Do they need to be complete…? To be useful…? Could it be said that symbology represents the bare bones of an experience, stripped of strictly personal adherents…? Stripped to some extent of the “narrow specific perspective”…?
Anyway, Lanie’s finished her homework, and is bound to put the computer to better use than I… 
[Edit - having regained computer]
Actually, I don’t care, I was just bored. What have you been up to me old mucker…? Pm me.
The gap between the symbol and it’s use is getting wider and wider. The reason? Who knows, but to give you a very basic glimpse of the place in history we have come to, is where we have ceased to actually connect the dots between the reflective state of the mind itself (the reflectivity as in self image) and the concept of the self. We shortcut our understanding on this very basic notion of reflection, of the visual genesis of our selves, as per reflection.
Hence we get stuck with our egos, because we don’t know how to derive it’s sensibility. Reality becomes an extension of the construct of the ego.
This is our ultimate symbol, and we get frustrated (or worse), when we can’t correlate it with reality.
Is our attempts at de-constructing this mess actually working? I think unless this very primary puzzle is solved, we are literally just spinning the wheel.
I am involved in a personal process of this sort right now, and it has become so personal, as to be almost impossible to put in symbols. In addition, it's personal nature by sheer power of it's motives has dug a very wide hole into the general. The specificity of it has actually overreached into its generality. Whereas formerly it remained undefinable it has now gained a symbol. I believe this is the greatest bar to peace, the putative description excludes the nominal, by way of misunderstanding how that description (symbol) came about.
We require instant flashes of interpretations, (de construction), whereas, the original reflection, was most probably a very slow process from literal to figurative. This is why we demand understanding, in an age of shortcuts.
However,could this process be too cumbersome, given today’s tools of personal/societal change?
I apologise if I am being cumbersome myself, but I am trying to connect the dots here.
obe,
Ain’t it a bitch? 
This is why it is important to slow down on the knowing and accumulate as much correlative information and exerience possible from as many perspectives as possible. Eventually, there is at least some confidence in what we say we know. Yes, it’s all a construct, but as long as what is happening seems to mirror the construct (even imperfectly), we can assume a bit of sanity in amongst the flow of experiences. Oddly, once we let go of all our “knowing”, we seem to find understanding which in turn becomes part of our knowing. Chickens and eggs…
I think you are right about the gap getting wider, but I believe that it is down to the lack of awareness in daily life, whether because of the speed of everyday occurrences and their being compressed into a shorter space of time, or whether because many people are blinkered and only focus on certain aspects of life, I’m not sure. Perhaps a bit of both and more as well.
One thing we might observe in our daily actions is that we are often stuck with our concept of something/someone – even with our concept of self – and fail to notice what the reality is. The more pressure there is on us, the more often it occurs. This means we are turning the wheel where we think the curve is, instead of looking first – bound to cause problems and … suffering.
I have come to appreciate the ego more, but to ask whether it is appropriate in all situations to allow it to bulldoze through. I think we are more stuck with the false concepts than with the ego and that the ego is therefore led down a wrong (inappropriate) path, righting things that were possibly never wrong etc.
Our attempts … you probably mean those things we do on a local, or even personal level … depend on whether we diagnose right. I have seen people find fantastic sounding solutions, only they seemed to solve non-existent problems and overlook the real problem. Only last week I was speaking to someone about his solution, about which he was very excited, but I found that he didn’t listen to the question whether he had identified the problem correctly. On the way home, my wife asked me whether she had misunderstood, or whether our friend was dashing down a wrong path.
[…]
I think the first task we have, if we want to solve collective problems is to gain a common idea of what the problem actually is. That seems to be the first problem we need to overcome … as we have seen in the contributions to this thread.
Yep.
Until human neurology changes to another variation of the species and somehow skips using the amygdala as part of the decision making logic.
Not to me, no.
Not as long as people have emotional amplitude to their belief’s and devote to them their passion, which is redundant considering for something to be spiritual, it is therefore emotionally invested inherently.
Is there no way to serenity short of an amygdalectomy? Are amygdalectomy subjects like Bodhisattvas?
What has having your tonsils removed to do with serenity?
Bob, he’s referring to my comment:
Innate serenity between members of the species subjectively: yes, there would be no other manner.
That said, that also would cripple the species rather radically as even some of the very simple animals on this planet have an amygdala, and the innate function of the amygdala is too imperative to alertness and survival motive to simply just yank out of our heads.
OK, so we’re talking about the medial amygdaloid nucleus and its involvement with the development of hypertension … I was just thinking, “Tonsils?”
I can’t help thinking that it is a lame excuse to say we have the physiological capacity and we’ll always follow that. We have the capacity for numerous other things, but many of them have been checked by mutual agreement in societies.
In my most recent view, things like a body, an ego, duality, etc. These are all pieces of lower stages of evolution. If we evolve from down there, we can keep these objects and still have them. But in the higher levels we may not need them. We can still use them to go down and visit lower beings, or we can use the higher essence to reach the higher beings and realms.
The physical realm is a lower stage of evolution, but we can retain our memories and our energy body when we die, then use it to help people, or use it to more easily re-visit the earth.
All things can be made valuable. The ego doesn’t need to be destroyed, it just needs to be improved. Same with our ‘sinful’ bodies. These things are not pure evil. They are simply parts of a lower system.
This came to mind when you mentioned ego. Hopefully the readers will understand me.
It’s not an excuse.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t try. We’re human; we should always try to improve - even when we won’t achieve it.
It’s just a pragmatic point, though; the reality is that the emotional value for basic function of even walking down the street causes an inevitable range of requirements which are equally volatile to violence by provocation just as much as they are capable of great joy and gratitude, or humility even.
It’s like saying that we want a radio frequency without negative dbmv. Well, yes, that’s what most everyone wants, but the reality is that fluctuations in the system don’t work in a way absent of negative dbmv rf signal. It’s bound to happen by the very nature of the design for function.
I agree that we must, on some level, accept conflict. It’s the nature of the world. If I take up space, I have displaced something. If I eat, I cause suffering, no matter what I eat. If I dig up a carrot, I kill numerous creatures, however small. Learning to accept this is essential to the ability to cultivate a peaceful attitude. But I think it should be clarified that talking about the amygdala may be highly misleading here. The amygdala has no inherent function - it is not some evil object that always drags us down and causes problems. Mind training changes our basic posture towards our environment - training in compassion, love, equanimity, etc. changes our basic character - it changes our habits, and how we approach situations. Our instinctual and spontaneous responses can change.