Spinoza on Science and Stress

Welcome Internet Neighbours!
Why am I writing & producing the graphic essay, ‘Bud The Brain?’
Inquiries, criticisms & discussions not only welcome but encouraged!
Baruch de Spinoza says the duty of a philosopher is to
1) Taste union with nature
2) Produce true ideas in himself
3) Makes these ideas known to his neighbours
*This is a paraphrase from God Man & His Well Being,  Curley trans
Chp XXVI Collected Works, Princeton, NJ 1985

       ‘Bud the Brain Explores The Question Of Existence’. When I was young I tried to find the answer to why we exist, in religion. Now that I am 72, nearing the end of my journey, my questions are more modest. I am content with ‘how we exist, asking science and philosophy. The finite cannot explain the infinite but only stand in awe & gratitude.
 After years of academic frustration, I found that graphics can free me somewhat from the tyranny of language.
         ‘Bud’ will make more sense to you if you follow it in order (ie page numbers). So far I am not able to post it sequentially but I’m working on that. I also have an erratum. Somewhere along the way, my primitive brain went primal. I misspelled ‘primitive’ as ‘primitive,’ a problem I correct along about page 50 or so.

       As time goes on I shall probably add to this preface. Thanks for reading.

As I get older, I find the energy which the universe has given me to do my work has become very narrow in its focus as I face its liberation back into the universe.
    Everything I do today seems to focus on researching scholars which the universe has sent my way: Euclid, Spinoza, Boole, Seth Lloyd, Antonio Damasio, Moe Noman and most recently Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. My wife, Rose says she is jealous that the universe gives me books when I need them. She sees it as somewhat of a mystical process but I see it as a prcoess of what science calls, ‘entanglement,’ (what I think Spinoza meant by the third way of knowing).
    I have always loved research and abhorred writing. (thus my non-productivity in the academic area). I only write when the semen of research evokes the pain of birth and then it is usually a still birth.
    That idiot, Price, the anthropologist for whom I was a research assistant at York, told me the left side of my brain was undeveloped because I came from blue-collar roots. This was because I spelled ’sceptic’ with a ‘c’ rather than a ‘k.’  Anyway, I had spent a lot of time learning how to do the method of content analysis and applying it to the Toronto Native Times, an aboriginal paper. I never gave my results to him. We subsequently lost that paper on our many moves.
    However, this method has become vital to my research and I suspect that this is because philosophers don’t know how to do content analysis so that they fail to recognize Spinoza’s indebtedness to Euclid in all of his philosophy (and why he was not a rationalist).
    Deleuze & Guattari in ‘What Is Philosophy?’ say Spinoza is the ‘Prince’ and ‘Christ’ of philosophy. because he was aware that there is only immance and not transcendence. Nevertheless, these two magnificent thinkers, who I think understood philosophy better than anyone else, failed to see Duclid’s influence on spinoza and consequently  they were only sophisticated,  warmed up reationalists.
    Philosophy is, as Spinoza understood, only our own work and not nature and thus only a ‘being of reason.’ I suspect it is this failure of Deleuze to understand Spinoxa that resulted in his suicide.

Hi, Owen. I think it’s wonderful that you are discussing philosophy in highschool. I didn’t discover philosophy until my third year in university.  When I did – the heavens opened.
  While I originally spent much time in existentialist thought (and certainly experienced, ‘angst,’) I am presently focused on Baruch Spinoza, Euclid, George Boole, the scientist Seth Lloyd and the neuroscientist , Antonio Damasio.
  When sharing philosophers, you will find that often they have gone on, as Wittgenstein said, ‘to language games on holiday.’ When speaking to your English class, as much as possible, use your ordinary Australian words.
 Doing my B.A., I once wrote an existentalist paper describing the dump in our small college town where my wife and I worked metals to make money for food while we went to school. Got an A + on it.
  This weekend, I worked at a Music Festival doing a presentation which I called, The Old Philosopher. (I can do this because I am 72).

  I had a box in which was a skull with an exposed rubber brain on which were rubber maggots, and a loaf of bread.   I explained to those who came up that the bread represented our life and was NOW.
  I told them each slice of bread was like an incident in their life – both happy and sad. 
  I made 2 piles of bread – things they felt hate for and things they loved.
  Then I told them inside the box was the cause and sometimes the cure for all the world’s problems.
  They would stick their hand in and feel around.
   I asked them what they felt. Sometimes they identified it as a brain.
  Then I’d open the box to reveal the brain with the maggots.
       “This is a brain filled with hate,” I said. “And it causes all the world’s problems.”
   Then I went back to the piles of bread which I reminded them was NOW, and I said: “An old philosopher (Spinoza) said every time we thing about something in the ‘hate’ pile, we bring hate back into the NOW. the place we presently occupy. Things like anger, guit, greed and the rest, only have the power we give them. They produce the emotions that cause hate in the world.
  But we can stop thinking about the ‘hate’ pile and focus on the other pile, the ‘love.’ Here we find truth, beauty, science and so forth.
  It doesn’t hurt to memorize quotes from thinkers you appreciate and focus on these when the ‘hate’ pile seems to be taking over your thinking.
  This is a simplified version of Spinoza’s ideas. He is quite complex when you read him.
  While very simple, the presentation with the brain and the bread was quite effective on that summer afternoon.
  Think of something you can do using ordinary language that can show ideas to your audience.
   Let me know how you do. Have a happy slice of NOw doing your presentation.
 
Dick DeShaw

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