Stranger than your brainAn unlikely,long line between Delphi and Johannesburg

Moses told me the story of Vera the Ghost, a perfect urban legend with a thrilling twist. He was more entertained by his own storytelling rather than stating a proper commitment about the belief; nonetheless he is convinced that ghosts do exist. I giggled a bit, condescendingly to his naivety. Then I remembered the Greeks. Long time ago, the same very wise men who discovered the technique of investigating the true nature of fact, many times said that along the streets of Greece, you could meet gods, heroes and other semi-divine creatures. Should I respect more Heraclitus than Moses (Moses intended as my friend...)? Xenophanes was metaphorical, while my Zulu friend simply lacks a good western education? Or maybe am I really arrogant both with the Greek bunch and with my friend?

What does it mean that the stranger you meet along the way could be a god or a ghost? Pump up the metaphorical interpretation: your attitude with a stranger generates goodness or evil; this powerful reaction can shape your days AS IF you met a god or a ghost (ghosts could be like values, take morality or virginity...). Because we know for sure that no material entity matching a semantic description of a god or a ghost can be encountered on a physical street.

But maybe calling something a ghost is a good strategy to name a feeling your brain grab, without a clear correlation, something like a phantom feeling. Which of the following do you choose as a good naming:“I'm still scared: I'm sure a ghost was following me” or “I'm totally in control: I know that my brain is sending me hallucinations after my nervous breakdown.Though one second more with their company will prove unbearable for my mind and I'm seriously thinking to terminate this agony with a logical, metallic, non-metaphorical bullet in my brain, I perfectly know this is not real...”

Phantom feelings are clearly projections of our imagination, which we suppose is a product of our brain. Our brain extends its informational ecosystem wiring neuro-connections with the semiotic infrastructure of the narrative environment hosting him. The being there of your brain and his representation to play with, is your mind. Though it sounds odd, your brain encounters his mind as a stranger on his way. And gradually accept it, becoming you. You are the encounter of a brain with his mind.

Technically speaking, you are haunting the brain of a Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Moreover we face the hardcore self-esteem question: do you believe in yourself (in your existence)? Say that the response is positive (no matter how insecure you feel at the moment: I'm sure you think you exist!). Now: how ghost are you, in comparison to the entities on the street of Delphi or Johannesburg? Speaking of meeting the strangeness:

On which side of the physical clarity of your brain do you sit?

Master of the Universe: When a fellow with impaired equilibrium grabs a lamppost, does he it for standing or for spinning the world?

What is that makes the world goes round? There are sex and money. And generally all the serious business. Right. So we see a world as meaningful because we are occupied in serious activities. Ok tell me what are the serious activities: working, loving, fighting, having fun? Is that all? For sure then our shaky fellow is just one of the unfortunate (for that night). You can pass by, no problem. But what if the meaning of the world comes from the pure gratuity of being there? What if the meaning is just the absence of a goal in being there? What if being there were already the completion and its representation an eternal fractal interpretation?

Try to see the world of men as a wheel of stories. Try to see all the pain and the joy as (true!) projections of representing brains. Try to see goals and targets as painted background on stage.
Now look at the shaky fellow. He grabs a lamppost because this is his job. He pushes walls and blows boulevards, because he's moving the world. Seriously. I'm sure you're nauseated by this confusion of metaphorical speech.

The answer is: do the disarticulated gestures of our friend make the planet accelerate? Do they play a big part in human society? No. This is the simply answer. Still they are spinning the world: they are spinning the meaningfulness of the world. The meanings you consume are not eternal ideas, nor some sort of quanta: there is not a single meaning in the physical world (and outside lie pure spirits!). So, where our concepts come from? They haven't been there since the beginning, so they moved. Someone moved them. Meanings are spun by human beings, actively playing their form of life. But when you are totally in to your character, do you play your role or do you move meanings? I suppose you already got it. Yes my friend. All the “normal” persons are playing their roles. Some mystics are playing the meanings.

