Of Dragon Slayers and Maidens of Necessity - pt.1 (A Sci-Fi Ultrashort)

It is incumbent upon my pleasure of communication to relate to you a short story I have heard (or told, who remembers?) many years ago and which I believe will impregnate our conversation with a fresh variety of sensations.

It is a metaphorical story (how else?) about dragon slayers and maidens of necessity but it might also be a story about spaces and processes, which is for you to decide.

There was this master dragon slayer you see, who was called upon every now and again to come and slay a dragon, whenever such a beast and wherever such a monster was startling the population of the realms of beyondness.

And so it came to pass..

After years of loneliness wandering in the solitude of the great mountains, a young maiden came upon him, she was, it goes without saying, of such innocence, that she actually, truly and beyond doubt, believed it. Of course the master dragon slayer had no such illusions, he well knew how deep and how fast the corruption of desire embeds itself in the young ones.

Especially those that still believed in their own innocence.

Nevertheless, being of such a huge strength and capability, being empty of particularities, yet still on his way to perdition he accepted the offer of the young one to teach her the secrets of dragon slaying and in the process become his lover and purveyor of all earthly pleasures.

Before I go on with the story, let me tell you a few things about this particular dragon slayer. He was a being unlike any other, for though there are other dragon slayers; none is or was as rowdy, as wild or as feral by nature as he was.

As you may know, dragon slayers tend to hide their wild natures, knowing quite well, that not everything in life is about dragon slaying, yet in his case the slaying of dragons was a procedure he mainly performed upon himself. For though it is true that all dragon slayers are in fact redeemed dragons, tamed by the vision of a world of beauty beyond comprehension, it is also true that some forget at times that they are already passed the stage of acceptance and thus do not need consent to the slur of young maidens. For when a slayer of dragons is accepted unconditionally, by the people of beyondness for the people of beyondness, he is free to do as he pleases, which of course he never does.



Bound by an oath greater than themselves, dragon slayers abide by the rules of independence, mostly. In the case of our dragon slayer here, abiding by the rules of total independence is what allowed him to accept the young maiden’s embrace in the first place, even though, and this must be said, if it was only up to him he would never have agreed to such a deal. For there is another rule in the total independence of dragon slayers, that they must make another, for only dragon slayers can make other dragon slayers out of the dragons they slay.

Quite the demand I know, but hey, there are so few of them that if they will not create other dragon slayers, who will? Can you imagine a world of beyond without dragon slayers? I cant (or will not).

But wait, it gets more complicated still; the rules of total independence require that a dragon slayer present his apprentice to the people of beyondness for approval, a fact that does not always coincide with the pure satisfaction and deep joy of slaying dragons.

Our dragon slayer was a bit different in this respect for he knew only one way to transpose the very fine art of dragon slaying, and that is to make it so that only a total intimacy of sensation between dragon slayer and apprentice in full merging of intensity and desire can make it work.

It’s not always the case indeed, however such was the case in our little story here. There are many reasons for that particular happening, only some of which relates to the dragon slayer in question, for we should not forget that the maiden had her own agenda of innocence as well. (For though it was hidden from her own beholding, her agenda was anything but innocent).

I believe that you now start to have a glimpse into the problematic situation of our very dear dragon slayer.
He accepted the maiden into his domain of existence knowing full well that such acceptance of merging in full intensity of craving and full intimacy of desire spells, how else? But trouble!!

Our dragon slayer, truth be told, was a great master of slaying but as mentioned above, he was mostly performing this art upon himself and, here comes the troubling bit, for he was also sharing this very act of self slaying with the apprentice, also known as, the young maiden of necessity.
Let it be said here, that as such legends go all maidens are by necessity, called, well, maidens of necessity, the reason for that if you are interested in this sort of exotic knowledge I will reveal to you some other time, but suffice it to say that their necessity has nothing to do with being a maiden and everything to do with the necessary condition of unimpeded motion or free flowing.

But now that you have enough knowledge about our dragon slayer let us hasten to reveal how our story unfolds.

Few years passed

And in their passing, these years (as time has the tendency to do) had revealed a few interesting facts about this very rare relationship between dragon slayers and maidens of necessity.

The most important aspect that was revealed during these years concerns capturing fire. Now, as you may well know, the art of capturing dragons fire is anything but simple, in fact, as legends will have it, capturing the dragon’s fire is even more challenging than actual dragon slaying. Maybe, some say, capturing dragon’s fire, should be the real test of a dragon slayer, and maybe, others say, the only serious measure of a true dragon slayer is how well he keeps the dragon fire he captured. This is an interesting discussion indeed but not for me to have an opinion about, since I only carry the storyteller torch. (Though if we were alone in the dark I would whisper to you that I am very much in favor of changing the norms of measurement of the people of beyondness, for at the end of the day it is the fire of the dragons that carries the meaning and essentiality of dragons, how much more so, of a dragon slayer, moved and motivated by dragons fire, the real substance of their being, ah! Well).
Be that as it may, the young maiden of necessity was vehemently opposed to the insistent demand of the dragon slayer that she give him the fruits of her fire capturing on an immediate basis. She claimed that our dragon slayer was not giving her enough time and enough space to come and bring him the fruits of her labor when they were ready and ripe for his consumption.
It was highly irregular of course, yet here we were, I mean here they were..

At any rate, as I might have already mentioned, fire capturing is a very complex process, consisting principally of three stages, the building of the container of fire, the capturing of the fire itself and the aggregation of the fire.
Amongst these three stages, the longer one in terms of duration is the building of the container. Again the reason for this is that the construction of such a container takes all the resources of the mind of the apprentice dragon slayer and in the process makes him or her actually able to capture the fire itself.
But in our story here, the maiden of necessity was impatient (due to her supposed innocence) to play the game of equality. For was she not after all in full intimacy of desire with our dragon slayer? The point however was that she was impatient about the wrong thing, she wanted the time to process the capturing of the fire, in her own way, but was not patient enough to build the fitting container which it must be remembered can be done only via the agency of the master dragon slayer.
When a master dragon slayer demands progress, he does so in the only fashion possible, in the now! And this our maiden of necessity could not contain.

You see the paradox, for sure.

The inconsistency of the situation was due to a few facts, the fact of intimacy of desire, which to a storyteller like I am, always appears premature (though admittedly it is not necessarily so) and reflects on the need of dragon slayers for companionship (and the second rule of total independence that demands of a dragon slayer to make other dragon slayers). The second fact was the unveiling of the self-slaying which our dragon slayer was performing upon himself. Now this is a tricky issue, for though it is a reality of intimacy that the self slaying must be made clear and transparent to the apprentice dragon slayer, it is also true that this unveiling must be made gradually and with high precision and clarity. Remember please that in the act of unveiling the dragon slayer himself exposes his raw nerve endings to an ‘other’ that is ‘not yet’.

This leads sometimes to a great confusion, or to the very old, and by now legendary, illness, of all maidens of necessity, namely the sickness of overt familiarity.
Overt familiarity is not contra-indicated to dragon slayers in principle, just the opposite, it is encouraged and necessary, however the timing, fashion and manner of unveiling of the self slaying process is crucial, fundamental and critical, for it defines the future relationship of the dragon slayer with the maiden of necessity.
In fact I would go as far as saying that a dragon slayer’s self-slaying is the actual manifestation of fire capturing and aggregation in real time of the fire itself. And when successfully performed represents the highest form of the second rule of total independence, namely the creation of another dragon slayer, but when performed not in the correct time (or timing), generally speaking, disaster ensues.

I realize that I bother you with a lot of details about dragon slayers lives and methods but I believe that these are important factors for you to consider in your journey to understand this story.

More particularly my friend, I wish to tell you this story, because many a time, the desire for intimacy in intensity, appears to the Dragon Slayer as an act of independence and self-determination, when in fact it is anything but. Truth to tell, many a dragon slayer, has succumbed to the temptation of proclaimed autonomy, only to find at the end of the day that no fire has been captured and no aggregation of the eternal substance of dragons has been brought to the arena of the people of beyond.

