Chiastic Book Trines :: A windowToy
A precursor version of this text, which differs in
content is here.
In order to playfully and profitably capitalize upon any sort of
available diversity, we need to be able to create systems of connection
between what often appear as profoundly disparate domains of resources.
Are these domains as disparate as our thinking and language imply?
Perhaps not.
For example, in ‘thinking about language’
we can generally be found to be making many presumptions which are
not only absurdly untrue, but are also commonly defensible. This
is a problematic situation for humans in general, and it relates
to the way we are ‘representationally’ conscious.
Because we represent experience and memory with tokens,
we forget we are using tokens. This makes us suceptible to getting
trapped with a single form of token. Some forms actively abhor those
who host them, and the main form we’re habituated to is of
this kind.
~#~
When we realize that someone who knows three languages
is hundreds of functional scales ‘more literate’ than
someone who knows only one, we begin to see the power of recombinative
linkage. It is not the quantity which empowers them, but the increased
potentials for recombinant relation between tokens and
their systems of origin — a poetic triangulation of sorts.
The person who knows three languages, has three formal
lexicons with which to create ‘meaning-connectivities’
of various sorts — but the integration potentials
are where the real treasure lives. Such a person’s ability
to ‘understand’ language, and probably to craft it in
general, is in most cases on another scale entirely from a
‘single language’ user.
A person who knows three languages, knows a lot more
about general language maps than their singly enlanguaged
counterpart. Similarly, knowing how to know presents the
same kind of problems and opportunities.
I refer to this triangulation-quality, very generally,
as ‘making rings’— the three language-knower has,
essentially, a ‘core ring’ of three languages. We make
rings all the time, without recognizing it, and it can be done in
any domain, all, or one. That it be done, and frequently, is the
important thing — because when we make rings, we accrue what
often seems impossible: the ability to utterly transcend common
ways of knowing, as well as obstacles which appear intractble even
at the scale of our species.. These skills bring with them the common
ability to take a ‘scalar leap’ up whatever ladder we
may be climbing at the moment.
~#~
Applying a simple understanding of scalarity and emergence,
we can inventively create and inhabit entirely new ways of reading,
learning, and exploring.
The illustration at the top of the page represents
a recombinant “ring of ‘books’”. It’s
purpose is to at once suggest a ‘specific and valuable ring’
and also to illustrate the concept of scalarly recombinant ‘bookRings’—
as a learningToy. To create and play with this toy we will imaginally
credential the following assertions:
Language, and minds, have sources.
These sources are not yet clear.
Languages emerge from interscalar psybiocognitive connectivity.
(not from humans or ‘knowledge’)
Our human experiential sentience is deeply linkted
to ‘lingual’ systems and figures.
The sources of language and sentience are linked.
The stories of these linkages are far more interesting
than we suppose.
Flatness is a cognitive problem created by mechanization.
Understandings of Emergence and Scalarity remedy flatness problems.
Chiastic relationships established via triangulations provide
a positive toySystem for exploring these domains.
o:O:o
In our time and place books are parsed and experienced
as though ‘a single author wrote’ them. The ‘ownerShip’
ideas about books and language are a lie. Language has a source
in our people, this source is resident in all books. In other words,
to write a book, one touches something which is being touched by
every momenty of every being that was is or shall be.
All books can be seen (in our model) as emergent from
a ‘central organism’ of source/authoring momentums which
is never resident in any author, but instead ‘retranslated’
by them. Seeing this, we can playfully realize that there is ‘one
author, first’, and ‘many human guests who translate
for this author’. Do not make the mistake of believing that
this idea leads us into religion, for the field of cognition alone
is sufficient to grant us these miracles, regardless of our perspective
on ‘spiritual’ matters.
Progenitor-linked systemKeys are resident in the source of any
activity which is symbolically cognitive. These linkages point
directly to the sourceEvents which resulted in our species’
initial encounters with symbols, storyMeanings, and perhaps
the seeds from which our modernly experienced cognition arose.
Tracing these threads experientially, creatively, and playfully
leads to windows. Those windows look out on what rationality considers
to be impossible. When opened, experientially, they become doors.
