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I haven't trusted the government since the 60's. My first knee jerk reaction to anything they say is that it's a lie. After that everything makes sense...

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Charles Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man, wrote "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".

Darwin was the recipient of much criticism regarding his often astute observations, including his observation of the existence of carnivorous plants, as the largely theological-based "science" of his day held strict belief in the concept of the hierarchy of species, thus refusing to believe that "lower-order" plants could never prey on "higher-order" insects & animals.

And though Darwin has often been used as a divider between the theists and atheists, he started-out pursuing work in the Clergy, and never lost his faith in a higher-power, but did lose his faith in the human-manipulated Church doctrine.

Darwin's observation "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" serves as a basis of the Dunning Kruger effect.

Those with lesser knowledge of a topic or subject, tend to overstate their perceived knowledge of that subject or topic.

I.e. they lack the more comprehensive knowledge to realize what they don't know.

The "liberal" Philosopher, Educator, Mathematician, Polymath, etc. Bertrand Russell, in his Ten Commandments of Critical Thinking wrote:

"Do not feel absolutely certain of anything."

And: "Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light."

And: "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."

And in another source wrote: “A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers.”

The last concept what I call the sliding scale of belief.

One can hold BOTH belief and disbelief of anything simultaneously. The degrees of those based on available evidence, knowing that additional or contrary evidence may surface later, shifting that scale of belief vs disbelief.

Real science is in NOT knowing, or ever being certain.

Real science is in always looking for answers, but knowing you're never fully certain.

Francesco Petrarca, aka Petrarch, was a 14th century Poet and Philosopher, whom is credited with the concept of the Dark Ages of the Middle Ages.

He lived during a time when the Church was most powerful, wealthy, and controlled most all info (even forbidding & banning unapproved books).

He saw that Church, which largely served as the government of the time, as promulgators of myth, superstition, and human-manipulated theology.

He was a frequent critic of the Scholastic Movement of the time, which was the Church's effort to skew logic, reason, thought & such towards official theological ideologies.

Rather than shedding "light" on knowledge, that Church brought darkness.

Interestingly, that Scholastic Movement of the Middle Ages paved the road for our contemporary system of "scholastics".

We are currently experiencing much the same today.

An "educational" system based largely on mere indoctrination of official narrative, rather than a pursuit of true knowledge.

The ability to merely recite conventional narratives is more highly regarded than the ability to observe, discover, think, etc.

Degrees are awarded based primarily on conformity to systematic procedures & beliefs.

"Eccentricities" of thought are largely abhorred.

People should always question, everything.

Including their own beliefs, biases, judgments, prejudices, presumed knowledge, etc.

But do so based on evidence, logic, reason, induction, deduction, and such.

And always look, objectively, for additional & greater evidence, prior to deciding how much to believe and disbelieve anything.

And always be willing to admit they might just be wrong.

There is no weakness in admitting "I don't know".

As long as you continue to search for answers.

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Is certainty a feeling? A thought? or the nature of existence confused with image, concept or meanings derived?

I appreciated your post.

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I don't know. That's a great question.

Perhaps either/or, or like most things I know, rather than either/or, a varying combination of the two.

Given that we're talking human psychology, I've a feeling the answer is as diverse as the individual mind/psyche.

I'm not sure most people could tell the difference between a feeling & a thought, though they'd likely certainly claim that they could.

I've a theory that much certainly derives from a feeling of powerlessness, irrelevance, lack of self-regard.

Most people today, even in the "learned" classes, have been relegated to mere task doing.

In an age when we're experiencing amongst some of the greatest concentrations of wealth & assets in modern history, those controlling the wealth have massive influence, as money is used as power.

And with that power from money follows the power over, and of "knowledge".

Doctors are really allowed to truly think, so much as they are trained to do as they've been taught, and worse, expected to do as the almighty Big Insurance and Big Pharma companies dictate, or risk being unpaid (or even stripped of their licenses).

Certainty brings back that lost sense of power.

It helps one reclaim that sense of lost self-relevance.

I know & work with a good number of "highly educated" and well paid Researchers, whom mostly complain of the lack of freedom afforded them at their jobs.

Most all are limited solely to what they're told they can do (perhaps why much true innovation thru history has been performed on one's time).

One of the consequences of living in a feudal society, one must do as the "Masters", those that control the massive amounts of wealth, say.

One of the things that has fascinated me most during this "pandemic" is how so many people, from staunch covid believers to covid deniers, from pro-vaxxers to vax-critics, are so certain of what they think they know.

And so unwilling to consider any other data/info/evidence that may contradict their beliefs.

The "covid" event could have been a great lesson in renewed dialogue, thought, divergence, cooperation, etc., but instead has served mostly to further divide people & induce greater ignorance.

If one is certain they know, they likely stop learning.

A great tragedy of human existence is if/when we stop learning.

Interestingly, "covid" could be quite real for some, and quite fake for others.

There is rarely ever a one-size-fits-all answer.

Just as penicillin has proven life-saving for many, for others it is a deadly toxin.

It's been estimated that the human body is 10:1 foreign cells (microbes) to human cells.