The very posh ones are poets, but all the queers, weirds, addicted, all the life juggler, all the convention acrobats, all the monotony burglars are precisely blowing the meanings. Their unstable, staggering steps, with hands barely grasping a hold, are moving the world. Next time a man falls down, help him: you'll be lifted!

The Story of Neuro-ecological Connectivity:A Semantic Esoskeleton

The complexity of human brain is not an adaptive response to a multiplicity of information to be understood. Quite on the contrary the complexity of the environment WE perceive is the reflection of OUR brain complexity. Am I saying we create things outside? Am I? Bloody German slippery idealism...No no, we are not creating the stuff (of course: a momentary lapse of Anglo-saxon empiricism relief...). Like the demiurge is just manipulating basic matter of the universe, the khora, not creating it. Ops...demiurge is a platonic concept! Maybe I'm really slipping in to idealism...By the way this is precisely not the point! “Outside” complexity is a reflection of “inside” complexity of the system,able to detect such complexity.

Our brain shapes itself with re-entry information and the circumnavigation of its own complexity extends with its environment. Neuro-connections self organizes their relationships and project in their surroundings a tracking system of their interaction. Surroundings in the context of a brain is a broad term: eyes are in these surroundings, as well as hands; but with a stick in your hand you can perceive how deep is the water in a pod. The bottom of the pod is in the brain surroundings. Moreover, our brain perceive its pertinent hands(and sometimes he's even wrong about which is its proper hand; an experiment from phantom limb master Ramachandran proves this), not its own neuro-connection. Or better, the representation of its own projection, us, perceives his own hands, not his own neuroconnections. So “brain surroundings” is a fluid term.

Our brain marks its surroundings to track its projection in the environment. The brain tracking system of the interaction with its surroundings is semantics. And the practice of living with other minded beings produce the context, the stability and the sense of interacting with the environment. This is the projection of the brain in to its surroundings: the ecological esoskeleton, a brain wears to understand its environment. Your brain wears its world to perceive it.
The semantic environment is the story of the passage of a mind, tracking its interaction.

Therefore the semantic esoskeleton is the space time extension of the brain in its own projection: a mind. We have a backbone to support our posture; arthropods have external structures to do the same. Cartesian dualism has an inside backbone to support thinking, we have a semantic esoskeleton to support the deambulation of our brain in its surroundings. Would you call it this idealism?

A Giant Grammatical Vampire Squid is sucking generative power from the brain of humankind?

We speak our language in a very peculiar way: we invent the proposition we speak. This is the generativity skill Chomsky proposed to describe the algorithmic richness of natural languages. We are so inventful, that no two identical proposition have ever been uttered.Or at least this is a famous quote of the Chomsky's generative grammar. After the first astonished seconds, they clarify that very similar propositions are spoken constantly, but it's mathematically rare to utter the precise sentence more than twice and not just you: in the total history of the language you speak. You can feel uncomfortable with this thesis, but the chomskyan revolution did the same in linguistic as Einstein did in physics ( odd to say but I still think that Einstein is underestimated...).
Now in the ages of speed of light distribution of content, we are experiencing a bottleneck of production: we are overwhelmed by replication of content, but consuming is outnumbering creation. What are the consequences on our generative grammar? Some scenarios then:

1 Proposition changes with the context, so grammar is not a system of internal relations. This is good, in grammatical terms it means that even when you replicate a concept, you generate its semiotic surroundings, so the proper utterance is the compound, always different. Chomsky will hate it: you should admit something like extended grammatical minds.
Heretical.

2 Humankind is close to a grammatical apocalypse: in order to be meaningful again, grammar will bend our semiotic “spacetime”. We'd pretend to say the same, but the internal grammatical relations will “twist” the identity: if you say the same proposition twice, it will change autonomously the internal relations with the linguistic system. You say the same, but its meaning is different. This is the fall of main stream: no one will be able to follow a trend because even chasing the same, will be actually chasing something else.
Alternative.