Even if the sources of lingual cognition were divided (arose
separately and later coalesced) in our cognitive evolution, the
nature of the source(s) of our symbolic cognition, are
clear in only one domain: our relationship
with, and the evolution(s) of our human languages —
and the structural relationships of meaning-ness they enforce
or imply.
~#~
Oops. I’ve confusingly diverged from my task.
When we read books, we imply they are important. If
any book can be important, we could decide that some books
are essentially and functionally far
more important than others — in a given set of active domains.
But by what means would we decide this?
| |
A
Toy:
(there
is an ancient accessToy which all living creatures share.
It is engineered to solve this riddle, faster, each time
it's accessed by any being whatsoever. The toy is not hidden,
but it is cognitive in nature. Language, and logics, can
interfere with it dramatically)
You're spontaneously transported to 'the library of worlds'.
This library contains every moment of every cognitive being's
experience since the universe began (and unto it's end)
encoded in tiny books; each one fits in your human palm.
As you arrive, you notice a note in your hand:
Greetings EarthHuman,
You are in the library of worlds. It is one square mile
in surface area, and is octagonal in shape. You are in the
center of the library.
Your world is dying. You've got 144 minutes of oxygen, thus,
you are dying as well.
Within the time allotted to you, you must locate one of
three books.
Book 1 will return you to your dying world.
Book II will return you with the knowledge to save it, but
you will perish from having known it.
Book III Will rescue you and your world, leaving all parties
unharmed.
Whichever book you open first, will accomplish that mission.
You may open as many as you desire in the process of seeking.
You need only open the book and glance at its pages once
to resolve the dilemma.
There
are more books here than you have cells in your entire lineage.
To succeed, you will need to allow yourself to touch your
sources. Any other strategy will result in your expiration,
and that of your planet. The chances of you accidentally
stumbling on even one of the books, without a real connection
strategy aren't worth considering.
There are 288 shelves arranged in a starPattern around your
current location. Speak the linkName of any book into the
central station and that book will be delivered into your
hand.
You are then given the internal understanding of the
basics of access and standards of organization of the library.
Somehow, this is ‘communicated into you’ instantly.
On the floor, at your feet, is a stopwatch. Twelve minutes
have elapsed since your arrival.
If you can't locate the essential and ‘alingual’
migration skill in yourSelf, which book will most rapidly
and efficiently lead you to the skill you seek?
Why?
Tick.
Tock.
|
We could probably agree that, given a game of survival and elaboration,
arriving in any library at all might imply that there is a single
key book which is perhaps more important than any other possible
book, to become cognitively intimate with. And strangely, there
are 'more than one' such book(s)', in any library — part of
this is a result of the essential generality of the universe and
its paradigms of organizational symmetry.
Books, are, it turns out, scalar accretions more than they
are linear recordings. This secret has for far too long been hidden.
Experiencing it as a reader grants some extremely uncommon
cognitive experiences, abilities, and emergent skills. That is the
goal of this toy.
I believe that probably for as long as we have had
written language there has been something that is in essence a ‘book
of how to talk’ to the beings who live in the transports,
which are within you, as you are within them.
This is the finest possible goal of knowing —
to return us to active relation with its sources, and to authorize
us to again experience the innocence, wonder, and miraculous nature
of our birthright and their power to insure liberty, unity, mutual
uplift, and rescue.
~#~
In a world of complexly enlanguaged people(s), books
are like cognitive sperm. They are like fertile comets penetrating
the vitalizing atmosphere of a young world — an inward world
— comprised of worldlets, and scales within scales of sentient
children. In our lives books act almost like the reverse of NEO
objects relating with Earth. In our case, the planet is drawn to
the seed, rather than the other way around.
Some strange gravity attracts us to a volume or author — and
there is a penetrative encounter. Perhaps only our ‘gravity
well’ is penetrated. Perhaps our atmosphere. Perhaps the surface
of the planet we are, itself. They may be many ‘near misses’
and ‘partial penetrations’ during the evolving relationships
that eventually bring a specific book, to a specific handEye.
