Introduction by "The Quotes"

"Analogies it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home." - Sigmund Freud

"Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing that we have." - Samuel Butler

"All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy." - Henry David Thoreau

"We know nothing of what will happen in the future but by the analogy of experience." - Abraham Lincoln

(NOTE: This is a legitimate maze, where you enter at the bottom, try to reach the middle, and wherever the opportunity presents itself, follow the pattern of left-right-right).

All my life, I have looked for and tended to see patterns everywhere. It was a major point that I would make to my students in each class --- look for patterns, connect what you know to this new stuff. I would often say "I teach by analogy" but never totally understood myself why I did it, other than that I'm very much a visual learner and so tended to teach that way too. I have always tended to see patterns of three. When I was reading the book "Googlewhack", the author was dealing with the situation of writing a story about a guy who had discovered a new primary colour, and was frustrated in his attempts to describe it to the rest of the world, since no one else had seen it yet. I feel a bit like that with 'is'. I've said several times that I feel like I have this crystal-clear image in my head of what it's all about, and more importantly why it's all about, but, like describing a new primary colour, language often fails me, and I get tangled up in the web of my own words.

I loike [NOT a spelling error!] the story the quotes told today. So, I'm going to re-tell parts of yesterday's blog about the four system levels, within a broader context of 'is', using bead necklaces as my analogous tool. That will be tomorrow's blog. Grab your beads, and follow along!

'is' is a theory of universal pattern. Basically stated, it allows that there is a common, underlying, irreducible pattern to everything. Further the same pattern applies to everything, no matter what 'everything' is. That's it, in a nutshell....(or should I say, "in a seed"!). So why do I care, and why should I think anyone else should care?

It has always bothered me that we only seem to accept truth if it comes from the mouths and laboratories of scientists or scholars, as if they have been endowed with some sort of super-power of cognition. But what of the truth of the layperson? It should be no less significant or worthy of note. It comes from a different mouth and a different laboratory, but so what? Surely, in a scientist's or philosopher's quest for answers, they must always seek answers, not just partial solutions. Examining the history of science and scholastics, every 'discovery' has been modified over time, if not debunked altogether. A 'truth' is only 'true' insofar as a modification has not yet been made. The earth used to be flat, the sun used to rotate around the earth, smoking used to be cool, virgins used to have babies. Every scholarly saying or discourse is countered by an opposing or alternate view. For every quote of common sense, there is a countering quote of equally common sense; every expert has a detractor.

Is there any one 'thing' that transcends the subset that each of those experts represents, that transcends even the layperson himself, and is all-inclusively universal? Not 'to a limit', or 'rounded to 3 decimal places', or 'within generally-accepted accounting principles', or 'accurate to 3.4%, 19 times out of 20', but ALL-ways.

What is the purpose of bothering to try to describe it, even if there is? Well, for one thing, my thinking is that if the pattern can be recognized as being a universal truism, then it can be predicted (as well as simultaneously contra-dicted, post-dicted, 'dicted' in any way, shape or form.....the mirroring concept). And if it can be predicted then, contrary to what Abe says up above, the future doesn't have to rely on past experience alone. A higher-level (system) basis already exists for other predictions, and other futures, that haven't been made yet. Looking in the reverse (mirror) direction, if the pattern exists, then links can be made between 'things' from the past where no links have previously been made, and those links, being new, can lead to other never-thought-of-before 'newness' from the past. That implies that everything that we think is past now, isn't yet, and things we think of as not yet having happened, have --- at least in part.

Past, present and future all collapse into the 'is' moment, and can draw from each other simultaneously rather than sequentially. In effect, it gives a new time dimension by eliminating the dimension of time. Time is nothing more than a relative scale which we use to rank-order things based on sequence, or measure things based on existence over duration. There is still more 'past' to be discovered, and 'is' can help predict what that past will be [consider that last phrase carefully!]. {Historians, psychiatrists, weather forecasters....} will love it! Finally, if the pattern exists, things current ('is') can be considered current-different as well as current-same, so for instance {conflict resolution may take on a new and simpler format, scientific research may modify and simplify its methods, cause-effect relationships can become effect-cause relationships....endless, infinite list of possible current-affect options}.

