Crisis, the failure of the built-in programs to achieve a desired result, lead us to make attempts for clarity, which are most of the time nothing more than to create new programs, new strategies that really get us what we want. If they work well we might pass them on to others, so that they will have something to simply "copy and paste" without the need for laboriously working out the details. Our society as a whole has grown immensely with this sharing of strategies for getting what we want. From erotic relations to technologies, social interactions, religious views, etc. And although most of these shared views were born from an attempt to achieve clarity, now that they are implemented, there is no need to understand why they work. We only need to be clear on how to implement them. For instance some hundred years ago the female orgasm was practically unheard of, the medical community even considered it a source of physiological problems.
As a teenager I was like that regarding books and video games. I could have lived all my life consuming books and videogames, and how joyful it would be, all full of pleasure! Of course
and to them our very small pupils do not seem lacking in detail. these very small windows are even obscured by our limited ability to desire and to see beauty.
As a matter of fact the universe seems to be that way, the laws of physics assure that practically everything that happens will influence almost everything else given enough time. Human beings, like other animals, are only sensible to a very small portion of the universe, reduced to a very small fragment of the spatial and time scale.
Being clear is like having a body, it is what allows to interact, to communicate with the rest of the world.
relation of We know how light is produced by A clear window, for instance, will let you see the trees and the sun. Obviously, the tees are opaque, When we apply the concept to ourselves we usually mean , but here I will use it a more restricted sense, to designate the property of a medium to transmit, to pass-through, without distortion. In this context clarity is the property of a medium that lacks distortion, audiophiles search for it in high fidelity, and if you have it you'll see through that medium quite well, if not, well... it will just reflect some other thing, it might be like having a dirty windshield, not god for driving, but interesting in other perspectives.
So clarity, in our restricted sense, demands just one thing: absence of obstacles in a medium! Obviously a clear medium might be of no use if we lack either a creator of messages and someone able to receive those messages (someone having consciousness). However we should leave these two aside for a moment and concentrate on the medium. The reason is simple: consciousness is a mystery and both creativity and understanding can only be fully understood if we were able to understand the root of meaning, the root of consciousness. That seems out of our reach with our present culture, but it is easier to understand the problems related to the fidelity of the medium. Basically it is just a matter of reproducing correctly to the listener what is happening outside. In music an incorrect reproduction would be for instance not identifying the musical notes or, at least, their relation (higher or lower pitch). This is actually the case with many people not accustomed to classical music, and it's a large part of the reason for not liking classical music. One hears just "noise" not the complex interplay of higher and lower notes but simply louder or softer sounds.
Basically, to avoid musical distortion, to have" high fidelity", a medium must not: i) introduce extraneous sound; ii) exclude any of the music's sound; iii) change the sound properties (temporal order or rhythm, volume, frequency, spatial localization (in stereo systems), etc). the accuracy, scope and detail of representations
Today we are surrounded by an articulated, coherent, infinitely complex world (at least in the eyes of our limited cognitive powers). A very small fraction of the world provides more than ample material for a single homo sapiens, even if armed with millennia's worth of cultural baggage, to delve for an entire lifetime. So we have, in this kind of body, in this planet, in this era, no difficulty in finding messages. Our present culture (globalization) offers too much, we are submersed in contents we will never be able to understand. From astrophysics, computers, molecular engineering, genetics, movies, music, sports, biology, psychology, world religions, politics, etc. In some of these topics there are far more books then we could ever read in 1000 lifetimes, but in all of them more is being written then we are able to read and even less to understand. There is vastly more music than we could ever hear in many life times, more tv shows, and movies, etc, etc. The humans species has become very efficient at producing culture, but how can each of us assimilate reasonably this large quantity of information, these vast worlds?
The very pressing problem is in integrating all this gorgeous but gargantuan quantity of information
and a receptor, we are also presupposing a message, but in our body, in our planet, what we have is a large excess of messages, we are surround by vastly much more things than those we will ever be able to understand.
Now, our brains allow us to make reproductions that may be more or less clear and these reproductions may be achieved at various levels. Western culture values clarity at the intellectual level: Clearness, or clarity, applied to the intellect, is a measure of the accuracy, scope and detail of representations of objects, that usually include cause and effect relations and also relations between the part and the whole. Science and technology are heavily based on the intellect.
