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awareness Metanews Psychology

Masked truth or blurred vision

We, as a species are in a weird predicament. Our entire species, no matter what culture, is in trouble with a new version of a virus that we have been threatened by several times over the last few years. Now we can go into large detail on what the virus does and how it is a danger to young and old. But the bigger problem isn’t the virus. It is our sudden inability to distinguish between usable patterns and non-usable patterns (aka superstition/conspiracies).

Super stitious

Humans have prided themselves (especially from scientific perspective) on our ability to distinguish patterns and to use concepts regarding patterns that exceed our visual observation. However, as a species, we have learned many things parallel and these things haven’t all be correct.

Some of the most obvious superstitious items that have been lingering in western society for a long time, was black cats and walking under ladders. There are many more, but these most likely everyone knows. Lets consider the claims and see why they exist and why they are bogus (or not).

Bad luck

‘Black cats bring bad luck’. For one thing, when in the dark, black cats are hard to see. When a cat is in heat or are fighting, their screams sound very very unearthly. Combined with the fact that because they are hardly to see in the dark and when you do see them, mostly you will see the prying eyes that judge you as all cats do, it makes them mysterious and scary creatures.

So, if someone stumbles (literaly) on a cat in the dark, one can say: That is bad luck. But if more people admit this has happened to them (black, brown, grey, turtleshell, whatever color the cat had), the patterns starts to become very easy. Sometimes someone repeats it as a joke, sometimes someone wants to be the middle of attention and reiterates the story altered or that of another. Eventually, the story sticks and people start to create constructs in their minds that will RATIONALIZE the pattern that they should be able to distinguish. For some, all cats become a danger. Others stick to the specific story. If we take a look at when the superstitious tale about cats started to diminish, we see a trend with street lighting. The more electric streetlights (and therefore continous bright) the less the story would stick. Nobody tripped over cats in the dark anymore. Cats don’t like looking into bright lights, so they would mostly look away, diminishing the ‘scary judging view’. Additionally, more and more people in western countries started holding cats as pets and their different breeds started to make the stories less ‘general patterned’.

Math and geometry magic

Then how about ladders? This is more of a goofy thing, where people took religious concepts into realworld situations. A ladder against a sil will create a triangle (often almost perfect), which people from abrahamic religions would adher to 3, thus trinity. This combined with the fact that a ladder is mostly used to bring things to a height (like paint or water to clean windows), it could happen that someone got some of that paint or water on them when walking under a ladder. This seems to be the most legit version of rationalizing illogical patterns. It is better to not walk under ladders, though there is no actual ‘superstitious’ reason for it.

Con spiracy

Most often we seek patterns that are biased to what we want. This is logically, because we as an organism, want to trust on our ‘instincts’ to get us easy food and lazy life fast and easy. If something falls in our expectations, we are easy to accept it as confirmation of our bias, so we don’t have to venture into scary territory. When we add confirmation bias on confirmation bias and the bubble/box we keep ourselves in, is not broken, we will claim that something is true. Our subjective observations can not prevent this mistake, because we are less ‘intelligent’ than we think.

Masked truth

The problem is that most of our actions are hidden from ourselves. Our thoughts are only a small portion of our cognitive activity. When we are children much of our thought is new, because much of what we observe is new. We conduct investigation. Question everything. But when we get older, things we have observed before, are processed by our brain automatically. Much of the patterns that we have recognized and determined (whether right or wrong) as some kind of causal effect, will remain beyond our future vision. These patterns then cause an automated reaction in our brain, a reflex/instinctive behavior, and we are then sometimes wondering why we behave a certain way in certain situations. We, depending on what values we have before learned, decide these actions are having special meaning. Nothing is further from the truth. If we were to have learned of these behaviors before, we might have thought differently about them.

Blurred vision

But the result of this ‘masking’ of our own behavior by the fact that our identity is only a limited part of ourself cognitive awareness, is that anything we observe afterwards depends on the way we have created the filters before. These filters are the automatic processing of patterns by our brain. The reflexes and instincts. Anything we observe and think is objectively processed, is not so. It is always subjectively processed. Depending on our reference frame and our internal processes. This causes us to never see clear.

