RE: INTUITION - What happens beyond the discursive use of the mind?
I return to you after a long nap. It's one of the best times to let intuition breathe, I think, the space between sleeping and waking.
You perform a clear analysis of intuition. You capture the heart of the issue when you say because
we unlearned to trust this intelligence in others
we don't trust it in ourselves.
We live in a scientific age, when everything needs to be "objectively" proven. How do you do that with intuition? Personal narratives don't do it for "science".
Personally, I have had experiences in which intuition played a significant role. There also have been people who claim I'm intuitive because I can sense the way they feel. But this has no objective value. It may just mean that I pay attention.
The most intriguing part of your essay for me was the discussion about uncertainty. The interconnectedness described by Peter Kruse has made the world less predictable because of unforeseen consequences. It's ironic, because our ancestors lived in a bubble of uncertainty. They didn't understand weather, or an eclipse, or an earthquake. They turned to the supernatural for explanations. Today, our science, with all its certainty, has brought us also to an uncertain universe.
Quite a bit of work went into this. I think you explored ideas that are personal to you and yet you placed them in a systematic framework so these ideas would have value for us. I know they did for me.
Nice, so you also have a lazy Friday.
Oh ... very interesting ... you draw a great circle from prehistoric ancestors to ultra-modern citizens and both face the same thing "uncertainty" where the circle closes again ... That is indeed a very surprising thought!
Hm .. I lately started to think that we might underestimate our prehistoric ancestors. I do not think of them as frightened creatures all superstitious in a naive way ... Scared over the top by earthquakes and weather phenomena, certainly cautious. I don't know why, maybe because of the influence of some really good books I read and also because of some other stuff I saw documented which opened up my readiness for letting in other stuff than pure science. Even though science itself has to do with it, too. The cave findings of paintings do radiate some really impressing energy, even just looking at them through the screen from the far. Don't know if you heard of them. Anthropologists put a lot of interest in them.
There was a pre-scientific era of people, how was it perceived?
For no objective reason I started to believe that our ancestors were dealing with death a lot better than modern people. Their abilities on an intuitive level must have been much higher than ours when it came to finding water and prey. I believe in things like the symbolic language in the Jungian sense and also find other sources interesting which speak from a collective "memory". For me, it is also logical, that what happened to my former generations (family related) does survive through unconscious convictions some generations (getting weaker over time).
I don't think that all findings of what humans do have interest for must be scientifically proven to count as true for people. I would dislike a world like this. Intuition actually, was for me a nice topic as it's not scientifically rejected when it comes to physical events. Mr. Sheldrake, for example, is interested in the fact that there is still room for a lot of research and that it is possible to empirically and correctly investigate this resonance phenomena. I find him fascinating because he tries to pursue his science in such a playful way. One might think what one wants of him, but I think he is courageous and opens up completely new fields.
Personal narratives don't do it for "science", that's true, but they are the inspiration generators to open up new fields of research.
Not so much lazy as recovering from a cold. My energy level has been greatly reduced since last weekend--although there is nothing wrong with being 'lazy'. Some of my best thoughts come from lazy times.
I'm very familiar with cave art. Wrote a couple of (small) books--on history and on art-- for students in which I featured it, briefly. Amazing that it can be found in different parts of the world.
Although intuition is hard to prove to a skeptic, I believe it is real. But it is so easy for the skill to be claimed by charlatans that it undermines true experiences. And undermines serious efforts to validate it.