Moving on from Alignment ① prep where I mention a few prior usages, here I'm thinking about the simplest way to 'define' my use of alignment within a worlding context. The full list of these thinking-out-louds will be found at Alignment under [taphonmy of worlding].
Alignment 2.1 the most basic effort
Alignment is the most basic worlding effort. It requires three
[bits/pieces/things/notices] as a minimum to put these bits into forming a line.
But this is not a geometric space of angles but the animal headspace of fright, fight, flight and freeze, among other 'things'.
One of these three [bits/pieces/things/notices] is always the threshold of closure in reference to a body. I.E. that which the body excludes, or accounts in enclosing itself.
When the self enfolds itself out of the world thus made/confounded/composed.
In this biological space there is no alignment without this bias, this survival push. Because this is always there, an alignment in a worlding context will often make the shortcut of assuming it, which often occludes its presence before our notice (that which aligns), and thus we will think of a line as aligning at a minimum two items of notice, when really it is three.
If you are wondering where the originary third bit went, it is in the "we will think" of the last sentence. You can swap in various other verbs for 'think' by the way.
Thinking a line is made only of two bits is not so much an error or oversight, but a short cut or instinct or even a skill that aids survival.
Consciousness often survives by not thinking about being conscious all the time. After all that takes effort best allocated elsewhere at times.
Thinking about universal truths won't help you then either BTW.
Sometimes selfing is just hard, and in order to survive sometimes it is better not to think about the fact we are thinking, so we often exclude the fact of subjectivity in order to preserve that subjectivity (we exclude the enclosure, and at other time we consciously enclose the exclosure).
We use this instinctual skill in other ways, other places.
This definity defining alignment in the context of worlding the self, requires an injunction to never forget the POV when discussing alignment, even if it is only semi-conscious at best.
Now many alignments do exactly this, they forget or dismiss the POV or partiality, and of those, some do so by active choice, perhaps to find truth beyond the limits of a POV and its survival mechanics.
But it is still based in animal logic. Biologic.
Reprise: An alignment is to make at least two things line up with one's mind/preferences/inclinations/assumptions… with whatever it is that one needs to world around the self in order to protect, boost or maintain that selfing in the world of others doing the same.It can pop up anywheres.
2.1 crossposted at whyweshould.loofs-samorzewski.com
You write: "Consciousness often survives by not thinking about being conscious all the time. After all that takes effort best allocated elsewhere at times."
&
"Sometimes selfing is just hard, and in order to survive sometimes it is better not to think about the fact we are thinking, so we often exclude the fact of subjectivity in order to preserve that subjectivity (we exclude the enclosure, and at other time we consciously enclose the exclosure)."
This implies (to me, I am not sure if you meant it this way) that "consciousness" (which in the first sentence I ttake to mean "self-consciousness" -- just trying to make sure our terms are the same) is the baseline, and being un-self-conscious is "secondary".
But I think the opposite. It seems to me that self-conciousness is an extra layer of feedback/control that is not typically present. We were taught to do it as young children. And selfing constructs a narrative whereby it is claims to be always present (and thus we think we are permanent "selves"), but I suspect that we are actually only selfing a very small amount each day. When peforming activities, for example, selfing only occurs when things are too hard to successfully complete by habit or in a flow-like state.