WHERE IS THE BACK STORY

[soltani]

Dear Fred!<p>

It is fine. I just wanted to know the cause.<br>

The 29th, it was my first contribution to a forum, and after reading the whole thread I felt like people were trying to prove each other wrong instead of helping; So my response was to be honest and tell them what they cause. I was scared, and the process that helped me over come it was just what I stated there. I thought that brief introduction might help.<p>

Yes, I am all over the map, I am sorry. Marios invited me to the thread and our idea or what we had spoken of was the relation of art and life at our time. So first I tried to clear things about the relation between the photo and the observer:<p>

<i>First of all I'd like to point out that a photo of any genre is not what it shows; I mean to say that the photo of Mario is not Mario, it is paper with some chemicals over it; Get the point? The photo of the Vietnam war is not the Vietnam war, it is just paper and some ... So let us be clear that it is the observer that makes the relation between the photo and what it shows, and that the photo, in soul has no relation what so ever to what the observer thinks it shows.</i><p>

Then I tried to clarify the relation of a photo to reality:<p>

<i>A photo when seen by the observer has no relation to reality, because the photo shows something of the past, and the past is not real. Now is the only reality. So what is real in the observation of a photo is the brain of the observer working to find a relation between the photo and the many bits and bytes of info and things in his/her memory. Our thoughts make images and store them in our memory, so does the camera except on paper.</i><p>

Then I asked myself and others what was so special about a photo, and for a moment then, I saw no point in photos, as a means of help to life. But after some time something struck me, and to explain that we have to see the nature of thought and what we call "I" or me. I see thought as PS software working on

[Norma Desmond]

Thanks. That helps a lot. And I am now more convinced that we are thinking along similar

lines, although I imagine more will get clarified as other questions are brought up and we

continue to discuss such matters. I think we both have a notion of the amorphous and

fleeting nature of

"reality," the fact that the observer brings as much to it as the physical world gives it. So

that a fixed idea of reality, to which something can relate such as a photograph, might not

be for either of us the right approach. I don't think photos represent reality, I think they

<i>sometimes</i> represent what we believe reality to be (our perspective on the

physical world) but those representations are always also interpreted by a viewer who has

his/her own perspective and brings to it his/her own additions. And sometimes a photo

creates its own reality. I do worry that you are elevating

"thought" (by identifying it with

self) a bit too much. I think we are very much our bodies as much as our thoughts. I am

reminded of Alzheimer's patients and how their loved ones relate to them. There comes a

certain point when we say, "that is no longer the person I came to know all these years."

That is because her thoughts are so far from normal for her, the memories are gone,

and we have a hard time identifying her as herself. So when we say "she is no longer

herself," we identify her with her thoughts (as you seem to be doing when you say "I am

thought"). Yet, we still feel that closeness to

her, we still care for and about her as if she is the same person. That's because she is the

same body and we don't just let that go. Once the mind is gone, few of us if any

would give up on the body if it is reasonably healthy. We still want to love it and to care for

it, and that's because

there is still some identifiable entity which we consider important to us. Your

philosophical and

English skills are remarkable and admirable. I have studied philosophy with many non-

English speaking students and you show an incredible fluidity with the language, and the

language of philosophy is not an easy one to use so freely and successfully. It is a pleasure

to get to know you and all who have contributed here and I'm glad we have persevered to

this

point.

[marleft]

Dear Fred and Ali

In order to help your dialogue I put here the discussion we had with Ali under my photo "METAMORPHOSIS" at my "Trilogy of human behaviour" and "Restoring inner peace" sections of my portofolio:

 

"Marios Lefteriotis

 

You see Alibek, we are what our thoughts are. By changing them we can change ourselves to the better

 

Ali Soltani Farani, May 24, 2007; 09:12 A.M.

 

I agree with you on the thought issue, and even go one step further to say that we are our thoughts, so a change in our thoughts is a change in us as you said, but to me thought comes from the past and so I am the past and as long as I am -through my thoughts -living in the past I am dead, so the end of thought is the birth of the true me, yet I shall not try to end thought because I can see that it is impossible since I am thought. Through seeing with out the conflicts of thought one may see what thought truly is and what "I" is and then only through this seeing thought and thus the "I" may vanish all at once, leaving the truth of humanity in us to take action, and that action is the action of love in its most true face.

 

lovely PS work; Congrats.

Regards. Ali.

