Why are Raincoats Yellow?

written 12 Apr 2007 in the earliest morning

Pretentious on college and teaming with all-too-often alcohol laden nights, my friends and I would sit up all night long discussing the fabric of the universe and how it applied to religion, music and sarcastic wit. Much of who I am today, or at least, how I got here, was born in these binge drinking, 4/5am, green and leafy couch expeditions, and it was there that I first began pondering my own perception of reality. Like I said, pretentiousness was not lacking in abundance.

Consider the possibility that everything is perceived differently by every consciousness out there. So Person A and Person B both are humans and both have relatively similar brains working with the same gears of cellular and electrical activity, we assume. However, how input into those brains is perceived and processed is largely unknown. Even with the limited scientific expertise on how our brains work, it’s still science and therefore, still all theoretic.

Perhaps when Person A was young, before he understood language, even facial expressions and hand gestures, he was fascinated by an object. His mind had no way to describe the object, but every time it floated above him, moved him around, picked him up, swayed him back and forth, he smiled and was quite pleased.

Person B, on the other hand but at the same age, would not recognize this object from any other objects around him. To him, the object was just another blur in the background of existence.

The object was Person A’s mother. Person B lived in the neighborhood and occasionally would see the object but as it wasn’t vital to his life, he never bothered to recognize it. The object was perceived as a completely different experience for both.

As Person A and Person B grow up these types of situations continue to persist, but as they develop language they’re forced to apply various labels to the objects around them. A shows B a ball and says “Look, this is a ball.”

“No,” replies B, “it’s a basketball.” A had no idea that it was in fact a basketball and not just a ball, or another kind of ball for that matter. “And basketballs are orange.” A agrees, it’s a basketball and basketballs are orange.

Why does he agree? Because from the time he first began to understand communication and language in particular, he began to be taught that certain pieces of reality have names. This bit of it is known as “orange” and that bit is known as “round” and another piece is called a “ball.”

But remember back to when neither of them had the ability to think such thoughts, because language didn’t exist in their minds, descriptions full of adjectives and nouns were completely foreign ideas, all that they could do was take in information, processing it was only done on a basic reaction level.

If we can take this all one step further, and this is just an idea I’ve been toying with for many years, what if the way that Person A’s brain develops in those first few years is drastically different from Person B’s, in that instead of him processing a round object as a ball, he perceives is as the color blue. Just completely interprets the data in a different way, because he has no basis of language to focus his thought process. So the actual way that his mind processes input has developed in a completely different way from anyone else on the planet (and in turn, all minds develop in a similarly independent fashion). Think of two cultures, isolated from one another and how they can develop so differently.

Once Person A and Person B begin understanding language, they would begin to agree that these pieces of reality are the same thing, and where B once interpreted something as X and A interpreted it as Y (and they still do), they now agree that it is to be called an “orange basketball” – nothing has changed about how they process the information, only that they now use language to make the object familiar to both of them and interpretable on a daily basis.

This could explain the differences between all humans and why art, writing, love, ideas, conversation and every other aspect of our interaction is so complex and completely different for any variant group of people.

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Dude, you’re only touching on the surface of an entire existence unraveled. Just take it a few steps further.

This not only explains the differences between humans and interaction – it explains the difference between humans and everything else on the planet. It explains well, pretty much everything that is “explainable”. I don’t know how much you know about Zen, but you’re damn close – if it were possible to get close to Zen using thought.

Language, or in fact, my brain’s “ability to give anything (object, property or trait, behavior, experience, etc.) a name” is what makes me human and separates “me” from the entire world around “me”. “Me” referring to my ego, or concept of “I”, which is just another name. That’s a rock, that’s a tree, that’s ground, that’s paper… and this (points at self) is “me”. Think Garden of Evil… Tree of Knowledge… God giving man the task of naming all things in our kingdom. This is pretty much the root of western religion: man is separate from everything else. And it’s root of all man’s suffering.

We see reality through our thoughts, perceptions, ideas, knowledge, experiences, the whole core of what our BRAINS tell us is reality.

This is why when we refer to “me” – we often are referring to our minds. We say things like “my mind and my body” – as if they’re separate. Or “my mind and my brain” as two separate things. And, dare I say it, we talk about our soul.

You could ask “Where does my brain end and my mind begin?” but you’d still be looking at it wrong – as if they’re separate – as if ANYTHING is separate.

TRUE REALITY has no names, no properties, no “laws of the universe”, no good/bad, no right/wrong, no me/you, no mind/body, no hot/cold, no yes/no, no one/zero, no separation whatsoever, it exists without thought or names applied to it – it just is.

