Apophenia.
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I haven't yet seen that this is a useful label.
I think the key word in Conrad's original definition is "unmotivated." It seems to mean "unjustified." This would then require judgments about what pattern recognition is justified. People would vary in this judgment.
There are important brain functions dedicated primarily to pattern recognition. Conscious increase in pattern recognition is part of the training (part of basic expansion of awareness).
In particular, while the left brain hemisphere primarily processes explicit information ("reading what's written in the lines," what we usually call "knowledge"), the right hemisphere primarily processes implicit information ("reading between the lines," what we usually call "belief"). Humanity has needed, possessed, and used both of these faculties in conjunction as long as humanity has existed.
Any random splash of data will have patterns that can be reduced to some sort of curve by Fourier analysis. It doesn't matter if there is any meaningful connection - the distribution itself will be reducible to patterns. On the other hand, our survival is maximized when we correctly identify useful (functional) patterns.
A separate issue - and, to my thinking, far more important - is the process by which we (individually) ascribe meaning to things. Meaning isn't intrinsic in anything. (There is no intrinsic meaning in anything.) We attribute meaning, and survival is enhanced by attributing it usefully. I'm wondering if this isn't the key point for the things you're talking about?
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"We attribute meaning, and survival is enhanced by attributing it usefully. I'm wondering if this isn't the key point for the things you're talking about?"
Yes, if that's to me.
Does it mean I'm weak, crazy, incapable?
Or does it mean I'm advancing, courageous, spiritually "teething" or "pubescent"?
Our choice of words and the milieu from which we choose them can bias our attempts to ascribe meaning, both in our own minds and in the minds of others. But what other words are there, you know? It's tricky.
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I notice that your first response is to attribute meaning.
(Yes, I can tell you saw that too 
)You started itemizing things the stated fact could mean. Inherently it doesn't mean anything. It's just a fact.
@Sardonyx said
"Our choice of words and the milieu from which we choose them can bias our attempts to ascribe meaning, both in our own minds and in the minds of others. But what other words are there, you know? It's tricky."
Agreed. But the impossibility of consistently succeeding isn't an arguement against constantly trying.
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@Diluvium said
"Following them has brought me down a myriad of rabbit holes, but there always remains a discernible trail, a narrative voice that I can identify and assimilate.
Modern physics would hear non-causality and scoff, modern psychology would look at how I make my decisions and tell me I'm in a constant state of psychosis, yet the experience is there.
"Yes, the Crossroads. There came a point for me (and I don't think I'm unique in this) I simply had to say, "I am no longer willing to deny that this is happening."
You can go crazy trying to use the current scientific paradigm to attempt to explain it though. I mean, you can go into right and left brain functioning and the potential there for meaning to be constantly and instantaneously projected onto all events around you. And that is where the room for debate lies: "Is the instantaneous projection of meaning onto currently happening events simply a function of my very concrete brain?"
I take a side in this debate though. There are points in time where the thought comes so simultaneously and complexly with external events (or even before them) that one is hard-pressed not to have to go into the theoretical interaction of Consciousness and Time (without linear causality) to explain them. I don't think that the whole left-right brain conversation has developed so far in the empirical realm. And you have to decide for yourself whether or not you'll go there in your attempts to understand - whether that can be "real" for you or not.
That's what I call the Crossroads.
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Continuing:
There are times that it becomes so marked and intense that I have simply come to the conclusion that my thoughts have been coordinated (by what you tell me
) to occur in my mind as external events unfold in time. It's somewhat like forfeiting the ability to call your thoughts your own and having to submit to the idea that your own very thoughts can be programmed for you to have as certain events occur.Once that kind of thing starts to occassionally happen, I must admit, it's very difficult not to just follow one's psychological projections. "If it happened so powerfully and meaningfully then, why am I all completely wrong right now? The Thought-Orderer must be broken or betraying me!" That's what it feels like anyway. I can only come to the further conclusion that the experiences cannot be expected to be continuous... or, at least, not without further development. But I also can't imagine constantly being in such a state of mind either. You'd constantly be in your own private experience of reality.
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Use the World of Action to test it.
Soror Meral commonly would say, in the face of some breakthrough or realization, "Test it!" Act consistent with it being true. Your life may flourish, or it may crumble and collapse, but in either case you will learn something.
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""Test it!" Act consistent with it being true. Your life may flourish, or it may crumble and collapse, but in either case you will learn something.
"Yeah... Your front porch (forum) has kind of been my lab for a while now.
Sorry for the failures.
