into the weeds of why and come out with an inter-subjective agreement (or not). What then will be the reasoning you use to justify your reasoning? If you use the same mode of reasoning to justify your reasoning, you are not reasoning at all (If you define reasoning as working from a proposition to a unique conclusion). You are saying this is true because it is so and it is so because so (a tautology). And if you use another form of reasoning to justify your own, you are admitting to the validity and interdependence of other forms of reason, thereby opening the door for your intellectual adversary. [...]
Read more →
Much of the intellectual life involves unpacking concepts. Annoyingly, other commentators usually come along to unpack the way you unpacked it and so on and so on…The supposed purpose of all this unpacking is to salvage a valuable conclusion, but what exactly makes it valuable? On we go… unpacking conclusions that are the conclusions of unpacked conclusions. And here at the fringes of sanity, the universe goes; chasing its tail with gleeful abandon.
Bodhidharma sat facing the wall.
The Second Patriarch stood in the snow.
He cut off his arm and presented it to Bodhidharma, crying, “My mind has no peace as yet! I beg you, master, please pacify my mind!”
“Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you,” replied Bodhidharma.
“I have searched for my mind, and I cannot take hold of it,” said the Second Patriarch.
“Now your mind is pacified,” said Bodhidharma.
Have you seen the face of freedom? Shivered against its feathery touch? There’s a cultural mythos of freedom not far removed from eating grapes on a lilo, authority on all matters you care to be and beholden to none, but when we go into our idle imaginings of what would satisfy our requirements of freedom; trouble in paradise.
One, if freedom has to meet requirements, is it freedom? Two, our visions of freedom are counter to the forces that make us feel trapped, such that our ideas of freedom are biased by the avoidance of pain —but is not the pain we feel but a symptom of freedom? If you are free you can hurt yourself, and if others are free, they can hurt you. So we find on that account that our depictions of freedom invariably fail, because they are depictions that necessarily exclude. If freedom is truly free, it cannot be limited to the particular, but it includes the particular too. How can one imagine something not particular? Impossible. Unknown. Undefined. Unbound. All-inclusive, and sometimes exclusive. Trapped, pain, wishing things were different, any scenario. But look around. Does whatever is happening truly make sense? Is the current predicament divinely designed? If you are honest, you will see it has no author, no solidity, no reason to be. Is it not then already free?
And tell me how does God choose?
Whose prayers does he refuse?
Who turns the wheel?
Who throws the dice?
On the day after tomorrow.
Tom Waits - Day After Tomorrow
Are the shapes of our lives no more fateful than the distribution of leaves on the ground? Who can say? but men and women will wonder; men like Tom waits as he comments on the plight of soldiers who are “gravel on the road” to politicians. Fundamental inequity has ever thus brushed us the wrong way and is the very stuff of war. By now, most folks have pocketed the truism, life is unfair and dusted their hands. But, beneath the surface the itch of our dysphoria bites. After all, who are we without our will? The ever turning gyre of determination squealing beneath crushing compromise coughed out before a universe whose nature is homoeostatic; perverse to whim and indifferent to pain. [...]
Read more →
I want to take a step back from my first foray into the field of fiction writing and adjust my fictional glasses. I recall that Philip Pullman once responded on a podcast I vaguely remember; “Don’t plan. If you plan, you’ll end up having a plan for your plan and so on and it’ll end up stilted, so just write. Once you see what you have you can organise your thoughts.” Well Mr Pullman, what if having a plan for my plan and no actuality was my plan all along? *taps forehead* In all seriousness, although these words strike me wise, and everyone has their methods, I thought some commentary on my process could prove insightful. [...]
Read more →
The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.
Absolute truth. The ground of being. The unspeakable Tao. The Which than Which there is no Whicher. The irreducible datum of all experience. Existence is.
The third and final instalment in this series is something of a sea change, massaging the mind towards contemplation of its nature that may induce a shift of perspective that is as far from abstract or theoretical as anything can be. Articles one and two were no more than a sealed envelope and an accompanying letter blade. Here, the article cannot do the heavy lifting. I cannot open the letter for you. It is an invitation. [...]