In our human world, especially the modern one, books rePresent a
problem, and an opportunity, in general. But there are ways of optioning
the opportunity that we’ve largely left unexplored. One of
these has to do with three principles: Emergence, Scalarity, and
Recombinance.
Emergence: Text emerges from a central as-yet-unnamed
sentience — a unityBeing, within — but not from ‘a
writer’. Linguism is a ‘networked thing’, not
a locally-housed thing at all. Language, books, and related artifacts
emerge scalarly from preCursor systems and events. A physical model
of this might be the bottom of a pan of water heated towards boiling:
first, a treeLike map of minute bubbles appears — then a carpet
of them. Emergent from the carpet, a treeLike map of small bubbles,
larger groups, then large bubbles. Soon, we can see a diversely
populated and uniquely complex set of relationships where emergence
from preCursors is visibly and structurally demonstrated. And
then, the water boils — and the toy is lost to our eyes by
the frequency change, the change in speed of emergence...
Scalarity: Essentially, this is the understanding
that changing the magnifi / minifi cation of our cognitive approach
reveals new terrains, and different fields of participant systems
which we may observe, disturb, or otherwise interact with in real
or cognitive terms. Structural features and character change dramatically
which our reference(s) of focus.
Organelles coupled with biocontexts comprise cells, and
cells comprise superCells, as well as networks. Cellular systems
in coEmergent autoelaboration emerge as organs, and systems of organs
emerge as animals. Emergent from animals are ecosystems, and from
ecosystems, biospheres. Each of these is more a recognition potential
unities at a given scale of organization, rather than a real or
integral separateness.
We can immediately see that whatever sort of cognitive systems exist
or arise are emergently scalar in their sources and natures.
They are also interscalar, and there are specific 'devices' which
create and 'tend' these potentials in all living systems, because
there are common sources.
In examining a conical spiral (chiasm), what we may discover depends
upon which scale of magnification / minification we apply. In music,
tonality and timbre both are emergent results of scalar expressions
in sourceEvents. Animal cognition is an emergently cellular event
which arises scalarly.
How does this relate to books? In a way easy for children to understand,
and more difficult for most adults...
Books are nothing like our models of what
they are. Young children understand this because encountering any
book is alike, to their experience, with encountering books
in general. This single feature, seemingly simple, is at the
very heart of cognitive activism.
Books are emergent from many diverse streams of linguism, exploration
and cognitively recombinant evolution. As such, from on perspective,
they have no personal author — any more than a language does.
Nor can modulant symbolsets in any reasonable way be 'owned'.
There are many 'ways of reading' which our highly
compressed systems have shaved away in favor of singularity and
enforceability.
This fundamental problem is easily addressed with chiastic, or scalar-assemblage
reading strategies.
Such strategies posit 'anything as a book', and scalarly recombinant
integrations emerge from playful and recursive contact with single
texts or any given linked series of texts.
As a toy, rather than a law, this method, in general, posits a 'single
author' approach: the 'author' of any book, is 'the language(s)
and their lineages' coupled with 'a unique translation matrix'.
In 'reading' we can see that a generalizing and recombinant strategy
which attends matters of scale by its nature rather than by
expertise is geometrically more valuable and functional than
'flat systems' of reading, understanding, relating to and parsing
'information'.
Recombinance: Simply stated, it is probable that
all of the complexity and diversity we experience in our cognitive
and physical endeavor emerges from the 'rather magically elaboratory'
recombination of simple and elemental structural 'characters'. Rather
than being specific, these characters are highly general in nature.
Recombinance is the 'source of eyes' and thus, when eyes behold
it clearly, and generally — the nature of those eyes is changed.
Their 'essential seeing' is new, because matters of focus are attended
very differently.
Books are in a sense, like cognitive seeds. They emerge from the
complex biogenetic aspects of emergent experience and language,
coupled with incredibly diverse domains of context. The 'tiny bubbles'
of letters 'dance' to produce the larger bubbles of words, which
are then arranged into a 'locked matrix' that is essentially freely
interpretable, but also specifically parsed according to general
and commonly practiced rules.