We must love our dragon slayers, and we appreciate their never-ending quest to, so to speak, bring the flesh of dragons to the hungry table of beyondness.

But as storytelling goes you will see that the unfoldment of this story is not as simple as it might appear, for at a certain point of their disagreement on the subject of capturing the fire, the dragon slayer and the maiden of necessity, happened upon an unforeseen event.

You see, they inadvertently triggered the curiosity of Nallab the mad dog; also known as Nallab the irreverent one.

But for this part of the story you will have to wait until I extract it into written form from the annals of beyondness.

To be continued..
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Part of the Ultrashort Project

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“The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin


“No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Tue, May 21, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: dragon slayer,ultrashort,beyondness,Sci-Fi,

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Opting for idleness (of will)- envisioning more nuanced scenarios of freedom

My dear friend,

Knowing how busy you claim you are, performing all these social tasks you call duties, at work, at home, with your hobbies but more particularly in your mind, I shall (hopefully) take only a little of your reading time

Walking on nothing, which is now the official name of this series of letters addressed to you but published publicly because I carry this strange idea that they may be useful for others as well, is an interesting state of affairs.

Allow me to state the reasons, why walking on nothing is interesting, and only then explain them in some depth.

Firstly, walking on nothing is interesting because by annihilating the need for absolutes (the very first necessary condition for walking on nothing) the event of mind opens up into many options not previously deemed possible, or even existing. This first reason implies that an exploring critical mind is inherently limited only by the particular absolutes, which this mind believes to be true. The fact that no such absolutes exist is beside the point since by their very nature, absolutes, are immune against either self-criticism or criticism from an ‘other’. The point however is that absolutes are very specific (and quite hidden) sense thought memes that paradigmatically hinder and block exceptionally interesting states of mind. In that the annihilation of absolutes eliminates the fundamental barrier of and to interest. You may discover in this process that creativity, that hard to pin down sense of excitation and interestingness, is awakened afresh. In the sense I am writing to you here, walking on nothing, as a different layer of description of non-absolutism, is really an opening of the senses to the infinite variety of experiences the mind event allows.
That makes walking on nothing interesting.

The second point I would like to propose to you is that walking on nothing is interesting because it allows you to merge with your desires in intensity.
I know this is a point that fascinates you in a particular fashion, because you have this tendency (that you still do not approve of in your mind) to equate your inherent desires with their apparent fulfillment. Moreover you carry a very intimate knowledge of that which gives you pleasure and believe as all humans at some point do that this pleasure starts and ends where it is located (i.e. with your desires). Merging with your desires in intensity is a fundamental concept of walking on nothing that permeates the membrane of immediacy, in fact transforming your awareness into one of freedom. It is in a way the unleashing of your senses nerve endings to an avalanche of impressions that is quite formidable indeed. However the point I am trying to convey to you here is that this flood of sensations managed correctly (meaning non localized in a particular desire) results in this intensity I wrote to you about before.
It is a very special kind of intensity and at first you will mistake it for stress, as it does (at least initially) carry similar manifestations; eventually however you will come to see that the manifestations of intensity and merging your desire in intensity have nothing in common but habits, or leftovers from our evolutionary heritage.
Again I stress the point that merging with your desire in intensity creates an abundance of options (especially of the emotional capacity kind), which needless to say is an indicator of interestingness.
In this sense, there is indeed, as you have already guessed, a very high and closely coupled correlation between freedom of mind and high intensity. Critically though, high intensity, is also the very self-management tool of desire.
Desire need be in full intensity yet strangely it must also be idle. Idle of a particular direction, which allows the horn of plenty, the cornucopia of abundance in sense thought, to be free.

That makes walking on nothing interesting.

The third point I wish to make concerns busyness, or that which you currently hide behind when you say:” I am busy”. This really is the most salient issue here, for is it not the case that the statement ‘I am busy’ whether explicitly presented or simply implied by your inattention is a manner of hiding your disinterest in the moment? And please do not mistake the busyness argument with the fact that some things you ‘really’ like and ‘need’ to do. Being occupied with a particular task (as I am right now whilst writing these words to you) does not mean that I am ‘busy’. Of course some times I would like to not be interrupted, though I will tell you that it very much depends not so much on what the interruption is about but more importantly ‘who’ the interrupter is (that is for another discussion though). When I refer to being ‘busy’ I do not mean the above though, I mean your usage of the term ‘busy’ to deflect the possible upheaval created by interest. For you see, my friend, interestingness has this tendency to disturb your mind event, your flow of the moment, as it were. However, this is a welcome disturbance for it is in fact the disturbance of abundance, the riot of options, which are the hallmark of a free and intense mind, a mind that walks on nothing.

That makes walking on nothing interesting.

Having said all of the above I wish to put forward to you the idea that Idleness is not such a bad option. And opting for idleness is really a fashion of envisioning more subtle scenarios for your freedom.

By more subtle scenarios, I mean high-resolution scenarios that carry within them the immediate sensation of the enterprise of freedom of mind, and for sure, quite an enterprise it is.
I have this thought that in your case the idea of freedom need be looked at as a kind of entrepreneurship. It is of course an analogy, but an interesting one I think, if for no other reason that for some, as I believe is the case for you, the way forward need be one where the release button is a DIY kind of affair.
I’ll write more about why this is particularly true in your case (your love for bric-a-brac comes to mind) however at this point I wish to tell you about idleness from the standpoint, not so much of social politics, as Bertrand Russell so famously did at the beginning of the 20th century but from the standpoint of the infinitely creative free mind, the mind of she that walks on nothing.

Idleness is a necessary condition of the free mind; it is a configuration of sense perception that allows a certain loosening of the will into the gentle flow of desire. The point in this case is that idleness is the state of affairs of mind when there is no product at the end of the process. It is sense thought, or extended emotional reflectivity ‘for its own sake’. In other words it is ‘love’ with no specific direction or manifested destiny.
Idleness of will does not mean that one does not wish for ‘things’ or does not ‘do’ that which is required by the circumstances of his immediate existence, not at all. It does however mean that the abundance of the event of mind is made explicit when one has a ‘will on demand’ but unless the ‘demand’ is locally manifested, the ‘will’ remains idle.

In our modern ‘civilized culture’ it is commonly assumed that idleness when referring to a person is a negative state since that same person produces nothing of value. The erroneous-ness of this statement cannot be emphasized enough, not only is it a misconception of what idleness means it is a method to exacerbate the scarcity of openness.
I could go on and on about why idleness is important and necessary but at this point suffice it to say that idleness allows the event of mind ascending into freedom the extended capacity to envision more nuanced scenarios for its own freedom.

In your last interaction with me, you asked if I was not too busy to reflect upon some of your questions, my answer is simple: I am never busy, I lay idle, lazily walking on nothing until interest is piqued, then almost instantaneously the reality of my intersubjective extended cognition rallies to the call of ‘demand’, suddenly a ‘will’ is made manifest, a desire flows, resources are mustered, a letter is written. This is not so common I agree; yet it is also not so common to walk on nothing.

Until next,
Whilst Verbing the flow,
Sincerely,
W.



"I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble."

Agatha Christie

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Part of the Ultrashorts Project

Tue, May 7, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: Idleness,philosophy of mind,fredom,liberation,walking on nothing,

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Selving – The art of living ‘IN’ the edge

My dear friend,

It appears that our latest communication has created a flow of sorts within the mind process, which you presumably call your ‘own’. I know it did so for me, and I gratefully acknowledge this communication between us as an interesting one, a rare commodity nowadays, I am unhappy to admit.

Such ‘flow of sorts’ (I so call it for its being purposefully undefined) is an ambient sensation really, a result of the kind of erectile function of the mind when interest is picked. (Yes, I did use a sexual metaphor to refer to the mind, just as sometimes one meets with the mental emotional equivalent of erectile dysfunction, sad I know, but true nevertheless)

And when interest is picked, we become instinctively alert. Suddenly a wave of unknown origins elucidates itself into a form of pleasure, a very core-like sense thought of embodied consciousness.

