Cephalopodism

Cephalopodism is my name for a certain process I found to occur in different places, mostly as a cognitive cycle of learning. It consists of the following major phases:

1. No-thing: Not being aware of something, or denying its existence.
2. Single-thing: Perceiving or conceptualizing the object in question as a single monolithic thing.
3. Chaos: Not even knowing wtf is going on. The feeling of being in a sandstorm. This is where most people throw the towel.
4. Many-things: Perceiving or conceptualizing the object in question as many different, potentially contradictory, things. There’s an article by Eliezer Yudkowsky that I could not find, which basically condemns hippie’s cop-out of “everything is one, man, no need for your distinct categories for things” while pointing out that in fact, categories are useful, even if imperfect. Buddhism also has something like that in the form of upaya.
5. Meta-thing: Is a sort of “all of the above, depending on need, because they are not as contradictory as they appear at first glance”.
6. The Red Queen: The constant incompleteness, the devilish pain to seek while never being satisfied, to study Ein Sof with the understanding that one will never understand. It’s not even a proper phase (but kind of is, just for the next, yet undetermined object of study), which loops back to its own definition.

Examples:

1. In religion we have atheism, monotheism, polytheism, apatheism, agnosticism, pragmatism, pantheism, and Others(TM).
2. In the arena of “how Abrahamic religions see the connection to The Singular Divine” we have what I like to call poly-bridge-ism (everyone having a divine spark in Judaism), mono-bridge-ism (Jesus in Christianity being the single occasion where the divine bridges to our world), and a-bridge-ism (Islam placing a heavy emphasis on Allah being really, really separate from anything in our world, no question asked — it’s even in the name; “Allah” is not just “God” (which is a word that can be used in a polytheistic context just fine) but carries the singleton-quality with it).
3. In how we see truth and ethics we have relativism (many truths and moralities being valid, even if they contradict each other), nihilism (none), and objectivism (one). And again, probably a bunch of other categories too.
4. Related but with a more psychological focus: Free after The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin we have “Hedgehogs” (people who don’t accept cognitive dissonance and need everything they believe to slot into a larger unified system), “Foxes” (people who are fine with holding contradictory beliefs and using them as they see fit, think physicists being completely at ease with the particle-wave-duality of light) and who I now term “Ravens” (hippie or Zen types who just “go with the flow” and see the entire concept of right-wrong and spelled out, well-defined beliefs as, at best, flawed practical tools one must not elevate too highly). I want to add “Chimeras” as amalgamations of all the above as well.

The process of alchemic purification, or noble eight-fold path as I like to call it (Red Queen speaking, of course), is then as follows:

1. Disinterest or denial (no-thing)
2. Interest and first attention (single-thing)
3. Confusion and awareness of not-knowing (chaos)
4. Mapping of the parts and their relation to each other (many-things)
5. Holistic understanding of the entire system such that it becomes indivisible again (single-thing)
6. The ability to assume each of those perspectives depending on need, and recognizing how they are not contradictory (meta-thing)
7. Integration of the subject into one’s own ontology so deeply that it becomes uninteresting, seeming too obvious and trivial to warrant attention (no-thing)
8. Coming off the high of epiphany, getting bored, and feeling the sting of the insights failing to solve certain problems that now become more apparent (The Red Queen)

Connecting this to various processes like Nigredo-Albedo-Rubedo, Ratzo v’Shov, Monomyth, Hegelian Dialectics, The Four Stages Of Competence and whatnot else is left as an exercise to the reader.

I call it Cephalopodism because of how those animals

1. Represent the unity of “poly” (many arms with their own little “brains”) with “mono” (single main brain) and “no-thing” (they are evasive) and “chaos” (they live in the deep dark depths) and integration (they are a single entity, at the end of the day) and The Red Queen (being a product of evolution and not at all the final word of it)
2. Move via expansion (single to many) and contraction (many to single) and flail around in a way that seems both chaotic and whole at the same time. And moving itself, especially at those speeds and with such dynamism, is peak Red Queen behavior. Propulsion, finally, is playing with emptiness.
3. Have “head” in their name (cephal) and eight noble limbs (pods)
4. Are associated with strangeness and mysticism (Cthulhu says hello)

Also, they are of course the objectively best animals, if one is not allowed to count humans, which one is not. Source: I deem it thus.

Until we meet again.