Yoga, Einstein, and Grant Morrison Walk Into a Bar

My favorite reading on my syllabus for my course on Research Methods comes George Lackoff's The Political Mind.  Lackoff summarizes the knowledge science has gained about how the brain works.  The main takeaway point is that we think in terms of concepts and narratives.  Its application to politics is, none of us believe what we believe politically because we objectively weighed the facts and came to the most logical decision.  Our brain doesn't work nearly so neatly.  We believe what we believe because our brains seek to fit new information into a relatively narrow set of cognitive frames.

As fascinating as the narrow application of that theory is, its broader meaning is even more mind blowing.  None of us see the world as it is.  We perceive only the segment of the world that our brain allows, and our brains are such a murky, weird, not-rational-but-biological place that we shouldn't even be all that sure that what we can perceive represents something true or immutable.

If nature isn't your thing, let's talk about nurture.  By the time most of us were 10, we had probably learned that no two snowflakes are exactly alike.  If that's the case, why do we call all the white stuff that falls from the sky snow?  Probably because we lack either the perception or the words to delineate the infinite different varieties of snowflakes that exist.  Some linguist can give the citation, but I am sure that our perception is greatly limited to those things/categories/concepts for which we have adequate language to express them.

Thanks to yoga and comic books, I have spent a lot of time thinking about magic, meditation, religion, theoretical physics, and the psychedelic movement.  At this point in time, I think they're all reaching for the same thing.  They are reaching for that moment where we can transcend our normal perceptual and linguistic limitations and more accurately perceive the nature of reality.

If you don't understand anything I just wrote, don't feel bad, because I don't either.  This is the biggest idea with which I have ever struggled, and I lack accurate words to describe it (because, hey, the idea is that words can't express).  But this idea is also one of the most important things I have ever found.  If any one thing has inspired me to start this blog, it is the opportunity to talk about this idea--to try to get a better handle on what it is, and to try to open the way to others to see it, as others opened and continue to open the door for me.

And because the Idea is infinite, and my supply of words only slightly less so, you can expect numerous fumbling attempts to explore it over the next 359 days.

PS: Please note that I said that I had THOUGHT about the psychedelic movement.  For the record, I have never tried a single hallucinogenic drug, and you can polygraph me any time you'd like about that claim.