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Somewhat musing, and clarifying my thoughts on the Illusion of Mind.
By which I mean, of course, that necessary delusion that we all suffer that somehow we are "I" - unique, continuous, congruent people.
The Ego, constructed from birth forward, pejorative, it's social convention to disregard the ego, we use the terms "egomaniac", "egotistical", "egocentric" to describe someone who's ego is unacceptably developed - the ego, that combination of individual experience, that separation from others, we manifest it a hundred ways, through consumerism, fashion and clothing, brands, our identifying with various causes, corporations and lifestyles, religion, art, we are anchored to our experiences, opinions and beliefs, all of which serve to make us "unique". But this ego is the frail, uppermost, "conscious" realm of thought, it's the day-to-day quest for identity and belief in ourselves that defines us, and I would argue that it's largely, if not entirely, an illusion.
There are in fact a hundred, maybe even thousands of smaller mental and psychic cogs that work to create this illusion, largely hidden (but not entirely), our conscious self is perhaps a bit like an optical illusion where we see lines against dot backgrounds and our mind fills in and imagines a square , or any of a hundred other corollaries, the square does not exist, certainly, but it is suggested, and the suggestion is enough for our minds to imagine a whole...
Imagine, extend feelings of hunger, of pain, of withdrawal from your chosen addiction, there comes a point with each of them where you break, you're mind no longer able to grasp the wholeness of you, the smaller mind that preoccupies itself with food, survival, pleasure is now in control. Homunculus has taken over. But these are extreme states you argue, but then think of emotional states - be they pleasure, anger, heartbreak, loneliness, etcetera, and you'll find they as well can consume you - and everyone, at some time, has fallen prey to these. Again, extreme states. Think about your autonomic responses - breathing, heartbeat, kidneys, a thousand parts that work efficiently in the background until it's time to make their demands known - and when they do, there's an urgency that cannot be resisted. Relating, on a curious and personal note, while trekking in Nepal, above 15000 feet my breathing was no longer autonomic, it became very much a labored, conscious process - each breath required both diligent effort and concentration, curious, indeed, for this was a process that my entire life had looked after itself.
And curious, too, or not so, if you please, but consider meditation - various practitioners are able to alter any number of their autonomic responses, reducing heartrate, breathing, raising or lowering core body temperature and adjusting metabolic rates. And curious or not, meditation is generally the process of refuting ego, descending beneath the realm of self, enlightenment (a popular aim in meditation) is generally described as a liberation from ego and worldly desires, a oneness - an intellectual as well as an emotional realization - of the connectedness of all things.
In mind - or the grasping of mind - it as well helps to survey the external landscape of external stimuli - always a part of mind, the backdrop of thought, the countless super and subliminal cues and subconscious responses, the manipulation of which suggests that a great proportion of which we consider to be free will is nothing but a conditioned response to the environment around us. Consider the illusion of what we perceive to be the world about us, generally shared, but represented to each of us independently in our own heads, we agree - often - as to the size and shape of an item, but disagree as to it's meaning, it's subjective value (a piece of music might simultaneously inspire and/or revolt 2 different members of an audience), our every sensation is first filtered through our senses and a hundred hidden prejudices, opinions, interpretations, understandings, emotions, creating an internal representation that bears little objective relation to the external world.
And finally there's memory - the lingering experience as recalled through all the processes above - seldom accurate or objective to begin with, memories are overwritten every time we revisit them, destroying all continuity, we continue our lives from places we think we have been...from false memories and interpretations of events, memories of books, films, third party narratives told to us at cocktail parties and by our parents, siblings, teachers, all woven into our own, we know that it's unreliable, tested and proven, but our own recollections are somehow not to be doubted, and every memory is a false starting point from which we begin again...
These are just a few random thoughts, poorly organized, but for more coherent and inspiring reading that might challenge or enlighten you on theories of self and mind, try some of the links below...
Link: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome
Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en
Link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/partial-recall
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Prime Minister of Canada Salary $157,731.00 + Expenses, Living residence.
President of the United States $400,000.00 + $50,000 annual expense account, $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment.
