Notes - the day / 'Forced' anticipation /

         You are sitting in the Tylersville Kroger lot waiting for Carol. You are forcing yourself to get better because you are tired of being tired, pills or no. – Amorella

         1147 hours. Amy says it might take a month to rid myself of this vertigo. That’s what it took her.  The weather is cloudy but warm. The larger bird feeder was down this morning; I assume squirrels were the cause. I rewired the feeder so it can’t be pushed off its hanger. It had to have taken two or three squirrels to do that. Interesting, forget the apes. A new film, “Planet of the Squirrels” will be gnawing its way onto the screens soon.

         Dusk. You and Carol spent the afternoon doing chores both inside and outside. You and Tim decided on one more lawn mowing before putting the mowers away for Winter. Lunch was leftovers as so will be supper. In fact you are finding it rather pleasant not eating out so much. – Amorella

         1717 hours. I am feeling better, more energized than I have been since ‘vertigo event’ Friday. Today we watched a show then National Geographic – great photography better seen on a new HD delivering screen. We will have to partake more often.

         Later, dude. Post. - Amorella

         1734 hours. I just watched the trailer for the 2015 Star Wars  “The Force Awakens” – most awesome. I will have to watch them all once again, one at a time from the first through the sixth. ‘The Force’, let’s see what Wikipedia says:

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The Force is a binding, metaphysical, and ubiquitous power in the fictional universe of the Star Wars galaxy created by George Lucas. Introduced in the original Star Wars film (1977), it is integral to all subsequent incarnations of Star Wars, including the expanded universe of comic books, novels, and video games. Within the franchise, it is the object of the Jedi and Sith monastic orders

Origin

Lucas has attributed the origins of "The Force" to a 1963 abstract film by Arhur Lipsett, which sampled from many sources.

One of the audio sources Lipsett sampled for 21-87 was a conversation between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and Roman Kroitor, a cinematographer who went on to develop IMAX. In the face of McCulloch's arguments that living beings are nothing but highly complex machines, Kroitor insists that there is something more: "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God."

When asked if this was the source of "the Force," Lucas confirms that his use of the term in Star Wars was "an echo of that phrase in 21-87." The idea behind it, however, was universal: "Similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years to describe the 'life force,'" he says.

Quotes

The Force is referenced several times throughout the Star Wars saga.

In A New Hope, there are several mentions of the Force in reference to Luke Skywaler: by Obi-Wan Kenobi ("It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together", "Use the Force, Luke", "I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced" and "The Force will be with you, always") and Darth Vader ("The Force is strong with this one"). The famous line "May the Force be with you" is actually said by General Dodonna after explaining the Death Star attack plan to the Rebel pilots. It is said again by Han Solo to Luke, right before the attack on the Death Star battle station.

In The Empire Strikes Back, , Emperor Palpatine states "There is a great disturbance in the Force", in reference to Luke Skywalker. Yoda points out that "a Jedi's strength flows from the Force" while training Luke (a statement he would repeat in Return of the Jedi; Yoda also explains that "you must feel the Force around you". During their battle in Cloud City, Darth Vader tells Luke "The Force is with you, young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet". Finally, Luke says "May the Force be with you" at the end of the movie.

References to the Force in Return of the Jedi include Yoda stating on his deathbed "Strong am I with the Force, but not that strong", Luke revealing to Leia that he is her brother by stating "The Force runs strong in my family" and Admiral Ackbar saying "May the Force be with us" immediately prior to the Battle of Endor.

Depiction

In the original Star Wars film, the Force is first described by Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi as an energy field created by all living things, that surrounds and penetrates living beings and binds the galaxy together. Throughout the series, characters exhibit various powers that rely on the Force.

The Force has a “Dark side”, which feeds off emotions such as anger, jealousy, fear, lust, and hate, but the Jedi are only supposed to use the Force for peaceful purposes.^[3] The series' villains, the Sith, embrace the dark side in order to seize power. The Jedi's compassionate and selfless use of the Force has come to be known by inference as "the light side", although that term is not used in the films.

Force abilities

.

The Force can enhance natural, physical, and mental abilities, including strength (such as during a "Force jump" or to slow a fall from an otherwise dangerous height) and accuracy (as when Luke Skywalker was able to launch proton torpedoes into a two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port on the Death Star in A New Hope).

A number of other Force powers are demonstrated in the film series including telekinesis, telepathy, levitation, deep hypnosis, enhanced empathy, reflexes, precognition, and enhanced speed. The Jedi were also able to influence and control the minds of others by making use of the Jedi mind trick.

The Sith use an ability called Force Lightning which is a lightning-like manifestation of the dark side of the Force that can be used either in combat or as an instrument of excruciating torture (as demonstrated by Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith and Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones). Darth Vader also demonstrates the ability to choke using the Force and numerous Jedi have been able to manipulate their lightsaber with the Force. The Force also gives enhanced skills in lightsaber combat.

The term "Force power" originated in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, by West End Games. Later, it was used in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, where they could be gained via a system of Force "points".

Within the Star Wars Expanded Universe, a number of other powers have been demonstrated, such as the ability to heal or drain the life force of others, increase resistance to attack, warp space and to dissipate energy attacks (which has been demonstrated on-screen by Yoda in Attack of the Clones during his battle with Count Dooku).