The intellect is usually understood as a way to manipulate objects. It typically creates functional images of the kind "if...then" that allows the prediction of events and their manipulation.
Many confusions in the modern mind would be avoided if we would stick to this principle: not affirming what I do not know, not denying what we can see (even if we can't understand it).
Understanding our ignorance and searching with real humility for truth allows us to be open to the mysterious beauty of the Universe gives us many wonderful feelings, like awe and ecstasy, for instance. But going after the
But for the person who loves truth these are just aftereffects of something much more valued which is the "contact with the truth", the Encounter with Reality. To get this encounter one is ready to be disillusioned, to accept the meaningless of life, the absurdity of existence, the illusion of free will, that we are just machines reproducing our genes, etc, etc. The important thing is that we encounter reality, that we do not live illusions, dreams, we want to be in contact with reality, we search for it as if it was the greatest lover. We find it gradually, little by little, and, generally, it never fails to surprise us, to astonish us, in its complexity and subtleties.
This is a bit like composing a music, which is as much a work of inventing as an act of discovery. When you listen to a work by Mozart, for instance, every intricate melody made up by the seamed themes, makes sense. And every theme makes sense also. You have to discover what makes sense, you have to find it out, to make it born in your mind and in reality, to listen to it after it has been discovered and created. And Mozart's music makes you feel certain things, it makes you grow, etc.
Now some people seem to want to go directly to the well being that the encounter with reality provides. They make fictions where strange things happen, and that strangeness and weirdness works for them as truth. They don't need science, they are satisfied with superstition, as long as it is strange and marvelous enough. They make art, but instead as looking at it as an exploration of their imaginations, they attribute to it a strange reality. In their minds reality and fiction are mixed. They do not distinguish it.
I'm not talking about Carlos Castañeda, whose work I don't know that well, perhaps his work reflects a deep investigation into the fabric of reality through a serious and systematic phenomenological approach. But I am speaking about those people that live in search for emotions, and do not worry about living what might be a lie if it makes them happy. There is nothing wrong with that per se (after all emotions are very nutritious :), but I want to distinguish my approach from that one. I mean the mystery that deeply enchants me in life and the world is not an end in itself, I don't search for it, I search for the truth, and the wonderment is just a sign that truth is fulfilling, that embracing our ignorance, recognizing it, although it leaves you a bit lost, also gives you a chance to grow and to embrace the beautifulness of the world.
In that respect it is, I think, highly counterproductive to go after mysteries in themselves.
If we are not clear we might have pleasure also (in the short term at least), but we do not grow, our world shrinks, we live among our confusions, prejudices, fears or habits, we cannot see beyond them and we stay alone in our illusions, disconnected from the world, living in a small (or even shrinking) part rather than closer to the whole. In a rather literal sense, being confused, full of prejudices, myths, fears and illusions, is like being partially dead. Instead of a consciousness that grows, reaching larger parts of infinity, it rather revolves around the same old paths, again and again. The following text is an attempt to make clearer, at least to myself, the ways in which we can be connected to the world, more "in" the world. This is intended to be a practical guide, something that can help encountering what is.
Therefore it is my conviction (and it is only a conviction) that the Hell that I sometimes live is only due to being closed to the magnificent and infinite beauty that, the urgent need to get the daily bread muffles its soft, delicate whisper. The fact is, we live in a society of beings who are taught to be concerned on a very small variety of issues. Stars and cells don't concern us, we prefer soccer and fashion. So because the average "us" cannot speak about the beauty or even the things that surpass the human daily concerns, we end up living in a world of repetitions, of going over and over again the same old concerns, pleasures and thrills. In the end we will give clarity a lesser role, or even despise it as a whole. Why would I want to be clear if it makes me suffer? I'd much rather like to believe in a world much smaller, where I am closer to the center, where everything else does not exist: therefore dogma and superstition take their central role. However this kind of medication only treats the symptoms while aggravating the disease. Because it was blindness to the whole that made us sick and suffering, and to shield from that pain we go into the shadows even more.
Fighting is a way to sustain cohesion in our contemporary societies ensuring that minority views will not grow too much unless they are really needed.