President of the University of Calgary $480, 000.00 + $130, 500 for sitting on Enbridge Board.
There are some serious flaws in the way we reward competence, ethics and leadership. Serious. The first, and most obvious of which, is that while it's fashionable to overpay University Presidents at the moment (and wrong, the correlation between quality of leadership and understanding of core issues and values central to Academia is clearly disproven in her need to top up her salary with outside contracts), there is no necessary correlation between money paid and quality of direction and leadership. Find someone that shares your institutions values, pay them well (and at $480,000 ++ is too much more than well in my books) and you may be surprised at what value you get. Given the University of Calgary's reputation, this seems not a trifle high but insane.
Meanwhile, half-a-million dollars exhausted my sympathy, that extra hundred plus grand just looks like greed...
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The recent conflict of interest "scandal" at the U of C has prompted some thought as to the expectations and obligations of Academia, or University.
First of all, while I acknowledge the real world need and pressure of funding, this could be better addressed by raising corporate taxes and passing the proceeds along to the educational institutions in need. This is the purpose of taxation, to support those institutions that society values. By keeping corporate taxes low (a longstanding strategy of the Conservatives), and allowing the corporations to build their "brand" through selective donations to institutions that are willing to "partner" with them we remove all autonomy from Universities and Academia.
This diminishes the value of the Education received. Universities are not trade schools, or institutes of technology, they serve as well functions in research, in publishing, in advising government, and other roles, but their paramount objective should be to educate - without bias, and free of political, corporate, and religious interference. We would probably agree that fundamentalist Christian college would teach evolution and biology different that a standard university, it should not be hard, then, to understand that a University sponsored by oil and gas might not delve as deeply as it should into the environmental/social/political ramifications of the industry.
Education, as in University, in it's purest sense is not done strictly with the purpose of employing it's pupils upon release. Education is about learning to think critically, to relate to people from different backgrounds, to learning both generally and specifically about different areas of the arts and science. That you leave with an education and are more employable as a result should be the happy by-product of an opened, disciplined and trained mind.
It is both the peoples and the governments job to fund education, that we've so devalued the institution that it must go a-begging to corporate sponsors is tragic. We've a new government. We can fix this.
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In capitalist economies one finds a Legal System, as opposed to a Justice system. A Justice system concerns itself with balancing the needs of the individual versus society, and creates laws that favor both. The Laws and Judgments are acknowledged by society to be fair, or are changed. At it's highest level it attempts to restore our faith in a fair and just universe.
A legal system, on the other hand, is unrelated to justice. A legal system is it's own economy, by which both laws and justice can be purchased for those bidders willing to spend enough time and money to rewrite the laws to their own end, or prevail their point of view over their opponents.
A Justice system does not favor wealth, rather it favors fairness. The Legal system, transparently favors those who are willing and possessed of the means to invest in it.
For a justice system to work it must be unbiased, and have laws that are readily understandable and available to the citizenry it represents. Lawyers are not a part of any real justice system, as they by their very presence represent both money and power and an adversarial approach to the issues being decided upon. Those points of view without the resources to bring a paid voice to court will simply not be heard, and laws will be made without consideration for their rights or interests.
Corporations represent some of the biggest threats to justice, wherein the fiction of personhood extends to them all the rights and privileges, yet profits are actively used to lobby and absolve them of any responsibilities. Examples of laws created by corporations, not people, include the copyright and piracy laws (many of which actively engages in suing real people for both real and imagined piracy and copyright violations), and the corporate taxation laws, many of which would be the envy of any individual.
For more ideas and reading on these themes, follow the links below:
Link: The more unequal your society, the more your laws will favor the rich
Link: Georgia claims it's laws are under copyright & Georgia sues citizen for publishing law
Link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-powers-and-abuses-of-americas-mega-corporations/5371901
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And from this reddit user (redditor?) comes perhaps the most coherent and well thought out argument ever as to the direction the Star Wars franchise is heading...
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/
Absolutely brilliant, and cleverly explains a lot of otherwise puzzling incongruities in the series. That said, who, really, has that kind of time to think about it?