Disturbances in the Force

Those who possess the discipline and subtlety of mind to sense The Force often refer to disturbances in the Force. Since the Force is "an energy field created by all living things", a disturbance can be felt when there is death or suffering on a massive scale. A disturbance (or "tremor") may also be felt in the presence of a powerful Jedi or Sith.

When the planet Alderaan is destroyed in A New Hope, Obi-Wan senses "a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced". Also, in A New Hope, Darth Vader remarks to Grand Moff Tarkin that he felt a "tremor in the Force" that he had not felt since in the presence of his old master. In The Empire Strikes Back, Palpatine tells Darth Vader that he has felt a great disturbance in the Force upon realizing that Luke Skywalker poses a threat to him. Vader tells Palpatine that he also has felt the disturbance. In The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan and his master Qui-Gon Jinn both agree that they feel a disturbance in the Force upon their arrival on Tatooine, possibly caused by the presence of the young, yet incredibly Force-sensitive Anakin Skywalker on the planet. In Attack of the Clones, Yoda feels a disturbance in the Force when Anakin, enraged by his mother’s death, slaughters a tribe of Tusken Raiders.

In Attack of the Clones, Yoda can see through the Force that Obi Wan and Anakin will be forced to confront Count Dooku. He immediately orders a ship to take him to the scene of the duel in order to interrupt Dooku's plans and save the Jedi. Yoda is seen to be visibly disturbed after the deaths of many Jedi during Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith. He falls to his knees and grasps his chest, as if especially its bond with the Jedi that were killed. In A New Hope, Darth Vader was able to sense Obi-Wan through his interactions with the Force, and in Return of the Jedi, Vader and Luke Skywalker were able to sense each other.

Force-sensitivity

Force-sensitivity is a condition in the Star Wars universe where a life form possesses a natural connection to the Force. Though the Force flows through all life, with only rare exceptions (such as the Yuuzhan Vong), outright sensitivity to it is a more uncommon trait. While potential for Force-sensitivity is established at birth, awareness, experience and training are necessary to harness the power of the Force. Yoda implies that this training is most effective in early childhood. It is established in The Phantom Menace to be biological, the product of midi-chlorians.

Midi-chlorians are micoorganisms first mentioned in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. They reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force.They are symbionts within all other living things and without them life could not exist. The Jedi have learned how to listen to and coordinate the midi-chlorians. Every living being thus has a connection to the Force, but one must have a high enough concentration of midi-chlorians in one's cells in order to be a Jedi or a Sith.

Creator George Lucas notes that the midi-chlorians are based on the endosymbiotic theory. He says: Midi-chlorians are a loose depiction of mitochondria, which are necessary components for cells to divide. They probably had something–which will come out someday–to do with the beginnings of life and how one cell decided to become two cells with a little help from this other little creature who came in, without whom life couldn’t exist. And it’s really a way of saying we have hundreds of little creatures, who live on us, and without them, we all would die. There wouldn’t be any life. They are necessary for us; we are necessary for them. Using them in the metaphor, saying society is the same way, says we all must get along with each other.

The Chosen One

An ancient prophecy foretold the appearance of a Chosen One imbued with a high concentration of midi-chlorians, strong with the Force, and destined to alter it forever. Anakin Skywalker was believed by many to be the Chosen One although it was Luke Skywalker who brought his father, Anakin, to the Ashla at the end. Anakin Skywalker had the highest concentration of midi-chlorians the Jedi Council had ever seen. He was possibly conceived by the midi-chlorians (parthenogenesis). Lucas has said in interviews that Luke Skywalker had the same total midi-chlorian count that Anakin did at birth, though this does not necessarily make him the Chosen One because Anakin did exactly what the prophecy foretold by coming back from the Dark Side and destroying Emperor Palpatine.

In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine tells Anakin that a Sith Lord, Darth Plaqueis, had the ability to use the Dark Side to influence midi-chlorians to create life and to prevent people from dying. Anakin believed this power could save his wife, but failed, leading him to the dark side of the force. This raised doubt whether he was the Chosen One, but he later proved himself a true Jedi, the Chosen One he was foretold to be.

Midichlorians

Midichlorians are science fictional microscopic bio-organic entities. According to the Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn, midichlorians were described as "microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force." Midichlorians existed in the blood system of individuals in the Star Wars universe and acted as an energy ‘conductor’ of the Force. Individuals with higher counts of midichlorians in their blood system were recognized as "force sensitive" by the Jedi order and were tested before being determined to be accepted into the Jedi order.

Force Ghost

The first instance of a dead character communicating with a living character occurs soon after Obi-Wan Kenobi's death in A New Hope, when Luke Skywalker hears Obi-Wan's voice saying, "Run, Luke, run!" Luke hears Obi-Wan's voice again during the Battle of Yavin.

The first visual appearance of a Force Ghost (or Force Spirit) is in The Empire Strikes Back, when Obi-Wan's ghost appears to Luke on Hoth, and again to Luke and Yoda on Dagobah. In Return of the Jedi, Luke converses with the ghost on Dagobah after Yoda's death, then sees their two spirits alongside that of Anakin Skywalker during the celebration on Endor at the end of the film.