What is so startling about these kinds of sensations is their naturalness on the one hand coupled with and juxtaposed upon an immediate urge of doing. It is surprising in so many ways that to count them all will take forever; but then we do have ‘forever’, at least in as much as our imagination allows us the ‘time out’ required for the processing of unusual sense thought processes.

Before I try and tackle your questions I have one of my own for you, if you will.

Would you be willing to consider ‘Verbing’ your identity? Can you accommodate in your extended emotional reflectivity a process of ‘Selving’?

Strange question indeed, and yet, think about it for a minute, if the whole route leading to ‘walking on nothing’ is described as a hyper complex process of mind, and no stable ownership of an idea, no full possession of a thought can be ascertained, is it not the case that the same should apply to our identities, or that which erroneously we call ‘our’ ‘selves’?

This particular question you may find interesting, or so I hope, because to my mind, the main issue we need tackle is the one of language (by which we describe experience) especially and fundamentally when we tend to noun-ize, everything.

Our tendency to turn everything into nouns deflects the awareness of our process, since by noun-ing we can, as it were, take control of the state of affairs and seemingly stabilize it into submission.
There is a reason why we do this, or at least have had the tendency to do this for a long while now.
The reason is the desire to possess (and eventually ‘own’) the autonomy of a self. The thing is that this not only cannot be attained, since the self is not a thing, but the very desire of stabilization, in the sense of owning and or possessing the autonomy defeats the whole purpose of the process.

Verbing is the very innate act of naturalizing (not an, but) experience (as such) into continuity. It is truly quite an astonishing feat of our minds, in which we consistently and continuously re-describe our realities in fashions permitting constancy of motion.
This has a lot to do with the freedom of mind that you so desire. But before I jump into that, a word on this elusive concept: Desire.

Desire is a very strange animal indeed, not least because this beast cannot be tamed. Desire can be leashed of course, desire can be caged, hidden in the dark corners of our minds, not to be let out and smell the morning rain, but desire will not die, nor can it be domesticated.
It is good to remember again that not all desires emerge equally, in fact not only do not all desires deserve the same attention, some can be disregarded and let play with no concern of our own to interfere with.
Unlike a will that can be mastered and developed like a muscle, desire carries no such characteristics. Au contraire, the very definition of desire is that it defies both logic and reasoning, at the very least in as much as desire contains the seeds of its own ‘verbing’.
In other words you cannot ‘have’ a desire, again a linguistic quirk that allows us the articulation of the verb ‘Desiring’ into a noun ‘ Having Desire’; having a desire is a contradiction in terms, since desire is not an object and cannot be owned or possessed.
Hence in no uncertain terms, expressions such as ‘my desire’, or alternatively ‘I have a desire’, carry a sense of ownership and objectified autonomy that seamlessly make us put on the overcoat of civilized society and seem comprehensible to one another.

I acknowledge the fact that it is not an easy task you are embarking on here, it is a voyage of immense difficulty and very few can carry it to completion, which is really only another beginning.

Nevertheless assuming you are serious in your questions I venture to propose to you a few ideas concerning the desire for the freedom of the mind, which you have expressed so eloquently.

The first idea I propose to you concerns the language you are using when referring to freedom of mind. Consider for example the thought that we are as a society currently using different kind of languages to describe different aspects of reality, be it the language of science (hard facts, empirical observations, measurements and so on) the language of technology (bits and bytes and user interfaces etc.) or the language of philosophy (meta-concepts, logic, metaphors..) or the very elusive language of poetry (with its synonyms and analogies, narratives and so on). What all these different kind of languages have in common is their fundamental attribute of mapping reality. And yet consider the fact that when you think you do not map reality using one language only but are using an amalgam of all of these and others as well, languages made not of words but of sensations, sights, images, colors, and even abstract shapes you will find hard to describe.

It is important at this stage to understand that mapping one realm of perceived reality in a different kind of language is not only an art of extreme difficulty it may appear at times as completely useless if not utterly banal. What possible reason would you have to perform the act of mappingtranslating a sense of sexual desire transforming into love for example, into the language of neuroscience (it’s probably somewhere in the insula and the striatum- see here if you are interested)?



(The Accommodations of Desire, 1929
Salvador Dalí -Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on cardboard -The Metropolitan)

Alternatively you could of course indulge in this most precocious form of human expression and try to create an artistic rendering of the same desire, such as the above painting by Salvador Dali (a painting I happen to like in a particular mode).

Again the question, why would you?

My answer to this question, if you care to consider it, is quite straightforward, different languages allow our minds the expression of different varieties of the same experience. Put differently, by mapping and translating experience in and into different languages we may unshackle a very basic fixation of our minds, that an experience has a particular name in a particular language and thus carries a particular meaning and as consequence a particular state of mental emotional accommodation, including if so a particular set of ’recognizable’ behaviors.

Nevertheless, as I have written to you in my previous letter, the emergent semantic network of our minds, allow us a very special capability, some call it plasticity of mind, I, on the other hand prefer to call it ambiguity. I do not think that meanings are fixed, or definitions set in stone; I think that semantic reasoning is a direct by-product of the capability of our minds to inhere in ambiguity.
In ambiguity, we find the opening of spaces, of options of descriptions, of possibilities unknown, but more importantly, through ambiguity we may find a very basic key to the freedom of mind.

This key, which I propose to you here concerns the extended emotional reflectivity embedded in ambiguity, I propose it but will not elaborate now, since this letter is already long enough and I know how little patience you have for extended verbiage.

Therefore I will engage here in only one more quick point and then will let you be (for now).

The Autopoeitic system that is our minds permits a finite yet indefinite variety of inner configurations; each of us is such an amalgam of these configurations (from which our uniqueness). Certain particular configurations have tendencies of allowance that are either not present or only slightly present in other configurations. These particular configurations, which for now I will call, the ambiguous ones, have a very specific attribute that we are looking for. This attribute (a set of attributes really) can be summed up as the tendency to ‘verb a noun’ or alternatively to open spaces of descriptions, better yet for our communication here, a tendency towards increased freedoms.

You could call the particular configuration that is most favorable towards ascending into a freedom of mind state, ‘selving’. (Hence the question I have asked you above).

Finally, selving is an art, the art of living ‘in’ the edge. Yes indeed, ‘in’ and not ‘on’.

Soon I will write to you again, my friend, since you have picked my curiosity.

Until next
A possible friend in Selving,

W.
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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Part of the Ultrashorts project

Fri, May 3, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: Selving,Verbing,noun,language,freedom,storytelling,

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The otherness of the other is none other than me (or you)

So, my dear friend, here I continue the same line that I started previously in: “Liberation! It’s as simple as being free (from liberty)”.
Though I understand your questions perfectly, or at least that is how it appears presently, there is a point I would like to make before proceeding with an extended answer to your questions.

The point is this: The otherness of an ‘other’ is none other than you. Allow me a moment to explain, for it is no simple matter, to realize that otherness is fundamentally a complex trait-building, pattern making characteristic of our minds.
The simple manner to understand this concerns our perception apparatus and our processing of images in the process of self-description. The fashion by which you self describe define more or less the manner and mode by which the otherness of the other is described because contrary to popular opinion it is not our uniqueness that defines us but our similarities.

As embodied consciousness we have very little to go on when self-describing. We have our bodies of course, that are (presently) more or less fixed in their line of engagements and development. Consider for example that unless you belong to (presently) a very small minority of humans that at some point decide to change it for whatever reason, your biological gender is set from birth.
This little fact has more to do with your self-description than you imagine, if only because of the biological, hormonal and eventually cultural baggage this implies. It is extremely difficult in this instance to disentangle yourself from the particularities of your body, its gender, its color, its look and so on.
That however is only the beginning of the difficulty for soon enough, being subject to forces much beyond your control, at least initially, you will get a language and a biased experience of the world via your parents, siblings, family and friends, not to mention the geographical location of birth, its cultural heritage, possibly a religion and or political affiliations and so on.