The following text is an attempt to be clearer, more open to the world. In my experience, the more clearer we are, the more we see that, in fact, we live in an amazing world, a world more beautiful, complex and with more variety, than the most beautiful Paradise ever conceived by a human mind. All we need is to open our eyes.
The most obvious thing to us in a private experience (for instance what it feels like to feel light) is also non-analyzable and non-describable in a public way: you cannot explain to a born-blind person what seeing ust feed on illusions, then, if we want to have the will to live, we should only be clear as long as it does not destroy our fantasies
So, how does transparency work? Well, we actually don't know that transparency is a special case of transportation, and, in the real world, it seems to demand so for it to work we need several things, for instance objects that can transverse it, a fortiori, they must have the ability of being displaced or recreated without loosing their relevant properties in the process. For instance we might say that a window glass lets photons pass through because we see them arriving on the other side. But it would be difficult to decide if there were the same photons that were on both sides of the window. Perhaps the glass just absorbs the photons that smash on one side of the glass on the one side and, being unable to retain or transform them, recreates them on the other side. To us it is is as if they were the same. Why should we care? They have the same properties, frequency, amplitude, polarization, direction, so, in what sense could we say that they are not the same? In the same way, how can we know for sure that the Spock who is teleported is the same Spock after teleportation? In fact how can I know that the I who saw the sunset the other day is the same I who was washing the dishes, or the I that has become senile, or the I that I was 20 years ago? In any case if I suppose that the same object continues to exist even if it change some of its relational or even intrinsic properties, then I conceive something that can travel, that can be in different relations and still be the same in some sense. If we, by the contrary suppose that there is no real continuity then objects will
but this is in fact a simplification because when a photon encounters a glass it . Such objects maintain the intrinsic properties that allow them to keep their identity, but some of their relational properties, for instance their spatial or temporal position become different. So a transparent medium might be seen as a way to safeguard the identity of something while allowing for changes in some of its relations.
change some of its properties, for example its spatial position, while continuing to be (at least in our understanding) the same. For instance we say that a photon
keeps at least some part of its intrinsic properties (the more transparent the medium the more of its intrinsic properties will remain) in its travel from A to B. For instance suppose a say the word "beach" and it reaches you. We might say that you clearly understood my meaning of "beach" if you imagined the same thing as I imagined. And we might say that the medium that allowed for the passage of this idea was transparent if it did not distort my idea. Now, the thing is, in this case for me to pass the idea of a beach to you I had to have a brain capable of controlling a body able to make pressure on certain plastic keys, that conveyed certain electrical signals to an interface, connected to a cpu that runs a software that saves it on memory, and then stores it on a hard disk somewhere in the world (in the world of the wide web) for an indeterminate period of time, and then somehow you have to get it using also computers and electrochemical signals in the brain, etc. It is very clear that this medium does not allow for the passage of "things", the movements of my fingers are not passed to you, nor the electrical voltages inside the pc, or the electrochemical signals in my brain. All of that is lost to you. But what was important to us both remained: the image of a "beach". So, the concept of transparency is inevitably associated with intrinsic properties. If we considered that all the properties of an object were essential to its identity, than that object could not travel anywhere, for changing the property of being at time tx or at space sx would change its identity. An object changed from one spot to another spot would not be considered to be the same object and an object that would get to the next moment would not be considered to be the same object as it was before.