3 We lost control of our mastering a language (idiolect): our brain has been sucked by a vampire grammatical squid ! If you can't say the same proposition twice in the same language, but you're saying twice the same proposition, then you're changing the language. This is by far very acceptable. At the end, you can say every one is speaking is own language, just very similar to the other mates with a similar dialect. The problem of this convergence is that you could start to speak different variation of your own same language: in different times you will speak different dialect of the main version. Technically speaking you'll destroy the concept of native speaker of at least our own language (idiolect). Everything stays the same, but no one is understanding.
Incomprehensible.

Self Interpreting System: living beings are stories that narrate themselves

Image you're an instance of state of things. Image you're occurrence is purely random. Image you're a mess. Image your bloody, chaotic, disfigured state of being is actually making sense as it's able to sustain itself. God blessing! Seriously, it helpful to have the concept of a allmighty player of permutations like God, in order to understand the mere casuality of being a self-organizing system. From a MiddleEast(Sinaian)-Mediterreanian(Roman-Vatican-Empire-mafia) point of view, being able of making it without any help from hyerarchical superior entities is pure metaphysics!

Now you're a self-organizing system:really good my boy! Ok, in order to stay stayed, you need to counterbalance thermodynamics; it's a real pain in the ass, I know. Amogst the Tughs you could have found in physics, that's pretty bad. But in the series of self-organizing systems, only the ones able to handle their own energetic trade (metabolism) AND to impose the replication of their scheme of action, can pass to level two: living beings. The difference? Just this: if you don't pass your misguided scheme of action, not matter how good, it will dissolve. Further on, passing scheme of action is passible of misquotation, misinterpretation, code-deception, that is: mutations. So if you're passing your scheme, the bastards new generation can actually improve it. I can't believe it!

Ok buddy, now you're a self-organizing system, you improve (if you're lucky)(well in billions of years, because we're speaking, you have been lucky...). So you can detect state of things: you represent. In order to handle interaction between you and the world, you need to have a map of the place, yuo need to get the bearings. Represent. Map your bloody environment. Good. So now you're able to preserve yourself, to hand it down through generation AS a representing scheme of action. Congratulations pal:you're a true organism now!

So what you do? Well you pass your scheme of action (partially encoded in your DNA: sorry mate, but developmental systems theory in biology thinks that the scheme to replicate a whole organism is encoded in DNA and the contingent situations generated by the environment; that is to say: the scheme is all over there: DNA, temperature, other organisms you're parasitizing and you're parasitized). Ok scheme of action, that is: representation. I'm representing myself right? Pretty much. DNA (and environment) are reading themselves in order to execute the processes leading to the proper actuation: DNA (and uncle environment) is interpreting himself in order to perform himself as the scheme of action leading to the self-organizing system we know (and love).
Sometimes I miss religious explications: it's so blatantly naïve it's moving you to make an effort. Another item in my collection of turtles.

Entropy of Truth:Shuffling Facts

What would you say if I tell you that all along history the little Devil Boltzmann mixed true quotations with false ones? Our little devil likes just the sake of it; he doesn't have any strategy nor he wants to deceive human beings, not in particular. He simply wants to have fun.
History wouldn't be credible anymore? Is it now?
Now let's say some people know he did, but they have no way to systematically discover it; they found some of samples of wrong quotations, they corrected them or did try and that's it. The lesson is that now they know.
History wouldn't be credible anymore? Is it now?

I think we are ready to change game: what do you do with genuine quotations? What do you do with truth in general? Don't take me too radically: it's not this game. I know that truth can be meaningful if in the majority of cases, it's more or less what we think. Call this the basic notion of truth. Now keep on the game. After you know the meaning of truth, after you collected a vast sample of true propositions (and a lot of true quotations), you're ready for the game.