Then at a certain point these forces coalesce into an apparently confident set of words and terms, views and biases, filters on reality, and an overall worldview, which of course you will consider as ‘you’.
The fact that you may realize that you had very little (if at all) say in these matters counts for little at the beginning for the simple reason that these will become the constituents or building blocks with which you have to work and they carry meanings, and significances that are hard to almost impossible to eradicate or change.

On top of these building blocks you will get an education, again a systemic impregnation of your mind in fashions to which until quite an advanced age you will have very little to say or indeed be able to criticize, but even if and when you do find yourself able to realize the state of affairs of your mind and self criticize to an extent that defies all that which was put there by ‘others’ you will find that certain attitudes, and some views are quite difficult to overcome.

But overcome them you must, if you are to create an ‘other’ defined by you and fitting the overall worldview which you have chosen.
The ‘other’ in you and as ‘you’ need be coherent and consistent with all that pertains to the relevancy of your process of self-description.

“Otherness is in many ways, a slippery and difficult term. A contradiction is apparent whereby the very process of naming the other, whether in specific or generalized terms, is bound by the simultaneous disappearance of the concept. More than just simply a result of a linguistic deferral of ‘meaning’, this situation is an effect of the fact that the very nature of alterity is impossible without the idea of sameness. Other and self are inherently joined and so when we ‘speak’ of otherness, we inevitably ‘speak’ of its other: selfhood. In spite of this, otherness is generally conceived of as that which is not ‘self’. We feign that there must be a dividing line somewhere between and not outside the two and as such the relationship between other and self is inevitably problematic and complex.”

(Otherness: Essays & Studies 1.1 from the Introduction by Maria Beville)



Otherness is most commonly defined as difference, both by external markers and internal characteristics and is generally accepted in this order. However the way I see it is that otherness is first and foremost and aspect of one’s self-reflection, self definition, and self-description, in this I think that otherness is a complex and highly critical issue in the process of self-revealing, or evolution into a state of personal liberty and freedom of mind.

Moreover, the ‘other’ as a sub-category of your own self-description is biased in as much as it is indeed a condition impregnated upon your mind by none other than your own process of self-description. Which of course brings me to your specific question (which I have rephrased a bit): “How can ‘the other’, as a representative of a condition in itself, can be a supportive power (partner) to the process of self-description into a state of liberation and the ascent into the freedom of mind which you have proposed? “

Permit me to say that I see this as a very important and critical question; indeed in as much as we are culturally biased in our present society to associate liberty with individualism and uniqueness, it may very well be that that this question represents the fulcrum of that which hinders our mutualities.

“…all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Martin Luther King Jr


There are many aspects to this hindrance and we can as a basic rule divide them into two generalized aspects, one is the substrate dependency of our minds upon our neuro-chemical soup (or brain) and the other our context dependency upon the language of our minds (which will include by necessity all of the cultural semantic patterns with which our minds have been filled.
I will not deal here with the first of these two, namely substrate dependency, I will say however, that though substrate dependency from which stems the concept of embodied consciousness is a very difficult nut to crack, there are many avenues in current scientific and theoretical research that may lead both to a better understanding of the mind body conundrum and possibly to paths of extending the mind into and unto the world in manners previously unthinkable. For an extended view on all that pertains to substrate dependency and the desire for ‘substrate independent minds' see the quite amazing work done by Randal Koene at Carboncopies.

Having said the above, and though I am a great believer in science and technology to provide for us tools of evolutionary advantage, my main concern is with the second point namely context dependency.
Context dependency has many aspects and many levels but at its most simple and basic it is an extension of the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, namely that our language influences the experience of reality.

But to update and upgrade our contextual dependency we need a new kind of conceptual scaffolding. The conceptual scaffolding we need has at its core the metamorphosis of the information-processing model of mind, in which incoming information is acted upon by the system. Our minds are not spatially fixated, and are to a very large extent better understood as emergent semantic networks.

And as emergent semantic networks our minds define and redefine continuously in a hyper complex dynamic process that which we consider as meaningful. In the case we are talking about here the ‘meaningfulness’ resides with the concept of the ‘other’. In the conceptual scaffolding I am proposing to you here, the very term ‘other’ transforms to become an extension of that which is ‘me’, but even that transformation is only the first step into a greater motion still. The motion I refer to is the one in which the ‘other’ is not only an extension but forms a nucleic reality within your own self-description. In this case the nucleic form or image that the ‘other’ has become is no longer disassociated from the powers at play within your own mind but constitutes ipso-facto a strength of activity, dynamically interacting with the overall process of your own self description.

“For human reality, to be is to choose oneself; nothing comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can receive or accept….it is entirely abandoned to the intolerable necessity of making itself be, down to the slightest details. Thus freedom…is the being of man, i.e., his nothingness of being.”

Jean-Paul Sartre


The thing is, that as the process unfolds you may discover a very interesting phenomenon, a phenomenon seldom acknowledged but extremely important nevertheless. The fact is that to allow the form sense-thought of the ‘other’ to interact meaningfully with your overall process of self-description an extended emotional reflectivity need be present. Put differently (and quite colloquially) without the ‘love of the other’ the other cannot become an inherent part of you. So in a sense that may answer your question concerning the conditions in which an ‘other’ can become a power for your own self-transformation into a liberated mind. The funny thing to notice here is that unless a very deep acceptance of the emotional reflectivity involving ‘the other’ is in place, the ‘other’ remains a ‘limiting condition’, whilst when the emotional capacity of your self description process extends into an accommodating inherency of ‘the other’ through love the ‘limiting condition’ transforms into a pillar of your own freedom of being, an allowance for your own liberty and independence.

Not only that, but over and above this particular direction of the evolution of your freedom, the inherency of the ‘other’ becomes an extended reality by which you ‘cover more ground’ or put differently, your self description incorporates a larger world, or better yet, the reality that is ‘you and me’ has transformed into a greater unified whole, in this fashion my freedom is unshackled from the tyranny of the ‘other’ by intimacy.

The intimacy about which I have written to you in the previous letter is a creative and dynamic interactivity, an intermingling of minds. (I will write to you, if it is of interest, about this kind of mind intimacy in another letter.)

Finally, before I bore you with too many words, let me say that for my own mind the term ‘the other’ is practically a non-issue. My lovers are free to change ‘me’ as I am free to change them; it is in a fashion the ultimate uniqueness of the process of self-reflection for by its very dynamic inherency I am made greater. Greater in all fashions but primarily greater in the unique freedom of mind that I embody.

The nothingness of my being is thus my highest asset and my extended reality the very liberating and highly idiosyncratic intimacy within which my freedom resides.

Into my desire of being, I fold.
Until next,
W.
..

Addendum:

As an addendum to all of the above permit me another small intrusion upon your precious time. You mentioned in another letter that you find it very difficult to merge with your desires, your questions of life and make them part of your liberation.
To walk on nothing like I do, you may need to soften the kind of intellectualized logic you find so precious. Freedom of mind and personal liberty, seen as a hyper complex dynamic process demand a certain flow, which carries its own logic for sure, yet it is a soft version of self-reflection. The soft version of logic I refer to here includes an allowance of ‘desire’ to fold again and again upon itself, both condensing the desire (becoming in the process a motive power) and simultaneously annihilating the ‘strong‘ foundations of its semantic contours.. Thus providing the intensity necessary for the ‘walking on nothing’. If you are to walk on nothing what will sustain you? You guessed correctly: the otherness of the other as you (or me), its intimacy revealing its intensity. (I’ll write more about this)

-
(Part of the Ultrashorts Project)

Endnotes:

1. Image 'Otherness' by Artist Robyn Walton

Fri, Apr 26, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: freedom,storytelling,liberation,philosophy,otherness,self-reflection,

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Liberation! It’s as simple as being free (from liberty)

(A very liberating story of and on freedom based on a personal letter, which you shouldn't believe and neither do I, but then here it is)

My dear friend,

You asked me, in truth and simplicity, why it was so difficult to be free?
And my first answer need be:

Forget truth and simplicity- aim for elegance of thought; the reason, if you should care to explore it, is that no reality survives the encounter with an inquiring mind, none more so than the reality of one’s own freedom and liberation..


