2 Groups: Those Who Want to Believe, & Those Who Want to Know
The following recordings are from Jan’s final years, when his voice was diminished and he spoke in a low whisper. Some listeners may find these tapes hard to listen to, or difficult to understand. Thus, as another option, transcripts are being made and will be posted.
Otherwise, turn up the volume and enjoy! Those who carefully listened to Jan during this period consider that he spoke plainly and directly to the matter at hand, “pulling out all the stops,” as he understood that these were to be his last messages to his groups, and to posterity.
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Summary
9/15/04:
Notes by TK
An interesting/informative model: the whole world is divided into two groups: people who want to believe and people who want to know. This division exists internally in each individual as well: things you want to believe and things you want to know. These things fall into two categories: the external world (science) and man cum culture.
There are only two approaches to them: thru belief and thru knowing. Virtually no one truly wants to know—even while proclaiming otherwise. The prime example of a man wanting to know was Socrates; he was executed because Athenians wanted only to believe and his questions pushed their faces up against that hard- edged fact.
The original philosophers were men who wanted to know, not merely believe. All attempted explanations of man are the will to believe, not to know. Death is man’s deepest fearful mystery; only the Few can see it for what it is without distractions of belief. Everyone knows they are going to die but flee into belief. (56:46) #3200
Summary #2 by Cfish
Jan Cox Talk 3200 15 Sept 2004
Copyright Jan Cox, Jan’s Legacy 2020
Notes by Cfish/DerekH January 2020
Suggested Title: Believing/Knowing
DH title: Only Philosophers Want To Know
Begin: I hate to call it a model but this is like a model for all other models. Anything verbal that you cannot point to, something that is physically there, you have to call it a model. This is like lightning hitting a juke box three times in seconds.
-> The whole world is divided into people who want to believe and people who want to know.
That’s the beginning and end of everything I have talked about. It’s the beginning and end of human history from physics to mysticism. Believing v. Knowing could be the model for all models for folks like us. (ex. asleep v. awake)
05:00 I assume you folks have the understanding that whatever man talks about is of two categories. It’s either the physical world or the cultural world of man. (ex. sports. the arts, etc.) If it’s not science, it’s about man.
Although it can appear verbally to be something else other than about man, there is no religion, no sports, no literature without man. If humanity goes, so does the culture. There are two approaches to what man talks/thinks about.
10:00 People either want to believe or they want to know. People swear they may want to know what makes a man tick. (ex. evil, death, love and respect) But they don’t want to know, they want to believe. It is not a criticism.
You will not understand the model if you are critical. Nobody wants to know (well, maybe a few) if there is a God that exists, they just want to believe God exists. I just saw it one day. People do not want to know the nature of man.
15:00 Repeated statements about subconscious mind etc. affecting behavior that people say they know, they don’t know. They believe. Picture Socrates, the trial, and his execution to see what I am trying to get you to picture.
Socrates represents man wanting to know and Athens killed him because they want man to believe. Socrates was easy on the Gods. (He did not have a death wish) In those days the Gods were synonymous with the Throne/Secular Power.
20:00 Most people feel their pursuit is of the truth. (ex. warriors) Some thought the achievement of the aim was thru the study of spirit. But Socrates thru his dialogues, would ask questions like “What is spirit?”
Through these type questions Socrates showed the fact that men want to believe and not know. TV, novels, etc. if you listen, are not statements of fact about human nature. The behaviors of men in the physical world may be a fact, but that is not what people talk about – they talk about their opinion of it, what they want to believe.
25:00 But if you look, it’s not why the behaviors happened. It’s what people believe caused the behaviors, not what they know caused the behaviors. It’s hard to hold on to. That is why one seems alone in the world in wanting to do this.
Even though, at times, I refer to it as mysticism, it’s just to distinguish it from everything else. It’s not mysticism. When philosophy first showed up religion ran the culture. And you could be killed in the name of God.
30:00 True philosophers do not have a death wish. Philosophy was the first sign of someone wanting to know. Belief is meaningless. (ex. believing water can run up hill) Mythology/Religion/Elysium fields you can’t know, you can only believe. Mysticism is philosophy trying to hide out in religion.