To read a book, is to become cognitively sexual with vast myriads
(and scales) of people, ideas, lineages and potentials.
To create 'small rings' of linked books, is to radically increase
the general usefulness — through integratory expansions and
reExpression.
Recombinance (as an improvisatory skill) grants access to important
features of 'generalized knowing' and generalizing modes of knowledge-acquisition
— especially when liberally applied to the domain of selecting
and reading linked trineSystems of useful books. And there's nothing,
which, essentially, is not a book.
Triangulation, in concept, model and action is going
to become a heck of a lot more important to our understandings of
our abilities, and our access to them, in the symbolic domains of
our human and socioLinguistic cognitive activity. And that covers
an awful lot of our experiential terrain. Probably almost all of
it.
~#~
The idea of 'triangulation' is essential to the learningToy of bookRings.
With 'three references' we find a much more accurate and often (cognitively)
more flexible position from which to acquire, parse, or explore
our abilities and the essential questions and activities which arise
as our 'doing' in our human lives. As regards 'triangulation' as
a general activity, rather than related to something specific, I
have noticed that humans (a class which includes my humble self,
sometimes), generally 'forget' to include 'something external'.
In other words, a 'distant' or 'not visible' reference, of some
sort. I believe it's important to grab an extraSystemic reference
whenever possible.
The ring below is not merely an example. I believe it to comprise
one of the most potently powerful rings I could assemble. When seen
as written by 'a single author', this 'twoScale' ring of books provides
some obvious and amazing paths not only for exploration, but for
the general and intelligent reFormation of some of the essential
questions that drive our lives, cultures, and our personal minds.
In a sense, these books contain a 'very high signal ratio' of 'cognitive
keys'. Though specific in each book, across the books they
may be rapidly and simply generalized into functional cognitive
toySystems.
The constant use-intimacy with integrative cognitive toySystems
creates prodigy in relation to time and flexibility of the participants.
| |
Plying
the waters of a bookRing:
The
idea is simple:
Each book is a window, to the other books.
All
the books have a single Author.
The Outer Ring is related to as the Container or World -
it is the 'bag' so to speak. The context.
The
Inner Ring is related to as Children of Outer Ring, the
'organelles' in the cell formed by the membrane of the Outer
Ring.
Positional Relations:
The Rings can be swapped, positionally.
Individual books may change position or ring.
Any 'child' may be reCognized as the child of a ring, or
a book, or a container for any set of the other participants.
Books may imply other rings, or be children of other rings.
Books
communicate something which effectively changes our personal
cognitive environment(s), thus they are essentially cognitively
transgenic.
|
Reading:
Read the books as though they were written by a single
non-gendered author with a single intent. An author comprised of
many scales of unique moments of authors and authoring.
Actively examine the elemental meaning-shapes and stories which
emerge from the ring, and its relations of structure. Be as general
as possible in all such activity. Consider these as applicable in
your human experience, rather than mere ideas.
Explore the implications of the author's intention, and the shape-natures
of the particles at various scales of reference, such as word, tone,
paragraph, phrase, chapter, etc.
Explore the contexts from which the texts arise deeply and creatively,
being aware of the dangers of scholarship and the rewards of an
psybiocognitively poetic (and thus emotionally active) exploration.
Be more like a child with a set of alien toys, that reCombine strangely,
in a game that seeks miraclePowers...
Consider the general persona of the author as it emerges in the
many books...
Quest-Ions:
How would a nonHuman being who was reading these books,
and had an adept understanding of English, summarize their linkages
and most important or significant element-maps?
How do the books emerge when viewed as a scalar family
of related texts and information / paradigms?
What in general do the concerns and noticings of context
have to say in relation to our natures and sources.
What is the nature of the essential messages of the
'single author' of this bookRing? If the books were compressed into
a singular and functionally useful phrase, what might it be? If
it comprised a single book, what would the roots of this book relate
specifically to?
What are the most actively valuable suggestions of natures and essential
structure which are generally and specifically implied in the individual
books and the scales, and the ring?