Those foreign cells produce their own chemical residues/signatures, and slight variations of different chemicals can produce massive impacts on the human body.

I read an interesting study regarding the mass-vax campaign, that objectively showed it was carried out simply because "science" still has so very little understanding of the human body, despite many humans believing otherwise.

Since "science" has no idea why "covid" is affecting some & not others, the best course of action the powers-that-be could devise is mass-vaxing.

Creating havoc in the process (as those vax treatments are conflicting with certain people, perhaps due to their individual body chemistry, that individual chemistry likely produced by those foreign cells.

"or the nature of existence confused with image, concept or meanings derived?"

You lost me with that one. Perhaps you could explain/clarify?

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1. Attempt to explain:

Existence can be thought about but only in image and concept, for awareness of existence is inseparable from existing.

So feeling - as intuitive recognition is the nature of an actual discernment of qualities that are in life. This feeling is contextual to all else in the sense of a 'field awareness' and is not a result of thinking set in meanings, but the Meaning of which thinking extends or substitutes for.

The archaic understanding would be that God is in all things and yet taking any thing as power or existence in itself would generate a corresponding sense of self in image and form, and focus in world as image and form generates an object reality mind, map and model that distances or dissociates in concept to seek lost certainty of being through a masking that denies inner conflict (separation trauma) to instead divert and substitute to external solutions, externalised fulfilment in attempt to make meanings that offer 'solution' to a sense of lack, fear or conflicted self, and in the process repackage those fears in changing image and form as variants of the same core pattern of self-evasion.

What we usually use 'feelings' to mean are emotional results that are assigned or accepted meanings, that are expressions of a masked and defended sense of separateness, or the bias of such over and innate quality of life.

2. Current reflections:

The current resort to bypass rational thought process by a 'politics' of manipulative incentivisation, targets these 'feelings' which are hopes and fears relative to an already divided and conflicted sense of self, life and world. In so doing it reveals that what passed as rational thought process was in fact part of a masking, set over separate self-interest seeking to survive or prevail in its own image as maintaining 'face' by compliance to controls.

I recognise that my attempt to clarify may hit a brick wall...

3. Consciousness?

You raise many points of interest.

I am conscious of the language I choose to use and for what purpose.

Terms such as 'deniers', are pejorative as a moral claim to reality by those who (align in) assertions of an event, a situation or of meanings and definitions put forth as fact - often as headlines, with a supporting first paragraph and qualifying use of 'may', 'could' 'thought to' etc such as to make the sales pitch legally defensible in court of law.

I put the onus of proof on those who make extraordinary claims, to provide substance for those claims. That they not only do not engage in honest open communication but are structured so as to deny all possibility of such a process of communication, is the evidence of such doubt and uncertainty in their pretext for leverage as to reveal a resort to lies as a means to get what they want or get away from what they don't want. Addictions to control, status, privilege and wealth are never satisfied, and the toxic consequences of such behaviours are never willingly owned, but offset or outsourced to others, whether openly or by stealth and guile as in bankster's repackaging to instruments of deceit - such as now in banking 'nature' as green new deal, or as the investment bubble of a failed science of genetic control wielded to a new 'solution' in nanotech interface to bio-control.

The original pattern reiterates in all its variations. Replacing Life with image as basis for control of imaged experience. Such that normalised sacrifice operates automatically by masking dissociation in a mind of asserted reality.

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Interesting.

Much appreciate you taking the time to explain.

Are these "your" ideas, or based on another/other philosophy? (which is somewhat of a loaded question, as I don't really believe much is truly "new" but more constructed from either previous ideas or convergences of previous ideas, though those previous ideas can be reconstructed to form revised conceptualizations of those ideas).

But I ask because I'm interested in exploring this more.

Regardless, I hope you write.

I rarely encounter people with the abilities for such abstraction, critical thought, etc. you've demonstrated herein.

And the world needs to be exposed to more of this.

Most people think they think, but way too few truly think to this type of contemplation. They most often "think" merely within the bounds & constraints of contrived "norms", teachings, customs, and such.

I mentioned Petrarch previously, and he sought to restore the "philosophizing" of the classical figures, often criticizing the trivialities & superficialities of the "scholastic movement" of his day.

The world again needs more deep thought & deep questioning.

"The current resort to bypass rational thought process by a 'politics' of manipulative incentivisation, targets these 'feelings' which are hopes and fears relative to an already divided and conflicted sense of self, life and world. In so doing it reveals that what passed as rational thought process was in fact part of a masking,"

I often wonder how long these "'politics' of manipulative incentivisation" have been present & ongoing?

Though many might proclaim they are relatively recent developments (perhaps hundreds or thousands of years), I ponder whether the concept of human "consciousness" is founded/rooted in such.

It seems to me too many people think humans have lived & learned, but I feel perhaps they have instead succumbed to greater manipulations, exponentially building upon themselves. Leading those humans far from "natural" existence.

Like humans themselves are some sort of GMO creation and/or experiment.

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In the course of my life I have acquired an articulation. I have also released my own mind as a means of prising truth to let it serve as an instrument to self-revealing truth. So in that sense the mind follows or serves the question and answer of the heart instead of running ahead in its own spin.