20/20

How can we prevent that we fall for the most obvious of mistakes in superstition and conspiracy thinking? By taking the first step back that is possible and be honest that whatever we observe will NOT be the whole of the pattern and what we will think of it is NOT determined by the moment alone. Once we are honest to ourselves and say: Look, whatever I think will be influenced by how I became who I am and judging things based on that will not do much more than confirm my bias. Take a 360 perspective first. Look at it how you think it is, BUT then also look at it totally opposite to what you think it is (But that is only 180. Correct.). If you have a clear overview of where you might be right and you might be wrong, shift the burden of proof halfway against and halfway for yourself (and yes, then you have 4 directions).

Conclusion

The most important part is, acknowledging that you are human and that humans are nothing more than primates with additional neocortex functionality (aka selfawareness). Also, as soon as you think you are clear on a subject, expand your view, include more parts. If the pattern from smallest to broadest part concur, it is more likely to be correct.

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Astro Physics awareness Physics Science

What is the base of our reality?

Don’t be alarmed, the end of this article might be more shocking than Quantum Physics.

Reality is basically everything you can (at the hazard of dying) touch and observe. Yes, air you can (and hopefully do so every moment) touch every day. Rocks you can touch. Snakes (though they can bite) you can touch. Even the sun you could touch, IF you were not incinerated by the fusion process already miles from the star itself (like in a nuclear reaction (because that is basically what the sun/star is, not a fire ball in the sky).

The depth of things

Now, we know that what we observe isn’t everything we can touch, and what we can touch isn’t everything we observe. Many fields of science and research direct themselves onto the ‘underlying’ part of what makes up things. For instance, we know that gold is a metal, just like lead. In the days before science became leading method of inquiry, there was a field between religious/fantasy thinking and what we call science.

Fall of the apple

Many well known scientists, like Newton for instance, was an avid practitioner of Alchemy. Alchemy is named to be the ‘the medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir.’. The practitioners of this type of magical science, run all the way back to 200-300 CE (Common Era), but as far as today still.

Imagine, turning Lead into Gold. Looking at what we know now about the atomic structure of both:

  • Gold (Au). Diagram of the nuclear composition and electron configuration of an atom of gold-197 (atomic number: 79), the most common isotope of this element. The nucleus consists of 79 protons (red) and 118 neutrons (blue). 79 electrons (green) bind to the nucleus, successively occupying available electron shells (rings). Gold is a transition metal in group 11, period 6, and the d-block of the periodic table. It has a melting point of 1064 degrees Celsius. The trends across the transition metals are due to electrons filling an inner d-subshell (here, within the 5th ring), shielding the outer electrons from the increasing nuclear charge.
  • Lead (Pb). Diagram of the nuclear composition and electron configuration of an atom of lead-208 (atomic number: 82), the most common isotope of this element. The nucleus consists of 82 protons (red) and 126 neutrons (blue). 82 electrons (green) bind to the nucleus, successively occupying available electron shells (rings). The stability of an element’s outer electrons determines its chemical and physical properties. Lead is a post-transition metal in group 14, period 6, and the p-block of the periodic table. It has a melting point of 327 degrees Celsius. Excessive exposure can cause poisoning. Uses include batteries, weights and bullets.

Value of change

It is understandable that people would want to turn the cheapest type of metal into the (in the eyes of European humans) most valuable (at that time). As you can see, they don’t differ too much on the scale of electrons, protons and neutrons. But though the limited eye would say: Well, with such a limited difference, there surely should be a way to transfer protons and electrons from one to another… Well, no. Because of the strong interaction force makes the atomic bond nearly unbreakable, except by infusing extreme amounts of energy or force. This is all great, but the effects of infusing such energy and force, is unpredictable too. So you could end up with Steel, Gold, rock or air (these are unlikely, because most would be combined elements, but still).

Alchemy lead in new bags?