While Yoda and Obi-Wan are seen to vanish upon death, leaving behind only their physical clothing, Darth Vader's body does not disappear or dissolve onscreen. Luke Skywalker is later seen burning Vader's armor, including his helmet and faceplate, but it is unclear whether the armor still contains Vader's body, though the novelization to the film says that Vader's body did disappear and that the armor was empty.

Questions arose after the release of The Phantom Menace, when Qui-Gon Jinn’s body did not vanish after his death fighting Darth Maul and, perhaps more importantly, none of the other characters expected it to. Qui-Gon's remains were burned on a Jedi funeral pyre on Naboo. In the film's DVD commentary Lucas indicated that this apparent discontinuity was a plot point that would be revisited. It should be noted that Obi-Wan's enigmatic final words to Darth Vader, and the disappearance of his body appear to perplex Vader.

In Revenge of the Sith, it is revealed that the ability to return as a Force Spirit is a recently discovered and complex discipline unknown to most Jedi. Yoda informs Obi-Wan that the late Qui-Gon Jinn discovered " ... path to immortality", the secret of how to retain his identity after death and absorption into the Force, and that his spirit would instruct Obi-Wan in this discipline during his exile on Tatooine. In the Expanded Universe novel Heir to the Empire it is explained by Obi-Wan to Luke that the Force Ghost is an intermediate state between life and afterlife, and one cannot stay in that form forever. Also in the novels following the movie, Luke discovered the discipline of the Force spirit.

George Lucas has since indicated (on the Revenge of the Sith DVD commentary) that the appearance of Vader's former self, Anakin Skywalker, as a Force Spirit at the end of Episode VI is due to Yoda and Obi-Wan's spirits helping him extend his identity out of The Force.

Selected and edited From - http://en.wikipediaDOTorg/wiki/Force_(Star_Wars) [The article needs some verification.]

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         1751 hours. I did not expect so much information. It is a romance of fun to bring these old films back into play.

         You are immediately concerned on how the concepts within the Merlyn books will fit within the parameters of Star Wars, and rightly so, The Force is separate in structure from Merlyn’s existential viewpoint. Later. – Amorella

         2006 hours. I had a makeshift supper and watched last Friday’s “Grimm”. I love this series – such clever wit and though you can sense what is going to happen that is part of the fun because you don’t know how it is going to happen. Also, I am feeling much better this evening. 

          Post. - Amorella

Notes - tired

         You had a routine morning of breakfast while reading the Saturday paper. Walking down the steps to breakfast though was a new experience in that you sat halfway because of lightheadedness. Carol chatted about an article on the Camry; you listened but without the passion for a new car (she was not suggesting such). You assumption is that new car days are over and this is something you can now live with, particularly since you are not driving. – Amorella

         1002 hours. Time for a pill for dizziness and a relaxing bath; then I’ll skim the new Automobile and Motor Trend so I can dump them in this week’s trash. I don’t mind reading the articles. Maybe it’s time for an X-Box for some entertainment – though I could start by warming up my own Nintendo 64 on the TV in Kim’s old bedroom.

         Later, dude. – Amorella

         You set up and filled the bird feeders after cleaning them. Carol cleaned the last of the leaves from the lower back deck. You both caught up on a few more shows then watched an hour program about ‘Living Free’ on National Geographic this evening. Carol is presently lying in bed playing sudoku on her iPad while you are sitting in the comfort chair in the southeast corner of the room. This was pretty much the day after running a couple of errands in the afternoon. – Amorella

         2127 hours. Dad would have loved the show on ‘Living Free’. I can easily see him living off a little of nothing while building a small cabin near a stream or river in the back hills of Virginia; killing pack rats with a slingshot or killing a turkey with bow and arrow, something he relished doing this time of year. We had squirrel over a fire at least once. The adults in the program had good hunting and survival skills. Most of what they used we learned in Boy and Explorer Scouts. It was rather fun to watch for a change but I remember camping more as an annoyance rather than fun and adventure. Now, walking or hiking through the woods or on hilly trails I remember that fondly, that was more of an adventure. Sleeping in a tent was just that and nothing much more during any season (which we did more the once). Spring was too wet and more than mildly uncomfortable; Summer was too hot and buggy; Fall was almost perfect; and Winter was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be even with wind and a snowstorm or two. I earned the merit badges of camping and hiking in my day. The hardest was building a fire without matches in the Spring; the easiest in late Fall/early Winter. Forging for food was okay, but I don’t ever believe I ate what I killed. I did have to gut it though. Water, berries, peaches or apples and a warm watery potato soup would do, plus I would sneak a candy bar, mostly likely a couple of Snicker’s bars if I could get away with it. I did eat what Dad killed. No choice sometimes but I didn’t like the gaminess of smaller animals and picking buckshot out of ducks or geese. I did not like moose and I did not like bear or a variety of mountain critter toughness. I would think I would remember some of those times with fondness, but I do not. I was what I felt was an obligation to do what my father liked. Nature, I did and do but not hunting or fishing or surviving in the wilds.

         You are surprised that you cannot recollect fond moments, but you do remember fond aromas on those outdoor adventures. – Amorella

         2155 hours. Walking through a thick woods after a spring rain was most delicious to breathe in. I think it was the oxygen in the air. I remember pancakes cooking in a skillet and corn on the cob setting in foil on the fire coals, hot chocolate and roasting marshmallows and/or hot dogs – old memories rattling up because of the National Geographic channel.