Could I not oblige you and answer you more thoroughly?

Of course I can and of course I do, here, I do and will keep on doing so, of course you shouldn’t believe a word of what I am saying, this is after all a story, a private one for sure, almost a confession of sorts. And as confessions go one wouldn’t trust them, not implicitly, for confessions demand ontology and maybe a theology, but a confession on freedom’s difficulty will demand the annihilation of both ontology and theology not to mention the annihilation of one’s belief in freedom as a conceptual idea.
You also shouldn’t believe it because after all how can one explain from the standpoint of freedom why freedom is so difficult to attain, for if one is free, it is not difficult anymore, now is it? In fact it may very well be that the difficulty in finding freedom is exactly that, the difficulty in telling the story of freedom, in such a fashion that the story does not hinder one’s freedom.
Quite a conundrum I agree and yet one must try, if only because of the love I have for you, or more accurately the extension of me into you as love.
Why, the very word freedom means love, or friendship, or acceptance, or joy, or dear one, or beloved, but somehow we managed to forget this. Well maybe not forget, more like a kind of obfuscation of immediacy, as if at a certain point we started looking at freedom as a freedom ‘from’ and not freedom ‘in’.

I think I cannot speak about freedom without mentioning some great humans that walked among us, and helped us and me, understand our freedom, such as Isaiah Berlin.
He is an important person primarily because he made a very important distinction between negative and positive liberty, in simple terms he taught us that there is a big and critical difference between the absence of something ((i.e. of obstacles, barriers, constraints or interference from others)) and the presence of something (i.e. of control, self-mastery, self-determination or self-realization), in Berlins’ words:”..we use the negative concept of liberty in attempting to answer the question “What is the area within which the subject — a person or group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?”, whereas we use the positive concept in attempting to answer the question “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?” (1969, pp. 121–22). (Positive and Negative Liberty)

Isaiah Berlin is quite a recent protagonist in this great quest for liberation, you should if you really are interested in understanding the difficulties of freedom go back a bit in human history and study those minds that claimed wisdom concerning liberation. You could as did I many years ago, start with Plato (as good a point of departure as any) for whom freedom was something that might only be attained in a perfect society ruled (how else?) by philosophers kings, for Plato only the just can be free, and you my friend are far from just, knowing you, this will not be to your liking, I do not think that is what you are asking.
Besides if we were to follow Plato and Aristotle we would need first to accept that we are political or social animals, a fact which I for one, think about differently.
Maybe you could seek the insights of those wise Indians, some of them spoke of Moksha (liberation), or Mukti (release) as liberation or release from rebirth, again I do not think you will find there that which you are seeking but it is important to know what they say, especially if you look into the concept of Nirvana, though I will argue that the other shore of wisdom has nothing to do with tranquility or extinguishing desires.
I suggest to you all these important paths, which are not mine, because if you are to unbelieve me I think you should have a good reason to do so.

My main issue with all of them is about attainment, I do not think that freedom is something to be attained or that liberation is to be sought by negative liberty (a la Berlin) and though I much appreciate the clarity that his writings have given me I also do not think in terms of positive liberty as in having the presence of self-realization (since we have so many selves..).

Freedom and liberation are not aims to attain, objectives to target, aspirations to manage, or goals to reach; these are to a very large extent hyper complex dynamic processes of mind, that vigorously shake the very foundation of that which brings them into being. Thus in a very real sense these concepts have no foundation. Not even as objects of mental consciousness.

Hence the big problem!

If they have no foundation how are we to know anything about them? The answer is of course through intimacy and intensity.

I think I told you once that it took me many years of combat, both of the reflective kind, and of the emotional tempests sort, to release the concept of liberation from the shackles of contextualized freedom.
It took me years to understand that spiritual liberation has nothing whatsoever to do with spirit, whatever that term may mean; more importantly perhaps was the reflective time that was involved in unleashing the freedom ‘to be’, from the freedom of ‘to do’ or ‘doing’.
It was always the confusion of acting that didn’t make sense, as if by being able to go away (unclinging) from my love I would be free, and therein laid the conundrum, for if I was free to go I would liberate from a situation that I desired to continue, shackles and all.

Didn’t make sense to me! I needed my desires, I desired my loves, I loved my feelings and I felt my existence, how could I, or better yet, why should I, have left them behind? And for that matter where was this behind? I wanted it all, to take it with me. Where to? Nowhere in specific, and nothing in particular, but all these where me, so how was I to be free if I left part of me out of the game?

The thing is that as funny is it may sound you cant be free alone but not in the platonic sense, there is a sense to liberty that demands at least one more mind to be liberated with you, put differently it takes two (or more) to tango.. or be free.
There is a sense to the manner and style of freedom; we are not created equal (for that matter we are not created but emergent and I know it’s a poor choice of words) and that is why we each have a unique kind of freedom and a highly idiosyncratic fashion of liberty.
A kind of madness if you like, but a madness that can go everywhere! A very personal and highly distinctive form of madness, mostly hidden in the light of internal desire..

“Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.”

R. D. Laing

In a way there is no theory that can account for all possible manners of being free, which is another problematic aspect of the freedom and liberty issue, and thus another way of understanding why it is so difficult to be free.

I know you know some of these issues very deeply but I am not sure you understand deeply enough the concept of agency (which is more of a philosophical and legal term really which modern society has created for us) I mean how intimate are you with the agent that presumable you are? I know you take your responsibilities seriously but think it through: what higher responsibility do you have than the management of the meaning you yourself have put upon the idea of your own freedom?

That is what I meant when I wrote to you at the beginning of this letter, that you need, (as did I), to release the concept of liberation from the shackles of contextualized freedom. It’s always the context that constrains the explosive nature of personal liberty.

There is, in the world we have emerged into, a kind of tyranny, of the context of course, but more specifically of the body. The tyranny of the body is only one amongst the many many kinds of restrictions we find ourselves in but it bears special consideration.
It bears this very special consideration because we are embodied consciousnesses, having cognitive capabilities that far outshine the capacities of our bodies. Some of your thoughts as you disclosed to me in the past and if I recall correctly, involved a desire to eliminate pain, the pain of the body and the pain of the mind. You wanted to be free of these and that started your quest so many years ago, but all the drugs in the world will not eliminate these pains, because though they can be temporarily abated they will always find a new way to tackle you.
There will always be another demon come to haunt you, be it of the material kind or of the mental sort. Unless of course, you can merge intimately with them in high intensity; it is in a fashion a form of desire folded upon itself, fractalized until its nothingness becomes apparent.
In this you may possibly not be happy (whoever told you that your freedom implies your happiness?) but you will discover that you can walk on nothing.

I like walking on nothing. Maybe you can like it too.And we can be free together.

My dear friend, I could write pages and pages in trying to describe to you the difficulties of being free, but I know that is not what you have asked of me. I could give you theories and clichés that sometimes help ease a moment or two. I could describe to you the beauty of being free and the exhilaration of certain moments of heightened inspiration, by that stimulating you to desire the kind of freedom I am privileged to partake in. But also this is not the essence of your inquiry.
I think that what you ask is more a question of management, management of (apparently) conflicting desires.
And I promise one of these days I’ll write you a letter about this subject but for now I must run take care of my loved ones. Strange, I know, but taking care of my loved ones allows me the freedom and the liberation of being that which I am, a relation of loves and desires, powered by an ever increasing allowance for that which is not me to change me. Just as you do when you ask this kind of questions.