The idea of alchemists was that elements that were closely related, should be in some way ‘evolved’ from each other. As we are (even back then) able to ‘breed’ livestock to our wishes, so should we be able to influence the anorganic matter. And we can. We do. But not in the way alchemists wanted.

Mold theory, germ theory, grave theory

Since the time of Alchemy (and I dare say, even due to the fantastice imaginations OF Alchemy) we as humans have evolved our understanding and recognition of reality, the universe as to say. But…..we still fall for the same mistake as alchemists did. We project onto reality our expectations and find answers we look for. This is great! This gives us options to develop. BUT, it also causes us to mold our theories based on genetically evolved insights. We don’t use control moments, where we re-evaluate our insights and say: Okay, we came this far, did we at some point, limit ourselves by our knowledge and might come to different conclusions if we use our current understanding in earlier steps.

May the force be with you

For instance, we know we have identified four ‘forces’ or ‘interactions’ in reality.
– Weak interaction (Effect in the Electroweak theory)
– Strong interaction (Effect in the Quantum chromodynamics theory)
– Electromagnetic interaction (Effect in the Quantum electrodynamics theory)
– Grativational interaction (Effect in Einstein’s General Relativity Theory)
(Do understand that these theories are so thoroughly researched that they are solid. There is little question regarding their legitimacy.)

We came to most of these, after gravity was recognized as a universal force by Isaac Newton (As mentioned someone who also practitioned Alchemy and was like most people in his time, Religious). Einstein added the observational variation to it and from there on many scientists evolved our understanding of matter and energy adding Quantum Physics/Mechanics to the Standard Model (of Physics) and Theoretical Physics.

Selfcentered?

Our reality severely changed by understanding what Copernicus said about the non-heliocentric universe we lived in. Many people know how amazing things can be when you are raised in a small countryside village and suddenly at 18 years old, you go to the big city. Imagine that you are Columbus and you sail through dangers and such for weeks and find that the world isn’t just Europe and Africa and Asia (which as you know are three continents, but one landmass), but America too. The world became bigger for him and slowly for those in other societies as well. The theory of Copernicus was great, but it didn’t hit home yet because of Columbus found a new continent.

Global recognition

The idea that the world was really a globe, like the Greeks already had deducted, was still a stretch for most. Copernicus had given a vision of more than just our world. Only when we finally got the technological advancement to test it, we came to realisation (as humanity), that the universe was bigger than Earth. Only decades ago, we came to the conclusion the universe is bigger than our solar system and even that our solar system isn’t the only one. All ‘zodiac signs’ were merely bigger stars that we had made patterns over, but in reality all were ‘solar systems’ of their own, in galaxy parts not even close to each other.

Though this is what we observe, this is not where the stars are in the galaxy. They aren’t on a flat distance from us.

Paternal or patternal

Humanity learned that patterns were not random and patterns weren’t based on intention (Though humans learned that their own influence on patterns were often intentional). Gods started to lose their meaning.

We skip ahead and see humanity evolve their knowledge of the universe and even matter and energy. The ideas of Aether left and Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide and other elements replaced it as ‘air’.

But as our understanding of the universe grew, so did we want to pass on this information and knowledge to other generations. We ‘schematized’ all findings to a level that people that where smarter would have to ‘jump the bandwagon’ and people who weren’t would consider the ‘bandwagon’ a fata morgana.

Breath, breath!

If you learn that this is Oxygen:

Oxygen model

How do you then jump to this:

To this:

For some of you who have read this now, will say: WHAT?! (for two different reasons).

Some will start examining the first two images and learn how crude the first schematics is to the second schematics, however still a schematics (like a cave drawing of an mammoth to a Van Gogh or Rembrandt). The third is how we are able to actually detect the ‘form’ of the actual element.

Eventhough we now KNOW that what we observe in the latter is an ‘excited’ state of a field, we still refer from the ‘particle’ perspective. Even while we know that the particle as such ‘doesn’t exist’.

Two steps forward, one step back

I propose to look back and imagine how we would calculate the forces and models, if we started with what we know now.

We are pretty certain that what we observe as a particle, is the observed excited state of a field. This seems unintuitive, but it is not.

