From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Sep 23 2002 - 12:33:54 MDT
On 24 Sep 2002 at 1:55, J T wrote:
>
>
> >>> joedees@bellsouth.net 09/23/02 09:45 AM >>>
> On 22 Sep 2002 at 21:41, Calvin Ashmore wrote:
>
> >
> > An idea for a new topic: Passion.
> >
> > Passion is an antithesis to apathy, so it is a positive quality.
> > However passion may be triggered memetically, when internal and dear
> > memes are threatened, which is clearly undesirable. Is it possible
> > to have a purely intellectual passion which is driven by reason, or
> > must there still be some sort of memetic foundation which underlies
> > it all?
> >
> > Seems like a good idea at the time :]
> > especially as there has been a lot of pumping of hot blood in the
> > list.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > (And thank you, Walter, for supporting me, it is much appreciated)
> >
> > -Calvin (Wondering if I should stay in the sun for a bit before
> > returning to the shadows...)
> >
> [joeDees]
> Passion is, in and of itself, neither good nor evil (as if those were
> absolute categories!), yet it may equally serve ends that are
> generally agreed-upon as either benevolent or malevolent. There are
> those who are passionate about gender and racial egalitarianism, and
> others who are equally passionate about sexist or racist beliefs.
> However, I do believe that, just as consciousness must necessarily be
> relational (consciousness is by necessity consciousness OF), that
> passion must also refer to some position or stand (passion is by
> necessity passionate ABOUT something); I do not think that
> referentless passion is any more possible than contentless
> consciousness.
>
> [veridicus]
> Really? You think so? I think that both can be referentless. You
> can live your life passionately while not being passionate about any
> particular object. You can live your life consciously without being
> conscious of any particular object. Consciousness does not need
> reference, it stands alone. In a universe without "things" could
> consciousness exist? Perhaps our universe is actually such and all
> "things" are created by consciousness rather than referenced by it. I
> think "contentless" consciousness is the most real, most powerful kind
> of consciousness. -veridicus
>
Passion is only manifest when engaged by a cause, and consciousness
is only manifest when it relates to an object. Of course, due to the
recursive nature of self-conscious awareness, a self-aware passion
may engage as its cause the commitment to live life passionately, and a
self-aware consciousness may choose as its object an intense willed
attention to the world at large. Passion's causes and consciousness'
objects phenomenologically may be internal ideas as well as the
externally extended matter/energy.
Perception is primary. It informs memory and its personal-
spatiotemporal-context-free symbolization in knowledge; these are
deconstructed and recombined in novel ways in imagination (for
memory) and cognition (for knowledge), and these latter four categories
recursively inform perception in a feedback loop, but the fount of it all is
our apprehensional grasp of a present-to-perception world.
> --
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>
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