I hope I have managed if not to answer (because I do not think there can be a full answer) at least to raise your appetite for more of these semi-poetic elaborations on our mutuality.

Until soon then,

Slowly but surely I walk on nothing, from there my love, from there my confidence, in the chaotic harmony of ambiguity.

w.

ps. you see, Liberation! It’s as simple as being free (from liberty).

ps1. soon I will write to you again on this fascinating topic.
-


EndNote:

I have deleted from this letter some issues that I think you might find interesting.

1. A deleted scene: "..But you know me; you know I love my language treats of etymology, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that freedom and liberation come from two different dimensions (I mean cultures). It appears that Freedom comes from a Saxon root, from the German Freiheit (freedom) whilst Liberty comes from a Norman root, from the French Liberte’ (liberty) (see)."

2.The Idealized agency of free will, is more than a perpetuated philosophical (and psychological) myth, it is ipso facto, a devastatingly ignorant approach to the concept of personal autonomy.
Personal autonomy may best be understood as more of an authorization than a willed action made by the agent.

3.The authorization in turn should be looked upon as an act of distancing on the spectrum of self-reflection, balancing its act in a move towards self-alienation. (in this self alienation is responsible for an extreme form of self reflection in its negativity.)

4.Being alienated from your own power to act (think Tourette syndrome) defies the whole concept of free willed agency (as is the case with addiction- or for that matter the belief that freedom means doing whatever it is that you like, whenever you feel like doing it – Neti-Neti).

5.What about instincts? Think about it like an authorization given by reason to the motivational power of desire
—

Part of the Ultrashorts project

Mon, Apr 8, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: freedom,storytelling,liberation,philosophy,

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Archeodatalogy - Entwined, Enmeshed, Entangled
Project: Polytopia

Entwined, Enmeshed, Entangled – Three modes of ‘being’ pertinent to our cyborgization process

Abstract:

By redesigning the conceptual landscape of our networked inter-relationality we may finally disentangle ourselves from the all-pervading occlusion of the cyborgization process and allow a fresh recognition of the manifold human sensorium extended in hyperconnectivity.
In the re-conceptualizing of our cyber existence we may need relinquish a few cherished objects of identity such as man machine interface, virtuality and man machine co-existence but more importantly the dualistic distinction between ‘real’ life and our virtual extensions as existence.
All of these descriptive objects of identity I suggest should become ‘naturalized’ in a new cyber-existential language.

This is the first part of a three pronged approach to what I believe is the foundation of a future philosophy of and for the hyperconnected individual.
I will try to show that these three modes of beingness are the quintessential infrastructures necessary for a future of a technological civilization aiming for the firmament of freedom and equality, personal responsibility and open access culture.
A civilization, which roots, we currently inhabit but that promises changes to the perception of ourselves, the understanding of the universe and the manner by which we may develop in tandem.
The three lines of approach that will be used are: Entwinement, Enmeshment, and Entanglement.
Each of these terms represents a similar but different manner to realize the state of affairs of hyperconnectivity as the threshold infrastructure in the process of becoming a citizen of the future, a cyborg netizen and perhaps a posthuman.

Entwinement, Enmeshment and Entanglement each represent a different level of intimacy in the infocology (see lexical index) one exists in and partakes of. The three terms offered here are suggestions for an illustrative strategy that will allow a deeper and more accurate description of the state of affairs of our cyber existence. Each of these terms will be expanded upon later, for now suffice it to say that the terms are distinguished primarily by the amount, depth and extensiveness of the connectivity between minds in the hyperconnected infosphere. Entwinement stands for the lowest level, Enmeshment for the medium level and Entanglement for the highest or deepest level.

Introduction:

“Chance Favors the Connected Mind” (Steven Johnson)

Between our digital reputations taking hold of our old tribal systems of acknowledgement and trust and the new cyborg existentialism a tension is made manifest.
This tension that I will expound upon in a moment can be seen primarily in its hyper complex fragility and tendency to ambiguity.
The tendency for ambiguity, itself a by product of the de-potentialization of the known factors of trust moving into new realms of unknowability, increases exponentially as networked decisions are made manifest (e.g. 'like' clicks).
The cyborg existentialism is a new domain of relationality residing between the tribal homophily and hyperconnected heterophily.
The cyborg existentialism (CE) is a fresh approach to ‘freedom’ as the ultimate ground of human beings' capacity to relate to the world, extended and enhanced in the world via technology.

Cyborg existentialism implies that sensory attunement via the embedding of technology in base line human bodies reveals a coherent understanding of the precedence of existence to essence. In short the idea is that the existence of the individual as an extended techno-sensory awareness mechanism belongs to a category in and of itself and should be looked at as the atom of the future (hyperconnected) cyber-civilization (see- The rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization ).
*Notes: I will use existentialism as a general kind or manner of thought and not as a systemic philosophy. Existentialism in this regard is an approach or an attitude, putting the individual sense of being as primary.

But first we need introduce a new term:



Archeodatalogy

(A neologism construct from the Greek arkhaios, "ancient"+ Data- The word data is the plural of datum, neuter past participle of the Latin dare, "to give", hence "something given" + the Greek noun λόγος (logos, "speech", "account", "story").

Archeodatalogy – Noun.

Meaning: Archeodatalogy is the study and analysis of the Meta narrative emerging out of the accumulated information about an individual in a multiplicity of infocologies.

Short version: The study and analysis of emerging meta-narratives in hyperconnectivity

The premises of Archeodatalogy:

1. A hyperconnected individual ‘is’ and ‘has’ inherently a multiplicity of identities.
2. The multiplicity of identities a hyperconnected individual is made of, are manifested primarily in the infocologies this individual partakes of.
3. A hyperconnected individual then is a multiplicity of identities embedded in a multiplicity of infocologies; the coupling between these infocologies can be strong or soft, discreet or continuous.
4. A hyperconnected individual exists as a spectrum of identities correlated but not necessarily closely coupled with the fields of interests manifested as, and in, the infocologies this individual partakes in.
5. The study and analysis of a hyperconnected individual in a given infocology is the subject matter of Archeodatalogy.
6. Archeodatalogy assumes that the inter relation between a hyperconnected individual and the infocology in which she exists is a thematic environment from which emerges a particular narrative. This particular narrative is one of many such narratives, each of which represents the interrelation of the particular hyperconnected individual to a particular thematic environment or infocology.
7. Each narrative has a particular environmental theme that can be described as the story of ‘this individual in this infocology’. Each such narrative has its own characteristics and attributes and though at times might correlate and or superimpose upon another narrative, the particular narrative carries its own peculiar and idiosyncratic coherence.
8. The purpose of Archeodatalogy is to create a Meta account of the multiplicity of narratives (of a hyperconnected individual in multiple infocologies) and to allow for the emergence of a Meta story descriptive narrative, from which arrays of predictions can be summarized.
9. Archeodatalogy assumes that no particular thematic narrative can capture the totality of the hyperconnected individual, therefore only a Meta descriptive chronicle of the multiplicity of interrelations can permit a full understanding of a hyperconnected individual.
10. The results of an Archeodatalogy analysis permit a mapping of an hyperconnected individual correlated to her fields of interest that may or may not parallel this individual immediate existence, nevertheless it is the assumption of the Archeodatalogy method that a high enough approximation can be realized.

Part 1: Entanglement is an event – Enmeshment is an episode- Entwinement is circumstantial

Explication:

In a state of Entwinement the correlativity of interest and mutual cross-fertilization is low to very low.
Currently the state of Entwinement is the most widespread.

A circumstantial state in hyperconnectivity can be defined as an accident of (at least initially) secondary importance in which two or more minds find themselves in the same infocology for reasons that are not necessarily pertinent and or interesting to their personal agenda (membership in the given infocology excluded)- example: one may join the network of twitter and because one twits with the hashtag of #Science he or she will be grouped in a Science list and by extension be correlated to all other minds (and possibly bots) that use this hashtag. As a consequence one may find himself being followed by a number of members of twitter and be labeled in the same fashion, namely ‘Scientist on Twitter’ or alternatively ‘Twitting about science’. This level of correlativity between the minds involved will be called here entwinement. However the level of ‘intimacy’ between these minds is (again, at least initially) practically non-existent, so though ‘Jon’ and ‘Mary’ may both be part of the infocology titled ‘ Scientist on twitter’ the amount of information that can be gleaned from this fact is very small if interesting at all.