Imagine the universe being a expanding bubble field group:

Not to burst your bubble.

They aren’t these kind of bubbles exactly. These are fields, fields of energy frequencies. They started with a high amplitude and high frequency, but slowly start to stretch. Because they are ‘pushed’ by their original force, the space called the ‘period’ causes some of the forces to exist. The wave is a one dimensional observation of movement for the frequency. When two field-waves touch, they cause an excited state we observe as a particle. Because the frequency if stable and constant, the particle remains stable. This also explains why at point of observation of particles we recognize energy increase. Which direction on the field the wave moves and hits another field/wave, determines what we observe as spin.

Bubble fields, really?

This results in the idea (yes, just an idea), that reality, however real, is a bubble universe of fields. This is also why a particle can have different states at the same time, because, the particle doesn’t really exist. The particle is merely an effect of the frequency of the universe/reality. This means that there is much to find out still. But as always, very possibly, reality is stranger than fiction. The frequency of the universes fields and corresponding waves. How it will result into a bigger universe still and whether at some point reality will change if the field/wave frequencies collapse or start to misallign. Will physics change?

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awareness Neurology Science

Brain works 1: Did I just lose a braincell?

There seems to be controversy about the ‘size’ and ‘matter’ of the brain these days. Here is my view on how does the brain works.

Brainsize

The brain is evolved from millions of years of neural synapses integrating (as said by others much like the processors we create for computers etc), when life was but worms, there were still only a few strands of nerves. A small lump in the ‘seat’. What was (and still is) the ‘brain’ set to? For food. The worm is one long intestine and basically we are a intestine with vertibrates. Our brain has been evolving ever since life became multiple celltypes with specific functions. When complex animals arose, the brain was already a complex neural box. It was so intrinsic that even mice have basically selfawareness options (who says they aren’t?).

Brainfunctioning

But the brain still has the same function over all those millions of years: Making sure the body gains food and survives dangers in doing so. We as mammals have been on lower steps of the food chain for thousands of thousands of years. (imagine that. A life span of about 40 years and so generations every 15 to 20 years….imagine how many ancestral generations have gone before THAT point.). Then the weather changed, climate changed and we got less predators to take care of, but we still needed to find food. We ate what was in trees, bushes, die with failure, live with good food. Those choices are all embedded in the blueprint of our brain. They are the unlearned reflexes. Many of them come to pass each generation, without being triggered. And from that moment on, the brain needs less for certain type of reflexes.

Mind

Eventually we are in our current era and we are the top of the food chain and we changed the ability of running from danger, to preparing for danger for many hundreds of thousands of years. Now, we don’t have to run anymore, but some of the reflexes don’t die that easily (hence religion and other fear aspects, causing diversion and anger).

We are in a time where the brain evolves on. It might become smaller, but not ‘lighter’ per se. The density changes, but also its functions ‘narrow’. Who of us still know from instinct what to do with babies? With a wild animal attacking us? With how the weather predicts the effects on crops tomorrow? We are all losing parts that are ‘irrelevant’ to the specific ‘bloodline’.

Social mind

Those in cities don’t know about carpenting or farming, while in the suburb there will be those that still know. Life still requires it from them to sometimes build something themselves. The same happens for many things, not just ‘job’ related, but also personal. In the country, people are welcoming to new (new blood, information, etc), but also cautious of differences (dangerous behavior, different unknown bloodlines and physical attributes). In the suburbs where all come together, it is a mediate, while in the city it is the same as in the country, but reversed. They are less welcoming (busy lives, close quarters and thus more shortlived interhuman contacts), but also less cautious. In all, the brain grows smaller, but not around the globe. There are likely locations where it grows.

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Art awareness Writing

Writing a new world

I was going through some collections while cleaning up. Suddenly my eye fell on something that I had not forgotten, but…the attention for it had waned. So? You might ask? Dump it, done, even cleaner.

Yes, cleaning up stuff you haven’t used for some time is a good thing. Nostalgia isn’t really helping in cleaning. But this was a game…or rather more than a game. And even if it had only been a game, it was an integral part of my life.

