You've left out the old English word "wyrd", from which Shakespeare named his "weird sisters", which was originally a noun used to describe the web of interrelations of all things and beings. We experience the pull of those strings in various words based on "tent" -- intention, tentative, tentation (French version of "temptation"). Yet, this web is the reality. Notions that we should want to be free of it, without temptation, without intentions ... well, other than the intention to be free of it ... perhaps is great for solitary hermits. But is it the wyrd (the original world-wide web) which is at fault, or is the problem when we get the particular strings we're most pulled by and pulling into tangles? Should our better goal be to unweave reality, or to weave it better, into even more beautiful -- if tentative, even trembling -- form?
The image of the spider, the fly, and the web almost feels like a little creation story.
The web is the world.
The spider is our active side, the builder of systems and structures.
The fly is our receptive side, drawn to sweetness and caught by attachment.
When the two recognize they’re part of the same life, the opposites meet: maker and made, hunter and hunted, self and other.
That’s the mystery of incarnation. Spirit woven into matter, freedom tied to form. And still the web, like the cosmos itself, keeps trembling with every movement we make. The question doesn't seem to be whether we can escape it, but whether we can learn to see the divine pattern in the tangle we’re already part of.
or as Locke said if we can conceive of man and we can conceive of horse; then we can conceive of a centaur.
but if can conceive of centaur, how do we conceive of that centaur? Romantically longing to become centaur? mythically seeing the centaur as a stronger combination than either? theologically , demanding the horse part be ruled by the man part? ethically,, giving equal value to the man and horse; biologically, assumptions that the combination is not real; socially, searching to find the role of centaur mediating between man and horse?
Ultimiately the diagnosis we choose is very sticky and whether we favor duality, partial duality, or non duality we float like the warriors as crouching tigers slaying the woman who doesn't eat the spider after swallowing the fly and slaying the woman who does eat the spider after swallowing the fly...
and all results lead to slaying the mind so that the decision on whether to eat the fly ends up being a decision made before becoming ensnared in the web...
can any choice be right if another can conceive of a different choice and can intelligent decisions ever be based on choices made from anything that we can conceive in determining those choices?
was Plato really outside of the cave or was he only in another cave being illuminated in differing only in the portions of light that became the shadows on his own walls?
If the right answer to any question creates a wrong answer to the same question was the right answer right before it was answered rightly?
But I, I can't even ask the questions because for me the game of chess was only the current move without any conceptions on how the other is going to counter my next month.
Most of us are not chess masters and most of us should not be offered a choice if we can't determine when we are making that choice any of the possible consequences our choice might mean..
but if we are not capable of making choices and are denied all choices, our prices are simply swept off the board without being given the opportunity to play? but then if we are given the opportunity to play and we decline to play are we not sweeping ourselves off the board even before the game begins?
I guess we are back to what we can conceive of and if we can conceive of the game being won and we can conceive we might not be the winner, then are the players that win the only players who should be allowed to play?
or do we just all crowd onto the board and push our pieces in vain and learn from our efforts that playing perhaps has more value than winning. we know winning has more value than losing, but do we know we can learn from playing and winning the game is not as valuable as playing because only by the effort of participating is winning ever possible.
and in this regard, the questions presented are much more valuable than the answers, which might not always coincide and that is good..if we now question why they don't instead of keep on trying to eat something bigger to conquer what we just ate; maybe we just have to sit down and reflect why we do what we do, which I suspect was what was a more valuable lesson for Mr. Jonathan Rowson than becoming a winning chess player.
I may never win the chess game but if I keep on pushing my pieces on the board I keep on questioning in new ways how those pieces might be moved and thus no matter how many times I am defeated I never lose by playing.
I see the abiding web as our incredibly entangled complex of organizational complexes — Nate's superorganism.
I see the spider as all those complicit in man-aging those their particular strand or connection of our soul-stifling, life-wasting superorganism.
I see the flies as all humans who feel trapped in this web.
"The fly can only escape when it realises it is the spider. The spider can only escape when it realises it is the fly. The web abides." Brilliantly apt, sticky, and juicy. I felt a surge of resonance and joy as I digested its elegance.
In my seeing these respective 'realizations' open to door to humanity's greatest challenge — that of together learning to weave a wisdom web that promotes and supports everyone, and all of life, with opportunities to learn and to thrive.
This challenge involves much more that teaching an elephant to dance. It involves creating a long-running context-shifting party wherein 'superorganism whisperers' co-evolve the music that, over time, has our superorganism 'parts' harmonizing in ways that begin to show who we can become together. BillVeltrop@comcast.net
What would Alan Watts say? (Something and nothing, at pleasing albeit soporific length.)
Not of this world? But in it? Or, not in it, but of it? It is within is. And without us. (I know you know. You told me (not only)!) This is no MERE coincidence (!) but rather CONSTITUTIVE is it not? The web too may escape by realising itself as the complex spider-web-fly-web-occasionalbutterfly-ormoth-etcadinfinitum. I guess for me, it is NOT nothing, coupled to nothing, in a better-than-worse-than dance.