 

Marios Lefteriotisphoto.net patron, May 24, 2007; 04:18 P.M. (edit | delete)

 

My friend Ali Thank you for starting this discussion. I agree with you or, I should say, with J.Krishnamurti who all his life was teaching what you have just said. By changing thoughts, I meant changing intentions, changing our minds and the way we see life.. (there is a very beautiful word in Greek for that). But I want to go a step further and say that in order to succeed in all these, we need a terrible amount of energy inside us in order to have a continuous self awareness and we can not do it by ourselves. So we must admit that we are weak human beings and we need help. I don't want to continue, in order to let other friends to state their oppinion on all these.

 

Ali Soltani Farani, May 28, 2007; 05:53 P.M.

 

Hi Marios!

 

J.K has inspired many and that's great.

I doubt our need for help Marios, although I agree with you on the point that we need a great deal of energy in order to be aware of our "I"s always. Well let us see where our energies are being wasted.

There is the continuous activity of thought, even when we are asleep waring away our minds and wasting loads of energy . Let us look at the true nature of thought and how it works. But J.K says that the observer is the observed; so let us look at thought without the presumed fact that there is such a thing as my thought. Maybe, just maybe, I am thought. Maybe this is a prior question: am I thought? Well who is called me? is it my feelings? is it my body? maybe it' s my body and mind. That is in fact an answer, many would argue over. When I say I, do I refer to my body and mind or is it something else that I refer to?

There are so many bodies and minds all over the world; would I be prepared to take the fate of my friend who just had a bad car accident or do I say "Thank god is wasn't me". Which one? if I refers to my body and mind then what makes me think that my body and mind is superior?

There is a better counter example. let's say someone insults me by perhaps saying something along the lines of "you freaking bastard". I know that I am not a bastard, yet many of us are hurt by such happenings and that shows that what we identify as "I" is not our body nor is it our mind. So what is "I"? This beautiful question is maybe the answer to all our miseries and mischiefs. Just this question?

 

What is I?

 

The I that is sometimes scared, sometimes fearful, maybe he/she is courageous, maybe clever, good looking. I love asking this question, it is so helpful; just asking it. Maybe at the moment of asking the mind is free of the I;

 

We make images, of everything and settle them down in our memories. Sometimes we take them out of memory and change them in our minds as if we have a PS in there that manipulates the images we have of the past, of people in the past. Our memories acting like a hard disk full of images of the past and our PS software doing all the manipulations and then saving them, and then loading new images, manipulating and saving again; sometimes importing new images.

We make images of our selves; Perhaps this starts at a very young age; your playing soccer and you score two or three goals, and your team mates encourage you and you make an image of the me that is good at football. why? because it was a happy moment and the mind likes to repeat that happiness by watching and manipulating that image. That is the pleasure that our memory gives to us, and our memory gives us fear too. Yes our memory gives us fear too. Well who is this guy doing all the PS work? loading the images and manipulating them. Who is the software? That is what we all call thought. The act of entering our memory and doing all the PS work. Its our thought; but is it not me, loading images out of my memory and then manipulating them? It is. Its me. I am thought. Yet thought has made an image of me and put it inside my memory and all the time it fools me (or I fool me) telling me that the "I" is my body, my mind, my feelings.

 

Marios! I think what was said would arouse a lot of questions and many would doubt it and have things to say. I would love to see this continue, it would help me see better what "I" is, and how it works; Thanks for the chance.

 

Regards. Ali.

 

Marios Lefteriotisphoto.net patron, May 29, 2007; 04:17 P.M. (edit | delete)

Restoring inner peace!

 

Ali, welcome back

 

Thank you for joining us here, as well as at the Philosophical forum, at the entry under the title "WHERE IS THE BACKSTORY". As you can see there, I sent an urgent invitation to all our friends to speak and state their comments..

 

As we are digging here a little deeper, I should like to make things somewhat simpler in our search of what "I" is, through a case study of a situation in our life, we all have gone through : LONELINESS. At the same time I will explain a little more what I have said about our necessity to admit that we are weak and helpless.