The I in write

I write, I write since I can write and am a poet since my teens or before. As drawing doesn’t come as easy to me as it does to others, I have to use words to describe a world I picture. It wasn’t until this game, that I turned my yearning for writing into a ..(I hate words connected to superstitious nonsense, but by lack of better) soul-lust. The game was Myst, or rather the whole franchise (The books, the games from Myst, Revelation, Riven, Exile, URU, Myst V and upcoming Obduction, but also the web communities, way back in the 90’s). What it did to me, was give me a sort of insight into the process of writing, without going into it actually.

The Y in Myst

In Myst, the story starts on an Island that was created by a writer. He wrote a book, and by writing it in such a way, it became a real world. No doubt Robin and Rand Miller will have thought about it from this perspective. The game is all about solving puzzles in various ways. It was the start of the genre, though I now found Cosmo and Manhole to be the precursors actually. The fact that the game was based on such profound (in my eyes as a teen) wisdom, that writing was an ability to shape a world inside one’s mind, was beyond the game of course. And it clung to me. I was Atrus (like many people at that time), I was a D’ni (I was always joking online that my third name was pronounced the same), like all the other people. Some identified with Catherine, the wife of Atrus, others with yet other characters from the stories devised later (Three books: Myst: book of Atrus, book of Ti’ana and book of D’ni are a must read. Rand and Robyn Miller together with David Wingrove).

Revelation

But the revelation, or rather making the idea that thrives writers, tangible, caused me to build this dream to be able to really write such type of ages, these worlds. But of course, schools don’t immediately teach you what you dream of, rather than what you need to come by in society and the country you live in (if you are lucky).

In all, I am a writer, more because of the world of Myst. Where worlds were written and words held magical power, which metaphorically is the same way we as humanity look at it.

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Affairs of the State awareness Culture

AoS – Relational allergies

Quick base from the AoS method

In this article about relational allergies, we will look at it from perspective of Affairs of the State primarily focuses on getting insight on the following 5 fields:

  1. Politics/moral (want/need)
  2. Weather/external natural aspect (Emotional confrontation by self or other)
  3. Terrain/support (time/space obstacles)
  4. Leader/commander (You choose to address something)
  5. Doctrine/discipline (You set way-points and follow them to the letter)

What are relational allergies?

When living, working or simply interacting with other beings (animals or people alike), we process signals and responses from a structure deep inside our decision tree. They are initially (in case we are doing something that we have always done) on Instinctive level, but if we are still not entirely ‘fixed’ with how to handle an event, it is still being filtered sometimes by the emotional layer (this is where ‘allergies’ are noticed. Allergies are not cognitive, nor are they instinctive, though the behavior we portrait often become so, because if our brain does anything, it will see if the recurring of those allergic stimuli should be made automatic, so the brain has more time for other things.

Relational Allergies can range from simple things like someone dropping a candy wrapper on the floor, to more intrinsic structures, where the allergy is about a complex combination of both cognitive responses and instinctive/emotional behaviors. For example: If someone seems very intelligent/rational in conversation, but when there are actual moments where such person abuses such ‘observation’ of intelligence and actually behaves very irrational, this can cause a feeling of dissonance (irritation). As many people behave this way on certain moments (even intelligent rational people are still people and can sometimes feel empty or get stressed and behave irrational), it can become an unobserved response of ourselves to become slowly or even instantly irritated and behave negatively to such person.

Lets see whether you are able to find such person or event in your own life. This is ‘becoming aware’. In AoS, knowing the weather and terrain is most important. Because what we often want/need is feel better ourselves. We can’t do that if too many things influence us (or too little).

1. What do you find important as a personal quality?

(give one quality, and try to make it as concrete as possible.)

2. Why do you find this important for your own actions?

(Assess the quality and see how you rationalize that it is positive for you, others and generally the environment around you/the person having this quality)

3. And for your feelings?

(How do you feel if someone behaves with the quality in a positive way? Or how does it make you feel if a person is not behaving according to this quality?)