         Time for your inner ear pill boy. Post. – Amorella

         2204 hours. I am getting tired of this dizziness and light-headedness at in opportune times. It is all rather tiring.

Notes - at present /

         You arrived home mid-afternoon. Carol is tired of driving. You spent time cleaning up three daily newspapers of ads, sports and whatnots; which leaves not much in comparison. Earlier today you had breakfast with Kim, Paul and the boys at Scrambler’s at Polaris, then you and Paul took the boys home while Carol and Kim went to visit Andy F. at Ameriprise in Worthington. – Amorella

         1807 hours. This was at my suggestion. It is time Kim understands our investment strategies and has a say in ones that are of longer range. She will have the most to gain or lose in the process.

         Yesterday’s Thanksgiving affair was well produced and everyone appeared to have a good time. Tuesday and Wednesday were not good personally because of arthritis and dizziness. Paul prescribed another two prescriptions of what I have been taking. So far the dizziness continues. I would not presently drive a car on a bet. Plus, the pills make me very sleepy. After the dinner and conversations Paul took the boys and me home for a nap. I slept almost three hours. I will be ready for bed early tonight also. Almost half the time I get up from a chair or the bed I have the spells. Sitting down or lying down also produce similarly uncomfortable results. Cool mornings also make for bad arthritic conditions. I kept to myself on the sidelines in most family conversations. Still, under these conditions it was enjoyable overall. I was finding a quiet place now and then was also enjoyable. We’ll no doubt get up again at Christmas if not before. The women, the cooks, thought it was a rousing success. It certainly was delicious.

         We had left over soup for supper (still very good) and Carol is finishing up with the three daily papers. I finished them just before the food.

         You feel caught up with the general sense of how life is at present. Later, dude. Post. - Amorella

Notes - a Delaware morning /

         Early afternoon. Almost time to take your pill. You suddenly realize your right thumb is not fully functioning above the keyboard due to severe arthritis. – Amorella

         1347 hours. I can make due. Carol and Kim are downstairs working on Thanksgiving salads and desserts. I am in the boys’ playroom sitting of the rocker. Yesterday was wonderful, our anniversary present was sleeping in the bed Kim and Paul have in the room and bathroom they created for us on the first floor of their new house. We are happy they are content with their lives. What more could parents wish for than contentment (at this time in their and our lives) for their children and grandchildren? I love their house and all they have done with it in the last few weeks. We ate at Logan’s near Dublin last night. Good food as well as family time. Paul now has Direct TV and had copied 2001 Space Odyssey. I watched it this morning after Carol and Kim left early with the boys, went shopping and brought me back two doughnuts from Schneider’s in Westerville for a late breakfast snack. No lunch for me. More BBC News on the comet:

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26 November 2014 Last updated at 08:46 ET

“Comet landing: UK team's data bonanza from Philae”

By Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent, BBC News

Scientists say they detected what might be complex carbon compounds on the surface of the comet the craft landed on two weeks ago.

The results are from the Ptolemy instrument, which is a miniaturised on-board laboratory.

The detection of carbon supports a view that comets may have brought key chemicals to Earth to kick-start life.

The team leader, Prof Ian Wright, told BBC News: "We can say with absolute certainty that we saw a very large signal of what are basically organic (carbon) compounds.

"There is a rich signal there. It is not simple. It is not like there are two compounds; there are clearly a lot of things there - a lot of peaks. Sometimes a complicated compound can give a lot of peaks."

The "peaks" refer to the graph produced by the Ptolemy instrument of the different molecules it detected. The result is in line with initial observations made by a similar German-led instrument on Philae.

In an exclusive interview with BBC News, Prof Wright explained that Ptolemy had gathered huge amounts of scientific data. Normally a quiet, understated man, he was marginally better at containing his enthusiasm than his co-worker and wife, Prof Monica Grady, who jumped for and then wept with joy and relief when Philae landed.

Prof Wright told me: "I am as excited now as I was a couple of weeks ago. It's tremendous!"

"For years, I've been giving public lectures about what we plan to do. Now we have some data and it's: Wow! This is what scientists do this stuff for."

Much of the data gathered by Ptolemy was collected on the fly. Shortly after the Rosetta spacecraft was activated in January, Prof Wright and his team saw the opportunity to analyse the comet's tail as the spacecraft approached.

"It is not something we had planned to do, but it became obvious that it was something we could do."

The early data suggests that the composition of the gases changed as the spacecraft got closer to the comet.

Prof Wright also explained that Philae's bouncy landing suited his experiment. Among Ptolemy's capabilities is the ability to analyse gases and particles around it, and so it was pre-programmed to sniff its environment shortly after landing.

Pictures from Rosetta show that the first landing created a dust cloud, providing Ptolemy with a feast of data. But Philae's bouncy landing and eventual resting place in the shade meant that it would not be able to recharge its solar powered batteries. The Ptolemy team had a few hours to rethink its scientific programme and upload a much curtailed set of experiments to the instrument.

Fuelled by the drama of the landing, and feeling the weight of history on their shoulders, all the various Philae instrument teams spent the night feverishly working to make the best use of the precious few days of operating life that the lander had left.