 

What is Egoism? The word is Greek and the route is "Ego" which in Greek means "me" or "I". So egoism is the result of the activities of "I" inside us. And these activities are these PS workouts, so vividly described by you. Unfortunately the images, simple or complex, made by this process, tend to prevent us from communicating with others (if not attacking them), because they build a superior image of ourselves and we have to protect it from exterior attacks. So as you can see at the first photo of my Trilogy of Human Behaviour, titled "lonely" (at the right side of the screen), this woman is sitting in the dark, staring at a blank TV set. This is the beginning of despair. Then we become aware of our condition and we try to change our behaviour, but remaining at the same dark prison we have built for ourselves and as nothing is going better for us, despair deepens. This is the case of the second photo titled "alone", where this woman faces the opposite side, thinking that she made radical changes to her behaviour, but at the same time, realizing that nothing changed to the better. And finally we end with "hell", where we are totally isolated from the others, imprisoned in the walls of the castle we have built to protect our ego, and in full contradiction with ourselves (sitting back to back). This is the case of the third photo (the "hell" photo), which describes the absolute despair of this woman.

 

Now Ali, there comes the necessity of feeling totally weak, in order to repair this situation. This is the critical moment to do something about our life. If we realize, by these circumstances, how weak we are, which means how trivial our "big" image about our self is, this awareness, if deep enough, can destroy and transcend the walls of our egoistic prison and make us open ourselves to our fellow-human beings (symbolically asking for help). This action and only this, is the great moment of the beginning of our inner revolution to a total change of our existence. This is the case of the photo titled "help" ("Abstract - Restoring inner peace"), which describes these extraordinary moments of great decisions in our life. And finally we come to this photo titled "Metamorphosis" (a Greek word meaning transformation), where images inside us, have been definitely transcended and love and compassion is flowering in our life.

 

And there comes Ali now, the serious question. Why do we have to pass through this "Odyssey" in order to achieve inner peace?

 

ISN'T IT MUCH EASIER TO UNDERSTAND JUST NOW WHAT "I" IS ?

 

Regards, Marios

 

Ali Soltani Farani, May 29, 2007; 05:53 P.M.

 

Well, Marios!

 

Frankly I have been through this process or at least part of it and I have seen the different ways the "I" has fooled me; Maybe I am in that part of this odyssey between hell and help. Believe me, I am being hurt, but there is this beautiful verse from Molana (A Persian poet, known as Rumi among the world) that helps me:

 

What sadness do I have in the destruction

Under the destructed there is the treasure

 

Well your question is very essential for me, I too would like to see myself clearly and end this misery I am living in.

Well Marios! The I is my thought, and I see this, yet as you mentioned earlier I lack the energy to be aware of this always, at all times. For years this process of PS work and looking at everything through "I" has been happening.

Are you suggesting that the step from hell to help and then on is to truly realize our weekness?

Regards. Ali.

 

Ali Soltani Farani, May 29, 2007; 06:02 P.M.

 

Well can you see i in what I just said; I am trying to take myself out of this misery, but is it not I that is the misery. Yes that is true. I is the misery, thought is the misery; it is all made by thought and I was just fooling myself again. I am my own misery; and seeing this fact has ended my misery right now;

In what ways Marios do you think we waste our energy, other than the continuous work of thought?

 

 

Marios Lefteriotisphoto.net patron, May 30, 2007; 11:09 A.M. (edit | delete)

From hell to help and then to heaven!

 

Hi, Ali

 

Here we are again in our exploration of "I".

 

You asked two questions :

 

1. "Are you suggesting that the step from hell to help and then on is to truly realize our weakness?" and

 

2." In what ways Marios do you think we waste our energy, other than the continuous work of thought?"

 

The only way to transcend our egoism and start truly communicating with others, is humbleness. I think this is obvious. So, by realizing the ways "I" builds images about us, how false they are, and how these images keep us inside our castle, and if we are quite strong and clever, WE END NOW with watching "I"'s activities and we go straight to humbleness, then to compassion and finally to love and heaven. All our energy is redirected from watching our thoughts, to outside activities of helping our fellow human beings, and so we are avoiding hell.

 

But usually we cannot do this (including me), and we are living our daily misery, admiring the superior image we have built about our self. So either we start fighting each other to impose our image upon theirs, or we isolate our self in order to protect our image from exterior attacks. Both ways drive us to this hell situation. And then here comes Nature or God or what else you name it, to give us a last chance to stop misery and restore inner piece. If despair is strong enough, then WE ARE OBLIGED to realize our weakness and how false the image of ourselves is and therefore cut our chains and start truly communicating with others. The beautiful Greek word we have for that is METANOIA and is composed of two words : META which means "go after" or transcend, and NOUS which is the mind, the intellect. So this word says that we have to go after or transcend our mind, our ideas and change completely to a new life..