Thanks for the successes!
If there's some work I can do to repay you or make up for the mess, let me know. Otherwise... I'll just keep on working my magic.
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Apophenia is definitely one of my favorite goddesses. In her higher forms, she has to do with the "magical link", the connection between phenomena that cannot be explained by either belief or empirical material knowledge.
The spanish-language magical working group (I hesitate to call it an "order") that I founded is called Circulo de Apophenia in her honor.
93!
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@Jim Eshelman said
" Meaning isn't intrinsic in anything. (There is no intrinsic meaning in anything.) We attribute meaning, and survival is enhanced by attributing it usefully. I'm wondering if this isn't the key point for the things you're talking about?"
It is.
I believe that modern culture, due to a preoccupation with the mundane, has lost its will to apply meaning.
They just don't see the point, what with all the shiny little toys and indulgences they have entertaining(distracting) them.
There is immeasurable power in the freedom to choose what you give meaning.
To me, this was symbolized in ancient Egypt as the concept of Ma'at, the underlying acceptance that we are all solely united by the quest for meaning. It is at the center of every human heart. Their society flourished like no other since because of this infrastructure of spiritual awe.
But in society today, this is lost entirely, and the infrastructure is in complete decay because of it.
Our very survival here is in question because of this folly, because meaning is forced to be placed in money--as a matter of day-to-day practicality, not the Earth, first and beyond all. Not the underlying connectedness of all people and events on the planet.I think Apophenia is the way back to that purity.
It is truly my Work to spark this reflex in others, whether by interaction, art, or occultism. To send out white rabbits, and watch them enter their own hell, so they don't turn the world around them into it first. It's the highest end to any magick I could think to do. -
Now that is the most interesting, disturbing Artist's declaration that I've heard in a good while. =]
It's early. Gonna ponder that a bit.
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"I think Apophenia is the way back to that purity.
It is truly my Work to spark this reflex in others, whether by interaction, art, or occultism. To send out white rabbits, and watch them enter their own hell, so they don't turn the world around them into it first. It's the highest end to any magick I could think to do."Please correct me if I assume to much about your post.
I'm not certain you can stimulate such experiences in others against their will. But you may have some success if people are open to the experience.
I am certain that if you attempt to stimulate such experiences in others against their will, then your own unconscious will take up the impression that you have done such a thing, and you will begin to experience the ...the narrative (is, I believe, your term)... that such things are actually taking place around you. This narrative may or may not actually reflect another person's experience of your art, but either way, you will receive impressions that this* is *taking place because your own unconscious will elaborate on whatever definite impressions you give it.
In short, it's a gamble. You will enter the Labyrinth of your own suggestion whether or not your "target" does. If it violates the law of karma, it will bounce back to you, and the narrative will end with your humbling. If it agrees with the law of karma, then you may just accomplish your intent, but nothing is certain. Like I said, it's a gamble. It's also a war that takes place in the sphere of Mind.
Take care.
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@Bereshith said
"
I'm not certain you can stimulate such experiences in others against their will. But you may have some success if people are open to the experience. "I find that, at a certain level, there is a fear that is universal to all human psychologies. A primordial funk at the bottom of the unconscious well.
With Art, you can tickle it. Coerce it out, force a confrontation, and turn it into love.
You can produce such a specific vulnerability that it will immediately revert to its emotional reciprocal.
That is the mechanism at work in many initiations throughout the mystical tradition.
You arrange a sensory experience specific enough to produce a desired change in the perceiver/initiate.
This, essentially, is how art works.
You arrange images, sounds--whatever the medium--to produce a desired change in the perciever/initiate.
To form a magickal link.
It's a gamble I have no reservations in taking.I trust my Angel to humble me when I need it, and accept it on all levels of being when a humbling is presented.
I fully expect to experience all the hell I seek to externalize, but that's okay.
Hell is where I learn best; it's home-field. -
See, now this is the most interesting conversation I've had in a while. You're familiar with my kind of hell... Please forgive the liberty I take with the frequent comments.
Maybe I'm ascribing meaning.. But I think I hear some justification of the survival (kill) instinct attempting to find its proper role in your Love under Will. I understand the necessity completely - that it is the only path to the full integration and fulfillment of all the necessary parts of you. It is a very powerful instinct. It can be overwhelming and possessing. I guess that's why I'm reacting to your posts by commenting so much. I respect the process, and I mean that with the full meaning of the term respect. There is danger there, and reward.
Or maybe I'm off, but you'll have to tell me.