4. Do you feel you have this quality?

(Be concrete and honest. Do you think you have this quality and behave to it consistently, or do you think you are trying hard to have this quality?)

5. Do you recognize people around that have this quality and who does no?

(Can you name one person who you have observed behaving according to the quality  you named under the first question? Can you name someone who clearly does not? Write these names down. Remember, AoS is about you, not about others. You can’t change others. Writing down their names, makes you aware, nothing more.)

6. How does not holding the quality make you feel? (If someone pretends to have this quality but in actions later doesn’t)

(Do you remember a situation where someone normally seemed to behave according to this quality, but later at a certain point failed this? How did you feel?)

Processing reflection

Now, take the answers and write them separate as one piece of text, in the following format:

I like to be <quality from question 1>. I find it important for <scope from question 2> because <arguments from question 2>. I feel <feeling from question 3> when I notice the effects on the world around me. I sense I feel <negative feeling from question 3>. I think I <answer from question 4>. I have examples from my life, where I notice I feel <answer from question 6>.

The question now, is whether you want to improve anything here. Remember, you can’t change others. You for sure shouldn’t make yourself behave negative or different, just to accommodate something that you feel is a positive thing.

Though you have written down a clear introspect on one quality, it doesn’t mean you are right or wrong in it. However, there are three steps left to become seriously aware of the effect and validity of this need/want.

Step 2

If you have been honest in question 4, you will know how consistent you consider yourself to be. In the coming week, try to observe when this quality pops up, or should pop up and it does or doesn’t and how consistent you yourself behave towards it. If you didn’t, what was the reason? Did you think about why, or did it just happen?

When you get irritated about someone not behaving according to the quality, is this person someone you know will normally behave positive with the quality, or is it someone who normally already doesn’t?

Step 3

When you yourself notice you have not acted according to the quality, how do you rationalize this? Do you apologize to another openly, or do you conceal it and leave it at that?

Step 4

If at step 3 you have noticed you concealed it, try to openly ‘announce’ you have not done what you wanted to do.

If you have tried this even once, you will quickly notice that declaring/announcing openly how you feel and how you wanted to act, makes you feel better 1. you have shown to others that even though you missed the opportunity, you are aware (where they might not have been) and you are working on it (if you weren’t you wouldn’t be open about it).

In the previous, you have now addressed all five fields of AoS. Do you recognize them?

If you do, you can be proud of yourself. You have already made a leap in understanding yourself and social interaction.

If you fell you miss some, you can be proud of yourself, because you have already excelled in effort and are on the verge of evolving yourself to a person you want to be.

If you feel you don’t connect to the five, be proud of yourself. You are critically observing and looking at a field of knowledge you might need to research more. Or, perhaps my wording is not connecting. In that case you are welcome to contact me on it through the contact form.

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Affairs of the State awareness Culture

AoS – Rational Allergies

Quick base from the AoS method

We will look at the cause, effect and possible solutions to rational allergies from the perspective of the Affairs of the State primarily focuses on getting insight on the following 5 fields:

  1. Politics/moral (want/need)
  2. Weather/external natural aspect (Emotional confrontation by self or other)
  3. Terrain/support (time/space obstacles)
  4. Leader/commander (You choose to address something)
  5. Doctrine/discipline (You set way-points and follow them to the letter)

What are Rational allergies?

Consider the following mention:

If there is one you should know, it is that you know nothing. ~ M. de Haan ~

Now, if you consider I said this to you, how does this make you feel? What emotion did you recognize immediately, and what rationalization popped up in your head to solve the emotional conflict?

See, even though I know why I wrote it, when I read it, and it registered,, I felt attacked. I didn’t even consider the fact that I wrote it myself, just that it talked about ‘you’, which is an indication of the person reading it. And it said that (contrasting with my logical reasoning) I knew nothing, which is generally associated with a negative quality: ignorance. I immediately had answers: The writing can not say anything about me. The writing is inconsistent with itself. You can’t know something, if you know nothing.

But is that what it says? Is that the meaning of the text? Is that the intent of the person who wrote it? (in this case me).