Is this born out of arrogance? A 'sick' mind? A 'distorted' view of 'reality'? Perhaps. But that would have no impact on the theory itself. It would simply be an example of the Ad Hominem error in logic....attacking the messenger to destroy the message. Is it possible? If you were to poll 1000 people, you'd likely get somewhere between 999 and 1000 replies saying 'No'. Is that a legitimate reason to stop thinking about it? No. Is it a reason to stop writing about it? No. Is it a reason to stop reading about it? Not my question to answer.

I had actually debated last night whether or not I would continue writing these blogs, wondering if anyone was reading them. Then I realized, that is not my purpose for writing them! While I always secretly hope someone out there is taking them in, and perhaps picking up a piece here and a piece there, I'm primarily writing for selfish purposes. I'm making a record of ideas that are in my head. I'm describing the pattern that exists in my thinking. I recognize that there is still a moderately wide band (threshold) of perturbation between what I'm writing and what I'm thinking, so it follows that there is likely even a wider band between what I'm writing and what you're thinking.

But that is exactly the reason why I'm writing them. They are 'attacking' the threshold between my internal and external levels of understanding...and, through the blogs, it's a verbal attack or more accurately it's an external recording of the internal mental 'attacks' as I work at sorting it out in a way that can be expressed in English. For if I am unable to find a way to express my thoughts so they can be communicated to another, then they will die with the genetic structure of my body when my body-vessel (or, to borrow a phrase from my current read 'The Selfish Gene', my gene's survival-machine) dies. Selfishly, I don't want that to happen.

I think I have intuitively been expecting critique each day from people saying 'you've lost me' or 'I'm not interested', or 'check in with your doc again...you're looney-tunes material, for sure', or similar such comment. But I would be correct in assuming that a missing comment says that already, without being written and attached. And such comments, while being helpful in guiding me if I were writing for you specifically, are unnecessary for my current goal, which, once again, is to make a record of the first draft of my internal thought. It is the sketch pad etching of the statue that I see contained in the block of marble known as 'my brain'.

It is the quiet, unsure, stuttering which is slowly unveiling my selfish gene. The one I want to survive me. My purpose gene. If it is to survive [or if at least I am to know that it survived], somewhere and at some time it will need to be reinforced with a 'Wow!' comment, or an 'I follow that, but you lost me when....', or a 'publish it, dude, this is hot stuff' comment, or the like. In other words, there will have to be some degree of threshold crossing in order to link this thought-gene to an external thought-gene with enough of a bonding that it will survive to the point of having the essence of replicating. One of the characteristics of anything in 'is' is to be able to self-replicate, to give birth to itself. Such is my thought. Such 'is' my theory.

Questions of the day to all readers:

1) With respect to the theory of 'is', you should continue to write your blog entries because:

a) I don't follow them at all
b) I'm picking up the general sense, but don't see the big picture at all yet
c) I understand mostly what you're saying, but don't agree at all with it
d) It interests me
e) It's a pile of hooey...I just check in to see if you've written about something else today
f) I'm with you all the way, and can't wait for tomorrow's enlightening installment
g) other

Please feel free to leave your opinion...no need to limit yourself to only one option, and feel free to elaborate if you so choose. Thanks.

2) The thing about your theory I mostly don't get is.......

3) Bonus question for the game-players in the crowd: Identify at least 25 metaphors that were used in this blog entry.


"I've learned that you shouldn't push your luck. Play it safe and move the ladder." - Age 79

P.S. Just as an interesting little footnote, I noticed with some amusement that, after I posted this, the 'Quote of the Day' in the footer (which is randomly generated on a daily basis) says "Order is power", and the 'Bumper Sticker' in the footer (which is randomly generated every time the page is viewed), said "Remember: pillage then burn". Rather a propos, given the discussion about time and sequencing today, I thought! Or, just perhaps, order in the universe is not as random as we might think!

Posted by Evydense on Friday, May 05, 2006 at 8:40 a.m. | Permalink