The hardest moment for the Philae team was having to abandon plans to analyse material drilled from underneath the comet's surface. Overall, programme managers deemed that there was only sufficient battery power to drill for one sample, rather than two as was originally planned. A collective decision was therefore made that any sample should be analysed by the German-led COSAC instrument - not Ptolemy.

It is unclear whether the drill successfully managed to get a sample to COSAC. But mission planners did grant the UK team Philae's last ounce of strength to operate Ptolemy's oven, to heat up all the debris that had collected inside the instrument to 200C and analyse the gases that came off.

Prof Wright confirms that this experiment was successfully carried out and that the results could give an indication of the composition of the carbon and nitrogen on the comet. These results may in turn help piece together what happened in the early years of the Solar System when the planets were forming.

The team wishes that Ptolemy could have carried out its full mission, but Prof Wright says the group is delighted with the results it has obtained. It also has the optimistic possibility of Philae coming back to life in the weeks ahead as the comet moves closer to the Sun and lighting conditions improve at the landing site.

"If you ask me whether we have done all we could have done, the answer is 'no'. But I remain optimistic that the thing may come back to life and we will get the chance to do those things," he said.

Selected and edited from – BBC News, 26 November 2014

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         Paul just arrived home, office work but no OR today. Post. - Amorella 

Notes - # 47 /

         Today is your wedding anniversary. You were married to Carol Jean Hammond of Alexandria, Virginia at the Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 1301 Collingwood Road in Alexandria on a Saturday night in 1967, forty-seven years ago. Your first trip as a couple (and with your friends) to Niagara Falls was this October; it was also Carol’s first trip to the Falls. Happy Anniversary, boy. Post. - Amorella

Notes - BPPV / Grandma generations work /

         Late afternoon. You had an appointment with Dr. Merling this morning concerning you vortex event last Friday. Dr. Merling said you had an episode of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), which is defined as:

** **

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is one of the most common causes of vertigo — the sudden sensation that you're spinning or that the inside of your head is spinning.

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is characterized by brief episodes of mild to intense dizziness. Symptoms of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo are triggered by specific changes in the position of your head, such as tipping your head up or down, and by lying down, turning over or sitting up in bed. You may also feel out of balance when standing or walking.

Although benign paroxysmal positional vertigo can be a bothersome problem, it's rarely serious except when it increases the chance of falls. You can receive effective treatment for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo during a doctor's office visit.

Definition By Mayo Clinic Staff Online

** **

         The doctor asked you to describe the ‘event’, which you did in detail. He then jokingly asked, “Have you had ever taken LSD?” to which you responded laughingly, “I never felt the need to.” You both laughed good-heartedly. Post. - Amorella

         1751 hours. I have put the twenty-five year birth dates in from 1075 to 1500. I will have play with them perhaps using a die to generate random numbers up to six mostly. The point is the number of Dead, the generations more than individuals here.

         I agree, orndorff. Why don’t you spend time doing this along with having Grandma’s family genealogy correlated. Also, check to see how far book two, as it stands, moves in the generations. – Amorella

         1756 hours. Good point, Amorella.

         1802 hours. The last date associated with the stories is 1533 in Chapter Fourteen. You had an excellent idea Amorella. Now I can go through the remaining Grandma segments and plug in those who are already there. This will make the work much simpler and also for the final book as far as the Grandma segments are concerned.

         Good. You have some work cut out for you during this Thanksgiving period. Post. 

Notes - "the recent event and being" /

         Late Sunday afternoon, almost dusk, you are feeling better, have been downstairs and have even gone out for a Graeter’s, but you did not drive. – Amorella

         You had leftovers of homemade turkey soup and meatloaf, a quite good supper anytime. You wondered aloud to Doug on an email concerning your recent health that if you took my perspective during the initial ‘spinning orbs’ event last Friday. You said this because from your perspective you were looking at your eyes outside themselves spinning like the lumbering props on an old DC-3. The spinning was within the eyes as there was nothing outside the eyes seen spinning. You assumed, rightly so, from this that the ‘visual spin’ was caused from within. Later, Dr. Cutter at Bethesda North said he felt the disturbance was caused by an inner ear problem. This was a deduction on your part based on the observation at the time. Your immediate focus though was on whether this was from an ongoing heart attack or a stroke. This is when you took the baby aspirin you had asked Carol to bring you. After, she called 911 as you directed. Once the medical team arrived you felt you were in good hands and your concerns pretty much vanished as you felt there was nothing more you could do so your life was in their ballpark, so to speak. – Amorella

         1844 hours. I remember my life was secondary at that point. I really did not have, or could not afford to have that much interest in the outcome. There was no sense of “I want to live” or “I want to die”. Basically, it was secondary to the immediate event. Looking back this appears somewhat odd; however, also looking back, that was pretty much my thought on the subject. I suppose that is why I was thinking that this was your perspective not my own. It was my own. I don’t know what your perspective was Amorella, or even if you had a perspective coming from my imagination or not. – rho

         You were in a dream stage. You turned on to your right side attempting to disconnect from this “event”. I watched you literally attempt to ‘disconnect’ your eyes as in a hypnotic trance the moved out of your head and quickly the optic nerve cord from both eyes severed or snapped leaving both ends flapping in reaction. You were aware and concerned what the problem was. I did not have such a sensation. You had no passion for leaving or staying and neither did I. Your internal order was completely restored up climbing into the medical emergency vehicle. – Amorella

         1901 hours. This is an interesting perspective by both of us.