@Diluvium said
"
I find that, at a certain level, there is a fear that is universal to all human psychologies. A primordial funk at the bottom of the unconscious well.
With Art, you can tickle it. Coerce it out, force a confrontation, and turn it into love."That's the gamble. Love is required in the recipe, and skill.
"You can produce such a specific vulnerability that it will immediately revert to its emotional reciprocal."
"emotional reciprocal" - The unpredictable element. Don't forget the chaos factor. It's not entirely mathematical. Every human has a touch of liberating chaos in them, and love is not required to be reciprocated. Love must be given freely by *both *parties. No other bond can unite the divided...
"That is the mechanism at work in many initiations throughout the mystical tradition.
You arrange a sensory experience specific enough to produce a desired change in the perceiver/initiate.
This, essentially, is how art works.
You arrange images, sounds--whatever the medium--to produce a desired change in the perciever/initiate.
To form a magical link."Sounds like you know what you're doing. Kinda freaky, I confess. You know magical links run both ways, right? That fact, and the touch of liberating chaos in everyone, and the fact that love is not required to be reciprocated... that's why it can be war - a just war - and merely war without loving resolution.
"It's a gamble I have no reservations in taking."
I can relate to the sentiment.
"I trust my Angel to humble me when I need it, and accept it on all levels of being when a humbling is presented."
The only way to do it.
"I fully expect to experience all the hell I seek to externalize, but that's okay.
Hell is where I learn best; it's home-field.""None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!" - Rorschach, The Watchmen.
I've always loved that line. How long has it been since you've seen The Watchmen?
Remember Love under Will.
Refine and ever refine thine Art...!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Love is the law, love under will. -
@Bereshith said
"Maybe I'm ascribing meaning.. But I think I hear some justification of the survival (kill) instinct attempting to find its proper role in your Love under Will. I understand the necessity completely - that it is the only path to the full integration and fulfillment of all the necessary parts of you. It is a very powerful instinct. It can be overwhelming and possessing. I guess that's why I'm reacting to your posts by commenting so much. I respect the process, and I mean that with the full meaning of the term respect. There is danger there, and reward.
"In the spirit of the black that makes black white...
I suppose I could blame my Pluto in Scorpio; such a strong death-current coming from the reaches of my perception.
I could also perhaps blame my Sun-Mercury/Gemini, Uranus-Neptune/Sagittarius dichotomy; the Arrow of Art piercing through the veil, forcing me to bridge the Two Worlds of inner and outer merely to compensate for the richness of experience it produces.
Really, I just know that the Powers That Be have dominated all the mundane channels of change with brute force, so if I am to continue the Work of the Aeon, of clearing the Throne for the return of the Great Daughter, Ma'at, I must play a more subtle game.@Bereshith said
""emotional reciprocal" - The unpredictable element. Don't forget the chaos factor. It's not entirely mathematical. Every human has a touch of liberating chaos in them, and love is not required to be reciprocated. Love must be given freely by both parties. No other bond can unite the divided..."
Yes, Love. I bow to Her with every breath,
The only reciprocal to Love is Fear, and I was forced to swallow from that horrid cup at a very young age.
I know fear well, and I know it is a very insidious addiction.
Harder to uproot than any drug..@Bereshith said
"Sounds like you know what you're doing. Kinda freaky, I confess. You know magical links run both ways, right? That fact, and the touch of liberating chaos in everyone, and the fact that love is not required to be reciprocated... that's why it can be war - a just war - and merely war without loving resolution."
I know they work both ways.
That is why the Lovers are the requisite to the Great Work, a Work of Art.
All of the Work I do is done symbolically, magickally, through a Daughter.
I am Hades, and I lead my Persephone through her trials. Around her and through her, the world becomes Persephone.
I am Djehuti, and I speak my Word into the resonant womb of Ma'at. Around her and through her, Truth echoes.
It is a war, but a playful one
Forgive me if I abstract too much.
It's inevitable with such a fragile context.@Bereshith said
"
"None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!" - Rorschach, The Watchmen.I've always loved that line. How long has it been since you've seen The Watchmen?
"Six months? Something like that.
Justice is Justice@Bereshith said
"Remember Love under Will.
Refine and ever refine thine Art...! "
Always.
I'm 17 years old, when all's said and done.
I'm just getting started.
93's -
"It is a war, but a playful one
"Make it Beautiful.
Make it Scandalous.
Make it Fascinating. -
"It is a war, but a playful one
"Cross your fingers too.
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"39. A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet â secret, O Prophet!"