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01.04.01
Belief Systems - Origins and Classification
Origins
Regarding "Belief Systems" and their origins, it is
possible that many are the result of the human mind's attempt to reconcile
observable and unobservable cause-&-effect. Human desires, goals, and
plans appear subject to the vagaries of a chaotic universe. The mind
struggles and attempts to find causality and effectualness in the chaos of
existence and as a result often progresses at a rapid pace toward madness
(a form of instability).
In the evolutionary path of most minds there is a built-in
governor, a self-protection mechanism that retards the journey toward insanity, melancholy
and despair. It is the belief sub-system; a portion of the human mind that
attempts to ensure that cyclical loops of cause and effect cannot run to the
point of self-destruction. In some, the belief sub-system is formed at the
moment of self-awareness. In others, it develops over time. In a
few, it may develop only partially or does not develop at all or is of a
rudimentary nature, extending only to observable phenomena.
Classification
Belief Systems may be classified in numerous ways. One
such schema consists of a hierarchical taxonomy with the concepts of Universal
and Derived at the root node. Universal belief systems are those that
appear spontaneously in multiple cultures and have a significant correlation of
like attributes or themes. Derived systems, as the name implies, are those
that have their origins in the logical or synthetic manipulations of properties
and/or methods of one or more parent belief system concepts. Polymorphic
Inheritence is permitted.
This schema appears suitable for classification of all known
belief systems in that it provides a general form and self-clustering
opportunities. Further refinements may be made using Object::Attribute-Value
structures as differentiable concept vectors. The OAV form is especially
useful in comparing and classifying descriptive concepts of systems that utilize
symbolism. The symbolism may be either abstract or concrete so long as it
is instantiable.
00.07.07
A Life Allegory From The Mounds People Of The Mississippi River
Valley
It is times such as these that test us all. Test us in
ways that we could not have foreseen. To love one is to love all. To
love all is to love none. To love none is to have never lived. A
puzzle? Perhaps, yet there is some truth in it.
How easy it is to write nonsense. Perhaps that is one of
the reasons why there are too many words; too many stars. What is it that
you wish to say, oh heathen spirit? Why do you whisper to young children
playing beside the shaded stream? Why do you whisper promises that you are
not empowered to make and cannot possibly keep? Isn't it enough that your
silent voice still echo's among the leaves of the cottonwood trees when the hot
summer breezes blow? Isn't it enough that you can still impress your
strange love upon another's heart and make it your own?
Each tree, in its time, must feel the woodsman's axe or be
felled by nature in it's course. And yet, in these mounds of earth, in
these trees, you persist; having not yet learned the lesson that so many of your
kens people have so easily mastered. Your time has past. Now is your
time.
You sit upon the stone and I upon the fallen tree, each gazing through
the eyes of the other, each thinking the same thought; much is different yet
little has changed. You see the future, I the past, while our dreams
converge within a common time, a common place of gathering. We meet and
trade our trinkets of dream stuff and in happy purchase, wander toward our separate
togetherness.
Abba! Abba I say unto you and yet if my words hold no
meaning for you have I not uttered nonsense? why question my intentions
when you so easily misjudge my deeds? Is it not the base instinct of the
animal to presume danger at every turn and yet they are those that survive; but
to what end and what life?
Better yet, perhaps, at having free choice and to choose trust
for in so doing choose we not life beyond living? Such trust and such
living must surely nurture love beyond understanding.
Memories Of A Dying Man
Series One
Regarding
the gift, some never have it but use it while others have it but never use it.
00.05.09
Snippets and fragments of imagination do not a book make.
Little daydreams, woven together, become a book of day visions.
00.05.16
She didn’t consciously think of
herself as a witch, at least not in the traditional sense but she was perhaps
very close to that all the same. Instead
of cryptic incantations and meaningless symbols from dusty parchment, her spells
were more the business plan, the idea, the painting, or other artifacts.
Her knowledge of the craft was legend and yet this spell had apparently,
as some occasionally do, gone astray.
He awoke with that unsettling feeling,
his arms frozen yet thawing as the final moments of the dream dissipated and his
conscious mind came to the forefront of this reality. The details of the memory were strong in his mind however and
he reviewed the critical elements. Was
there a moral or a lesson in his dream? It
was difficult to tell. Since
childhood he had been prone to violent dreams.
Dreams where he died in a myriad of ways. Perhaps the best thing that could be drawn from this
particular experience was that it is a blessing to awaken from a reality where
you and your entire family have been killed by a single, random act of kindness.
They must have driven for along time and were either tired
or bored. Perhaps they simply
noticed the old ham radio antenna and stopped to exchange pleasantries with the owner, obviously
a fellow amatuer radio operator.
