Ummm…that’s peitho not pathos.
peitho is to convince, from the Greek goddess of persuasion.
Pathos is passion.
The mind is addicted to patterns.
It a forager of patterns, because it is a organ/tool evolved in an organism dependent on patterns.
Pattern being another word for order.
So obsessed with it that it seeks it everywhere, wanting to absorb what is occurring as it absorbs food, which is also pattern.
Body consumes genetic patterns, mind consumes memetic patterns.
To give its life meaning, and to establish predictability, offering the illusion of control, the mind connects unrelated patterns, finding commonality, as if it hints at design - fate.
From this the presupposition that all in cosmos is a pattern, discounts chaos, or randomness, to feel like control over one’s destiny is possible.
Man as God.
This relates to astrology.
Some patterns are, indeed, related, others are connected using symbols like dates and numbers, which are human constructs.
The division of the earth year is a human technology/technique, as are numbers and the binary 1/0 they are based on.
There is no such thing as a one…anywhere outside human brains.
One is a metaphor, applicable to all unities unified within the human mind as abstraction.
1/0 is based on the on/off cellular activity.
On = neural pulse going through neural cluster (1)
Off = no pulse going through neural cluster (0)
Human metabolic rates, and cellular activities.
Systolic/Diastolic.
No magic.
Metabolic rates are the basis for our experience of time/space.
All technologies and techniques are extensions of organic processes. Man translates genetic code (pattern) into numerical code and then builds versions of his physical processes externally, or applies organic processes externally.
Genetic code = memory, nature/past sum of all past nurturing
Memetic code = memory/knowledge, cultural traditions, morals, rituals, behaviors passed on as linguistic code, and numerical code.
Man sees himself everywhere.
And so we have the Christian One-God.
Pagan gods represented the multiplicity of natural processes, anthropomorphized.
Pagan man made sense of world by translating it into symbols he could identify with, feel intimate with, giving him a sense of meaning, that also explained catastrophes, and the unforeseen.
A sense that he could do something about them, deciding his own fate before the incomprehensible and unforeseeable.
Words/Numbers are such representations.
Misunderstood by moderns when they are taken literally, and not as artistic, not figuratively.
Words/Numbers are approximations…and lines are not things existing outside the human brain.
There is no line, or point in time/space.
The world is dynamic.
It is interactive.
Meaning all is in constant movement.
Man feels this all around him and inside him.
He senses it intuitively.
He seeks patterns in this interactivity to make sense of it all.
At times he connects what is coincidental, drawing from it desirable meanings, as if his life is directed by some higher power, or some unseen force - predestination.
This is comforting.
Detaching words/numbers from phenomena, the apparent, liberates them from the limitations imposed upon representations by the world itself. Moderns love this, because it gives them the sense of liberty, as if they can determine their own fate simply by reinterpreting existence (changing your perspective suffices to change world), or by naming themselves this or that (declaring themselves whatever they wish).
This is how charlatans can place words in whatever sequence they prefer, to make them seductive to those they wish to manipulate and exploit.
This dis-ease is called nihilism, and you can see it in economics and how money was detached form the Gold Standard, leading to the recent collapse, because con-artst could sell total noetic fabrications referring to nothing…hot air, to gullible materialists, desperate to become rich and escape their genetics.
We can see this in how moderns use words to redefine themselves, free from past/nature, or to fabricate their identity using symbols - not only words but surgery, clothing, social titles, cars etc.
Philosophy in the service of weakness, seeking a quick and easy solution to its predicament…desiring power.
Case in point…
Look at how Christianity placed “love” the word, now void of its natural connections, before existence.
God = love
Love creates (creator) man.
Using a more idiotic, local approach, value as creating self = value selfing.
The order can be anything, the words anything positive.
The justification is how it makes us feel.
How it makes the many feel determines its value, its “truth”.
Measured in quantities - popularity.
We can see the same thing in art, where painters, for one, can splash paint on canvas, or draw a line, and then sell it as “genius” to gullible idiots, desperate to appear sophisticated.
The real is insignificant, because the observer projects his own private psychosis in the art, as if the artist intended it to be there.
Then, if enough are sold on the lie, the artists is established as trendy, as talented.
Surrealism.
Manipulating and exploiting human vanity, anxiety, emotions.
Unfortunately this has trickled into philosophy
No longer about world, but more about politics, or psychology - offering to the many a feel-good explanation.
The idea judged not by how it refers to the apparent, the observable, but by how it relates and feeds into the desirable, the emotional.
Throw words around is any sequence, where it triggers an emotional positive reaction in the listener, and you can call yourself a philosopher.
When I was young I too had similar experiences.
One was that despite not being married in my thirties I, somehow, felt I would, and that I would have a son.
And I did.
The psychosomatic effect, or placebo effect.
You will yourself towards the desirable goal, with many subtle, unconscious, adjustments.
You place yourself open to the possibility, and opportunity may come knocking.
You affect other minds with your stance.
You recall success, forget failure, disappointment, because memory recalls the past selectively.