         I agree. It is as though you thought – “Life is not nearly so important than it seems at the time.” – Amorella

         1903 hours. In such a situation, then what is important if it is not living or dying?

         Being. Post. – Amorella

         1904 hours. Do you mean like there would be a sense of ‘being’ either way?

         That is evidently your belief or was your belief at the time. Your reasoning was tied up in ‘How are the medics going to allow me [yourself] to survive or not? (I want to observe this.)’ – Amorella

         Sartre’s Being and Nothingness comes to mind.  Here is a selection from Wikipedia.

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Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L'Être et le néant : Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's main purpose is to assert the individual's existence as prior to the individual's essence. His overriding concern in writing the book was to demonstrate that free will exists.

While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, an ontological investigation through the lens and method of Husserlian phenomenology . . . Reading Being and Time initiated Sartre's own enquiry leading to the publication in 1943 of Being and Nothingness whose subtitle is "A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology". Sartre's essay is clearly influenced by Heidegger though Sartre was profoundly skeptical of any measure by which humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfillment comparable to the hypothetical Heideggerian re-encounter with Being.

In Sartre's much gloomier account in Being and Nothingness, man is a creature haunted by a vision of "completion", what Sartre calls the ens causa sui, literally "a being that causes itself", which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Born into the material reality of one's body, in a material universe, one finds oneself inserted into being. Consciousness has the ability to conceptualize possibilities, and to make them appear, or to annihilate them.

Overview

In the introduction, Sartre sketches his own theory of consciousness, being, and phenomena through criticism of both earlier phenomenologists (most notably Husserl and Heidegger) as well as idealists, rationalists, and empiricists. According to him, one of the major achievements of modern philosophy is phenomenology because it disproved the kinds of dualism that set the existent up as having a "hidden" nature; Phenomenology has removed "the illusion of worlds behind the scene"

Based on an examination of the nature of phenomena, he describes the nature of two types of being, being-in-itself and being-for-itself. While being-in-itself is something that can only be approximated by human being, being-for-itself is the being of consciousness.

Part 1, Chapter 1: The origin of negation

When we go about the world, we have expectations, which are often not fulfilled. For example, Pierre is not at the café where we thought we would meet him, so there is a negation, a void, a nothingness, in the place of Pierre. When looking for Pierre his lack of being there becomes a negation; everything he sees as he searches the people and objects about him are "not Pierre". So Sartre claims, "It is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of a human expectation."

Part 1, Chapter 2: Bad faith

Bad faith (or "self-deception") can be understood as the guise of existing as a character, individual, or person who defines himself through the social categorization of his formal identity. This essentially means that in being a waiter, grocer, etc., one must believe that their social role is equivalent to their human existence. Living a life defined by one's occupation, social, racial, or economic class, is the very essence of "bad faith", the condition in which people cannot transcend their situations in order to realize what they must be (human) and what they are not (waiter, grocer, etc.). It is also essential for an existent to understand that negation allows the self to enter what Sartre calls the "great human stream". The great human stream arises from a singular realization that nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.

The difference between existence and identity projection remains at the heart of human subjects who are swept up by their own condition, their "bad faith". An example of projection that Sartre uses is the café waiter who performs the duties, traditions, functions, and expectations of a café waiter:

[W]hat are we then if we have the constant obligation to make ourselves what we are if our mode of being is having the obligation to be what we are? Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium, which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself to changing his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and even his voice seems to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café. There is nothing there to surprise us.

Sartre consistently mentions that in order to get out of bad faith, one must realize that their existence and their formal projection of a self are distinctly separate and within the means of human control. This separation is a form of nothingness. Nothingness, in terms of bad faith, is characterized by Sartre as the internal negation which separates pure existence and identity, and thus we are subject to playing our lives out in a similar manner. An example is something that is what it is (existence) and something that is what it is not (a waiter defined by his occupation).

However, Sartre takes a stance against characterizing bad faith in terms of "mere social positions". Says Sartre, "I am never any one of my attitudes, any one of my actions." The good speaker is the one who plays at speaking because he cannot be speaking. This literally means that, like the café waiter, the speaker is not his condition or social categorization, but is a speaker consumed by bad faith. Thus, we must realize what we are (beings who exist) and what we are not (a social/historical preoccupation) in order to step out of bad faith. Yet, existents (human beings) must maintain a balance between existence, their roles, and nothingness to become authentic beings.

Additionally, an important tenet of bad faith is that we must enact a bit of "good faith" in order to take advantage of our role to reach an authentic existence. The authentic domain of bad faith is realizing that the role we are playing is the lie. To live and project into the future as a project of a self, while keeping out of bad faith and living by the will of the self is living life authentically.

One of the most important implications of bad faith is the abolition of traditional ethics. Being a "moral person" requires one to deny authentic impulses (everything that makes us human) and allow the will of another person to change one's actions. Being "a moral person" is one of the most severe forms of bad faith. Sartre essentially characterizes this as "the faith of bad faith" which is and should not be, in Sartre's opinion, at the heart of one's existence. Sartre has a very low opinion of conventional ethics, condemning it as a tool of the bourgeoisie to control the masses.

