PERCEPTION, PSYCHOLOGY, & EVOLUTION – The triune brain and religion


The triune mind [actually it’s five] from fish to reptile to, mammal, to ape, to human

The archaic levels of the human brain and psyche cannot understand the rational/modern/scientific truth of nature, reality, and our own psyches – because they are pre-rational structures – therefore, it is essential to retain pre-logical, pre-rational mythological stories about reality, nature, and cosmos so that the primordial, primal, and evolutionarily more primitive structures of our psyche, both subconscious and conscious, can communicate with our more sophisticated, rational, and scientific minds in a language that is mutually intelligible.

If this were not so, there would be no need for science as a way of knowing to compensate for our deeply irrational, superstitious, and biased thinking that constitutes the vast preponderance of our thinking.
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Perception, Psychology, & Evolution


Perception flows from interior to exterior regions of the brain, from evolutionarily oldest to newest.

An unidentifiable perception flows first through the startle reaction of fear and flight, then the emotive, superstitious and paranormal explanation before finally, when enough data has been collected, to fit to our rational understanding of nature.

Φ

A Very Important Question Answered-The unabridged and authoritative answer to the question, Who was Tom Bombadil?


You really cannot discuss Tom Bombadil [©Anke-Katrin Eiszmann]

You really cannot discuss Tom Bombadil without Goldberry.             [©Anke-Katrin Eiszmann]

Who is Tom Bombadil really, you my ask?

I had a close friend of mine ask me that question recently, apparently the email the question was encoded in became buried under two or three months of Facebook notifications – Facebook is going to be the end of us all I’m sure – at that time my friend was listening to the Lord of the Rings with his school age son.  Listening to???  I had thoroughly parsed the Silmarillion in print by age 12, mom’s Book of the Month Club selection for September 1977 – mine!

I suppose that was why my friend asked me the question, because he thought I probably knew the answer.  So, in case you haven’t managed to find the unabridged and authoritative answer to the question yourself – here it is.

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Felix Culpa! – The Happy Error – Academic Freedom and the Pessin Affair at the Augean Stables-Stuck in moderation limbo again


A torrent of scholarship cleanses the Augean Stables [Phi Studios, © 2012]

A torrent of scholarship cleanses the Augean Stables                                         [Phi Studios, © 2012]

I have a couple of comments, apparently stuck in moderation limbo, up at the Augean Stables concerning Prof. Richard Landes’ article My Talk at Connecticut College About the Pessin Affair, and  which I have aggregated below.  This article was a continuation of the discussion of the Pessin Affair which began at the Augean Stables back on July 29, 2015: Salem on Thames, what Connecticut College’s Andrew Pessin teaches us.  A briefer version of the article was published at American Interest on July 30, 2015.

In brief, the Pessin Affair involved the fallout from events at Connecticut College during the Spring of 2015 concerning Philosophy Professor Andrew Pessin.  I give a brief expert of Prof. Landes’ article below for the context.

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Les Vents qui Ventent [the winds that whirl] – A new experience of soul externalized in Time-Le Bruit Court Dans La Ville-the new wave old timey Québécois music and two odd ideas


Le Bruit Court dans la Ville Québécois power-trio [© 2015]

Le Bruit Court Dans la Ville  –   Québécois power-trio                      [© DepositPhotos.com 2014]

The Meme Merchant Culture Society went out the other night to a house hoot, for the first time in many ages, as a possible encouragement to use our French with people who actually speak French for a living, even if they are from the tail end of the Francophone world and tend to get a lot of grief from the Parisian epicenter of the Francophone world about their pronunciation and grammar.  C’est la vie.  This particular evening’s experience was a musical encounter with Québécois folk music trio Le Bruit Court Dans La Ville, “The buzz around town” more or less, le bruit court [literally ‘the noise short’] may also be rendered  as “rumor has it,” though we are not sure if there is a Québécois vs Parisien distinction here – possible.

This is not another music blog, this is a blog mostly about odd ideas; in the course of the evening we encountered enough unusual ideas to be worthy of promotion of the evening’s experience to a blog post.  The first odd idea was not that three Québécoises should be trying to make a living reviving a declining folk music tradition by giving concerts in people’s living rooms aux Etats Unis – a worthy idea – but not that odd.  The first odd idea was that in the Québécois folk music scene, les pieds [the feet] are an instrument you are likely to find credited in an album’s liner notes – extraordinaire.  The second odd idea is that in addition to the usual stories of marital infidelity by wife, or husband you may also find reference a theme of the now largely defunct Social Credit movement.

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