What are the most essential questions that we can
productively and actively pursue in relation to what we've accrued
through our exposure to the textRing?
I encourage you to experiment liberally with this specific
ring of books...because I believe them to be essentially illuminative
of some extremely important and elemental aspects of our cognitive
natures and heritages. To my eye, their value, alone and in concert,
is not only pervasive and functional, but heartful and poetically
empowering, as well.
BookRings :: An Organelle model:
Outer scale of ring:
The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human
Understanding
Humberto Maturana, Ph.D & Francisco Varela, Ph.D
This book is something like a fundamental usage guide
to humans infected with symbolic cognition. It is a rare work of
radical genius, cleverly disguised as something far less threatening.
It introduces a domain of emergently co-optimizing networks —
and the playfully complex natures of what it means to participate
in such lifeNets, as a cognitive person concerned with matters of
'knowing'.
Written in the wakeful style of a 'new textbook' these two cellular
biologists have created a the kind of synthesis that, properly encountered,
delivers critical seeds and toySystems related to the activity humans
call 'knowing'. The book is not essentially philosophical, but instead,
follows a unique map through some terrains we nearly never encounter
as common human cognitives arising from positions deeply integrated
with ways of knowing, language, and signaling.
Symbiosis takes on an entirely knew meaning (and some radically
adept evolution-features) when understood as an event which is one
of co-arisal, rather than 'member-parsings'. Linkages are the nature
of biology, and from that biology emerges the myriad cognitive dances
of living beings. From that dance emerges the complex cognitive
gardens from which human 'sentience' arises. This lineage is critical
to encounter directly, rather than understand as mere theory.
In a sense, this could be seen as a guide to the general shape(s),
natures and features of the cognitive toySystems we are intimately
enmeshed within, changing by our presence, and evolving with.
The volume is well-illustrated, unique, and should be familiar
terrain (deeply familiar) to anyone interested in how universes
arise from language, cognitive activity, and common misappropriations
of unities which are not at all separate.
In my opinion, TTOK is akin to a knowing-Grail. It is a treasure
whose value increases scalarly any time it is referenced at all.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind
Julian Jaynes
This is not so much a book, as it is a lens with which
one may explore the origins of the cognitive momentums and experiences
which may have led to the potential for there to be books, at all.
The essential directions of the author are as difficult to pigeonhole
as the questions are from which a book of this nature arises. The
general implication is that our cognitive evolution as complexly
enlanguaged symbolMakers emerges from a domain that includes the
'direct inner experience' of gods, or things alike with gods.
However, those who would stop there would miss the entire trove
of treasures emergent from this book. Its speculative noticings
are in need of no literal proofs, because the nature of
its questioning is so much more fundamentally valid (beyond most
modern approaches to understanding) that most of what's offered
stands as a ‘noveltyMirror’ — it’s value
is that it generates fascinating questions, perspectives, and —hopefully
— experiences. Jaynes has reauthored the seeds of new ways
of knowing by taking us through some complexly poetic and pragmatically
unique features of the history of our cognitive evolution.
While many of the more interesting roads of exploration implied
are not deeply explored, the outline is profound in its implications
and deliveries. Overall, the direction of the questions and inspirations
in this work is golden. It's a certain preCursor that leads to far
more interesting questions and explorations than we might otherwise
locate or emerge within.
Linking domains that are normally invisible, Jaynes leads in a way
which legitimizes their primacy over our commonly accepted models.
These matters are of critical importance in understanding how we
understand — what understanding is. And though their
general organization is as yet formative in nature, once applied,
they lead directly to domains of thought and research which yield
not theory or science, nor religion nor mere spirituality. Understanding
our cognitive sources should allow us to contact them directly
— and the maps of thesis in this book can lead directly
to those skills, properly understood and applied.
This is a key to a box of infinite keys. Though all books are alike
with this, generally, this book is alike with it specifically.
It’s perhaps best to understand Jaynes’ offerings as
a general map, which can be radically improved with speculative
and experiential exploration. The implications of its questions
are perhaps far more valuable in toto than the specificity of the
answers it may infer or embody.
