Replying to LO25329 --
Hi Winfried
> Thank you, for checking and adding background to the word 'algedonic'.
>
> >Both ideas (flee from all pain, seek all pleasures) taken together may be
> >called "algedonism" according to the rules of English, although I have
> >never encountered this name before. (I will have to consult the Oxford
> >Dictionary on this one.)
All human societies drives are derived from the algedonic signal which is
connected to our nervous systems and "mentalised" as values and culture.
However there is little more to pain than meets the eye because the
expectation of a fearful thing happening is enough to invoke pain signals.
It might never happen. Or worse the fear resides in the minds of those
presently living from those long dead. The Serbian problem
All our motives are to allay our basic fears and meet our basic needs
however after this all we do is create mental values and cultural things
e.g.. the basic needs for a BMW is to transport one from A to B its
secondary needs are perfection, harmony and prestige. Perfection and
harmony are both values that flow out of striving for heavenly perfection
on earth (the age of romantics). Its fear component is the fiery earth
with degradation powers and destruction. Prestige is from "being seen"
and having an identity of worth. Soldiers will die for a piece of ribbon.
I call them harmony and entitlement needs.
> has also to be passed in order to have the system 'viable'. Which ones?
The viable part of the systems is that part that can produce itself,
sometimes production sometimes another department, but whatever produces
that system in focus. There could be other embedded systems that produce
themselves and there usually are. (This is the whole issue of recursivity
and the laws of cohesiveness of which the algedonic signal helps in
binding them)
> Those which tell about pain or pleasure! Thus (and thanks to your
> explanations I also understand why) such detail information passed beside
> aggregate information is called 'algedonic signal' or 'algedonic
> information'.
>
>
> The question of how such a signal is processed by the higher level support
> system is a very different one. "Algedonism" in your sense above would be
> surely a very poor form of processing, the discipline of personal mastery
> is a much better one:
Before anyone can claim personal mastery they will have to walk the
algedonic tight rope. This is most of what I have been ranting on about
over the months. The biggest problem with the human race is that we are
all totally oblivious of this on the mental level. We all fall inside the
mental structure of the the mind and hence even if we strive for something
it is an algedonic signal, hence the deep paradox that humans find
themselves in.
If you can find one striving on the outside of the algedonic signal you
would have made one of mankind's great discoveries.
The discipline of personal mastery is a cosmic joke, because we cannot
live outside the point of existence, we then cease to live, we also cannot
live with a mind of infinite space because of the boundaries created by
the mind hence we create models and theories all bound in the same laws.
We are fooling ourselves if we can be otherwise. It is the blind telling
the deaf that he can see.
That is why I have said if we do not know our personal algedonic signal
then we haven't begun to walk the tight rope of personal mastery. I also
suppose this will then boil down to issues like freedom which is also an
algedonic signal. How free are we really? If we have boundaries are we
free? The trick is to see the opposite of freedom that way one can see why
it is an algedonic signal.
Here are some nice ones for you to chew on.
succession, wins, loses, freedom, hope, ideal, recognition, harmony,
perfection, strive, challenge, satisfaction, abundance, money, rewards,
poverty, deprivation, death, degradation, strength, beauty, restriction,
need, safety, fear, insecure, bondage, success, failure, pain, dread,
terror, hell, heaven, life, identity, creativeness, affiliation etc
Read any mission and value statement and you will see that sometimes they
are strivings other times actually values that depict the firm other times
they are there because management liked the sound of words like integrity,
team work and rewards.
> >He [Job] then proposes the only dialectical dual to be the
> >wicked path and the devine path.
Again here is just another great example, I always talk about this, this
is the tension between good and evil. Which of course is just a human
fabrication. Our language and meaning is totally mixed with the algedonic
signal.
> "Algedonism" and personal mastery may be a reflection of this dialectical
> dual.
>
> I can recognise in your descriptions of your journeys in the desert your
> pointing to the importance to have the 'algedonic channel' wide and open
> and not dumb and fed up by the artificial signals provided by consume and
> 'civilization'.
The algedonic signals are so mixed up with our culture and values we could
not separate them even if they smelt like rotten fish. They also have the
effect of increasing our cognition so we land in a double bind.
Where I live some of the societal algedonic signals are "clean green
beautiful pristine New Zealand", All Black power (black is the colour of
the void, infinite and scary).
> Take for an example your explanation of how to find a specific specimen of
> a succulent in the desert. Similarily (or was it in that context?) we once
> wrote on gem detectors.
>
> More on the pain-side, you offer the following evidence for the importance
> of (authentic) algedonic signals:
>
> >Not all fears are bad. For example, a desert wanderer has to fear
> >poisonous insects and snakes. Using such a fear, the wanderer then do not
> >make fractal moves without first thinking. For example, turning a stone
> >over will cause a scorpion underneath to attack immediately. Pulling out a
> >tuft of grass to make a fire may cause a "horing-adder" (a small, deadly
> >snake with a pair of horns on its head) to do the same. In both cases
> >death will come within an hour.
Again to label signals bad or good is the basis of human problems, signals
are not good or bad but rather appropriate or inappropriate to the
situation. The value labeling is one of the main causes of the algedonic
signal being misunderstood. Note that in this issue, mentioned above, it
is connected to death one of the main drivers of the signal. Species
survival.
There is a need opposite of this fear and it is the safety and support
needs. (why do we live in houses?, why did the ancients build on top of
citadels-even today some of these citadels are revered by some
societies-Masada for one-what about the Cloud People of South America.
Even the term citadel has a powerful algedonic meaning)
More religions and cultures use the algedonic signal to control people
more than anything else ever devised by man. e.g. the Inquisition broke
bodies on the rack (between life and death), so one could choose heaven or
hell. It is called the hypnotic rhythm sometimes listening to politicians
one can hear the ventriloquism used by them.
Whole societies are driven by them, what about the Constitution?
kindest
gavin
--Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz>
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