In a state of Enmeshment the correlativity of interest and mutual cross-fertilization is medium and can be averaged.
Currently the state of Enmeshment is in the exponential increase.

To continue the same example from above then, an episode in hyperconnectivity can be defined as an extended session of interest between two or more minds that are of medium correlation such as might happen in a Google hangout or Skype chat or alternatively an extended period of loosely coupled membership in the same infocology- such as a comment section in a particular site.
An episode in hyperconnectivity will be called here ‘Enmeshment in hyperconnectivity’ and can be a single episode (as in ‘we had a few exchanges on the comment board of..”) to a multi episode connection (as in ‘ we are in continuous contact via the comment section of.. but it never extended beyond that’). The importance in understanding the enmeshment state of affairs lies with the amount of information that can be pertinent to the individuals involved. In a very wide sense the scope of possible ambient intimacy is extended beyond that of the accidental or circumstantial (as in Entwinement) and thus allowed for reciprocal influence, but did not reach a critical level of mutuality such that might exist in the state of Entanglement.

In a state of Entanglement the correlativity of interest and mutual cross-fertilization is high to very high, the difference resulting in a closely coupled relationship that may engender a relationship of extended duration. Entangled states in hyperconnectivity are currently quite rare (though in continuous increase) but offer us a glimpse into the future of inter-relationality and intersubjectivity as the web progresses and the Internet spreads globally.


A short lexical index:

Infocology: Information ecology – Basically the sum total of a particular kind or set of information, related to a particular domain of interest. Infocologies are nested and carry a given set of characteristics defined by the design and function of the infocology in question.

Infocologies stand for the ambient ecology of minds in a hyperconnected situation.

Infocologies should be considered as complex adaptive cultural contexts of hyperconnectivity in which transformative and processual properties extend the being of a particular mind

Infocologies can be seen as inter-relational spaces extending the biological autonomy of the individual mind into new forms of being manifested as the cyber-autonomy manifold.

Facebook for example is a medium size infocology nested within the larger infocology of the overall social networks infocologies of the net, themselves nested within the larger framework of the Web. (Of course also within FB there exists a continuum of nested infocologies, defined by friends or acquaintances and so on)

(It is my view that as the complexity of the web continues to increase both in size and widespread, the babushka effect reflected in nested infocologies will grow exponentially and in consequence the importance of Archeodatalogy will develop in tandem. )

Some other examples of infocologies:
The set comprised of all commentators on say CNN or the NYT current news page.
The set of all Wikipedia users as an ensemble represent an infocology.

With the advent of “anticipatory computing,” or “information gravitation”, (though I am not certain I go with these descriptive terms), the search will be gravitational and come to us no doubt about that, in this case the search itself might be reflected upon as an infocology.
Following the above the next step in the sequence per necessity will be self-mapping in hyperconnectivity. (Self-mapping in infocologies is the main tool we should get acquainted with, it is via the agency of such an activity as self-mapping that we will allow the myriad identities of our minds to carve a mind habitat on the net that fits and accommodates, our passions and our interests, our complex life. In the second episode of the rise of the cyber unified civilization asymmetry is being explored as the initial attribute of self-mapping in complex infocologies.) See: The Natural Asymmetry of infocologies.

Coming soon:

Part 2: Entanglement is a spectrum – Enmeshment is a gamut - Entwinement is particular

Part 3: Entanglement is multifaceted – Enmeshment is involved - Entwinement is exclusive


This is a work in progress and belongs to the Polytopia research projects. Please use with discretion and elegance. It is a fresh neologism meant to help us in distinguishing the next step in the evolution of hyperconnectivity. Though I do not accept the copyright idea in principle, please refer to this first paper when referring to the term Archeodatalogy. As of February 2013 search results in all major search engines has given zero results therefore I am not aware that the term exists anywhere in any fashion remotely similar to the way I present here, it is therefore my assumption that this is a first exposition of a term that I believe will be of great importance in the coming future.

Please use with elegance and grace.



Archeodatalogy - Entwined, Enmeshed, Entangled by Tyger AC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Cross-posted on RealityAugmented

Mon, Feb 18, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: Archeodatalogy,Cyborg,Hyperconnectivity,Infocology,Entwined,Enmeshed,Entangled,
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Plan B For Humanity - The Next 200 Years
Project: Polytopia

A video timeline of the social and technological changes that could save civilization and secure the long term survival of humanity.

I have watched this video and I hope that you will do too. There are many Utopian oriented perspectives presented here, in a very ‘cool’ and attractive fashion. However being the realistic (and highly skeptical) futurist that I am, I find the video though admirable in some aspects, somewhat estranging, not because of some particular aspect, but mainly because the tone distances the immediacy of our perceptions and thus the possible real life behaviors that we may need implement to make this portrayed reality an actuality.

Would love to read some of your views on the matter.



notes:

COPYRIGHT ATTRIBUTION
Music Libraryhttp://www.youtube.com/themusicrack
Playlist: Silent Films
Title: CHEE ZEE CAVES—Movie Soundtracks | Creative Commons | Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Videos
Artist: Kevin MacLeod
Copyright: 2011 Kevin MacLeod. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/  verify at http://www.incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/) 

Fri, Feb 8, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: future, Singularity, humanity, next 200 years, video
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Illegal, Addictive and necessary, Ramez Naam’s Nexus
Project: Polytopia

Nexus is about the evolution of a techno-participatory culture.

It’s called Nexus, an upgrade to the human brain, an update to the human mind, a coherent nano-technological addendum to the future of mind-to-mind communication.
Its all this and more, in a very real sense the Nexus technology as portrayed by Naam is a predictive and highly plausible vision of the evolution of complexity, technology and society.
The story is fast paced, the theme uncommon enough to be intriguing, the storyline common enough to allow non-stop fascination.



It’s a science fiction book all right but not of the regular kind (whatever one may mean by regular in a genre that is anything but), the difference in this case and my interest in the book is its emphasis on the connectivity effect.
Yes there are bad guys and good guys and the full complement of every good techno-thriller action packed scenes, nevertheless I admire Mr.Naam for the ingenuity of hiding in plain sight what I believe he meant to convey.
Namely, our future (2040 in this case) is made of humans desiring to connect to other humans in a transcendent fashion.
In other words whatever you will think nexus is about, my take is that the meaning of the book is its techno-participatory culture.

Such a culture is already here now and in this sense Naam’s nexus is (as all good science fiction is) a critique of our current state of affairs, with all its attending protagonists, the luddites and the technophiles, the control freaks and the meditating mind connected lovers.

It is a good read indeed, much better than I expected, I am the first to admit, but more importantly perhaps I think that what this science fiction narrative is trying to show us is that technology is much more than a tool, deeply ingrained and reflective of our conflicting desires.

I salute Ramez Naam’s ‘Nexus’, his first novel, highly recommend it and expect him to provide a sequel, I for one have become a fan.

Ramez Naam’s take on his book Nexus at Google Talks:
Data flowing in and out of our brains, Google being the third part of our brains
watch.
-

Fri, Feb 1, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: Nexus,Book,Ramez Naam,Sci-Fi,future,Mind Meld,Hyperconnectivity,
Sent to project: Polytopia

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One Film: Cloud Atlas. This is not a film review.

Fluidity of identity

First conclusion, most moviegoers will not get this movie. Sad and unfortunate but there you have it.

Second conclusion, Cloud Atlas releases a blow of sensitivity where it matters most; a punch straightly delivered into our mind simulators, into our fantasy descriptions of the real.

