The Matter With Things: revisiting some Part 3 notes

Pulled together a bit more

• The cosmos is purposeful.
  • Value is intrinsic to reality.
  • Laws like gravity don’t make things happen. Something underneath them does.
• Consciousness is on a continuum.
  • Consciousness is a verb.
  • Life is more concentrated consciousness. It speeds up responsiveness.
    • Nature embodies drives, but they’re not material.
• We are the cosmos becoming more aware of itself.
  • The process is the fulfilment.

Pulled together a bit

• Negative Capability: remain in doubt and uncertainty.
  • Check what’s consistent with observation, with the encounter of experience.
• Consciousness is a verb. Beauty, truth, goodness are aspects of it, adverbs.
• Rediscover the value of things as themselves, not as a resource.
  • Utility can’t explained beauty, truth, goodness. But it can degrade them!
• The cosmos, life, is purposeful.
  • Nature embodies drives, but drives are not material.
  • Value is an intrinsic aspect of reality.
  • There aren’t values because there’s life, there’s life because there are values.
  • Laws like gravity don’t make things happen. Something underneath them does.
  • The point of existing is to exist well.
  • The process is the fulfilment.
• “God” is both transcendent and immanent.
• The cosmos is constantly speeding things up that are important to it.
• Life adds more, faster, more intense, responsiveness to the cosmos.
• The cosmos desires life, purpose, love, self-discovery.
• We are the cosmos becoming more itself, becoming more aware of itself.
• Consciousness is the universe looking at itself.
• The self is an individual expression of the collective.

Truth

• Some truths are more complete, some are more partial.
• Not “What is true?” but “When is this true? In what contexts?”
• The more important something is, the more difficult it is to grasp in language.
• Our mechanisms for simplifying the world so that we can control it prevent us from understanding it.
• Negative Capability: remain in doubt and uncertainty.

Beauty, truth, goodness

• Consciousness is a verb. Beauty, truth, goodness are aspects of it, adverbs.
• The three transcendentals: what is good, what is true, what is beautiful.
• Beauty is the unity of sameness and difference.
• Beauty is an endless invitation to deepen the relationship.
• Attention is a creative act, a moral act.
• Rediscover the value of things as themselves, not as a resource.
• Utility can’t explained beauty, truth, goodness. But it can degrade them!

Purpose and Value

• Life is purposeful. It’s not something humans have created.
• Values, meaning, purpose are dis-covered by us, not invented by us.
• Reality, seen and unseen, is one unified field of loving aliveness.
• There aren’t values because there’s life, there’s life because there are values.
• Value is an intrinsic aspect of reality, revealed through the encounter of experience.
• Laws like gravity don’t make things happen. Something underneath them does.
• The point of existing is to exist well.
• Nature embodies drives, but drives are not material.
• Fulfil potential by appreciating and responding to value.

The Cosmos

• “God” is both transcendent and immanent.
• The cosmos having a purpose is an unfashionable point of view, but is consistent with experience and observation.
• The process is the fulfilment. A dance, a poem, have intrinsic purpose.
• The cosmos is constantly speeding things up that are important to it.
• Life adds more, faster, more intense, responsiveness to the cosmos.
• The cosmos desires life, purpose, love, self-discovery.
• We are the cosmos becoming more itself, becoming more aware of itself.
• Consciousness is the universe looking at itself.

Not-two

• To have seen it from one side only, is not to have seen it.
• The whole truth is the reconciliation and holding together of opposites.
• The many enhances the oneness with differentiation.
• We need to see the pieces and the whole, but the whole is more important.
• Have an intuitive, implicit, embodied, understanding of the world.
• The all-time of the whole becomes the no-time of the center.

The self

• The self is an individual expression of the collective.
• We can’t exist separately from our culture, the natural world, society.
• It’s healthy to have a (healthy!) sense of self. Not individualism or narcissism.

Added 2024-04-15.