Do you think that at the end of the series of the true sentences and the true quotations, there is something? Or someone? There is a price? Do you find the sense of truth at the end of this...rainbow? Do you know really something more? Do you know everything now? Are you wise?

It's a thin line this. Radical deceiving is pointless: it transforms your words in verbalism. Fine. But a mixing false quotations, just to shape a new sense, a new meaning, is that evil? I don't find evil, but patronising. You have your mystical agenda and your false quotations are supposed to lead me to your imaginarium. It's a game.

You have also an alternative: mixing false quotations randomly. So precisely, even you don't know which are the good, which the fake ones. Why? Well you'll start to think more. It's not a quotaton or a proposition that makes the truth sense. You need much more effort, you need to work in very stormy cognitive conditions. And you know it, so you're not exactly misled, it's more a virtual conceptual training camp. This is the entropy of truth: good cartesian reflection on fakeness of language.

The reason of the haiku: permutations of words, permutation of minds

Truisms are mute; when you state the obvious you're basically mute. On the contrary when you say something meaningful you're driven to new semiotic paths. Haiku can have sense only because they accurately just says what is not yet written in the environment. They are moderatly silent, like the whisper of a gentle breeze and they teach you the language. Haiku points at meanings in the environment and shows the path to them. It's short, because it's common. Haiku don't aim to re-found conceptual grammar: they set up what is already known. Just in a more meaningful way. It's obvious what underlies beneath an haiku, but it's not obvious what an haiku states: you can learn how things are connected to words. It's like the most common thing: you know what meanings are, but only trivial meanings are available: they are frequented semiotic paths.

It's a bit more difficult to reach more complex meanings: you can see them, you can walk nearby, but the path is unsecure. Try. Most of the times the people will simply don't understand you. You're connecting things and words in proportions that are visible only to you. At this point: are you really sure you know what you wanted to say?

Complex meanings are not just funny inventions. They are written in the environment, with the words of their times. Reach them, through a semiotic path; but you need to go there. It's not enough to assemble words: this is verbalism. And to go where complex meanings are, you need to start a semiotic enterprise, you need to became an interpret of signs. This is slightlydanger, because not interpretation will leave untouched the interpreter. Only truism are safe: without a clear idea, silence is preferable.

If you still want to say something, beware that the things you say will change you. It's normal: if you're manipulating the writing of the environment, things will start to interact with you and will react to your saying.
Common thoughts are the structures of language; changing them, is changing the environment, because the environment is the writing of intepretation. The wisest thing to do is just saying what is not yet written in the environment. A gentle breeze of things.

Algorithmic vs Semiotic Search: The Fall of Consciousness in a Cognitive Sedan Chair

Algorhythmic search is effective. You search statistical proportions of single stupid search in huge number;stupid here means with no clue; and huge number probably can mean a “googol”. The story is straight: take a very simple task, take a unbefuckilievable big number of samples, connect with an algorithm. To give this algorithm strategy a name, let's go for stigmergic: this is pretty much what ants do. But the question is: can it work for men? The simple answer is: Goddamit yes!
Instead of inventing resourceful expensive task, you have very simple ones.And cheap, resourcefully and cognitively cheap. The system as a whole is a lot faster. A lot. So it can grow bigger and more complex: that means more powerful. I don't about you, but I like complexity, so as a rule of thumb, I find positive this enrichment.

But, we got some downside. First, it tends to consolidate the system as a whole, which is good is you searching for stability, not so good if you're searching flexibility. Why? Well, it's in line with the fascism of feedback: a feedback can be a feedback only if the system stays the same: other wise it can't use the feedback as a feedback! Simple, but for example our brain doesn't work this way. Re-entry information change the system, which continuously adapts to new re-entrant information. I still don't know about you, but I keep on liking complexity and brain is one my favourite buddy-theme. For this I'm a bit bitchy with feedback (comments from other human beings are more complex than proper pure informational feedback).