So how can a medium with so many transformations and obstacles It is obvious to see that So this medium is not allowing the passage of my mechanical acts, not even of their immediate electromagnetic consequences to you. through which we can communicate clearly, that is able to pass-through all these concepts and notions, is not passing the same objects
But why should we care about clarity? Well, for conscious beings, transparency is what allows them to be in contact with something. Your own ideas, feelings or impulses must be clear to you, they must get to your consciousness, otherwise there would be no "you", there would be no conscious experience for its objects would not arrive - conscious would only exist as non-actualized possibility, an emptiness surrounded by an impenetrable opacity. You and me are in the world (even if it is an inner world) because we communicate with it, or at least with an infinitesimal part of it: we perceive something, we respond to it. All this needs some minimum degree of transparency both for perceiving and for acting, between the subject and the object there must be a passing-thru. The more transparency there is the more we will be here, the more we will be in contact, the more we will be present, aware, understanding, feeling and living. Obviously, every object of our consciousness must be transparent to us to be part of our world. Without any kind of transparency we would be blocked out from the world, we would have no ability to receive or to give, we would be like in a coma, in total darkness. On the other hand, total transparency of perception, understanding, and in the ability to act would be like some have imagined God's powers: all knowing, all detecting, all powerful... not a single event, in every scale and in every dimension, would occur that would pass unnoticed. But if we go a step further and imagine everything to be transparent, not only the medium that allows subject and object to communicate, but the objects themselves, then what would we see? Nothing, because everything we see has a shape, it is by being distinct from its environment that we can identify it and characterize it. We live in a world of differences. But if everything was absolutely transparent we would not be able to distinguish any particular thing, no frontiers could be delineated. We would be also blind, not from, being confined by opaqueness, but from being lost in infinity. Obviously, human beings, are unimaginably far away from such total transparency, our windows of perception are very limited due to constrains in our bodies (sense organs and cognitive powers) and in our interests. But however restricted our interests may be, we must care about transparency as long as we care for anything at all. Even if we wanted to commit suicide we would have to be clear on ways to achieve it! Only utter contempt towards every kind of existence / experience would be compatible with disregarding clarity in all its forms. (The movie Cast Away suggests such a state of mind when Tom Hanks looses "Wilson".)
Usually the objects that we find in our daily life that are transparent will only let certain kinds of things pass-through. A window shield for instance will let light pass-through but will be impervious to water and air molecules.
Although it is very important to understand that transparency in itself cannot be seen or felt, and if everything in our universe was perfectly transparent in every sense, what would we see? Well, nothing! In that sense a perfect transparent world seems as blinding as a perfectly opaque world. Only the conjugation of clarity and opacity can provide a world of objects as we know it. Transparent media can be known indirectly through the objects that transverse it. a perfectly transparent object in every sense would be invisible in our universe. Not even time or space are completely transparent: time forbids us from being in two places at the same time, whereas time apparently forces us to go "forwards" to the future, as if there is an arrow of time that points only in one direction.
That is, a perfectly transparent medium would allow for what exists in point A, a photon for instance, to pass-through to point B without any of it's properties being changed. Properties may change during the travel due to obstructions (fewer properties get to point B), additions (extraneous properties get to point B) or distortion (different properties get to point B). Clear days or nights, clear windows and windshields, let more light pass thru and with less distortion than clouded days and nights or dirty windshields.
concepts cannot be seen or felt, this one is very easy to understand: transparency is simply the ability of a medium to pass-through something without changing it. That is, a medium that is perfectly transparent regarding a certain kind of objects would allow for an object of that kind to travel from A to B without any of it's properties being changed. Properties may change during the travel due to obstructions (fewer properties get to B), additions (extraneous properties get to B) or distortion (different properties get to B). In any case a perfectly transparent medium would not interfere in any way with the object traveling through it. Usually the objects that we find in our daily life that are transparent will only let certain kinds of things pass-through. A window shield for instance will let light pass-through but will be impervious to water and air molecules. Do we know
In our daily usage the word "clarity" applies not only to physical objects like clear rooms, clear skies and oceans, but also to minds, feelings, personal relations, etc. Clear minds, a clear heart, being clear on what we feel for X, etc, are expressions that we frequently use. But here we will go much further than that, we will try to be clear in every domain of human experience we have patience to write about. This includes the mind, the heart, communication, anger and pain, religion, spirituality, sex, and even the mind-body problem.
It is easy to see that transparency, defined in such an abstract manner, is the opposite of "interference" and can be used to characterize the relation between any two things.