 

A last word Ali. In this process of continuous awareness of our thoughts and images there is a danger of creating another very strong but invisible image. Remember what we are doing when imposing images one to another when working with PS. We control opacity to a certain level. But if we set opacity to zero, image disappears. We cannot see it, realize it, but IT EXISTS, it is there! So in this continuous observation of "I", we may create an image of our self doing this serious, deep work of "I" awareness and we may not realize its existence. And this is the worst of all , because we are totally captured in this process and we lose contact with reality..

 

Finally I think that we have to discuss the nature of this energy inside us. But let us do it later on.."

[Norma Desmond]

I don't agree that the misery is "I." That sounds a little too much like religiously-imposed

guilt or something. Some misery is bestowed upon us from without . . . hurricanes and

earthquakes, etc. One can be comfortable in misery sometimes while working through it.

It's not your fault. Bad things happen and sometimes no one is to blame. Bad things

happen and sometimes others are to blame. Bad things happen and sometimes I am to

blame. I like the communal sense of "I" you've suggested above. Even Sartre, in his

Existentialism Is A Humanism, suggests a reformulation of Descartes's "I think, therefore I

am." One might encapsulate Sartre in this article (with a lot of qualifications and care not

to misread him) as saying "We think, therefore we are." What he suggests is that our sense

of self and identity comes to us not only through us but through others as well. We see

ourselves as others see us quite often and that helps define who we are even in our own

eyes. I worry a little bit about identifying "I" with egoism. I think we can operate with a

sense of ego without being egoistic. I think we should critique each other's photographs.

[ellis_vener_photography]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/space/05essa.html

[marleft]

Fred

 

I don't want to disturb your dialogue with Ali, but let me clarify the meaning of some words I have used, in order to avoid misunderstandings.

 

When I am driving and I am thinking how I will find my way back to home, or when I am working out a mathematical problem and so on, it's me who is thinking in order to find a solution to a practical problem of my life. So, I don't mean this "I" or "me" or "ego" and these "thoughts" which have to be understood and stopped, but the psychological ones. Thoughts of superiority or inferiority, or thoughts to find ways in order to beat others and so on, you know what I mean?Sorry for interfering.

[Norma Desmond]

Marios, yes I understand the distinction in kinds of thoughts you are making. You are not

interrupting at all. I think of you as the glue holding this conversation together.

[marleft]

To Ellis and PN

 

Thank you Ellis, thank you PN

 

For encouraging this discussion by proposing a new very interesting aspect of back stories:

 

UNIVERSE, THE GREATEST BACK STORY OF ALL TIMES

 

But first let us kindly wait for our friends Fred and Ali to complete their dialogue

[jtk]

Photography isn't an "art," it's a craft. Nothing is an art.

[soltani]

Dear Fred!<p>

Thank you.<br> Frankly I don't know much philosophy, yet I have spent much time trying to solve the problems I faced. I will try to explain further what is meant by misery, the "I"; I choose to speak of myself as a case study, hoping it will not result in an image of me in others minds.<p>

To many in Iran, being qualified for higher education is like a matter of life and death. They face the fear of missing a healthy and wealthy life if they get unqualified. Around the world though, there are problems, we all face, like fear, anger, jealousy, ... When these problems reach an extreme point it is often the time when we act to solve them.<br>

That is when I started. I remember the time when I thought everything was mathematical; I believed in Islam and it's teachings as if it was a fixed algorithm for living, there was also my opinions in politics, rigid. So then, there was this Ali, who was politically left, religious, and he was also one of the best at his studies. At this time photography came to me as a tool to prove to the outside world, that this Ali is not a nerd, he can also practice Art. All this would bring fear, anger, shame, guilt, and above all a lot of contradictions, and of course pleasures; At this time the mind is full with images, of himself, of others, and of different aspects of life; and thought is working very hard to manipulate all these and solve the contradictions; and of course it leads to action. Actions based on images of the past, images manipulated by thought, all towards the safe keeping of what is called I, and at all these times and through all these actions one is unconscious of the evil in his doings. It is only when fear, anger, and numerous contradictions reach a threshold that one realizes the amount of misery being taken, the many chains that bound one to this misery; but there is also pleasure, the pleasure of winning, of proving others wrong, of being praised, of remembering the happy times. So

[soltani]

PN : Please delete the last reply. it is mine and it is incomplete. If you do so, then delete this one too. Thank you.<br>

PS: If you can recover it then do so.

[imagemachine]

I think Art is a chronicle of an artist's journey to his deep conscience.