The physical difference between typing a word into a computer or smart phone to find the meaning after clicking SEND for fairly immediate results, and that of walking into another room to pull a fat dictionary off a shelf to turn pages using guide words ‘til you narrow down the right page to read the printed words. The brain receives both pieces of information but the cells of the body experience the two receptions very differently. The former is immediate but requires little work and thus perhaps feels less necessary to retain; the latter takes physical effort of the body to send the information to the brain.
The physical difference of having printed books accumulated full of the information you feel necessary or enjoy having around piled around you to consult when you feel necessary to search for the chunks that feel relevant to your current needs, and that of oral histories shared over time from various elder sources that your mind slowly absorbs to retention if you are listening well enough or the story is relayed strongly enough so that later when you feel the need or the information is relevant you lean back on your memory of those oral sources. The brain receives both pieces of information but the cells of the mind have absorbed where that information is very differently. The former can always be accessed but is external and thus feels less necessary to retain; the latter takes mental effort of the body to keep the information in the mind.
Progress is a myth, but myth does not necessarily mean false. Mythology operates separate from a true/false binary to be honest. But progress can be more false than true, without being entirely one or the other, and the notion that we’ll prove it’s false to know it’s false is not something that occurs historically. More often than not, people know something to be false long before it’s proven to be false. Proof itself depends on a lot of progress as the process of proof, and all of that isn’t necessarily true itself. Throwing good science after bad.
The scientific western civilization human brain regards the human brain as unique and extraordinary, and thus scientifically justified in its dominion of the Earth (and eventually Space). Why nobody ever thinks it biased the human brain considers itself an extraordinary brain when it’s studying brains through the filter of the human brain has always boggled me. There are many spiritual traditions throughout human history (and still present) which regard the human brain and humans themselves as just a part of a larger whole, not any more or less special than everything else we share the Earth (and thus Space) with. I try to think about that a lot, not really in any specific way where I force my brain to come to conclusions, but more like listening to oral histories, repeating that story to myself, so that my brain knows it inside my mind, not just on the book shelves stacked around me. It’s easy to book shelf know things, but much harder to mind know things. And with all this progress we’re bombarded with, it’s even easier to click SEND know things than it was to book shelf know things. That’s why everything feels so wrong, because we “know” so much but it feels at our cellular experience like that knowing isn’t being retained or all that real.
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