Bias & Duḥkha
Bias is a part of being alive.
Where one is blinded by the golden age of pure absolutes, bias can be seen as an imperfection of that ideal form, of the true reality, or real truth, which is something more than just good enough, which our sad lives are but a degraded iteration. Bias is a mark on our ideal souls, if only because we try to emulate that which is beyond us, as sinners, or fools not aware of their bias, while those proud of it are condemned.
Idealism itself is a bias, an iteration of our attempts, and thus possibly, a potentially additional part of being alive. And it is us as such, while alive, who throw such as this into the… —gap of our lived understanding. (It’s no innerstanding.) Doctrine is always a doubling-down of a bias, a preference, even as it proclaims itself heaven-sent.
We pivot to live, heaven does not, and so amidst our amongness we co-ordinate outcomes as if they were first causes of the world, (because) heaven does not… —even if we feel it should, and so forget ourselves that it is our selves making children special that makes everything so. Even the ideals of heaven.
sky father fix me
In Buddhist traditions, as translated into English, duḥkha has often been translated as ‘suffering’. In particular suffering in connection with ‘attachment’, and if one seeks some release from a cycle of suffering, then those attachment must be seen for the distractions that they are. This too can be an idol of course, doctrine and dogma will lead the examined life astray. Piety is a form of idolatry of the self.
If we accept recent scholarship that duḥkha refers not to suffering per se but to instability, as in standing awkwardly… — as if one should move into ease… but
awkward
—which can lead us to: pain, stress, pangs, anxiety, distress, spasms, frustration, unease, unsatisfactoriness, not having what one wants, having what one doesn't want, etc
Of course, even if we are in good balance, one has preferences one must negotiate with, both in oneself and in & around others, so this centredness or groundedness can become self-centred, or eccentric in orbit with boundaries delimited. Or both.
the centre cannot hole
The ideal is not available as a ideal without the lack of it arriving first.
???
We are unbalanced before we learn to walk. Before we ‘suffer’. We learn to walk because we want to. (attachment) To learn to walk we must first be unbalanced (the lack arrives first) (the baby, the blob) and be unbalanced enough to want to learn to walk (baby the motivated/driven/animal-ed) move like them… —parents, siblings, kind. And then we catch ourselves from falling.
So it begins.
After some awkward and painful moments.
It starts again.
Were where we?
on on on
Biases, or duḥkha, are integral to being alive. All appears to be ‘chaos’ before there is want; the weight of survival. The drive to live on produces the hindsight we sometimes blame entropy for.
All paths are equal. And then they are not. Who lives?
Ideals, like logic, are a hindsight, with the golden age in view, a hue. But ‘chaos’ is their predecessor, ideals are not the source, these our abstracted intuitions and mental short-cuts are outcomes we iterate (succeeding as success) into animistic ‘causes’ when taking the credit for them feels too much like being blamed.
Bias, or duḥkha. is not a bug, at best it is a necessary feature of ‘being alive’. The choice is not even (not) dying, there would not even be no fortune, that is, not even less than nothing. Not even naught.
Why is there something asking why is there something?
Why do you ask?
Suspending judgement does not seek death, nor even the peace that death brings, and on those questions we too… —suspend judgement.
It is the hollow that makes the vessel useful.
trauma as creation myth see https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/stephen-thaler-quest-ai-legally-recognized-upend-copyright-law-1234692243