Clear days or nights, clear windows and windshields, let more light pass thru and with less distortion than clouded days and nights or dirty windshields. Having a clear head, a clear mind, as also to do with this quality of not distorting, not repressing, not lying. we are pointing to
In day-to-day language "clarity" is applied to more than the free passage of light, not only do we say "it is a clear day" but we also speak about "mental clarity", or even emotional clarity ("being clear about one's feelings for someone" for instance) which in a strict sense applies to representations; representations will be the more clear the more they have accuracy, scope and detail; for these representations to be created and accessed so that it applies to any conceivable objects and media. A glass window, for instance, is typically transparent to light but impervious to air and water; a polarized lens will only pass-thru light that has a certain electromagnetic alignment. According to our use of "transparency" and "opaqueness" every object of our universe will have a certain degree of opaqueness that makes it visible by interacting with other objects; a perfectly transparent object in every sense would be perfectly invisible, for instance it would "pass-thru" without distortion all kinds of energy fields (electromagnetic, nuclear, gravitational...) and matter: in no way would it affect the universe around it. Therefore it seems impossible to create a perfectly transparent medium
for instance, if a medium could pass-through a message perfectly to a conscious observer, he would then have a perfect re-presentation of it, with absolute accuracy, scope and detail. .
Besides being a fundamental part of conscious experience, there is also another reason to care for clarity: as a goal, it keeps free individuals and societies from alienation. Freedom is fueled by a will to transcend, to be without bonds, limits or frontiers. Whatever has been said, thought, felt, done, is a ground in which to jump, in which to go beyond; it is this openness, this ability to go where no one else has gone before, that gives the society or the individual a further dimension to grow. Disrespect for the old gives place to the new, by contrast, imitation leads only to the same repeated landscapes. This means that, whatever limit we will want to establish to a free individual or society, it will be broken: creativity feeds on the forbidden or at least unexperienced lands. hampered by any superfluous rule, prejudice, fear, tradition, method, values, etc.
has been traditionally difficult to find a minimum set of principles that can guarantee the healthiness of free open societies, and what we say about societies can, in this case, be applied also to the free individual. The difficulty in both cases is the same: conciliating unbridled freedom with a desire for realism.
Clarity, understood as a goal, provides such a principle, because it does not close any doors, it does not impose any limits, but
Diversity, communication, creativity are the basis of evolution, of novelty, of "progress". However such a society can easily become "fragmented" with its different groups pursuing different areas of existence becoming gradually unable to communicate and to understand the beauty and value of each other's pursuits. In the USA a deep divide continues to grow between the scientific and the religious minded people. It is not difficult to imagine that in a matter of just a century or two scientists may become it is also easy to loose contact with reality, inebriated by our own splendor.
Rawls and others have tried to describe a set of principles regarding the distribution of wealth and the importance of freedom that could be accepted by all members of a contemporary free society (with different religious and or scientific views, etc). But looking back to other periods in the history of humanity in which we can find open societies (like in the Islamic Golden Age) we find that the main cause of decay has to do with the rise of obscurantism, dogmatic thinking, fear, the fall into an increasing rigid society in which there is no place for the new, for rebellion, for life. This decay is the result of a general dissatisfaction with free thinking, with the idea that obedience and dogmatism can be better than
it provides a framework in which we can represent almost every area of human endeavor as an attempt to achieve it. Of course, if I am tired and trying to sleep I will search for total obscurity, I may also be immersed in some kind of mechanical activity (like watching tv or working at certain factories) that turns me into little more than an articulated vegetable, but all of those who are in love with a certain topic or aspect of reality or field will dig in into what they love, they will try to clear all obstructions, all distortions, all additions, until all that remains is that pure vision of that realm. Be it mathematics, dance, sex, art, astrophysics, religion, philosophy, politics, sports, etc., they can only be good at them when they have a clear view of that part of reality. In fact all true experts, whatever their field may be, have achieved transparency on their field, that's why they master it. This vision of clarity as the main goal of most human activities that search for expertise provides a harmonic vision of human passion, we may be a physicist, an artist, a mystic, a sportsman, in all these activities you will find that you have company not only among those who share your premises and way of life, but of all those who are trying to be in contact with some aspect of reality, even if different from you. This is harmonious vision of different human endeavors may be quite important in today's society, at least if people are interested
Be it mathematics, dance, sex, art, astrophysics, religion, philosophy, politics, etc., they will be good at it in the measure that they will be in contact with the that particular part of the world, they can both receive and act appropriately upon that part of existence.
