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It's a fascinating psychological technology for saturating your brain with associations between anything and anything else. Eventually you can start to read num

by ryandv 3y ago

It's a fascinating psychological technology for saturating your brain with associations between anything and anything else. Eventually you can start to read numerical coincidences or synchronicities into anything - bus route numbers, time of day, order numbers... strangely reminiscent of Arronofsky's Pi, where a mathematician straddles the boundary of number theory and numerology [0]. All of it tied back to some notion of divinity, or whatever notions of "the most important things" exist in your head. I've sometimes wondered if occult instruction in gematria, numerology, tables of correspondences, relating names, colours, symbols, scents, etc... to mythological figures is intended to produce this hyper-associative, nonlinear form of thinking - a different mode of cognition than the typical linearized, rational sort of thought, that is able to leverage our ability to quickly and subconsciously make inferences, associations, and snap judgments about phenomena, instead of using slow, deliberate, deductive forms of reasoning. Kahneman's system 1 vs. system 2 maybe approaches what I am getting at here. The associations that surface may give insight, if only dimly, into one's psychological state - how they feel at the moment, or what meaning a particular event has for them. A sort of looking glass for the mind, similar to the way one may lay out a tarot spread and not seek to prophesy the future, but speak some symbolic language understood by this hyper-associative faculty to see what meanings the practitioner projects from their subconscious and out onto random phenomena; or the way one may consult the I Ching to partake in an "experimental dream" - in which, instead of trying to isolate and remove the subjectivity of the observer, the experiment embraces the fact that observer and observed are inextricably linked in this game of trying to ascribe meaning to phenomena. Where "synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers." [1] If you find yourself bereft of meaning in this life, a practice of gematria may provide you with the semantic infusion you seek - though it may not be exactly what you bargained for. You can really blow yourself up if you get too deeply into this. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1IzNKIHhp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1IzNKIHhp0 [1] http://the-iching.com/extra/iching_jung_foreword http://the-iching.com/extra/iching_jung_foreword

empath-nirvana 3y ago
> a different mode of cognition than the typical linearized, rational sort of thought, that is able to leverage our ability to quickly and subconsciously make inferences, associations, and snap judgments about phenomena, instead of using slow, deliberate, deductive forms of reasoning. I mentioned this in my other comment, but you don't even really need to get this deep about it -- it gives people a justification for making essentially _random_ decisions. It's not always the best thing to do in many contexts to make the "logically correct" decision. There are many cases where being unpredictable is a benefit, or people doing new or unusual things can lead to progress, or just getting over the hump of not being able to decide what to do.
- ryandv 3y ago
  Yes, Julian Jaynes also expands on this point in his book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and the section on "Divination." He posits that forms of divination, augury, sortilege, etc... were invented as attempts by newly "post-bicameral" man to once more hear the "voices of the gods" that would give them authorization or assurance that their course of action was correct; an attempt to recapture the bicameral era, when "free will" as a concept did not even exist, and all of one's actions were in fact orchestrated by the gods (where Jaynes presupposes that what were referred to as "gods" were actually psychological phenomena).

by ryandv 3y ago

empath-nirvana 3y ago

> a different mode of cognition than the typical linearized, rational sort of thought, that is able to leverage our ability to quickly and subconsciously make inferences, associations, and snap judgments about phenomena, instead of using slow, deliberate, deductive forms of reasoning. I mentioned this in my other comment, but you don't even really need to get this deep about it -- it gives people a justification for making essentially _random_ decisions. It's not always the best thing to do in many contexts to make the "logically correct" decision. There are many cases where being unpredictable is a benefit, or people doing new or unusual things can lead to progress, or just getting over the hump of not being able to decide what to do.

ryandv 3y ago
Yes, Julian Jaynes also expands on this point in his book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and the section on "Divination." He posits that forms of divination, augury, sortilege, etc... were invented as attempts by newly "post-bicameral" man to once more hear the "voices of the gods" that would give them authorization or assurance that their course of action was correct; an attempt to recapture the bicameral era, when "free will" as a concept did not even exist, and all of one's actions were in fact orchestrated by the gods (where Jaynes presupposes that what were referred to as "gods" were actually psychological phenomena).