We shall never know for she is dead, as is her entire family.
Executed, on a dusty road outside Milan, near a small white farmhouse.
His memory of it would not be complete
in every detail but that didn’t matter. He
would retain the most significant pieces. The
wizened old farmer, the old military periscope binoculars, the ham radio, the
impatience of his family, and of course, the bad men with guns that had remained
hidden from sight until the very end.
She had been where she wanted to be
for some days now and as she sat at the table of the small outdoor café in the
warm sunshine, she mused about what they had each written to her; for her and
her alone. She hadn’t consciously
cast the spell. It had just come to
her, naturally. She didn’t even
think of it in those terms for she was a modern witch.
No, she never thought of her unusual abilities in those ancient terms.
In fact, she was rarely concious of their workings at all.
The precocious smile, the mystery of those dark eyes, and the power of
her simple hands to make things… and of her mind, to make things happen.
Simple things , all taken for granted most of the time, like breathing
and walking; until they are lost or misplaced while kneading the bread of life.
In the moments before her death, young
Kate listened to the pleasant chatter of her family in the background.
Her mother and father talking with the old farmers wife, while she and
the old farmer tapped out a concerto of dits and dahs on the old key.
The tubes of the military surplus radio and transmitter glowed warmly in
the damp morning air. The forty
meter skip was just fading as the sun rose over their location and the
atmospheric ionization levels kicked up, destroying the remnants of the long
path to the states. Their journey
was unprecedented. Her family had
never taken a vacation to Europe before and rarely to anywhere else outside the
small town in the midwestern United States where they had all been born and grew
up. A random radio contest prize
had offered them the opportunity of a lifetime.
To take a trip, a real vacation, to someplace besides the state fair or
the small-town carnival.
991002
Personal Event Horizon
What is a Personal Event Horizon? The concept is this... as you
exist, your consciousness moves through apparent time. Apparent time being
the sum total of an individual's conscious and unconscious memories of their
existence up to the present "now" time plus the most likely
"projections" of an infinite multitude of possible future existences;
a synthetic memory of possible futures not yet realized.
When a "future" becomes a "now" it is realized in
apparent time and is stored (albeit sometimes imperfectly) as a memory engram.
The word engram, as used here, describes a resultant state of the human mind's
sampling, processing, and storing of real-time, multiplexed and concurrent
streams of physical, mental, and spiritual information (as opposed to the
hypothetical neuro-physiological definition). The minds ability to be
aware of and comprehend the passage of time is usually experienced by
integrating samples or fragments from these three primary
perspectives (past, present, and future).
It is plausible to think that the human mind tends to (somehow) aggregate
these samples or fragments into attribute-related clusters which are best
described using the word "event". Our perception of one or more
of these events at any particular point in time is then our instantaneous
Personal Event Horizon or iPEH.
In order to better understand the Personal Event Horizon or PEH which is an
average of the iPEH over time, it may be useful to have a way to
graphically depict it. One possible representation might be to plot a two
or three dimensional set of points where each point represents a time-space
mapping of an attribute vector of our current "working" event
set. Since this set is both dynamic and instantaneous the best we can do
is to take a snapshot (or number of snapshots and average them together).
Each snapshot may be produced from a personal survey or questionnaire that is
designed to sample the primary cluster categories.
Basically, we attempt to ask ourselves, "What am I thinking about and
how much of it is coming from the past, present, or one of a number of probable
futures. Since a single survey is likely to contain a bias introduced by
the recall, synthesis, perception process wes should obtain a more accurate
picture of our PEH by accumulating a statistically significant number of surveys
(or samples) into an n-dimensional data set. Conventional mathematical
analysis may then be applied to further understanding.
Next time: Constructing the PEH Survey
990930
Tin Pan Willy
High in the air, two miniature bottles of cheap booze had barely passed his
lips when an aged heart, broken and battered from a lifetime of abuse, beat its
last. His mind's eye saw himself awaken with a jerk and looking up and
down the isle of the airplane he noticed something exceedingly strange.
Rubbing eyes that no longer saw with earthy site he stared once again and this
time recognized the creature. He watched as it began a purposeful stride
in his direction. Half man, half goat, from his childhood story books
approached the god ling Pan with pipes in hand. "Welcome far
traveler!", said the creature. "Why do I not find it strange to
see you here?", said the man with some alarm. "It is because the
affairs of the world you knew no longer concern you my friend and deep within
your being you understand that I have come to guide you to another place; a
place of learning, a place of repose." "And where might that
be?", said the man, more calmly.