they will get better if they can get more accuracy, detail, an perceive what is at stake and act upon it. Obviously this requires transparency and vision. the more they can perfectly understand cannot be confused or obscured regarding their field of expertise. To be adept at something means to be able to transparently apprehend and act on whatever that clarity in common,
applies to all levels of human experience, from understanding a mathematical equation to full expression in dance or sex, from understanding Beethoven's ninth, to dealing with anger and pain, from epiphany to understanding M theory. Transparency is what people have to have in order to be experts or adepts in any field. This has at least two consequences: i) it allows us to understand that our drive to ameliorate in our context, in our field, is similar to the drive that other people have in other contexts or fields. More precisely they want to expand their vision, they want to understand more, to be more in tune, to express better who they are, etc. In sum they want to be more in the world, more awaken to whatever they want to grasp. You might be an actor, a scientist, a poet, a sex expert, an ascetic,
in all fields better transparency = expertise, being adept at
in each field, more demanding requirements - do not ignore other fields or kinds of experiences
no ideological fights - for instance dualism vs materialism, etc
understanding that everyone is having pleasure and learning, people in other fields are not stupid etc, they just focus different aspects of reality
like cognition, emotions, aesthetical does not establish any difference between cognitive, emotional, pulsional or even "spiritual" levels. although mankind has benefited tremendously from advances in science (think of medicine (vaccines for instance),
As long as we live in such a society we much accept that most of us will simply have no time to just be, relax, enjoy, search and create. A few of us do that. Some scientists for instance are like little children, they are exploring and tying to understand the world just like a child would, moved by simple curiosity and a desire to know.
That's why there are many scientists, highly inventive and perceptive on their own fields, who are capable of collaborating in the destruction of humanity, like what happened in the Nazi regime. We might be very clear regarding impressionist painting, food, classical music, jazz, atomic physics, Laura (a little baby), a cat, the house-market, etc, while we remain practically blind to everything else that is going on on the human world. The fact is: most things do not interest us, only a very few will seem substantial and delightful and nutritious. In general living creatures will want to have a clear access to these. This is why so many dogs get run over by cars when they're after a female. They are just not interested in traffic.
Usually the objects that we find in our daily life that are transparent will only let certain kinds of things pass-through. A window shield for instance will let light pass-through but will be impervious to water and air molecules.
Although it is very important to understand that transparency in itself cannot be seen or felt, and if everything in our universe was perfectly transparent in every sense, what would we see? Well, nothing! In that sense a perfect transparent world seems as blinding as a perfectly opaque world. Only the conjugation of clarity and opacity can provide a world of objects as we know it. Transparent media can be known indirectly through the objects that transverse it. a perfectly transparent object in every sense would be invisible in our universe. Not even time or space are completely transparent: time forbids us from being in two places at the same time, whereas time apparently forces us to go "forwards" to the future, as if there is an arrow of time that points only in one direction.
That is, a perfectly transparent medium would allow for what exists in point A, a photon for instance, to pass-through to point B without any of it's properties being changed. Properties may change during the travel due to obstructions (fewer properties get to point B), additions (extraneous properties get to point B) or distortion (different properties get to point B). Clear days or nights, clear windows and windshields, let more light pass thru and with less distortion than clouded days and nights or dirty windshields.
concepts cannot be seen or felt, this one is very easy to understand: transparency is simply the ability of a medium to pass-through something without changing it. That is, a medium that is perfectly transparent regarding a certain kind of objects would allow for an object of that kind to travel from A to B without any of it's properties being changed. Properties may change during the travel due to obstructions (fewer properties get to B), additions (extraneous properties get to B) or distortion (different properties get to B). In any case a perfectly transparent medium would not interfere in any way with the object traveling through it. Usually the objects that we find in our daily life that are transparent will only let certain kinds of things pass-through. A window shield for instance will let light pass-through but will be impervious to water and air molecules. Do we know
In our daily usage the word "clarity" applies not only to physical objects like clear rooms, clear skies and oceans, but also to minds, feelings, personal relations, etc. Clear minds, a clear heart, being clear on what we feel for X, etc, are expressions that we frequently use. But here we will go much further than that, we will try to be clear in every domain of human experience we have patience to write about. This includes the mind, the heart, communication, anger and pain, religion, spirituality, sex, and even the mind-body problem.
It is easy to see that transparency, defined in such an abstract manner, is the opposite of "interference" and can be used to characterize the relation between any two things.