Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering

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Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering
Varieties of nothingness and emptiness
Questionable understanding of emptiness and nothingness
"Mattering" and "Happening"
"Nothing" emerging through combinations of "mattering" and "happening"
Dynamic complexification: integration of "no time"
Emergence of "nothing": creating "cognitive shelters" and "cognitive vehicles"
Emergence of "nothing": globalization as exemplar
Emergence of "nothing": "import" of significance
Polarization and the dynamics of nothingness

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Terra cognita vs Terra incognita
Interweaving Demonic and Daimonic Associations in Collective Memory (Annex A)
-- Demonic associations and demonisation
-- Unusual, unsayable, unsaid, untruth -- and denial
-- Prefiguration: Van Diemen's Land as strategic pioneer in the treatment of dissent and otherness
-- Daimonic associations: imaginative, aesthetic, inspirational or spiritual
-- Refiguration of "the other" through fantasy
Memory Challenges at the Edge of the World (Annex B)
-- Symbolic journey -- to the "Edge of the World"
-- Dubious associations -- with the "Centres of the World"
-- Amnesia at the "Edge of the World" -- a key to unrealistic optimism?
-- Mnemonic devices for collective remembrance
Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering (Annex C)
-- Varieties of nothingness and emptiness
-- -- "Mattering" and "Happening"
-- "Nothing" emerging through combinations of "mattering" and "happening"
-- Dynamic complexification: integration of "no time"
-- Emergence of "nothing": creating "cognitive shelters" and "cognitive vehicles"
-- Emergence of "nothing": globalization as exemplar
-- Emergence of "nothing": "import" of significance
-- Polarization and the dynamics of nothingness
Transforming the Edge of the World through Voiding the Centre

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Annex C to Where There is No Time and Nothing Matters: Cognitive Challenges at the Edge of the World (2008) highlighting and giving focus to various themes in the light of metaphors arising from travels in Tasmania.

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Summary

The purpose of this annex is to clarify a range of meanings and implications for the phrase "where there is no time and nothing matters" -- as highlighted by the motto of Cradle Valley (Tasmania) noted in Annex A. The follows from a theme of the initial paper on the illusory nature of time (Amanda Gefter, Is time an illusion? New Scientist, 19 January 2008).

The embodiment of "nothing" in form ("mattering") and in process ("happening") is understood here as "importing" "nothingness" or "emptiness" through recognizing and enactivating patterns of associations. The terms in the title are intended to be ambiguously interpreted with respect to the transformation of "nothingness" into "somethingness", in the sense that each has both a tangible and an intangible sense, pertaining to matter (form) and to significance.

The central importance of "nothing" and "void" was a focus of the preceding paper (In Quest of Optimism Beyond the Edge -- through avoidance of the answering process). The intent here is to interrelate "nothingness" as it is central to extreme existential alienation (whether among the marginalized or as the consequence of personal development) with other philosophic and religious understandings. It therefore includes aspects of "meaninglessness", "emptiness", "insignificance", "irrelevance" and "unimportance" -- whether from sociopolitical or spiritual perspectives.

Experientially "emptiness" may be echoed:

• as an attractor by:
  • some physical extremes (mountaineering, deserts, etc) (Joe Simpson. Touching the Void ***; Cradle Mountain values***)
  • associated psychospiritual disciplines (hermitage, etc), especially in meditative quests to "empty the mind" and achieve some form of cognitive "void" (sunyata)
• as the repulsor of existential alienation:
  • in severely deprived environments (slums, refugee camps, etc)
  • incarceration (penal, educational, asylums, etc)
  • as experienced in some others ("spiritual emptiness", etc) or through death (metaphorical or otherwise) of a significant relationship

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