Bad faith also results when individuals begin to view their life as made up of distinct past events. By viewing one's ego as it once was rather than as it currently is, one ends up negating the current self and replacing it with a past self that no longer exists.

Part 3, Chapter 1: The look

The mere possible presence of another person causes one to look at oneself as an object and see one's world as it appears to the other. This is not done from a specific location outside oneself, but is non-positional. This is a recognition of the subjectivity in others.

This transformation is most clear when one sees a mannequin that one confuses for a real person for a moment.

While they believe it is a person, their world is transformed. Objects now partly escape them; they have aspects that belong to the other person, and that are thus unknowable to them. During this time one can no longer have a total subjectivity. The world is now the other person's world, a foreign world that no longer comes from the self, but from the other. The other person is a "threat to the order and arrangement of your whole world...Your world is suddenly haunted by the Other's values, over which you have no control"

When they realise it is a mannequin, and is not subjective, the world seems to transfer back, and they are again in the center of a universe. This is back to the pre-reflective mode of being, it is "the eye of the camera that is always present but is never seen". The person is occupied and too busy for self-reflection. This process is continual, unavoidable, and ineluctable.

Being for Others

Sartre states that many relationships are created by people's attraction not to another person, but rather how that person makes them feel about themselves by how they look at them. This is a state of emotional alienation whereby a person avoids experiencing their subjectivity by identifying themselves with "the look" of the other. The consequence is conflict. In order to maintain the person's own being, the person must control the other, but must also control the freedom of the other "as freedom". These relationships are a profound manifestation of "bad faith" as the for-itself is replaced with the other's freedom. The purpose of either participant is not to exist, but to maintain the other participant's looking at them. This system is often mistakenly called "love", but it is, in fact, nothing more than emotional alienation and denial of freedom through conflict with the other. Sartre believes that it is often created as a means of making the unbearable anguish of a person's relationship to their “facticity” (all of the concrete details against the background of which human freedom exists and is limited, such as birthplace and time) bearable. At its extreme, the alienation can become so intense that due to the guilt of being so radically enslaved by "the look" and therefore radically missing their own freedoms, the participants can experience masochistic and sadistic attitudes. This happens when the participants cause pain to each other, in attempting to prove their control over the other's look, which they cannot escape because they believe themselves to be so enslaved to the look that experiencing their own subjectivity would be equally unbearable.

Sex

Sartre explains that "the look" is the basis for sexual desire, declaring that a biological motivation for sex does not exist. Instead, "double reciprocal incarnation" is a form of mutual awareness, which Sartre takes to be at the heart of the sexual experience. This involves the mutual recognition of subjectivity of some sort, as Sartre describes: "I make myself flesh in order to impel the Other to realize for herself and for me her own flesh. My caress causes my flesh to be born for me insofar as it is for the Other flesh causing her to be born as flesh."

Even in sex (perhaps especially in sex), men and women are haunted by a state in which consciousness and bodily being would be in perfect harmony, with desire satisfied. Such a state, however, can never be. We try to bring the beloved's consciousness to the surface of their body by use of magical acts performed, gestures (kisses, desires, etc.). But at the moment of organsm the illusion is ended and we return to ourselves, just as it is ended when the skier comes to the foot of the mountain or when the commodity that once we desired loses its glow upon our purchase of it. There will be, for Sartre, no such moment of completion because "man is a useless passion" to be the ens causa sui, the God of the ontological proof.

Nothingness

Sartre contends that human existence is a conundrum whereby each of us exists, for as long as we live, within an overall condition of nothingness (no thing-ness)—that ultimately allows for free consciousness. But simultaneously, within our being (in the physical world), we are constrained to make continuous, conscious choices.

It is this dichotomy that causes anguish, because choice (subjectivity) represents a limit on freedom within an otherwise unbridled range of thoughts. Subsequently, humans seek to flee our anguish through action-oriented constructs such as escapes, visualizations, or visions (such as dreams) designed to lead us toward some meaningful end, such as necessity, destiny, determinism (God), etc. Thus, in living our lives, we often become unconscious actors—Bourgeois, Feminist, Worker, Party Member, Frenchman, Canadian or American—each doing as we must to fulfill our chosen characters' destinies.

However, Sartre contends our conscious choices (leading to often unconscious actions) run counter to our intellectual freedom. Yet we are bound to the conditioned and physical world—in which some form of action is always required. This leads to failed dreams of completion, as Sartre described them, because inevitably we are unable to bridge the void between the purity and spontaneity of thought and all-too constraining action; between the being and the nothingness that inherently coincide in our self.

Sartre's recipe for fulfillment is to escape all quests by completing them. This is accomplished by rigorously forcing order onto nothingness, employing the "spirit (or consciousness of mind) of seriousness" and describing the failure to do so in terms such as "bad faith" and "false consciousness". Though Sartre's conclusion seems to be that being diminishes before nothingness since consciousness is probably based more on spontaneity than on stable seriousness, he contends that any person of a serious nature is obliged to continuous struggle between:

a) the conscious desire for peaceful self-fulfillment through physical actions and social roles—as if living within a portrait that one actively paints of oneself.

and

b) the more pure and raging spontaneity of no thing consciousness, of being instantaneously free to overturn one's roles, pull up stakes, and strike out on new paths.

