now

    I entered the university with a set of ideas that I wished to develop.  These circled around issues cosmology, perception, and depth identity with an applied agenda of the pursuit of well-being.  One of the first things that I learned upon arriving in IDS was that my knowledge was situated, my perceptions limited, and what I really needed were good questions.  Many of the questions that I have since used and am using now have emerged out of the play between my initial set of ideas and those that I have encountered in classes, readings, and interactions with professors.  I have learned to voice my inquiries and observations in a more academic tone and occasionally even situate them within the languages of disciplinarity.
     In order to justify my major on paper I reduced the question to, "What is well-being?  For the individual?  For the community?"  This question contains much of the directions I have sought to pursue, such as:  Any cosmology implies a medical theory and vice- versa because a cosmology is built by people to relate themselves and their communities to a larger whole.  So, in studying medical theories of different cultures I then have exposure to their cosmologies and again vice- versa.  Comparing systems across the East/West divide straddles binaries like  causation/correlation, atomism/holism.  What interest me the most are commonalities in the systems - elements of structure and flow as a binary, stagnation as a cause and correlate of disease.
    Binaries and commonalities indicate the liminal space that contextualizes these systems - a field of potential in which modes of inquiry can create knowledge formations.  And within this field I mean to ask questions which may result in a cosmology for me and a medical theory for my well-being.
   
    As a complete cosmology may be outside of the purview of a single semester undergraduate project, I will for the time being seek to focus on a select few smaller and more specific aspects of the system.  These may well amount to metaphysical models.  As a dutiful academic I will ground my work in that of others.  As I continue to find examples of these principles in material across disciplines as well as within the domain of lived experience, these examples further refine my understanding of the model.

     #1 For the purposes of this paper I am principally interested in the structural effect of maintaining a conceptual model, identity, narrative, etc. in a conscious being.  Boundary maintenance of entitihood.  How does the structural form of this boundary reciprocate with flow and well being?  How can we manipulate this boundary, influence our paradigm (Constructive Dissociation)?  What effect does this have micro/macrocosmically in the social organism?  And I would like to construct an argument for the embodiment of groups as collective ecstatic experience.  Perhaps for the theoretical embodiment of the Universal as absolute or objective experience.
     #2 Another idea that i would like to develop: we embody and inform each other.  Through empathy neurons and a host of other structures we can show that the hippie idea of 'vibe' has some relevance.  Not only do we become who and what we are around, others become like us and what we are putting out into the world.  Even plants can be shown to share a mind with organisms around themselves.  This could be a paper on its own or just contribute to the idea of collective, ecstatic experience. 
      #3 There is a fundamental binary I see emerging in nearly all of the material that I engage.  For visuo-spatial reasons i call it Structure and Flow.  (It could just as easily be male/female, head/heart, atomism/holism, left brained/right brained, etc)   I could spend a few paragraphs or a whole book teasing out the implications of this notion.
      #4  Awareness as the compliment of entropy, a force making order from chaos.  This suggests a practical approach, namely "the ascription of order by the application of awareness."  This is the principle that gives rise to a medical model within a cosmology of awareness.

     All four of the idea sets here are aimed at illuminating a cosmology of awareness.

On this page I will post my progress on the senior project for my BA in interdisciplinary studies.  My intention for this work at this time is the development of small metaphysical models within a cosmology of awareness.