This can be called thinking in the heart, for it is where a question is refined, often to reveal answer by a more direct question rather than stating the problem in the form of a question that defines what the answers must be to be accepted.

I put some of my writing on

http://willingness-to-listen.blogspot.co.uk/

My desire is to extend invitation to recognise from a resonance rather than via translation back into old wine bottles. I also feel a reintegrative function that is growing the quality of such recognition by extending it as my witness to others.

And trust that my freedom to be as I am moved will serve others in their own, rather than to 'follow' or agree.

As for what the world needs...?

I feel a need for release of old baggage such as to allow or open a renewal. The old self-limiting patterns go back to the most ancient of days, but time is not what it seems.

I see a reversal in consciousness such that what we have called conscious is a seemingly split off dissociation running in place of full awareness, and set as if over and apart from life judged, yet suffering to be subject to the world it has in a sense made by such rules and filters.

I don't know that I have my own ideas so much as my own recognisable qualities or signature vibration that we all have and by which we are recognisably ourselves. I have only what I have received, but in willingness to extend the receipt is my own giving and receiving. In contrast to 'share' what we haven't really accepted or integrated as if to wake everyone else up is our function is to never open the quality of presence that is truly shared.

The exploration of experience is different from an 'experiment' in the way we are currently engaged in treating Life and suffering to be so treated; both. Living is transformative. But we never actually become what we are not, regardless the fear made real to the mind by reaction.

I could have said 'world made real by reaction'.

Look at the time of covid!

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Q: How can you tell when Fauci isn't lying?

A: When his lips aren't moving.

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Critical thinking skills are critical when it comes to such matters of life and death situations. Question everything all of the time. Verify and do your own research. The last people anyone on earth should trust are politicians or government operatives. Do not put anything in your body that might harm you or kill you. That should be common sense, but we live in uncommon times.

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Trustlessness is not a solution.

And Reagan had an army.

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Right, it's a defense mechanism, 1 that might save my life.

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It will not save America.

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I don't want to save America, I want to save myself.

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Honesty at last! You should run for office.

Certainly that's the GOP, and in person they don't deny it.

You do realize that in large scale killoffs/wars/famines/wars etc...you'll need help to live right? And that if you won't help others they won't help you?

That's the whole common defense thingie...

but thank you anyway for your candor !

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No way in hell would I run for office, I'm not a psychopath- a requirement for the job. "Myself" includes as many of my family members and neighbors as possible, many may not be possible; we are deliberately divided. Strong individuals can help a lot of people just by having strength & individuality which is why the woke culture would like to stamp it out.

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run for Office was sarc.

Not sarc: an individual is nothing in strife ....where we are already are never mind where we are going.

Good luck anyway.

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COVID solved the Trump/MAGA peasant uprising.

They are impoverished, broken, without power or vote, and the elites ascendent and enriched by Trillions.

As to the Science: When the car runs over the Dog, it avails the Dog to stop barking.

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"When the car runs over the Dog, it avails the Dog to stop barking."

What does this mean?

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As to the scientific evidence… etc.

As to the dog- that is we the people, the state the car.

They not only don’t care, they add the insult to our intelligence to their list of torments they delight in.

Put another way; they are the puppet masters and we the willing puppets when we engage on “facts” and evidence.

Stop being puppets.

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I'll believe you when you apply the rule to all the BS artists pushing the lines that you prefer

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Yawn… go away or subscribe to him. Subscribing to others does not allow you to vent BS, and not get called out. I call you out-where is Jordan wrong?

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All words fall into diluted and corrupted meanings if not truly lived.

The usage of 'trust' has become 'contract'.

You enter contract and call it trust.

In this you give trust to the terms of the contract instead of to a relationship.

You cannot verify anything unless you trust yourself, and while under contract, you are trusting to images, systems or models of representation that no longer serve their original function, and have thus become a dis-service as a means of identifying yourself or anything truly.

So regaining trust in your self is the key for regaining real relationship with anything and anyone, and this is the result of giving as you in truth receive instead of receiving through the filtering mind of a dis service that now protects you from truth as if survival depends on concealing a lie.

Extending trust is not a contract, but a true gift.

Being yourself with another is trusting the situation as an opportunity for release of contractual demands and obligations to freedom of being.

Giving freedom has always been the only way to have it, and contracting to take it for a private agenda has always been a lie, or rather self-illusion given value.

The experience of being lied to is contractually faithful to the desire to live a lie.

But no longer serving the awakening desire to know and appreciate truth as release of masking limitation to a shared or synchronous reality.

Trust is the basis of Creation.

Fear operates a negative or segregative miscreation in which something is withheld from wholeness. We always meet Life, but recognition can be denied.

If you don't extend a blessing, you wont recognise you have it.

How these reflections fit the challenges of a mind split between love and fear - each at times seeming to be the other is up to you. But only love is whole and unconflicted. Even a moment of such a recognition is enough to release the lockdown of the mind from its own dissociation.

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Couldn't say it better myself. We should all pretend we are from Missouri, show me what you say is true.

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They don’t care what we believe, they care that we complied.

We do.

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