From: J <[email protected]> To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 14:29:36 +0000 i suggest re mediation that it not get bogged down in details. thats their trick . , stay above the fray, ie lets cut the bullshit. and ask harry how much of your money does he believe he deserves. . and that would be my only sentence repeated over and over. re conciousness., I have yet to hear a cogent answer to the question of why putting someone in solitary confinement , has such strong mental reactions . moving a plant or chair or computer into a closed room has no effect. why do people hallucinate , talk to themselves. etc. there is almost no work done on the subject as irb would say no no, and prisons refuse to allow. . why having no social or at least perceived social contact makes people crazy , suicidal etc. . though im told a tv or radio relieves many of the symptoms. On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 9:24 AM Noam Chomsky < > wrote: Interesting perspective. Perhaps we can look at it sort of like this. The way our minds work, it develops constructs to try to accommodate our immediate experience -- like table and chairs to accommodate what I'm experiencing now, manifestations of what we take to be an external world; and comparably, norms of social action and beliefs about society to accommodate what I experience in social life, manifestations of what we take to be a prevailing culture. If so, we're back to Bertie's picture but with a broader range, the mind constructing an external world that consists of tables, chairs, cultural norms,... in an effort to provide some coherence to the flux of experience (itself a construct, so our efforts at scientific explanation instruct us). There's a preliminary discussion with the mediator planned for Jan. 2, then a general mediation session later. Will keep you up-to-date of course. Noam On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 12:06 PM J <[email protected]> wrote: what i am suggesting is that what the term culture m