What is Life?
Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan
Each of the books in the ring are so essentially diverse
in their natures and features that they are extremely hard to 'say
one thing' about. In fact, there's a significant danger in doing
so.
As a child I was fascinated with paleontology, and in a sense, paleontology
is the study and elaboration or correction of various timelines.
Seen at the right scale of magnification, we can observe that nearly
all of human storying and symbolizing is about the creation, exploration
and tending of such 'strings of knots' about 'what happened, or
will'.
What is Life? is an amazingly unique and
critically important tracework of stories, and meanings. It doesn’t
threaten anything directly — it instead weaves a careful and
inspired path through some largely unacknowledged noticings and
momentums in living systems.
This long-overdue volume captures the incredible majesty and miraculous
emergences of living systems at many scales. It presents a portal
which is far less size-biased than our common portals, and is perhaps
biased toward the small.
In our case, this is a bias we can all prosper from more direct
contact with.
Inner Scale of the Ring:
Protector
Larry Niven
There are a number of reasons that lead me to believe
this to be one of the most important(small) books ever written.
One of those reasons could be stated simply: I don't believe there
is such a thing as fiction.
The sources of language, and storying are, experientially, more
of a 'central pool' than a locally housed or emergent 'thing'. Some
story might, perhaps, be 'more fictional' than some other. But almost
all stories and common modes of storying partake of sources that,
perhaps in my opinion only, but I strongly hold it — eliminate
the potential for there to be 'fiction' at all.
A heartful or wellCrafted story or poem springs from a set of places
and 'people' — these are non-mechanical in the extreme. Our
language lies about its sources. When living beings are singing
stories about lineages and futures and histories in text —
there is a scalarly emergent quality which is unavoidable. It's
hard to describe, but frankly, our use of the tool means we touched
its source. And when we do that, the seeds of that source ring in
every letter we may, thereafter pen — however uniquely we
may personally or culturally translate what we encounter, and allow.
This book deals with bioHeroism. It deals with elemental
problems pertaining to the desire for Service, and it comprises
a sort of guidebook for a species with a limited domain of time
in which to insure their biosphere succeeds. But it is also so much
more than that. It is a mythopoetic bible related to the questions
of Rescue.
Seen as generally as possible, and without bias, this book forms
a poetic series of possible maps. Recombining them liberally leads
to a place from whence amazing powers of integration, liberty, and
mutual rescue may arise. The treasure is in the general shapes,
much more than the specifics. Watch what the protectors do
— not merely the plot and its animations of spectacle.
In this book are powerful and general keys. We are the protectors,
but we needn't suffer the fates that we plummet headlong toward
in our modern industrial societies before we discover this.
We can and must awaken before the blades we've created fall upon
the last vestiges of our connectivity with our biosphere, our humanity,
and our hope in a habitable future for ourselves and the many myriad
animalian and vegetative children of Earth.
Seen in relation to the other books, this one reveals a much more
inhabited perspective — one in which we can watch active integrations
from each of the books in the outer ring take on personified positions
in a linear storyline.
Get creative with the linkages. That's the protector way.
The Uplift War
David Brin
David Brin's universes are entertaining and bioHeroic.
Yet we live on a planet where a man can pen a story that, regardless
of evidence, he cannot himself generally believe in. To
call this ironic is an understatement. On the other hand, as a regular
human, I too, can experientially get behind skepticism. Even the
kind that forms a noose around my own neck, so to speak.
All of the above aside, there are two primary features of David
Brin's work which interest me, and which I find multivalent in their
essential nonFiction-ness. The first is what we might call 'Uplift'.
The second is the idea that most species have 'uplift parents'.
The first idea is a functional reality on earth, but
David's got it slightly backwards: in reality, the small —
in their diversity and recombinant assemblage of character, create
the potential for the complex cognitive symmetry of the large.
David's version is heartful and interesting, the humans 'uplift'
the dolphins and some of the chimpanzees to complex sentience. He
fails to notice that we are their children, and thus we are in essence
'uplifting' our grandparents, from a generalizing perspective.
