The importance of novelty in evolution

[sillypumpkins]

Hey all,

it occurred to me last night, as I danced with my higher self and some fungus friends, that seeking novelty seems to be an integral part of evolution in this world. Finding new and exciting ways of looking at things, for example. Or finding new ways of doing something.

If we don't seek novelty, we get stuck in habit. That can become pretty muddy. Is novelty an antidote for that sort of habitual living? Perhaps not an antidote.... maybe novelty is the thing that balances habit.

Personally, I've always been troubled by my habits and how "tied up" I feel in them. Perhaps introducing novelty is a way to break out of that mud.

I don't know, just exploring here.

Anyone?

[Minyatur]

Actually lately I've been trying to say here that the Universe seeks novelty and variety to experience, so I do think we can definitely also apply that to our lives. As above, so below.

Then again, maybe that's just a perspective that was given to me by my own fungus friends.

[flofrog]

Quite true Silly, which is why if we apply ourself to live in the now, more and more, then the constant question how do if eel about this NOW, what choice do I take now, and so on, spares us from the mud, right ? ... Even applying attention on peeling onions and tomatoes, if even doing some 'new age' feel of ' thank you tomato for your gift' will take out the muddy past from any small single action and thought we take ?

[Patrick]

 
The Law of Non Repetition in action !

[Aion]

I would offer the question, is there a difference between a routine and a habit?

I would say one is consciously undertaken while the other is unconsciously followed.

[Aion]

I would say that the idea of using novelty in order to break "regular" states of mind is something that has been used extensively in various philosophical and spiritual schools. It was one of the key methods used by Gurdjieff.

[sillypumpkins]

@Minytaur - yes! It's a way of the universe..... we can learn much from that if we apply it to our own level of consciousness

@flo - absolutely... just being present is another way to cut through the mud... being present is a novel sort of thing in itself then huh?

@patrick - would you be able to extrapolate a little on that? I can't find it in the search section of thelawofone.com

@aion - I would say you are correct in saying that routine is consciously undertaken where as habit is mindlessly followed. I love the analogy of the man riding a horse. Another man stands on the side of the road and asks him, "where are you going?" the man on the horse says, "I don't know, ask the horse!"

I'm going to read a little more into Gurdjieff. Thanks

[Patrick]

That's just my own wording for it, Aion had a much better term for it. It is that the Creator does not wish to repeat the exact same experience. There would be no point in getting inside an experience loop. It wants new experiences all the time. Of course, what we believe are repetitions are never exactly the same experience, because circonstances are always a bit different each time.

[Aion]

@Minytaur - yes! It's a way of the universe..... we can learn much from that if we apply it to our own level of consciousness

@flo - absolutely... just being present is another way to cut through the mud... being present is a novel sort of thing in itself then huh?

@patrick - would you be able to extrapolate a little on that? I can't find it in the search section of thelawofone.com

@aion - I would say you are correct in saying that routine is consciously undertaken where as habit is mindlessly followed. I love the analogy of the man riding a horse. Another man stands on the side of the road and asks him, "where are you going?" the man on the horse says, "I don't know, ask the horse!"

I'm going to read a little more into Gurdjieff. Thanks

Sometimes it's good to let the horse decide where to go. I remember being told once that animals teach us how to be in the moment.
Forewarning he is a controversial figure to some, he was just the first person to pop in to my head, but his ideas are interesting none-the-less.
I would say that the introduction of progressive levels of novelty is a bit of a crux in all ceremony and ritual.

In some ways I'd even say you could vaguely distinguish between "left hand" and "right hand" approaches in terms of the way novelty is approached.
The left hand seeks sudden, extreme novelty to shatter the senses. The right seeks gradual, rounded novelty to slowly dissolve them away.
Personally I think the key is somewhere in the very middle.

[sillypumpkins]

@Patrick - thanks for sharing Patrick. So would another way of looking at it be that the Creator does wish to be stuck in a karmic cycle? That would explain the "seeking" quality of humans.

@Aion - "Sometimes it's good to let the horse decide where to go" I agree with you I used to punish myself quite harshly for indulging in my habits, feeling quite confused about why I am so attached to certain things. I've learned that sometimes it's best just to let yourself do it wholeheartedly, and see where that takes you.

Thanks for sharing your insights Aion. They are very much welcome. You have given me some things to ponder

[Aion]

I think in some ways the vague Western notions of Buddhist and Yogic asceticism has done some harm combined with messianic idealizations of Christ, in the sense that it seems there are a lot of 'spiritual' ideas floating around that stem from these that suggest that all desire or wants of the physical are in some way "profane". These are ideas I find I am still unraveling in myself.

However, there is an old occult idea that one starts on the right hand path and 'graduates' to the left hand path. With the idea that all of the discipline and focusing of intent done on the right side meant to balance out and guide the creative exploration of the left, but with intense effort one can still prevail if you go right to the left, with both paths ultimately ending up with the same balance of discipline and intent. I think this is a decent explanation for why the paths are both of equal difficulty. In both cases the process of the development of the disciplines of the personality requires a different type of resilience and perseverance.

I have wondered before and consider if maybe it isn't that the paths are what produce the types but rather the paths are "created" by different types.