Read more →
System evolution, especially governance structures, can be thought of as a shell that calcifies and grows from the seed of human needs. It is composed of layers (paradigms), stratified by population, time, and cognitive development. Perforations in these layers are minor or major flaws that either curl downwards until critical mass is reached, collapsing the layer down onto a (cruder) supporting layer, or curl upwards and inspire the transition to a new (refined) layer. Layers become more reliable yet sensitive (taut) in the upwards direction because they stretch fewer human resources more efficiently over a wider breadth of the population. This provides interpersonal ease with a comparatively small spread out cost to any one individual's personal freedom. [...]
Read more →
I’m sure you have heard the aphorism that everything is one, but you may not have come across a complete description for how it must be. So here goes nothing.
If something is to be a separate entity then it cannot possibly interact with anything else, even in theory. If it did it would have to be part of a larger encompassing reality. Much like how a train has many parts and each part is the train. All parts interact to compose the train. If we were to take apart the train, then the pieces would compose the scrapheap and the scrapheap would compose the earth and so on. What composes what and where such distinctions lie is something the mind superimposes. [...]
Read more →
Having wrenched at the door of perception with some abandon in part 1, it’s time to peek our heads out the door like a timid cat. Tackling an unavoidably reflective topic like epistemology begs of me a refutation of every word preceding the current; a mess not unlike cleaning a leaking pen with ink-stained hands.
The preceding article appears to trace a linear path to a Socratic standpoint. A view not without merit. Nonetheless, it is still a position derived from opposing views. It is still a philosophical datum, a standpoint held, remembered and safeguarded. It's natural to ask: is there anything that does not depend on a hook to hang a conceptual frame? If you are looking for a fresh outlook, look no further than the mind of a newborn child. On the surface, it may seem that the Socratic not-knowing embodies the same spirit of an unassuming child. However, that one is assumed, and the other unavoidable makes every bit of difference. [...]
Read more →
There has been a distinct break in content for the better part of a year, but not without reason. I have been fortunate enough to have been sheltered amongst a few spiritual communities for the bulk of the lockdown period. In this time I have experienced and become intrigued by the backend complexities involved in building robust, but open and egalitarian community-driven decision systems and the difficulties wrapped up in the social dynamics therein. The predominant insight that emerged was that non-democratic consensus-based systems are biased, paradoxical, and do not scale easily, which is but a mere reflection of the inadequacies present in human minds. I set about devising a paper and a theoretical protocol to attempt to harmonise the best aspects of democratic and pure consensus systems which you can read below. I will emphasize that this is purely speculative and experimental at this stage, although I do intuit that there is something valuable to be gleaned here if only as a pivot point in thought for interested readers.
IAC pdf
This is the first in a series of short observations I'm calling field notes.
A casual remark gaining ground among young people is that we don’t take life too seriously. An alluring statement to plug into a social media profile. After all, the source of its robustness is its weakness. Its truthfulness, by extension, means you delight in showing little concern for finding a stronger explanation for your behaviour. A convenient and humble stance to align with. Interestingly, some of the great-thinkers have arrived at a similar conclusion through the exhaustion of analysis. Albert Camus’s absurdism lends itself towards this line of thinking. Why not bathe yourself in an easy-going and unscrupulous way of life when it seems harder than ever to find clarity and purpose? [...]
Read more →
Adjoining The Keystone is the next stone to be mortared into the archway. The problem of knowledge. At face value, we all appreciate the function of knowledge in practical affairs, but there is a more covert role it plays in shaping experience and perception. The degree to which we live within the web of knowledge places a hard cap on our ability to understand the world around us. This will be meta, like a mirror room for the mind. [...]
Read more →
Hello and welcome to State of Play. This is the keystone. An abstracted version of the architectural baluster, functioning as a centre of equilibrium by which my body of work is supported. The primary idea is to instil an intuitive feeling of the philosophies, values, and metaphysical undercurrents that flavour the various articles here. Akin to visiting the vineyard before tasting the wine.
I will clarify from the outset that the contents of this blog are not altogether serious, although it is sincere, because it is pulled from a well of ardour for comprehending the enigmas of reality. Also in the spirit that it would be conceited to impose ridged heuristics for living, effectively clipping our wings. [...]
Read more →