The plane, silent now, its occupants pale as marble statues, appeared as
fading shadows to the man. "I have come and you must
follow....", and with that the god ling lifted the pipes to his lips and
played. The man, as though no will of his own possessing, followed down
the fading walkway and into a thick, gray mist.
After a time, the mist grew thin though the dim light still shrouded his
vision. In the distance a pale, white, marble fountain appeared. As
they came closer the man could see that it was full of dark, red liquid.
The odor of fermented grapes hung heavy in the air. Two golden cups placed
near the fountain beckoned to a thirst that had been welling up inside the
man. Pan ceased playing. Sweeping one of the cups into a clawed
hand, he dipped it full from the fount. "A toast to our arrival
fellow traveler!", said Pan. Seizing the remaining cup, the man
filled and drank to quell the burning thirst he now felt in his throat.
Yet, he had not swallowed four times when he exclaimed, "What is this drink
that smells so fragrant and is sweet upon the lips yet is bitter when
swallowed?" "It is the wine of remorse.", smiled Pan.
"It comes from the grapes of discontent, the vine of which grows deep
within the soil of dark despair in the shade of Mount Lamentation. From
those lofty crags echo the soul songs of the inhabitants of this valley, of
which you are now one."
990926
Happy Birthday to me...
It's now official. I'm accelerating toward the sun's gravitational well
at over half impulse. The only question is can I bring the warp engines
back online in time to jump to light speed before I go out in a blaze of glory?
Dear Meg... my card reads, "Blah blah blah, happy b-day. Love
Meg". At least she loves me. Wardrobe extenders and a brunch at
the Maple Woods start what promises to be a very fine, sunny day.
Oh, and yesterday was Emma's birthday too!
990925
The Warriors - A Review of the Review with Flashbacks
"The Warriors" (Paramount, 1979) was recently reviewed by Seth
Tupper at Jinzoo No Uchuu.
Let me say at the outset that I have nothing but admiration for the quest of
this hatchling eZine and the review was probably meant to be light tongue-in-cheek
satire, however, it brought about a peculiar chain of thought in my mind that
may be worth sharing. Here then, in no particular order, are my
recollections about "The Warriors" followed by some not-too-distant
commentary.
As I doubt that Seth saw the movie when it was first shown on the silver
screen he may be interested to know that it was actually released several years
earlier than 1979 (perhaps 10 years?) in the mid west. (Don't quote me on
that point though because my memory may be playing tricks on me.) I recall
seeing it in a now-defunct movie theatre in Hannibal, Missouri one summer.
(The movie has been shown occasionally since 1979, mostly on television, but I
digress.)
Of particular interest is the "press" that this movie
received. It seems that at certain movie houses in New York, fighting
actually broke out between rival gangs (real gangs) in the theatre. The
fighting spilled into the streets forcing a contingent of police to be called in
to break up the melee. Similar incidents, in varying degree, were recorded
in movie theatres across the country during the first week or two of its
showing. The movie's run was subsequently cut short as theatre managers
across the country, not wishing to have their establishments destroyed by gang
warfare, pulled it from the billing.
An adequate study of the phenomena was not forthcoming. What aspects of
the movie motivated the audience to commit real violence? Possibly
it was a combination of the hot weather, too much testosterone, inner city
crowding, or the fact that gangs (and being in gangs) was still a low-profile
activity and considered "cool" at that point in time. In fact,
we may never know why but it is worthwhile to keep in mind the tremendous impact
that Hollywood, a.k.a. "the movies", has on the human mind; especially
the nascent, maturing adolescent intellect.
In a century marking childhoods end, movies have been the propaganda tool of
choice and the socio-political equivalent of sculpting in modeling clay with a
chainsaw. As we step across the threshold into the next century,
technology breathes new life into this staid medium. Computer augmentation
and other technological enhancements provide first-person experiences on a
level never before available except through pure imagination. The ability
to blur the line between reality and imagination is becoming all to easy.
The line itself, in some instances, hardly exists at all since it is no longer
possible to distinguish between the product of the lens and the computer in the
final result.
That movie makers (and financial backers) have been driven (by the bottom
line) to provide the viewer with more and more of what they want to see is
evident; and it isn't pretty. Critics and reviewers that have survived the
long-haul have been rewarded by the movie industry for appropriate comments and
punished for inappropriate ones.
The minute we think our ink (digital or otherwise) has no impact other than
to amuse and entertain then we need to think again because, in reality, every
word we write will affect a reader somewhere; either positively or
negatively. We cannot always know which it will be. Strange, I feel
a moral moment coming on. Oh, here it is... even arm-chair reviewers and critics
should consider holding themselves accountable to some degree of journalistic
standard.
30
A
WormHaus on Walpurgisnacht