Second point: health. Health is always important. If you're rich and ill, you're fucked (even if you're poor and health you're fucked, but in a different way. In this post we consider a priority “wellfare” of the system, so kudos for health rather than money). Homogeneity in a system make it per definition every region more consistent to each other; so you can connect better the regions because they are clearly more compatible. This is good if you pestered by colleagues using different operative systems. This is not good if you're the immune system; you want some degree of compatibility, but you like diversity in order to be able of upgrading your defense. Let's talk about this. In biology complex device must pay off. If you don't have advantages, you don't need swankies devices. The story of epidemy indeed shows that the rare occurrence of a viral epidemy kills between 80/90% of the population. The survivors were the only ones who committed a bit to diversity. Conclusion? If you're an individual you don't five a damn about your species global welfare, so forget it. But from an overall perspective, the integrity of the system is put at risk with homogeneity.

Now we can come back. In our cognitive adventures, algorithmic search is giving what we asked. This is efficient and stupid. A semiotic search on the contrary is complicated, expensive and fallible. During your research, you'll find a lot of different things you don't need; while you're involved in your activity, you consume your time and resources; finally, it's likely you don't find what you were searching for. So? Well, so sometimes it's better not to find what you were searching for. Two reason:1) you were searching something actually stupid\pointless\outdated\ ;2) what you found is more interesting\valuable\meaningful. Further on your enterprise exercised your cognitive equipment: we are not searching for finding (primarily), but only to explore our environment.

A semiotic research is actually the deployment of what consciousness is meant for: exploration of a semiotic environment. On the contrary an algorithmic search makes you giving up cognitively expensive enterprise. Then we rest on a lazy cognitively attitude and we are not ready for viral attacks on our consciousness (you don't need to wait for alien-like beasts: a viral attack on your consciousness can come from a religion. Or a TV series.).

In other words algorithmic search is mutating our attitude, degrading the level of complexity. Hang on. Am I saying I don't like Internet, google and stigmergic collaboration??? NO! But we need to re-shape our consciousness' enterprise in order not to be shut down by some cognitive virus. At the end, our cognitive system is close to be disconnected by the understanding of its own means of production: we are already disconnected by the understanding of our means for living comfortably, it's the price of living in big societies. But losing the understanding of our means of understanding it's different. Of course, providing we are not that unhappy with a Bye Bye consciousness....

The So It Is of Causality (if you think so)

It's a point that things happen in a certain way, that is to say the very reverend, mainstream concept of causation. Oh well, so now there is still someone who believes in proper old-school causation???
Don't be afraid, I mean, we live in very liberal philosophical times, so if you're such a conservative about happening, what to say? You're in good company. I don't blame you more than Catholics who believes in transubstantiation of matter in a odd kind of biscuits, or bankers selling to humankind a collateralized debt obligation about their necessity “to grow”.

But it is a fact that most people think it is possible for us to detect a series of event divided in causes and effects,whose totality constitutes the world. This is probably what is considered common sense nowadays...
What is exactly the relation amongst entities, that is so obvious you would buy every product that follows from it?

We know that things happen...to some extent. We know that we know it, because we are self conscious: we appear to be happening in this world. What we call “we” is happening and is here. Two possible paths: the thing we call “we” is an amass of chaotic hallucinations (for courtesy I'm speaking at plural: when things are getting tough, I like some company...) or this golden boy that is consciousness has some degree of consistency. Therefore if we are not a nightmare, we are a stream of more or less organized representations (I actually subscribe this. Call me romantic). And the order we see is causation. I fooled myself. Damn. Wait, I was joking.

Causation is the way we look at the consistent way we represent things to ourselves (including the self representation). So if we look a series of facts, consistency must organize events in a straight mainstream way. There is a corpse. The person died after a violent fight; has been killed. There must be a killer. Causation. There is a guy who says he's the son of god and everyone of you is his brother; he's been killed because he said to be god. Causation. The majority of us thinks we are a thinking machine. Our troubles are just the heritage of some vagueness in expressing our needs. We are just involved in the mist of our misinterpreted needs. Causation. We will win the mist and bringing the light of causation, we'll finally satisfy our needs.
Well let me just hand you down a hint. It's not our brains talking. We are not our brains. We are the mist in which our brains are involved.

