Passion from Puzzle Pieces
January 25, 2010
Perhaps I should not have said I have no conscious experience of my genetics, after all I certainly have some experiences because of my genetics, for example medical predispositions, or even social stigma (or status) attached to various ethnic phenotypes. It might be more accurate to say mechanistic, scientistic, or evolutionary-biologic explanations of my experiences simply do not reference enough (important) pieces of my puzzle interior to have satisfactory explanatory power. I think such symbols hold more sway with people who already have frameworks of predominantly similar kinds, i.e. scientistic, evolutionary, materialist; of course I don’t think such frameworks are wrong, they’re just different.
My framework, and consequently my symbols, are a bit more experiential, and this is what I mean when I say I am an experientialist; the symbols that work for me are ones that focus, refine and describe my conscious experience. Not that more materialistic symbols and experiential symbols can’t coexist; for example I know my sexuality is affected by my evolutionary heritage but I only allow such a fact inform my decisions about sexuality, and I try not to let my biology rule my decision making process. Indeed, I would say everyone reconciles these and more seemingly different symbols in their mental framework, with the natural caveat that different people do this differently at different points in their mental frameworks.
Thus I arrive at passion and desire as wanting completing piece(s) of our interior framework picture, and yet another reason why I am ‘passion positive‘. While mental frameworks are far from infallible they do help us organize our interior puzzle piece space, and it is by such organizing frameworks we perceive an absence of some (interior puzzle) piece, and we begin to desire. (‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’) Yet curiously, just as we might notice a hole in a fabric more than we notice the fabric, we tend to notice absence (and it’s corresponding desire) more than the fabric, or the pieces of fabric, from which it arises.
So, I asked whence cometh the meaning and now I believe a fair answer is dynamic: that meaning arises from the relationship between ourselves, our interior mental spaces (our interior puzzle pieces) and (the organizing authority of) our mental frameworks. Our desires and passions may be negative indicators of what we believe is missing and absent on our interior, but they are also positive searches for experiential meaning and significance in symbols compatible with our current interior framework; we all want meaning in symbols we can understand.
January 26, 2010 at 3:19 pm
[...] this I believe is the culminating point of this past week’s worth of posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6): as all people have their framework symbol addictions, the particular form of my framework symbol [...]
January 27, 2010 at 9:42 pm
[...] our nature by another name; after all it is easy to attribute these sorts of experiences to some scientistic evolutionary attunement to potential mating compatibility. Yet again, for me, such theories work [...]
February 1, 2010 at 6:03 am
[...] her desire. (I think this theory is at the border of having conscious explanatory power (and note here too) for me so I’m not sure quite what to think of it [...]
February 7, 2010 at 8:00 pm
[...] February 7, 2010 It occurred to me last night that part of my endeavor to maintain a positive attitude and framework (or avoid a negative one) may be more accurately described as, or is in part comprised of, my desire to maintain (and enlarge) a certain specific mental space within my mental framework. I know many will simply attribute this experience to ’sub-space’, the endorphin rush of a submissive in situ, but such symbols and descriptions have never worked for me, neither submissive nor scientistic biology. [...]
February 11, 2010 at 7:53 pm
[...] instance while I said materialistic, scientistic, theories and explanations don’t work well for me, I recently rear a fascinating article that had explanatory power for standard gender stereotypes [...]
February 16, 2010 at 2:24 pm
[...] to Existentialism] is not meaningful ) without resorting to some sort of scientism. Unfortunately scientistic, evolutionary-biologic explanations of my experiences simply do not reference enough imp… over the human biological meaning [...]
March 30, 2010 at 7:11 pm
[...] admit, some might say I only liked it because it was easier, yet again, I prefer to focus on what I consciously experience and feel, and what I felt then (and still) is as if I were fitting right in, and coming home. [...]
March 31, 2010 at 12:34 pm
[...] passionate understanding of another person’s situation and interior. Yet because emotion and passion (see also passion addiction) are what drive and motivate everyone’s interior spaces and [...]
April 1, 2010 at 3:31 pm
[...] Regardless of one’s view of evolution, if it is true we have co-opted our ‘expectation of safety’ and adapted it for our expectations of happiness, we shouldn’t wonder how we’re so bad at predicting what will make us happy. I already discussed how people will often define themselves as a person who doesn’t do or like something they have never tried; perhaps doing this is just as convenient for maintaining safety as attaining happiness through valid self expression. [...]
June 23, 2010 at 12:28 am
[...] is at the root of the female led impulse and the female led ‘love-symbol’. Even in passion from puzzle pieces (or meaning from puzzle pieces), the idea is to find exterior expression of an interior emotional [...]
July 3, 2010 at 12:08 am
[...] and studied“. It’s the very essence of the idea of meaning from puzzle pieces and passion from puzzle pieces – and my writings here might aptly be labeled some sort of morbid study and differential [...]
July 9, 2010 at 12:08 am
[...] am ‘passion positive‘ because passion is where we get meaning and motivation, piece by piece. I firmly believe passion is a good [...]
July 11, 2010 at 3:37 am
[...] expressing the edges of adequacy in our experiences is the same essential concept as meaning and passion from puzzle pieces: We sense the ‘missing of the mark’, the mistake, the absence, the [...]
September 2, 2010 at 8:51 am
[...] wife and my wife’s passion for being and existing as she does (see also here, not to mention passion’s general relationship to existence and being alive. This isn’t the first poem I’ve penned about passion [...]
October 30, 2010 at 9:05 am
[...] passionately – partially because I believe in passion as way of finding meaning in life (here, here and here), but also partially because I’m just romantically inclined – a reason [...]