my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

I have been pondering a lot lately about what constitutes a “mind” and just how such a critter can be studied or even understood.  This is a fit task for a retired man.  There are no real deliverables, no fact checking, no quality control, and there are an absolute plethora of ideas out there each different from its neighbor and all equally wrong/right.

What this activity offers is a difficult problem that doesn’t lend itself to testing using the simple expedient of using the scientific method.  In a sense this is a relief to me.  I have worshiped at this particular shrine for a long time now, and I cannot say that I am impressed by how far I rode that horse.

I am a man of my era.  I grew up in warm houses (too warm actually, my mothers and sisters liked the thermostat at 80℉ and my father and I were afraid to argue) cheap gasoline to transport me to places that piqued my cupidity, and a decent educational system that provided more than a trade-school approach to education.

Now that I have been put out to pasture and have sufficient comfort and time to ponder, I can wander slowly through the landscape of philosophy and try to figure out the armature of what produces the medium-quality thought in my head.  

Lately, I have been dusting off a concept that was planted decades ago in the seventies:  Egregore.  

How the mind works on an individual basis is difficult enough.  I am fairly certain that the Phenomenologists and the Existentialists are on the right track but they seem to only analyze the individual in situ and isolated.  I am of the (perhaps mistaken) impression that there is communication and transmission of emotions and beliefs that occurs when individuals communicate.  Now that I am retired and a recluse, this transmission is reduced significantly.  But when you try to separate the individual from the societal inputs, you actually change the experimental conditions so that what you think that you are measuring is not what happens in the real world where an individual is embedded in a society and that society has an effect on that individual's thought and actions.  Whether you like it or not, there is a scene in the “Rome” series that defines the situation succinctly

I suppose that this has been a long time coming.  Even more, we are looking at a set of cultures/civilizations which seem bent on conflict.  We in the West, with our Imperial Roman heritage seem to be returning to form in our bid to retain primacy (after all: It is good to be King).  But the descendents of the Vikings and the Mongols, the descendents of Asoka, and the descendents of Qin Shi Huang have redeveloped themselves to the awkward point that they no longer take orders.  

So the next period of time seems to be intent on emulating an old American schoolyard tradition of “choosing up sides” and then another tradition of talking shit in hopes of intimidating the opponent to throw them off their game.  

I am the the nerdy guy that doesn’t get chosen for either side, but the rest of the country is being prepped for a fight and they are using the images and methods honed by centuries and human nature.