Do you think a human brain destiny is to reach knowledge??? Have you ever read Darwin??? Do you think that a brain goal is to live in peace and prosperity with other brains??? For what??? We are so (righteously) involved in humanistic mist, we forget why we like to have an organized experience. Have you ever asked yourself why? It's good to have this experience because, given the narrative mist we are, it would be impossible to enjoy our narrative misty adventures without consistency. We mistmen like to have experience. We have a consistent experience because we are willing mistmen. Causation. We are willing mistmen because we have a pure pointless contingent consistent experience. Causation. So it is. If you like it

Time of Representation

Minds are essentially representations producers and for this they easily develop the authorship feeling; this feeling doesn't equally account for the delay of the representation. If you're representing something, then this something must have existed before. Or not? Well, a mind is a representation of a brain accelerated in a semantic environment. The actual organ is per definition living in his present: it's living in the same time of its correlated heart and liver. But the representation is living as a projection in a semantic environment. So when a mind thinks of itself as a representation in a semantic environment,can speculate about its own reality. Actually being a mind is being the self representation of a cognitive projection in a semantic world. So a mind is the return representation bouncing on the environment of signs. A mind is a mirror of its times; it's also the (partial) producer of its times. You are moved by the sensitivity of your contemporary ages and you are shaping your contemporary ages with your sensitivity. A puppet moving its own strings.

In our times it's becoming more difficult to feel in tune with our ages: it's typical to feel not in sync, to feel the relation with the world somehow distorted, to feel the superimposition of different trends. This means precisely that our ages is characterized by a diffuse sense of asynchronicity, distortion, superimposition: there is nothing wrong in the feeling. On the contrary the feeling is accurately representing the contemporary age. It's always the case that a mind is the representation of its times; even when it shows a problematic representation; better: especially when it's problematic, it shows its representative nature.

In fact time is a product of representing minds: time appears when it is observed by a mind. And a mind can occur only in time. Representing is the flow of projection and this narrative stream is time.
So when a mind is reflecting about itself, it's producing time and when it's reflecting about its times, is producing mindness.

The time of representation is a mind.

The representation of a mind is time.

Take Time

(from "The Books").

A Persian Trick to Save Authorship

The Persian Army had one his own Elite Special Forces, the “Immortals”, a group of 10 000 soldiers highly trained, highly motivated and with a legendary record of success. They were so feared, that they've been nicknamed “the Immortals”: no chance against them. They were actually quite impressive, but they could die. Simply, after every battles, the dead ones were replaced with new guys. The army was then composed by “the same”.
When we speak of the possibility of saving the memory of our consciousness after the death of the material support (the body), a similar trick is in play. Indeed: what we are talking about? Information? OK.

Minds differ from brains, because we spread our intelligence in the sorrounding environment, both temporaly and spatially. My mind is extended in the cultural tools of its society. My brain has been accelerated by a hosting culture to become a mind. In the infrastructured environment of a culture, per definition “memory” of consciousnesses are saved. We talk about Achilles and Siddharta Gautama. Their consciousness have been handed down all along the centuries. A possible refusal of this concerns the “incompleteness” of the consciousness arrived to us. Fair enough, you can argue that we got only fragments of, say, the mind of Jesus Christ or Plato. That's why it's difficult the intepretation...

Good point. Let's take something closer. Wittgenstein or Ivan Karamazov. I personally would say that “I know” what Wittgenstein would say about something and the same for Ivan Karamazov. It's because I dedicated to these subjects a lot of time and passion. Refusal: we appreciate your effort, but we don't give you credit to be the only voice of Wittgestein or Ivan Karamazov. It's easy to image someone else, with the same authority and an opposite view. 100% true. OK. So now try someone really close: a dad, a brother, a spouse. I really know what they would say. I'm one of the most autoritative storage of their consciousness. If I weren't, then I would be in crisis about myself...