How can I decide which answer is right to any of the three questions? Can I deduct or induct any answer to be true in this case?

Lets pick them apart, before we continue.

Is the quote/text saying what I think it says?

What I think it says is both very relevant, and irrelevant at the same time.  It is relevant, because when I am aware that I thinkwhat it might mean, I am aware of my own processes. Being aware of yourself improves your ability to change yourself, or at the least understand yourself. This is what AoS is about. However, what I think it says is also totally irrelevant, because I can give it any meaning I want, which only has value as long as I read it, and again, if I am aware of this, the validity of this meaning is corrupted, because this meaning will be drenched in subjective historical decisions. 

What could be the actual meaning of the text?

Because the text speaks about me, but inherently we know the text can be written by anyone, about anyone, I can’t take it as a personal matter, unless it was part of a larger text where it was singularly addressing me. In such case I would know the emotional load and rational argumentation behind it. But could the text even then be true? Because I already validly rationalized that the text contained an internal conflicting connection: If you know nothing, you can’t even know the one thing. Because nothing means: no thing, none.

So, the text can’t be about me specific, nor can it be read without the internal conflicting meaning. But is there a philosophical meaning to it? How do I get to such meaning?

First off, philosophy  is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. This means in broader sense: objective deduction/induction by mind of rational causality within the world we live in. 

Now, for the text to be philosophical, we would need to break it apart, but only after we have considered a possible reasoning for the text to exist in the first place and what field of study it would involve.

I think it would be safe to say it is about the knowledge, mind and reason of an individual in general.

So, the text wants to say something about the knowledge, reasoning and mind of an individual.

Now here is the culprit of the further investigation. I wrote the text, so I know what I mean by it. This means my explanation is already tainted with foreknowledge. Be aware of this when reading the rest and validate anything I say with your own logical mind. See where my rationality fails and please let me know.

The text speaks in two pieces:

The first piece says: ‘If there is one thing you should know’

The base here is ‘teaching’. ‘should know’, says that if you don’t know yet, you would require to remember the following. If you already do, you should learn from the following. Besides this, it says: ‘one thing’, indicating it is an important thing (though this is highly subjective).

The second piece: ‘is that you know nothing’

Conflicts with the former, as it would state you would know nothing prior to this text and would have to start with knowing nothing.

That last part of conclusion is important, because is it not true that initially a human knows nothing? Don’t we all start born with no cognitive content? Instinctive, yes, emotional, yes, but cognitive no.

The second part, also means that if you should be aware that you know nothing, you (picking back to the first) should learn from this single point. Every time you think you know something, you should consider you might not actually know.

Is that the intent of the person who wrote it?

Because I wrote the text, which is a free translation of some other quote (from Socrates), I know what I wanted to convey with it (giving it this meaning). My ‘deduction’ is validated by my knowledge of the meaning at forehand, but you might consider whether you could have rationalized to the same meaning.

Conclusion

Allergies in rationale (logical inclinations), or content (information of observation) pretty much always start and end with the limitation of the context (boundaries of knowledge). This isn’t per se wrong. Often we find ourselves in a conversation where someone shows on a rational level to have no content in the matter, though having presented to be knowledgeable within the context.  This will be irritating for many different reasons depending on the times and places. Important however, is to know where the irritation comes from. Sometimes it is not the other person, but ourselves who lack the information and this can be just as irritating.

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Affairs of the State awareness Culture

AoS – Attacking anxieties

Quick base from the AoS method

Affairs of the State primarily focuses on getting insight on the following 5 fields:

  1. Politics/moral (want/need)
  2. Weather/external natural aspect (Emotional confrontation by self or other)
  3. Terrain/support (time/space obstacles)
  4. Leader/commander (You choose to address something)
  5. Doctrine/discipline (You set way-points and follow them to the letter)

Definition disposition

Before we attack the anxieties, a little about where they come from.

Here is a link to the Medical News Today, about anxiety.

The link will tell you exactly what I would say. You might wonder, whether it would be even productive to go into such a diverse and complex matter. The simple answer is: Yes. Why so? Because knowing brings understanding. Understanding brings knowing. IE. You can learn a great deal from looking into it. Both about yourself and a lot of other things.