What came first, the path or the wanderer?

Something tells me it is the Wanderer who carves the path.

[Sacred Fool]

Well, there's novelty in the sense of sensual toys, bling, and there's novelty in the sense of innovative designs, new ways to balance old themes (right use of power or surrender to Divinity, etc.), new ways to accept the unacceptable. One can be as trivial or as deeply connected to self, to the planet and to spirit as one desires. Novelty of itself seems less important to me than the vibrancy of love and skill which go into creating and appreciating it as one stretches out towards the Creator.

[Ymarsakar]

A rolling stone grows no moss

[Diana]

I would offer the question, is there a difference between a routine and a habit?

I would say one is consciously undertaken while the other is unconsciously followed.

I agree.

In addition, the yin/yang symbol comes to mind. Within the chaos a habit may be formed (like the eye of a storm), and within a routine there may be movement (or evolution) if it is not too rigid.

In both a routine and a habit, if there is flexibility, each can be a positive tool. But if rigid, there will be entropy, decay (stagnant waters become toxic).

Habits and routines are also intertwined: routines become habits—which can serve us, but only if we stay open to change and don't cling to them even when we are prompted to evolve.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

I have wondered before and consider if maybe it isn't that the paths are what produce the types but rather the paths are "created" by different types.

What came first, the path or the wanderer?

Something tells me it is the Wanderer who carves the path.

Gurdjieff had the idea that there's two types of path: objectively, each individual has a unique path, but subjectively, generalized frameworks can be created to exist as "paths" to help those striving to go in some particular direction.

Well, the four generalized ways described by Gurdjieff are all meant as right hand paths. He largely seems to have limited his descriptions of real left hand striving to occult attempts to cheat the requirements for evolution, skipping as much as possible and using brute force to jump from the lowest to the highest, at the risk of ultimately finding the innermost hidden treasure to be empty.

The three traditional paths are old frameworks with traditions and all kinds of baggage and surrounding structure. They are the familiar fakir self-torture and physical self-mastery, monkish blind devotion to spiritual authority in search of a perfection of the heart, and yogic striving for real mind-over-matter transcendence. They all require monomaniacal lopsided focus and external distance from normal life for success.

The Fourth Way instead uses ordinary life as an esoteric obstacle course in which balanced training and inner distance between what is of real value and the transient and illusory influences of the world is the distance which counts. But all known attempts, beginning with Gurdjieff's and on, to provide successful Fourth Way schools are failures in practice, in how it worked with the students.

And from the start, it seems that Gurdjieff was extremely pessimistic about human evolution, to the point where experiments and the use of hypnosis on esoteric students to see if it could lead to anything at all, instead of nothing, was what he devoted himself to. And he more generally viewed the four general ways he described as the best bets, and did not really seem to do justice to unique individual paths and their travelers (and what we understand as wanderers) outside of generalized paths in his teaching.

[Ymarsakar]

I have wondered before and consider if maybe it isn't that the paths are what produce the types but rather the paths are "created" by different types.

What came first, the path or the wanderer?

Something tells me it is the Wanderer who carves the path.

Gurdjieff had the idea that there's two types of path: objectively, each individual has a unique path, but subjectively, generalized frameworks can be created to exist as "paths" to help those striving to go in some particular direction.

Well, the four generalized ways described by Gurdjieff are all meant as right hand paths. He largely seems to have limited his descriptions of real left hand striving to occult attempts to cheat the requirements for evolution, skipping as much as possible and using brute force to jump from the lowest to the highest, at the risk of ultimately finding the innermost hidden treasure to be empty.

The three traditional paths are old frameworks with traditions and all kinds of baggage and surrounding structure. They are the familiar fakir self-torture and physical self-mastery, monkish blind devotion to spiritual authority in search of a perfection of the heart, and yogic striving for real mind-over-matter transcendence. They all require monomaniacal lopsided focus and external distance from normal life for success.

The Fourth Way instead uses ordinary life as an esoteric obstacle course in which balanced training and inner distance between what is of real value and the transient and illusory influences of the world is the distance which counts. But all known attempts, beginning with Gurdjieff's and on, to provide successful Fourth Way schools are failures in practice, in how it worked with the students.

And from the start, it seems that Gurdjieff was extremely pessimistic about human evolution, to the point where experiments and the use of hypnosis on esoteric students to see if it could lead to anything at all, instead of nothing, was what he devoted himself to. And he more generally viewed the four general ways he described as the best bets, and did not really seem to do justice to unique individual paths and their travelers (and what we understand as wanderers) outside of generalized paths in his teaching.

G did not see the catalyzing potential Japanese visual novels then.

[Diana]

G did not see the catalyzing potential Japanese visual novels then.

That's interesting. Could you explain what you mean about Japanese visual novels (I assume you mean graphic novels)?

[Ymarsakar]

Visual novels is a novel run on pc software, but has drawn landscapes and sfx, plus music. Sometimes they just have art and 1 music track, as most are small indie circles.

The west only have audio books. Most modern visual novels have voice actors now.

So if you combined a 99k word novel, a graphic comic, and an audio book, with different voices for each role...

A house in fata morgana is on steam. Plus some free classics like planetarian or narcissus