Coffee making halted by milk clogged nozzle - it must be the Buddha!

I've been worshipping my coffee maker. It's a Dualit Expressiv.

Then it broke. A blockage in the steam stick bit (technical term) caused a pressure build up resulting in a small plastic tube being forcefully evicted from the small metal tube which carried the steam to the steam stick bit.

It went "KAPOOSH!" And then water started pouring out of the bottom of it.

The system broke down - it had a negative feedback loop - and contained no repairing or compensating feedback loops. It's a simple system operated by a much more complex system within an even more complex system. Yes the last two systems mentioned are me and the universe (and all the subsystems in between - if you like).

So the Dualit Expressiv killed itself  to some degree - but only after I had created the conditions for it's suicide. I had failed to maintain it - you're supposed to clean the steam stick thing regularly, and flush the whole system through. I didn't do this due to my own psychological system - itself reliant on biological and chemical systems and of course all the systems that brought me into being and create life on earth, the existence of this solar system in this....blah blah blah. So in a sense I killed it, and in another sense it was a conspiracy of all the interactions and relationships between all the systems in the universe. In that little machine sat the power of the universe.

Of course that steam stick bit was not conscious of the effect of it's clogging up. It does not know it blew up my coffee machine. I can't blame it.

We don't have a blame culture in my kitchen!   

But are we all just unconscious nodes in a network? Humanity generally disagrees. We can't bear to be that! We're special! We are aware of our consciousness and have the ability to self reflect. We even create cyber worlds in which some of these nodes can ramble on about consciousness.

                                             But what are we conscious of?

Being conscious within the system - having consciousness of how things work within it - is not being conscious of the fact that we are actually in a system, that our consciousness may just be a system ,mechanism - to keep the nodes doing what the system needs to do.

What is the purpose of the system?  

The purpose of the system is what it does.

So for example the purpose of the capitalist system is to create massive divisions between people (nodes). Rich and Poor. Luxury and poverty. And  also to use up the planetary system's resources as soon as possible. Capitalists and politicians and normal average nodes all disagree.

Well that is what it does. It is either the purpose or it's not working! One of the two! 

Anyway my system (me) does have trouble interacting with technological systems. I have a trepidation in my transactions with things technological or mechanical. I do not hate the technology. I just haven't got my mental model - part of psychological, neurological system - working as part of the flow-through between me and the machine.

Robert Pirsig in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'  said that the "flight from and hatred of technology is self defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead resides quite comfortably in the circuits of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself." 

I think the coffee machine which is made to be a Dualit Expressiv - is made to express a dualistic understanding of the world. Just like us.
That is:

I and the World,
                         Spiritual/Physical;
                                                     Human/God
                                                                           Ideal /Material
                                                                                                   Subject/Object etc etc.

It is the way we've seen the world particularly in the West - through Descartes and Newton and others. It structures and fashions our perception. It's part of the perception filter thing I was talking about in my last post.  

Maybe my coffee maker got so freaked out by the sudden realisation of the complexity of everything and the collapse of its world-view as understood through cartesian dualism. And "KAPOOSH!"  - actually it was more "KAPOOSHshshshshshshsh".

It became conscious of itself in relation to it's position in a system much bigger than the coffee maker. It had been a fish in a pond unaware of it's postion in the pond because it's universe was the pond. Suddenly being plucked out of the pond by a Heron and seeing the pond - very briefly, before being swallowed - from the outside, probably unable to make sense of what it sees, rather than thinking, "oh now I get it!", just thought

"Aggghhhhhggaggahhhahgggghhgghhhh!!" 

How my Dualit Expressiv gained this awareness without the aid of a Heron, I don't know.

Maybe it was just clogged with dried up milk!