You've left out the old English word "wyrd", from which Shakespeare named his "weird sisters", which was originally a noun used to describe the web of interrelations of all things and beings. We experience the pull of those strings in various words based on "tent" -- intention, tentative, tentation (French version of "temptation"). Yet, this web is the reality. Notions that we should want to be free of it, without temptation, without intentions ... well, other than the intention to be free of it ... perhaps is great for solitary hermits. But is it the wyrd (the original world-wide web) which is at fault, or is the problem when we get the particular strings we're most pulled by and pulling into tangles? Should our better goal be to unweave reality, or to weave it better, into even more beautiful -- if tentative, even trembling -- form?
The image of the spider, the fly, and the web almost feels like a little creation story.
The web is the world.
The spider is our active side, the builder of systems and structures.
The fly is our receptive side, drawn to sweetness and caught by attachment.
When the two recognize they’re part of the same life, the opposites meet: maker and made, hunter and hunted, self and other.
That’s the mystery of incarnation. Spirit woven into matter, freedom tied to form. And still the web, like the cosmos itself, keeps trembling with every movement we make. The question doesn't seem to be whether we can escape it, but whether we can learn to see the divine pattern in the tangle we’re already part of.
Hope this bit of fun is ok: 'in the world but not of it' makes me think: "I have my best ideas on the loo" (and then: reading "loo" hear also "lieu".)
this is a bit of brilliance. ty.
or as Locke said if we can conceive of man and we can conceive of horse; then we can conceive of a centaur.
but if can conceive of centaur, how do we conceive of that centaur? Romantically longing to become centaur? mythically seeing the centaur as a stronger combination than either? theologically , demanding the horse part be ruled by the man part? ethically,, giving equal value to the man and horse; biologically, assumptions that the combination is not real; socially, searching to find the role of centaur mediating between man and horse?
Ultimiately the diagnosis we choose is very sticky and whether we favor duality, partial duality, or non duality we float like the warriors as crouching tigers slaying the woman who doesn't eat the spider after swallowing the fly and slaying the woman who does eat the spider after swallowing the fly...
and all results lead to slaying the mind so that the decision on whether to eat the fly ends up being a decision made before becoming ensnared in the web...
can any choice be right if another can conceive of a different choice and can intelligent decisions ever be based on choices made from anything that we can conceive in determining those choices?
was Plato really outside of the cave or was he only in another cave being illuminated in differing only in the portions of light that became the shadows on his own walls?
If the right answer to any question creates a wrong answer to the same question was the right answer right before it was answered rightly?
But I, I can't even ask the questions because for me the game of chess was only the current move without any conceptions on how the other is going to counter my next month.
Most of us are not chess masters and most of us should not be offered a choice if we can't determine when we are making that choice any of the possible consequences our choice might mean..
but if we are not capable of making choices and are denied all choices, our prices are simply swept off the board without being given the opportunity to play? but then if we are given the opportunity to play and we decline to play are we not sweeping ourselves off the board even before the game begins?
I guess we are back to what we can conceive of and if we can conceive of the game being won and we can conceive we might not be the winner, then are the players that win the only players who should be allowed to play?
or do we just all crowd onto the board and push our pieces in vain and learn from our efforts that playing perhaps has more value than winning. we know winning has more value than losing, but do we know we can learn from playing and winning the game is not as valuable as playing because only by the effort of participating is winning ever possible.
and in this regard, the questions presented are much more valuable than the answers, which might not always coincide and that is good..if we now question why they don't instead of keep on trying to eat something bigger to conquer what we just ate; maybe we just have to sit down and reflect why we do what we do, which I suspect was what was a more valuable lesson for Mr. Jonathan Rowson than becoming a winning chess player.
I may never win the chess game but if I keep on pushing my pieces on the board I keep on questioning in new ways how those pieces might be moved and thus no matter how many times I am defeated I never lose by playing.
I see the abiding web as our incredibly entangled complex of organizational complexes — Nate's superorganism.
I see the spider as all those complicit in man-aging those their particular strand or connection of our soul-stifling, life-wasting superorganism.
I see the flies as all humans who feel trapped in this web.
"The fly can only escape when it realises it is the spider. The spider can only escape when it realises it is the fly. The web abides." Brilliantly apt, sticky, and juicy. I felt a surge of resonance and joy as I digested its elegance.
In my seeing these respective 'realizations' open to door to humanity's greatest challenge — that of together learning to weave a wisdom web that promotes and supports everyone, and all of life, with opportunities to learn and to thrive.
This challenge involves much more that teaching an elephant to dance. It involves creating a long-running context-shifting party wherein 'superorganism whisperers' co-evolve the music that, over time, has our superorganism 'parts' harmonizing in ways that begin to show who we can become together. BillVeltrop@comcast.net
What would Alan Watts say? (Something and nothing, at pleasing albeit soporific length.)
Not of this world? But in it? Or, not in it, but of it? It is within is. And without us. (I know you know. You told me (not only)!) This is no MERE coincidence (!) but rather CONSTITUTIVE is it not? The web too may escape by realising itself as the complex spider-web-fly-web-occasionalbutterfly-ormoth-etcadinfinitum. I guess for me, it is NOT nothing, coupled to nothing, in a better-than-worse-than dance.