Hello and welcome to Katâlepsāra!
My name is Michael, and I put out the content here.
Our current milieu is drowning in information yet starving for knowledge. Remember, knowledge has to be digested. Only then does it become wisdom. Indigestion of information has become a problem. We’re gaining weight and not nutrition.
Katâlepsāra is a portmanteau I made by combining:
- Katâlepsis: a philosophical term referring to the idea of grasping or apprehending something with certainty or conviction, often used in discussions about knowledge and belief.
- Saṃsāra: an eastern philosophical term literally meaning “wandering” or “world,” with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change.
My problem began as an insatiable curiosity with an exponential rate of incoming information. Some was signal, but much was noise. My question was: “How can I effectively differentiate signal from noise with respect to my precious time?” In other words, much of what we consume is nonsense, so how can we consume more sense?
In an attempt to remedy this issue, I subscribed to RSS feeds to tune into signal and mitigate much of the noise that clutters the surroundings of high signal information. However, the rate of RSS feeds have become too much to manage. In order to process much of this information, I would like to turn to technology as a confidant.
I wanted to create an application that aimed to leverage AI in summarizing RSS feed content according to user criteria. For instance, an RSS folder of various philosophy blogs can be summarized weekly based on their content. Thus, capturing signals, or at the very least capturing the concepts. If a user is more interested in a particular concept, they can prompt the application to specify the article(s) of origin from that timeframe.
Alas, I am not that technologically savvy with coding in order to pull off an application like that so I archived that idea in my Github repo.
Instead, (at least in the meantime) I’ve decided to settle on creating this blog that aims to equip readers with the philosophical accoutrement to think critically about information. Consuming information for nourishing sustenance, not as bloating fodder.
Cicero relates that Zeno would illustrate katalepsis as follows:
- he would display his hand in front of one with the fingers stretched out and say “A visual appearance is like this”;
- next he closed his fingers a little and said, “An act of assent is like this”;
- then he pressed his fingers closely together and made a fist, and said that that was comprehension (and from this illustration he gave to that process the actual name of katalepsis, which it had not had before);
- but then he used to apply his left hand to his right fist and squeeze it tightly and forcibly, and then say that such was knowledge, which was within the power of nobody save the wise man
Why the lotus?
The lotus symbolizes purity, enlightenment, rebirth, and spiritual awakening across various cultures, particularly in Buddhism and Hinduism. It grows from muddy waters, yet its pristine bloom represents the journey from darkness to light, symbolizing spiritual growth and enlightenment.