a small bit of background

thomas nagel states in his classic essay 'what is it like to be a bat' that even if we could somehow experience the consciousness of a bat, we would still not be a bat but rather be a human experiencing what it is like to be a bat, without actually knowing what it is really like to be a bat, because bat-ness is what makes a bat a bat just as human-ness is what makes a human human.

thus wittgenstein - even if a tiger could talk to us, we would not be able to understand it.

it gets worse; as quine proposes in the indeterminacy of translation thesis, we cannot even fully understand each other as fellow human beings, because we can never communicate a full and complete propositional statement from one person to another, since each person's individual attitudes and emotions will shape the proposition into slightly different forms.

thats the philosophy, how is in the real world?

well, sometimes i know exactly what my cats are thinking and i would imagine the flip is true.
nonverbal communication can be precise and full of information. the philosophical view encourages this arrogant human position that we are all individual and separate whereas of course if you listen to your body you know we are all connected, thus i believe i can in fact know what it is to be a bat, and if i did, then i could be a bat. such is magick.

there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy

a fragment may elucidate my point, or it may not:

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x vonnegut x
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kurt vonnegut on writing books in his novel 'timequake':
"still and all, why bother? here's my answer: many people need desperately to receive this message:
'i feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people dont care about them. you are not alone'"

he also laments the loss of the extended family in a different manner, namely addressing why the world is so fuckedup. he seems to think a reversal to the extended famiy might herald a change in values for the better. he also mentions the subject in other books and even goes so far as to make up new words to convey his meaning eg 'carrass'

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x dibdin x
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michael dibdin comments near the beginning of his rip-roaring read 'dark spectre':

"But if the mother wasn't to blame, who was? For a while it looked like society was going to take the rap. If the woman had been brought up in a caring, supportive, communal environment, like the indigenous peoples before the white man fucked everything up, this never would have happened. There would have been plenty of old people with time on their hands who were only too glad to look after chores like bathing babies, leaving the mother to get royally laid by a selection of super-studs like us. Plus she'd be living in harmony with nature, so she wouldn't need drugs or other artificial stimuli to combat the colonialization of her mind by the propaganda machine of late capitalist consumerism, right?"

introduction

if i have your attention, then i shall begin.

i would like to talk to you about a topic i find extremely difficult to discuss. this is not, as you might first assume, because what i want to mention is particularly embarrassing to me, nor do i perceive it as dull, on the contrary i would be happy to share my thoughts and i (at least) find them rather interesting. no, my hesitance is more due to the fact that these things are difficult to touch on, being perhaps of a very personal nature although i cannot help but believe that everyone comes across these thoughts at some point in some form and by setting out my thoughts here i might actually help contribute debate which i at least would find tremendously and fiercely useful.

having i hope piqued your interest, i shall continue.

i do not believe in god or gods yet i am prepared to debate with christians and other victims of organised religion because i do not believe them to be entirely wrong either; for there is something out there, some energy which shapes the universe, there is some hand guiding us. there can be no other explanation, for whilst it is true that a mind may search for meaning even where there is none, the sheer multiplicity of synchronicities, feelings and experiences in my life serve to convince me that my journey is a guided one.
i see this happening in a multiplicity ov ways and thee one i would be happy to expand upon here is my experience with literature.
i find it amazing how a book comes into my life.
how i am chosen by a collection of paper pages, covered with inked markings, glued together and covered with hard card, coloured by garish designs. i find it bizarre how i drift to a library or a used bookshop, without a specific plan and then a book draws my hand to its shelf.

it wants to be read by me.

the universe shapes itself to allow this to happen.

further, i find it strange that i (and why not anyone else too?) can be picked by the book at just the right time for a message to be conveyed, highly personal to myself, hinting at some special purpose which i do not even know myself when i start reading the book. a message of cosmic import, given for free by something guiding my journey. yes, scoff if you will, but i sincerely believe there is some strange power at work here. shake your head if you want, but consider the abiding attraction of the 'I Ching', surely a book which attempts to refine this obscure method of divination into a more organised form.
and whilst the 'I Ching' is an accepted method of contacting the energy or the divine or whatever you want to call it (the label is not the important thing!!), i also have a lot of time for "my" method, which i am sure i am not alone in using. i would be interested to hear the experiences of others. if you are still confused, i hope my ensuing and ongoing documentation will aid understanding. i hope it also heightens my own perceptions of the phenomenon i am tracking, since as well as individual books having meaning, one can also sometimes plug into a strange intellectual pull which links disparate books together into a highly personal odyssey of discovery.
but perhaps i have lost you already.

so enough for now.

i will document my experiences here and if they chime with your own, if would be interested to read your comments.