35:00 Socrates lived a fairly civilized existence and they had time to think. Socrates was born into a culture of art, drama, and music. And Socrates realized people believed this culture was apart from man.
40:00 Socrates tried to get some to see that culture, beliefs, etc. are not knowing. Everyone knows we die. A real philosopher leaves it at that. That’s all the fuck anyone knows. But everyone else wants to believe. (ex. man’s culture)
Opinions about behavior (ex. religious, political, etc.) are folks who want to believe. They don’t know. It sounds weird saying it. I can still listen with ordinary ears (ex Masters in Psychology) but still saying it’s wanting to believe, not know.
45:00 The strongest example of this is death. It’s the one thing all men have in common. No one else but the man who wants to know leaves it at that. The world of humanity is divided into two groups, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
50:00 And it is not limited to Religion. Everything that makes us human (ex. culture) is based on wanting to believe. Knowing makes Science and Technology. It’s is not man’s nature to want to know about man’s nature.
It is the beginning and end of mysticism, of this kind of thing,.(ex. the work, life, consciousness) A lingering awareness of “wanting to know” puts a stop to “wanting to believe” at least for the moment. Remember, everyone already knows, (ex.everyone dies) but does it wake them up? 55:24
Jan’s Daily Fresh Real News (to accompany this talk)
PLAYING SOCCER WITH WORDS:
THE GAME OF SECRET CHAMPIONS
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Where The Ordinary See No Humor — The Outlier Enjoys A Cup Of Crack-Up-Juice
SEPTEMBER 15, 2004 © 2004: JAN COX
More Bits Of A Glossary Consisting Of Words & Terms Made Up & Made Use Of
By One Man (J.C.) During Years Of Commenting On That Certain Puzzle Which
A Few Actually Seek To Solve
______________________________________________
(Part 14 of a series which began on August 31. In that this collection covers a great length of time there may be further additions to all definitions.
Words capitalized signifies that they have appeared else where in his comments concerning this nervous system search for a solution.)
A – Z
(Not In Order, Strictly)
__________________
By-Products: In man’s intangible reality: by-products are often the product.
Not understanding this is the source of much contention & confusion among
ordinary people.
Change: (1) You cannot be a passionate partisan of either C or D Force and change.
(2) Change is the core cause of stress in ordinary men regardless of specific incidents they may give as same (e.g. death-of-spouse; loss-of-job; effects-of-aging).
(3) Change is the oxygen of Life’s blood, yet the bane of its primary organ:
human consciousness.
(4) Man’s mental resistance to change simply spurs it on.
(The inner rebel privately stirs up even greater change within his self;
“If I’m not disturbing my own sense of status quo – I’m not on the case.”)
Everything: Everything is everything else.
Freedom Day: Even the most tyrannical rulers have a Freedom Day at which time
the people turn out to celebrate their good fortune at being tyrannized by such a wonderful despot: and note: the more repressive the tyrant,
the more vocal & vigorous the celebration.
(This certainly has no individual application – but:
any time you wonder thus about another person: “How can they live like they do?!” – just remember Freedom Day.
You might also care to note that the most efficient tyrants are always home town boys; coming from among the people, not from without.
“Aye! – there is a viper in my bosom! – oh – it IS my bosom.”)
Hero: Anyone you gossip about.
The Lack-Of-Oneness & The TWE Approach: Human consciousness perceives a distinct lack-of-oneness and an abundance of dualities which is a prime location for
the application of the TWE Approach, whereby you look at a given situation and ask yourself: “To What End does Life have things thus arranged?
What profitable purpose is being served?”
(To choose a specific area): consider the copious number of significant seeming duos in the cultural/intangible life of man and ponder: TWE? Why is it beneficial to Life
for men to perceive there being such dualities as the following, for instance:
(1) What is said and what is heard.
(2) Man’s inner self and his visible one.
(3) Anatomy and Physiology: TWE do we need one word for what a thing appears to physically be and another for how it works?