In a much more tangible sense, the 'small animals' of Earth
are our uplift parents, biologically.
Probably cognitively too, but they may well be history before we
realize we're eating our own mind by erasing, crippling and poisoning
their lineages.
The idea of uplift-parents or cognitive progenitors
is, in my personal experience, a reality on Earth. Our parents cannot
be located because we cannot acknowledge their natures. Our languages,
semantics, and systems of knowing generally and systematically forbid
this.
Yet each of these obstacles is overcome by human infants.
I know, again from my own experience, that adults overcome them
each time they create anything at all, or dream. We have lost some
essential keys that the personal and active quest for our real and
experientially available upliftParent(s) can heartfully return to
our living people, and our world.
Functionally, however, humans have a responsibility to protect and
nurture the biosphere they are emergent from and depend upon. One
of the domains of that protection is to insure the undisturbed longevity,
fertility, connectivity, and generalized vitality of Earth's ecosystems.
And that responsibility now requires that we gain and actively deploy
the ability to protect and nurture the delicate systems we arise
from and depend upon in entirely new and much more aware ways.
This book fits rather elegantly into the bookRing,
many of its themes can be seen as active upon many simultaneous
scales, such as those of cellular colonies or creatures, in moment
of organizational or symbiotic assembly.
But there is also a heartful TerraCentric aspect to the story which
elaborates a terrain of linked destiny and the majestic mysteries
of locating ourselves in a diversely alive universe filled with
many unusual modes and ideas about cognition, and the sources or
purposes of living beings.
A Fire Upon the Deep
Vernor Vinge
This amazingly inventive and powerfully prophetic
story is an incredible integration of nearly all of the books in
the ring. The primary reason I feel it is important is that it provides
models of 'recombinant' personality. The secondary reason is that
I believe in something deeply alike with the central threat of this
novel, and I've seen ample evidence that this threat is alive and
active on my homeWorld.
Vernor Vinge's understandings and presentations of the 'emergent'
natures and features of personality on the individual and group
scales are profoundly instructive, and I believe the essential foundations
that these metaphors provide are valuable leaping-off places for
unique and naturally emergent ways of knowing.
To understand the psybiocognitive animal as emergent from multiple
'bodies' is central to understanding the lineages, essential natures,
and emergent properties of cognition in general, and human cognitive
experience particularly.
Beyond all that, this is one of the most engrossing,
and amazingly unFictional (in a general sense) fictions I've encountered.
It pays off extraordinarily, in many simultaneous domains.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
After I completed this page, in its first incarnation,
I felt that there was something missing. The trines are good ones,
and well-related, but I felt that an even more central integration
was possible. Scott McCloud's work fits here perfectly. Understanding
Comics is true to its title, in the deepest of possible ways. But
beneath that truth there is something perhaps far more valuable
about this peculiar and uniquely idiosyncratic folkscholar. Because
his questions and presentations are so general, and integratory,
and elemental — what he discovers and presents is a lot more
about the sources and natures of our symbolic cognition, our languaging,
and our cognitive evolution than it is about a specific set of momentums
in 'art'.
In fact, because of his peculiarly scalar approaches which appreciate
recombinance, inversion, scalarity and emergence — he comes
up with something a lot more like the treasure of the alchemists,
than the treasure of comedic, dramatic or heroic stripWriters. He
emerges with a set of keys to the stone of the philosophers. They
change each time they are touched, as does the hand that touches
them.
I include this book as a link to another bookRing. It is meant 'to
come after' thorough exploration of the other volumes. I believe
it bears incredibly potent clues about the nature of our cognitive
expression, but also of our sources. They are, in part, so much
more simple than we can imagine. Yet in concert, so much more complex
than we are likely to ever be able to talk cogently about.
I see this unBook at once as the source of this ring, and as something
the ring assembles into. But you can use it as you like. Just don't
trade the general treasures of its gardens for the specific treasures
of any single application. This work is extremely generally applicable.
Especially in understanding how we think and know well enough to
step boldly into new relationShips in both of those domains. And
in domains unNamable, as well.
o:O:o
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