Welcome. Indeed it's not difficult now to figure out a situation where your dad/brother/spouse hid you something. Or even better: you will be a reliable substitution of their consciousness in the majority of case, but not in all the cases. Your algorithm to substitute your family consciousness is not perfect, it's good, but not perfect. Do you think we are just missing chunks of information? Do you think that the perfect substitution is just a matter of filling all the boxes? Your consciousness is a sequence of episodes, randomly embodied in a region of space-time. This is what we call “I”. If every information about me would be stored and replaced in another material support, I'm pretty sure the new puppet woul behave precisely how I'd have. The puppet will show some philosophical behaviour and for the rest of the world it would be pretty much the same. Except for me. I wouldn't “re-open” my eyes, this time in the new puppet, it wouldn't be “season 2”.

The very fragile subjective experience is not informative. It's a random breeze, a stigmergic production of the environmental narratives. Our cultures generate the sense of authorship of the narratives: there are protagonist, there are narratives, there must be authors. It's like when in a story, the character starts to quest: not matter my importance in this tale, I could be just an invention of the author. The 20 century literature is precisely dealing with this form of deconstruction: a character is talking directly to his author. Now we can do the same to our authorship.

The fact that autorship is alive, doesn't entail every author is. Remember the Persian trick....

Impiety of representation

In front of you there is a Buddhist monk; it's nearly done with his 3 years work: an astonishing series of diagrams made of sand, with breath taking details and a mind blowing conception. What is the worst thing you can do it? Take a shot of it, immortalize his effort. Whaaat?? The bald dude spent 3 years and because he's naïve, he's simply destroying a master piece...What a shame...

OK let's have a chat.

The bald quiet guy is Buddhist. So he thinks this reality is an illusion, at least in the way it appears to our eyes. He respects the fact we have a mind and we can think about a lot of things...but, they are pretty much all...random vanishing draft on a beach, shaped by an ephemeral breeze. The mandala is helping him to remind this, it's a tool to handle the vanity of being minded. And being minded is clearly being narrative.

A mind is the human form of cognition; cognition is a technology of human being to navigate through differences in the world to survive; the differences in the world are projected by the same cognition in the form of representations: differences are cognitive representations. The human form of cognitive representation is narrative. If you want to tame a human mind, then you need to hollow your narrativity. Being minded is a constant projection of representations; that's it. But of course idolizing the representation activity makes you losing the grip on what is important, that is: nothing.
This is the reason the many prohibitions about representations in religion, from iconoclasm or ban of portraits of god and prophets.

A Buddhist monk when is working at his mandala, he's playing with fire. He's exalting his representativity through his work; the more his mandala is beautiful, the more is telling you something, the more is moving your conscience, the worst:it's culminating the vanity of representation. At the very peak, the righteousness of the monk coincides with the one of Paris Hilton: the item is carrying moral values. The blasphemy, it's worthwile to remind, it's not about an item carrying moral values:it's about carrying moral values!
Many authors realized that the true essence of being minded, narrativity, is just the mere vanity of being. David Foster Wallace or Cesare Pavese clashed against the nothingness of authorship: the unbearable lack of sense of representing nothingness.

But the monk knows it; as soon as the mandala is done, he will gently blow it away. And it's important to create a very good mandala, in order to make sense of this annihilation. Otherwise it would have been a symbol, a cognitive shortcut reaffirming the power of the mind. The supremacy on the illusion of mind and reality is to run towards the bullet, not avoiding them. If you can move faster than the bullets, reality is an illusion, if you chase the bullet with your body, mind is an illusion. And you'll become the Michael Jordan of Russian Roulette.