Why the existence of both nouns and verbs?
(4) Governments and religions: both reassure men and both require submission, but in what manner and to what end are they so different as to require separate sobriquets?
(5) Excuses and reasons: an excuse is simply a non valid reason: you won’t accept it from others and you don’t actually expect them to from you, so why even have both: something is either a reason or it’s not; why the façade that fools no one?
(6) What men believe and what actually happens.
(7) Wants and needs: humans are the only creatures who would not fully be themselves if all they had was just what they needed to stay alive.
Wants are expendable while needs are necessities, yet everyone in their normal speech incessantly interchanges the two, and on a personal level it goes even deeper: the wants of others are clearly frivolous while yours are righteous.
(8) Misled and misguided: The former seems externally sourced and the latter internally based errancy, but the alert man understands that there is no out-there
as opposed to a separate in-here — so: TWE does Life have imposed in man’s consciousness this illusion of a duality where none exists?
(9) Cost and value: Cost is incurable and ostensibly calculable only when another party is involved in the transaction; value is possible only in dealings you have with yourself.
Cost talks – value is silent (from another view): If you can discuss the cost of a thing, it has no value. (Personal variation: If you can tell others, what-kind-of-guy-you-are – you has no value. [And no, this is not an error in grammar.])
JDN
Language: (1) In part, language is used to assign blame;
if the city had a working motto it could be: “Somebody’s To Blame” –
someone has to be responsible for this (whatever this at the moment happens to be).
(2) Language is arranged to accommodate consciousness, and Life’s needs are the grammatical structure for all that humans say.
Sentence structure is man’s nervous system taking on form in the apparent out-there; among ordinary people, words are unanalytically taken to be things that somehow
exist apart from the men who mouthed them (at least in many significant instances).
(3) In this rhetorical system, consciousness must consider itself a noun (the subject)
or man could not perceive a distinction between his mental in-here and the out-there; the Equation (I + Not-I = Everything) would implode and consciousness could no longer function as a practical weapon in the struggle to survive;
man would be unable to mentally discern between his self and others in an intangible sense and could thus not properly lay-the-blame where it belongs — on others.
Subjects exist in language to express something about action – not vice versa as routine consciousness would have it – but if there is no actual subject (which from the rebel’s view there is not) then there is no one TO blame, for action itself cannot be responsible for its acts; the act of your car hitting mine is not what is at fault,
but rather you were the fault – you the driver.
(3) When you are ready to assign blame there are two choices: either them or you,
(your consciousness, that is) and it has no nature for selecting itself for the distinction:
Life did not get where it is today (that is: still here) by blaming itself,
and any time a man has the twin choices available, he too has no inclination to
accept any blame that insists on finding a home.
(4) When you amputate the noun as the source of blame, as the author of your mistreatment – you cease to be mistreated (“I can accept the hurricanes,
but not the realtor who sold me this place and never mentioned their likelihood”)
(5) In its language, Life uses man’s speech as a modifier;
his consciousness is a qualifier: it does not actually create intangible goods,
but modifies them; the Yellow Circuit didn’t actually invent religion,
fear in the Red Circuit was its mother, Yellow just hung the words on it.
(6) To be a normal person you must perceive no simple nouns nor people;
only he who understands what is going on might visually qualify as a simple noun,
and internally, in private, as a super complex verb.
True/Not-True: If you can perceive it – it’s true,
so what is the purpose of the True/Not-True? — if Life dropped the Not-True
man would only have two dimensions, which would not be sufficient for existence
as we now experience it.
(You might ponder the fact that man’s lowest circuit [Red] makes no distinction between True/Not-True, and it gets along nicely; its version of True is that which is strictly life supporting, a position that a rebel’s Yellow and Blue Circuits could emulate to advantage.)
Tyrants: A really good city tyrant employs the devilish trick of making the people believe that he knows everything they say and think;
a would be rebel would counter with the ploy of never denying any accusation.
(Note: This has no application whatsoever to one’s consciousness.
Note II: You do recognize humor when you pass same, no?!)
J