It’s tempting to say, “Yeah, but even if we don’t call it hot or cold, it’s still hot or cold – just a difference name for a property of an object, right?” Just because we call it something different or don’t call it anything doesn’t change the fact that it is still “cold” or “hot”. And sure, you’d be right, naming something doesn’t change anything but our minds – that’s the point. It just is. It just is hot. Or it just is cold. Regardless of what our minds call it.

We’ve all experienced moments in our life where we exist, if only for a fleeting moment, in a reality that isn’t interpreted by thought. It’s called temporary enlightenment, and it can happen to anyone at any time. But as humans, our brains always turn back on, we always come back to our perceived reality of names and objects – of separation.

Enlightened Buddhist monks are able to hold that enlightened state forever – hence Nirvana. And when they “come back to reality” – they are still enlightened because they don’t /see/ reality through their minds. It’s kind of a recursive loop thing, they train their mind to use their mind not to use their mind.

Yeah, as confusing as this sounds, basically anytime you use your mind to “get it” – you won’t “get it”. Until you just “get it”, then you always “get it”. It’s ZEN.

If you want to read a decent intellectual account of this, you should read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Or, (who has time to read anymore), check out I Heart Huckabees.

The idea is really everywhere – all humans /KNOW/ about true reality – but we forget it. You could even argue that we are enlightened upon birth and then immediately become unenlightened as our brains perceive.

In the end, all pursuits are meaningless outside our own minds. Everything is meaningless outside our own minds. And it’s not a horrible idea in any way, it’s the most beautiful idea in the world. Not that we can “do anything without consequences” – I mean, karma is still a bitch – but that the universe will continue to exist forever infinitely regardless of how our minds perceive it – if our minds perceive it at all – if humans exist at all – if life exists at all.

There are no absolutes – everything is how we, as humans, perceive it. This is why I believe we should stop looking “out there” – we don’t need those metaphysical and religious answers, those “Does God exist?” answers – to know that human existence just is and should continue to be on this planet, right now and as long as we can help it last, amen.

End rant.

- Ryan | 12:46pm 14 Apr 07
Excellent.

- nathan | 11:41pm 14 Apr 07
Sorry, waking up hungover and still thinking about this…

Back to your idea about the basketball being interpreted differently for Person A or Person B. Even if they do use language to assimilate the name into something familiar to both of them, it is still not the same thing in their minds. To Person A, a basketball /is/ now that orange ball and what used to be the color blue – but the idea of the basketball is not JUST the ball itself but everything surrounding the basketball in Person A’s mind. It might be connected to his uncle Larry teaching him how to play, then it goes to how his uncle Larry was an alcoholic, then it goes to alcohol, etc. etc. Everything is connected through this weave of time, space, and memory – so much so that no object can be separate from anything else within our minds.

Every new idea to our brains must be assimilated into our entire concept of reality. An easy way of putting it is to say our brains have a box, inside that box is everything we call reality. When we encounter something that doesn’t fit within the box (we don’t know what it is, never saw it before, we don’t understand it, etc.) – we /use/ the existing box to fit the new idea in. It gets associated to /something/ within that box – and gets defined (given a name) using the words/ideas already within our box. Even when it changes definition within our minds (from the color blue to the basketball), we are still using our minds to define it.

And our minds perception of an object /separate/ from everything else is merely a ruse. The concept of separation is just another perception or idea within our minds. So we /perceive/ the object as a separate new idea within the box, but really, it’s still within the box (and thus tied to the box). There is no way of taking objects “out of the box” without taking all objects out of the box and removing the box completely – removing your mind – or having “no mind”.

Rewind, back to your point about cultures developing so differently… there are LOTS of factors coming into play for why cultures develop differently (not just language). But it is why humans develop so differently. Every human being is unique in their experiences, thoughts, definitions, etc. – their perceived reality. So, when using a mind to perceive it, there is a unique world to every single human being. We all live within our own world. But when you remove your mind’s perceptions, you /see/ the 1 actual true world in which we live. Seeing is not knowing, thinking, conceptualizing, or perceiving. It’s just seeing. Perceiving is with your mind. Seeing is simply with your eyes.