Phenomenological ontology

In Sartre's opinion, consciousness does not make sense by itself: it arises only as an awareness of objects. Consciousness is therefore always and essentially consciousness of something, whether this "something" is a thing, a person, an imaginary object, etc. Phenomenologists often refer to this quality of consciousness as “ intentionality”. Sartre's contribution, then, is that in addition to always being consciousness of something, consciousness is always consciousness of itself. In other words, all consciousness is, by definition, self-consciousness. By "self-consciousness", Sartre does not mean being aware of oneself thought of as an object (e.g., one's "ego"), but rather that, as a phenomenon in the world, consciousness both appears and appears to itself at the same time. By appearing to itself, Sartre argues that consciousness is fully transparent; unlike an ordinary "object" (a house, for instance, of which it is impossible to perceive all of the sides at the same time), consciousness "sees" all aspects of itself at once. This non-positional quality of consciousness is what makes it a unique type of being, a being that exists for itself.

In this sense, Sartre uses phenomenology to describe ontology.

Thus, the subtitle An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology or, alternatively, A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology: what truly makes Sartre's a phenomenological ontology is that consciousness's structure is the way that it appears. Philosopher Kenneth Williford suggests that Sartre's reasoning turns on a logic of full phenomenal transparency that might not withstand scrutiny. In other words, Sartre implicitly argues that if consciousness "seems" to possess a certain property, then it actually possesses that property. But, conversely, if consciousness does not seem to possess a certain property, Williford argues that it would be hasty to conclude from this "seeming" that consciousness does not actually possess that property. (For example, consciousness might not "seem", upon reflection, to be brain process, but it is not clear from this "seeming" that consciousness is not, in fact, a brain process.)

Critique of Freud

Being and Nothingness offers a critique of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious, based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also argues that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed. According to Sartre, in his clinical work, Freud encountered patients who seemed to embody a particular kind of paradox—they appeared to both know and not know the same thing. In response, Freud postulated the existence of the unconscious, which contains the "truth" of the traumas underlying the patients' behavior. This "truth" is actively repressed, which is made evident by the patients' resistance to its revelation during analysis. Yet what does the resisting if the patients are unaware of what they are repressing? Sartre finds the answer in what Freud calls the "censor". "The only level on which we can locate the refusal of the subject," Sartre writes, "is that of the censor."

Further:

[T]he resistance of the patient implies on the level of the censor an awareness of the thing repressed as such, a comprehension of the end toward which the questions of the psychoanalyst are leading . . . These various operations in their turn imply that the censor is conscious (of) itself. But what type of self-consciousness can the censor have? It must be the consciousness (of) being conscious of the drive to be repressed, but precisely in order not to be conscious of it. What does this mean if not that the censor is in bad faith?

In other words, Sartre views Freud's unconscious to be a scapegoat for the paradox of simultaneously knowing and not knowing the same information. But instead of alleviating the paradox, Freud simply moves it to the censor, establishing "between the unconscious and consciousness an autonomous consciousness in bad faith". Sartre thinks that the postulation of a censor within the psychic economy is therefore redundant: at the level of the censor, we still encounter the same problem of a consciousness that hides something from itself. For Sartre, what Freud identifies as repression is rather indicative of the larger structure of bad faith. Psychoanalysis thus does not yield any special insight, since hiding something from oneself occurs at the level of consciousness as a unified phenomenon, not as part of some intra-psychic mechanism.

Toward the end of Being and Nothingness, Sartre attempts to adapt some of Freud's ideas, and thereby develop an "existential psychoanalysis" in which causal categories are replaced by teleological categories.

Special terminology used by Sartre

Explanation of terms based on postscript to the English edition of Being and Nothingness by translator Hazel Barnes

Being (être): Including both Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself (both as defined below), but the latter is the nihilation of the former. Being is objective, not subjective or individual.

Being-in-itself (être-en-soi): Non-conscious Being. The sort of phenomenon that is greater than the knowledge that we have of it.

•                Being-for-itself (être-pour-soi): The nihilation of Being-in-itself; consciousness conceived as a lack of Being, a desire for Being, a relation of Being. The For-itself brings Nothingness into the world and therefore can stand out from Being and form attitudes towards other beings by seeing what it is not.

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•                Being-for-others (être-pour-autrui): Here a new dimension arises in which the self exists as an object for others. Each For-itself seeks to recover its own Being by making an object out of the other.

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•                Consciousness: The transcending For-itself. Sartre states that "Consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question insofar as this being implies a being other than itself."

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•                Existence: Concrete, individual being-for-itself here and now.

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•                Existence precedes essence. The subjective existence of reality precedes and defines its nature. Who you are (your essence) is defined by what you do (your existence).

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•                Facticity (facticité): Broadly: facts about the world. More precisely, the For-itself's necessary connection with the In-itself, with the world and its own past.

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•                Freedom: The very being of the For-itself which is "condemned to be free". It must forever choose for itself and therefore make itself.

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•                Nothingness (néant): Although not having being, it is supported by being. It comes into the world by the For-itself.

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•                Reflection (reflet): The form in which the For-itself founds its own nothingness through the dyad of "the-reflection-reflecting"

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Reflection (réflexion):The consciousness attempting to become its own object.

Selected and edited from Wikipedia

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