Third conclusion, the movie portrays the fluidity of our identities, this it does marvelously.



The movie is majestic, the film is intriguing, but what does it have in common with itself?
The answer is simple, this movie has multiple identities and as such will not let itself be pinned down easily. Like it or hate it, boring or exciting, this film will elicit a response from the beholder and will not soon be forgotten, the reason? It will, using circumnavigation kinds and manners, of cinematic descriptive technologies, remind you of you.
It will reflect the chaotic, wild and feral fashion by which our thoughts try to regulate themselves into a semblance of order, knowing full well that whatsoever is the belief paradigm underpinning our specific thought patterns, we both wish to believe it and cant possibly accept its manifested behaviors, ours that is.

Unlike most commentators on the film I do not think it is religious or tends towards spirituality in any fashion, on the contrary I think the film is highly atheistic and materialistic. It might even be an aesthetic statement of sorts, a self styled manifesto for the future of cinema.
To my eyes the film manages to extricate itself from its own dilemmas by the sheer ‘tour de force’ embedded in its experimentation procedure.
Moreover I saw the film as a representation of the mind, our mind, both the personal and the cultural, the historical as well as the futuristic.
I will not give the narrative of the film, you can find this anywhere, everywhere, actually to my perception the narrative as such is less important in this film, what is important is its flows, its multiplicity of flows.

What for me made this movie a fantastic watch was the idea of the interweaving, of characters, of events, of times, of genders, of colors, of periods, of settings, of emotions made manifest and in which it is a pleasure to get lost.

As a first approximation then to the question in what fashion is this film interesting I would say that the film (made by Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer) is a self-reflective loop. A philosophical investigation, not unlike that of Douglas Richard Hofstadter important book ‘I am strange loop’.

I just finished watching Cloud Atlas, a fantastic cinematic experience, grand and all encompassing and though I would love to see these huge concepts explored in a mini series, the film does have its own thematic ‘raison d’être’.
The main themes of the movie: interconnectedness, hyperconnectivity, the making of a personal freedom weaved in an ensemble of stunning imagery crossing boundaries of space-time and contexts allow this epic story to mesh its own myth. And like every good story ever told it demands of us attention, alertness, synchronization, and keeping up with the rhythm of unfoldment.



I fully agree with Lana Wachowski when she stated "People will try to will Cloud Atlas to be rejected. They will call it messy, or complicated, or undecided whether it’s trying to say something New Agey-profound or not. And we’re wrestling with the same things that Dickens and Hugo and David Mitchell and Herman Melville were wrestling with. We’re wrestling with those same ideas, and we’re just trying to do it in a more exciting context than conventionally you are allowed to. [...] We don’t want to say, 'We are making this to mean this.' What we find is that the most interesting art is open to a spectrum of interpretation."

Go watch if you haven't already, I'll go watch it again.

Endnote:

*(I have not read the book upon which the movie is based, but even if I would have I do not think that a movie adaptation should be in any fashion compared to its book, be it a good or bad adaptation bears no relevance, it is not this kind of continuity that we should look for in a cinematic experience but the effect of the audio visual weaving of our minds into a story that moves us)

Mon, Jan 28, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: Film,Cloud Atlas,Hyperconnectivity,Fluid Identity,

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Testing 1,2,3. No traces of this event will be left (a TLMAP Sci-Fi Ultrashort)

'Testing 1,2,3.' is the fourth entry in the Trans Luminal Mail Archives (TLMAP)

TLMAP 002276-88 (Letter the fourth) following TLMAP 00776-26 (Letter the third- Ideational Sensate)

The Editors
—

These are the real spaces you can choose from.

Of course there are also spaces that are not real that you can still choose from, there are also unreal spaces that you cannot choose from and also un-choose-able spaces that are both real and unreal and more so than other spaces there are spaces that you must choose because these are the spaces that allow the illusion of choice to be perpetuated.

By necessity the illusion of choice need be perpetuated.

Now then, in this proposal we will promote a particular space that you must choose and an unreal space that you cannot choose, if you can un-choose the real and unreal the choice, the job will be almost yours, since this is the first part of the test.

In the second part we will present you a particular time, which you must choose, it must however be inconsequential and meaningless, your task will be to unmask its timelessness and present it as a moment of intentionality.

If you can sequence the event, the job is now two thirds yours.

The last part is obviously the most difficult, though it will appear to you as the most simple. It consists of relocating an unreal space for a chosen myth in a sequenced event and a proof that you have been moved.

Do not concern yourself with the meaning of the proof, nor its consequences.

In the event of your successfully completing these tasks you will be instantaneously transformed into your job.

You have 17 moments to complete these tasks.
The logic of the moment is in your hands.

In the event of your inability to complete one or more of these tasks, nothing will happen, nothing will change; all implied meanings would be restored to their original state.

For the purpose of these tasks we will put at your disposition the resources of seventeen infinities to be disposed of as you see fit. You can also use whatever help you deem necessary, including this tester, its universe, its infinity and all correlated sensations.

The only hint we can give you at this point is not to use that which brought you until here; all previous causations, motivations, states and computations you have performed prior to this moment will be a hindrance to your possible success. Hope and or belief are both detrimental and inconsequential.

A Token:

We are not interested in your success or failure; we remain totally agnostic as concerns your desires and or motivations, the very fact that you have reached a point of testing is the only proof we need.
We do not know how a useful and successful completion of the test appears to you, nor does it appear to us, we can only ascertain that in the event of success full transformation into your job occurs instantaneously.
In the event of success this test will be forgotten and erased from all archives of all universes.
In the event of failure this test will be forgotten and erased from all archives of all universes.

No traces of this event will be left anywhere, anytime, anyspace.

We serve at your pleasure.
..

A reminder:

Editors note:

The Trans – Luminal mail archives

Trans Luminal mail is a repository of letters written by unknowns to unknowns, these letters carry no valid destinations and no convincing authors, these are simply fragments of impossible conversations, dialogues and monologues, treated as pieces of an indefinite puzzle which purpose we do not know and goal we cannot conceive, these letters are found in the trans luminal archive, riding the subspace flow and having no particular order, we do not touch the content of the letters, and we long ago stopped trying to make sense of them, we extract them, we publish them and we hope that if you are a destination or indeed an author of one or more of these letters you can take benefit from their archiving. We also realize that though some of these letters carry a sense of intimacy and may in fact make sense only to their recipients and originators, these nevertheless might help others in their quest of comprehension. In the old annals of humanity there used to be a tradition of embedding treasures of wisdom in hidden locations so as to be readily available at the appropriate time for the appropriate person, these so called Termas, had as a rule a tendency to be written in the past for future generations, the letters of the trans luminal archive however, have no such disposition and have in fact been written at different times and spaces configurations, some of which are from the future to the past, some from the past to the future, some come from parallel time lines and therefore need be understood as concomitant but in different dimensions of space, whilst others yet have been written in the same space but in different factors of time, other letters still are probably from interweaved subjectified spaces to which we have no access, the information however we deem to be accurate. We have no idea and no theory that explains how these writings have found their way to the trans luminal archive, we know that information can be propagated in faster than light speeds and though we presently cannot do so ourselves we do have the capacity of extraction, hence the Trans Luminal mail archives project.

We believe most of those letters to be written by sentient beings most of which belong to the human species, at least in as much as we can discern, however some of the letters that will be published have certain neologisms and idiosyncratic usages of language to which we have no context and thus do not assume human origination, though sentiency can be perceived.

For the purpose of retaining the anonymity of times and spaces we have edited the only identifying code of light cone time stamp, the removal of such was made in accordance with our charter of extraction and publication. The letters are for unrestricted utilization and thus are to be considered as under sentient public domain.

The Editors,
The Trans Luminal Mail Archives (TLMAP)


...
(The TLMAP is a new Sci-Fi project that aims to complement the Ultrashorts Project.)

Wed, Jan 23, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: Sci-fi, Ultrashort, TLMAP, Testing 1, 2, 3.

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