phenomenology: December 2006 Archives

“The…’present state of consciousness’ represents the self at any moment, the self as it is ‘now.’ According to psychologists, ‘now’ (William James’ ‘specious present’) is a span of time lasting for anything up to twelve seconds, and represents the breadth of experience that our awareness can digest as a unified whole.

For a quantum self, ‘now’ is a composite of already existing (but ever fluctuating) subselves – our selves as were before ‘now’ – and various inputs from the external world (new experiences), each of which forms its own wave pattern on the ground state of consciousness…Personal identity on a moment-by-moment basis is formed by the overlapping wave functions of all these things, which cause ripples and patterns to appear on the [Bose-Einstein] condensate – our thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations” (1990: p. 120).

from The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness defined by the new Physics by Danah Zohar

"What religion is that?" Alyssa asked. "Oh, it's a complicated answer," I replied. "I usually say pagan, but that label was given by Christians to identify those people who believed in other religions."

"Many different peoples around the world celebrate events associated with the earth, we usually describe them as indigenous or native peoples. But they each had their own beliefs, although most of them recognize the sun in some way."

"And," I continued, "what people who call themselves pagan do now is different than what people did in olden times."

"But what's the point?" Alyssa pressed for a solid answer. :-)

"The earth is at its furthest point away from the sun* - its apogee** - which is why the nights are longest. So we spend the night wishing for the sun to rise, in order for its return to bring longer days again."

"But won't the sun rise anyway?" (Such a smart cookie!)

"Yes, it will. But no one really knows if our belief makes a difference. Maybe, just maybe, us taking one night of the year and wishing wishing wishing for the sun is part of the overall balance that keeps the universe running the way it does."***

"Cool!" (Like I said, such a smart cookie.)

*The usual way is to say the sun is farthest from the earth, which is evidence of the lingering "common sense" that the earth, our planet, is the center of the universe. Not. Even though most of us know this is not true, we still tend to act (and talk!) as if it is. The scientific knowledge - after how many hundreds of years? - is not the gut-rock basis of everyday knowledge. (hmmm...)

**The term, apogee, was originally used only to describe the furthest point of the moon away from the earth, BUT the site, "everything2", where I first read this is some kind of spiritual/scientific mix (astrology-based?) of someone's particular epistemology. See what they say about the Sun representing the ego or persona of an individual.

***Ever heard of a Milankovitch Cycle? Me neither, until today! I was trying to find out more info on the correct term for the earth's distance from the sun - apogee is generalizable if we consider the earth as a satellite around the sun (which it is) - but I'm curious if there's something more precise. Oddly, the perihelion (when the earth's orbit brings us closest to the sun), is only a couple of weeks away! How can that be? What does this mean in terms of my own knowledge (understanding) of the natural events that are known as the Winter Solstice? It gets complicated, and I'm going to need repetition in order to absorb these facts. First, it is the tilt of the earth's axis in combination with the rotational cycle that causes the seasons (i.e., the length of day/night and temperature changes). (Do you know, I have learned this before and even yet it has not fully peirced my everyday consciousness. Am I a slow learner or what?!!)

Then, there's a difference between the tropical year, and the anomalistic year. Each is measured by a different starting point: the tropical year begins/ends at the equinoxes, and the anomalistic year begins/ends at the perihelion. They are not the same! I can't go further with this now, but here's a conversion chart showing the slight difference in length between a tropical year and an anomalous year. It is explained in the article linked above on Milankovitch cycles, which are named "after Milutin Milankovitch, a Serbian scientist who provided a detailed theory of their potential influence over climate in the 1920s."

I've either witnessed or participated in a few intriguing discussions about light in recent days.

Dr. Demetria Shabazz analyzes the built-in ideology of television technology that, as one example, uses fleshtone as the standard for establishing the light spectrum while filming. The producers don't start from any fleshtone, however. Instead, the industry has chosen those in the orange/red zone, not yellow or brown, hence producing an aesthetic of identity, or - an aesthetic representation that produces certain kinds of identification. Dr. Shabazz illustrates this point with an analysis of the 1968 television series, Julia, which presents an ambivalent character through the presentation of Diahann Carroll, who is literally "white-washed" through the lighting (as well as through the discourses surrounding her performance). Diahann Carroll broke ground, cracking open television for subsequent shows such as Cosby. (I kept thinking about Nichelle Nichols' role in Star Trek, a few years previous, as a groundbreaker for Carroll.)

I wanted to follow up more on the notion of polysemy - hoping to take it further than how audiences take (and make) different meanings about Julia/Diahann Carroll (or is it how they make meanings about Diahann Carroll/Julia?!) because (as an effect of the cause of how she is represented) to the situatedness of audience members (viewers) as a factor in the construction of meaningfulness (in this case concerning race and gender, obviously, and probably also heterosexuality - and class, etc., the list goes on!)

It isn't only what one is looking at (and how the object of sight is presented) but also where one is looking from that contributes to the construction of meaning.

Case in point, some of the students from the class I just taught, College Writing, have gotten excited enough to generate their own anonymous discussion forum (we'll see how long it lasts!) focused on writing. The primary designer and I have been discussing the color scheme (the look), because I want to be sure the site is as accessible as possible to people with vision impairments. He tried to convince me that his first choice of orange text on a black background is less straining to the eyes over time because these colors are in the lowest wavelength of visible light. (Black text on a white background is among the most visually-straining because of the high contrast - I guess I'm just used to this form of strain: if I gave myself more time the orange/black would become "normal," too.)

Then, there's all the info about light that I learned interpreting a Botany class: not just photosynthesis, either....the tickle of something else won't cohere right now. Darn. See how meaning slips? It isn't just the fact or the exposure to the fact, it is the retention, repetition, and use to which 'the fact' is put. The biochemistry of light first became real to me during a conversation with a stranger on a flight to an American Sign Language Teacher's Association conference. Steve is an organic chemist who works with the effects of light on carbon molecules.

It seems to me that light works in a parallel fashion as language. (Ah, the botany lessons return - about the relationship between the colors we see as the frequencies of light not absorbed by particular pigments in the leaves. Maybe I'm all confused (certainly wouldn't be the first time!), but isn't this how language works? We absorb certain elements of what is said (those "sound frequences" that we "hear" - and process! or, in the case of the Deaf, that which penetrates vision and captures attention), missing additional elements whose absence figures in to the meaning which is acted upon . . .hmmm, yes, as I "write out loud" - it isn't even so much that meaning is made (as in fixed in some kind of stability) but that meaning is assumed as a basis for further action. The assumptions can sometimes be identified retroactively through reductive (reflexive) processes and then (!) meaning becomes more fixed and/or more rigidly contested (for purposes of fixing). The fluidity of meaning-making is vanished as competing discourses seek to impose their sense upon whatever-has-happened.

Spark posted a great summary of a book I think I'd like to read. It critiques the role/rule of experts, a phenomena which caught my attention when a history professor whose class I interpreted frequently mentioned the rise of experts with disdain.

I tried to post a comment but my Korean is insufficient for decoding the directions:

"Great summary! I'm intrigued, especially by the conditioning of excess, the separation between reality/representation effected by the new logic of economy, and its location/operation as a source of power."