More On The Lacuna
Did I ever emerge from my lockdown bubble?
Well! Will we ever know?
What donkey were you using?
Hi All, thanks for joining us, very welcome but very unexpected readers.
On reflection, there is the donkey and the tail and the vast gap between the two (as far as the game is concerned, you understand). The other blind-fold games we will exclude from our inquiries, for the time being, so as not to get too dispersed in our less than rigorous discourse. So, you give me the tail, (but don’t spin me round three times, you hear). I am hoping that the donkey is 2 dimensional and the wall or board on which he is outlined is in close proximity.
Ah, you see! Proximity? More questions! So close and yet so far. We are fully tooled up with our, probably, paper donkey’s tail, but with only the picture in our head of where the donkey is. We may have a memory of the donkey before it was our turn. Or the donkey may have already become a mere caricature of a rendering of sense data etc. How easily we are reduced in our efforts!
Having indulged your patience on roughly where I am heading with this (blindfolded) clip-clop, clip-clop, stating the obvious might be a relief; that what is actually there and our means to comprehend, embrace, ascertain, find reassurance is limited. Yes, you could get better through practice. A whole afternoon of pin the donkey’s tail would surely be more than we could stand but, not enough to be perfect at the task. Oh, to become a donkey-tail Ninja.
Loads of people have written about the shortfall, the cognitive deficit, so to speak. Our brain-processing frailty is more marked than ever against quantum computing and ‘new intelligences’. Was the pencil ever seen as a threat to our human autonomy? (rhetorical flourish).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Flammarion_Woodcut_1888_Color_2.jpg/595px-Flammarion_Woodcut_1888_Color_2.jpg
Among the many ways one might see oneself is the ‘boy in the bubble’ or, as someone said, looking out of a house window to the view and not knowing about the other views from all the other windows (Mr Flann O’Brien, I think). Like the Elephant In The Dark in reverse. Instead of us being one of the many blind touchy people trying to discover the elephant with their other senses, supposing we are the elephant and the universe is the mystery when one only uses one faculty.
Lacuna Gestalt
Your partitioned hard drive and what your other selves are up to
Break throughs with understanding the games one plays are liberating, sobering and somewhat undermining at the same time. Finding oneself guilty of self-deception (the original ‘offence’ or programme), we still find that the split-off partitions seem to keep jollying along. The ‘Id’ holds up the finger to us other two – we won’t argue about which one of us is which; ego or superego, or indeed which one I am being at the moment. All the times I have ever asked myself ‘Why do I keep making the same mistakes?’ is answered by another question: ‘Why do you keep doing that to yourself?’
It's not me, it’s the others! (on the hard drive)
On discovery, running out in the street shouting ‘Adelante!’ or ‘Eureka!’, isn’t the answer to a change of behaviour. There is simply a call for fresh discipline to make the new-found progression sustained and consistent. Sounds tremendously boring to us free-thinking liberation heads, but that’s where we become transparent to ourselves, if only momentarily.
Manic excitement appears to give us a route out of the humdrum and prosaic. Surely the ‘in charge’ self is not going to close that down and say hold your horses (donkeys)! We want to embrace it, live it, go for it? In charge of that over excited donkey? Or is the real donkey the implicate order to which we are trying to attach our tail.
You didn’t happen to whisper ‘carrots’ did you? Donkeys aren’t that dim, and you may fall off on the rutted and stony track up the side of the ravine you aspire to.
I have had 3 occasions in the past year when my ‘Id’ donkey has given itself a ‘blank cheque’ to tear off up the ravine. So much promise – Carrots or the final gestalt piece in my jigsaw!
‘No sorry, Danny! You made that up for yourself because you crave completion out of all proportion to the means of achieving it. The Apparent may well be the Bridge to the Real, but you seem ready to pursue any exciting ‘Apparent’, hoping that the ‘Real’ will emerge’.
Reminds me of the teaching I have known for about 45 years!!! Many fateful attempts to incorporate the learning. Familiarity is not enough! – too close to that other phenomena - contempt.
“The donkey which brought you to this door must be dismissed if you want to get through it’.”
― Idries Shah, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study : Beginning to Begin
pointing hodja: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Nasreddin_Hodja_%28Oudewater%29_02.jpg
The Donkey-Door-Dismounting Problem
All the possible responses to this famous dictum could be presented on a graph. Say we applied this to a whole array of people for whom their method was singularly inappropriate for their desired aims. We could set up committees to decide what donkey, what door, how best to dismiss a donkey? What door are we trying to get through? Is it the correct’ or ‘best’ door for us ? How did you arrive at the decision to attempt to gain entry to that particular door? etc.
The ‘we’, in this case, would be all the would-be ‘door-get-through-ers’; probably the wrong people to judge the merits and challenges of the ‘donkey-door-dismounting’ problem.
What The Partition Map ‘looks like’
The metaphor only works if there is an admin login with administrator rights. The partitions don’t delegate authority or even submit to it. There simply is ‘admin rights’, whether they are used or not, or whether the credentials have been misplaced. There are means to re-gain control but it requires another machine and a thunderbolt cable and some ‘clever’ recovery software. Maybe I shouldn’t stretch the metaphor all over the place. No save that!
If you are like me and have lost track of the donkey (elusive - yes! the inferred ones are the worst), dont worry. They come back when they’re hungry.
Beloved reader: a reminder: I am teasing ‘with you’ not ‘against you’.