this lossy codec

Ever look around and start to notice themes popping up at certain points in your life? I do. I suspect it is a common enough phenomenon. Still, what people do, or how they react or listen to the world around them is an uncertain maneuver. Indeed, most people think that DOing something means being ACTIVE and moving foreward with little or no attention paid to the world around. There is an alternative view that has at its basis the idea that the ‘SELF’ is not merely limited to the physical body but that it merges into the environment in a way so subtle so as to actually be a continuity. “Huh?” you ask?

Here is a link to a fractal video created by my friend Jonathan Wolfe. It starts with the primordial Mandelbrot Set. Pay close attention to where the video continues to zoom. It is a choice made by the creator (in this case, Jonathan). It just so happens that the almost(?) infinite zoom is most heightened at the edges. Isn’t it interesting that no matter how much we zoom, the “edge” is never found?

Now, as I understand it, fractals are a graphical representation of a mathmatical proccess of recursive feedback (ie. feeding the solution of a quadratic equation back into the the formual over and over). Now this process of feedback has a great deal to do with Cybernetics. Cybernetics comes from the Greek kybernetes which means steersman. The idea is that the steersman is a part of a feedback loop between the rudder, the current and the allignment with where he’s going. He is constantly making adjustments and counter-adjustments to keep on his course. (Interestingly, our word government comes from the same root).

So this cybernetics stuff gets pretty heady. The basic idea is that the steersman is a part of a process. If he stops paying attention, he’ll go off course. Now, an old timer who’d been piloting for 20 years probably it becomes second nature. Like us driving a car. We don’t actually think about what we are doing (we’re too busy on the phone), but still, somehow we don’t ram that guy in front of us or run over any pedestrians (generally).

So what if our bodies were like this; vehicles we had long ago learned to pilot and gotten so good at we just unconsciously internalized the process. But where are we going? Did the Captain give us directions? Have we checked the current?

So. Environment+Self=Consciousness.

Of course, this can be sketchy territory. There is a fine line between seeing ‘signs’ and hearing ‘voices’. A maximum of discretion is advised. Still, it is easy for me to imagine the ancients interacting with the world around them in this way. Magic? The Tao? I know not…

I actually was planning on writing about the themes that have popped up lately for me. I’ll leave you with this for today and hope that those who’ve read it have found it stimulating at least in some sense.

If not, check this out and at least you’ll have something to thank me for.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Speculation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.