… a story …

Eno saw some monks arguing on the fluttering pennant; one of them said, ‘The pennant is an inanimate object and it is the wind that makes it flap.’ Against this it was remarked by another monk that ‘Both wind and pennant are inanimate things, and the flapping is an impossibility.’ A third one protested, ‘The flapping is due to a certain combination of cause and conditions’. While a fourth one proposed a theory, saying ‘After all, there is no flapping pennant, but it is the wind that is moving by itself.’ The discussions grew quite animated when Eno interrupted with the remark, ‘It is neither wind nor pennant but your own mind that flaps.’

…

Problem is, you can’t live without using your mind to perceive. In this culture or civilization anyway. I drift in and out, and honestly, I never really get back to “enlightenment”, but I remember what it felt like and what it meant. So, any monk will tell you I was never truly enlightened. But I still /know/ what it was to experience it. So, every once in awhile (when I get that small little spark), I can get back to it. It’s rare though. And the deeper you get into your mind’s cloudy perceived reality, the harder it is to come back.

Hence, even the partially enlightened come back to the inevitability of human suffering. We all still come back to the perceived reality, and we all still must live in it, but /knowing/ true reality makes all the problems of the perceived reality not really a problem.

A farmer once came to the Buddha complaining to the old monk at great length about his wife, his crops, his children and the weather. “Why? Why do I have all these problems?” Buddha said, “Everybody’s got 86 problems. If you try really, really hard, you might be able to knock out some of those problems and get that number down to 70 or maybe even 65, but the next time you turn around, you’ll have 86 problems again.” Now the poor farmer was despondent. Buddha said, “It’s not so bad. You really only have to solve the 86th problem and all the other ones will go away.” The farmer was overjoyed and begged to be told what the single most important problem was. “The one problem you really have to work on,” said the Buddha, “is that you want not to have any problems.”

- Ryan | 11:36am 15 Apr 07
Yes my response yesterday was a “little” half-assed…but mostly because I was too hungover to give it my true attention.

The seemingly impossible nature of Zen always amused me. I could only assume, through the paths that I’ve taken in life to achieve the state of happiness that I consider ideal, a balance of desire and satsifaction, ambition and contentment, and in a perfeft amount, not necessarily always balanced but always in the perfect amount, that Zen was the ultimate hilarious joke of being so – there is only one way to achieve this and that is by not wanting this to be achieved. As difficult as it sounds, at some point I grasped the concept and was then able to dismiss it as being impossible. Which perhaps also bored me of the idea. I’m fascinated by what I can’t understand, but only because I believe I should be able to understand everything – so introduce comprehension and you exclude my desire to remain impressed.

The concept of God always existing, for example…as an 8 year old in Christian school the idea, upon first presentation, seemed baffling, stupendously amazing, and unbelievable as well. I don’t think I differ from most people in that, regardless of intelligence or desire to acquire knowledge, most folk would not believe in something that they find completely impossible. Or more basically, that anything challenging is to be feared (hence slavery, women’s role in society, why Jell-O has no real competitor). But anyway, once I realized that my limited brain would obviously have a hard time comprehending eternity, it became so easy to understand how time could be infinite in either direction and that God could be as well.

It was during my teenage years that I continued to ponder this concept for whatever reason and realize that the very idea of a God could easily have been constructed by men to fill in those gaps – where understanding, wisdom and intelligence couldn’t do the job, explain away through the supernatural. Obviously, man has been doing that all of his life.

I said last night to Olivia, “Remember when the discovery of dinosaurs proved the Bible to be a lie?” and that may or may not be true, and obviously people could argue either side of the story for eternity (which is probably the reason I brought it up.)

I’m not sure that I’m on topic at all with any of the previously mentioned statements. But that’s the fun part, maybe.

Also, I have no problems. Sometimes I think I have 86 problems, but I’m quickly reminded by life and love and Line Rider 2 that life is much too easy to complain about. That hasn’t always been the case. There have been times where life was more difficult than imagining for the sake of hope could have produced, and so numbness and sleep and begging for the quick passage of time, if only for the idea that nothing could get worse, only stay the same or somehow improve. Luckily that’s all over. I’ve always wondered if we, while still in line in Heaven, waiting to be born, are offered the chance to write our own lives, but with Karmic weights attached – you must have 100 good times and 100 bad times, for example – and we’re allowed to determine when those times come, for each side. I could easily see myself writing, 10 good times for 10 years, then 100 bad times for the next 15 years, then my other 90 good times for the remainder of my years.

Like eating your carrots first, then wolfing down your brussel sprouts, so that you can enjoy your mashed potatoes nice and slowly for the rest of the meal.

- nathan | 07:47pm 15 Apr 07
Drunkard….. hypocrite warning!

- bob | 09:57pm 15 Apr 07