A quick resume: Anxiety is a plethora of behaviors that cause emotional and physical stress, either by impulse/stimuli from a certain situation, a certain train of thought/memoryset or an internal chemical imbalance.

Address of fear

Finding the five fields within a specific anxiety, would require first the anxiety to be ‘clearly defined’. This seems logical and simple, but of course it is not. A person responding with heightened heartrate from a view of a street doesn’t automatically falls within the borders of Agorafobia. Nor does one who feels totally drained by a group of people automatically fall within Enochlophobia. Though they are the primary targets to see if the symptoms match, so an initial treatment can be selected, it is very important to often seek beyond the ‘obvious’. If human behavior was ‘obvious’, we would have completed understanding ourselves already centuries ago.

The problem often is, that people will use old ‘medical’ steps to define newly found/understood disorders in human nature (behavioral/experience) or a human being (physical).  The DTM takes research done, based on old medical research, but then start from scratch, with rational reduction as base. The human experience is based on the interpretation of sensory input that we inherited from ancestors without the cognitive awareness of them. It is important to realize this, because it explains why human behave in certain ways and why researching how animals behave (taking that they are within the ancestral tree of humans regarding such behavior) is important for understanding ourselves.

In the above figure, you see from left to right, the evolutionary path from single cell organisms to dinosaurs and eventually humans. Though they all seem like either separate species, actually they never were. Slowly over the course of numerous generations, one turned into the other. parts of the organism changed, added, or lost functionality. Some lines went extinct. Some lines diversified. Just like your own family. Your grandma and grandpa had more than one child probably, and each of those got their own family, some with deficiencies, some with increased ‘functionality’. Those with deficiencies are often to have less possibility to survive (though in modern days we have medicine to solve many issues. And create new ones, true). Increased functionality often gets spurred by the environment, but just as likely can be an accidental genetic change.

Plato…or Plateau?

Each generation is a little different from that before. As far as we know now, before the moment of major diversity in species, there was the great Cambrian phase, where the amount of food and species were in balance and growth was possible without any environmental force to change the species. Likely when a sudden change in environment happened, the limited diversity in species was challenged and caused an explosion of species. This wasn’t like one day there was three species and the next day all three made two thousand. Just in a shorter period of time, different ‘cultures’ of microbes started to mutate to survive shortcomings in either protection from other species, food scarcity or environmental dangers.

How does this help understanding anxieties? 

First off, the chemical balance in our body, is one of the oldest systems in organic life. The cells we are made up of, are based on the singular celled lifeforms millions of years ago. These lived solely on the changes in chemical balances. Heck, the even exist because the concentrations within and around proteins caused them to fold into themselves, causing them to become more and more complex processes until they were what we call ‘life’.

It’s Chemistry

Chemical deficiencies cause erratic behavior in cells. They cause deformity and malfunctions. In systems with different combined cell types and changing/dependent concentration regulation, they cause discrepancies between parts of the system, making (again) either each other or within itself on cellular level, deform or malfunction. These malfunctions can be such that change in concentration of minerals or other pH changes, can cause the systempart to overproduce or abundantly attract fluids. This didn’t change anywhere in the evolutionary track. How do we know? Because we recognize the systems that are evolved from earlier systems, and still respond in the same way to altered stimuli or situations.

Not neurotic

Secondly, neurological importance. As our nervous system evolved from way before the mammal evolutionary diversion, the way it responds to the most basic needs, fears and changes, are important to understand. The automatic retraction of a worm is no different than the instinctive pull to fetal pose in sense of imminent and lethal danger of a mammal, even a human. Recognizing these cause and effects, can help determine on which level a person is influence by a neurological deficiency or malfunction.

Don’t get emotional

Thirdly, though not the last, it is the last we will address right now, is the emotional influence. As the DTM theory explains, we behave on three levels. Instinctive, emotional and cognitive. The fist two influences/systems mentioned above, are genetically caused instincts. We can’t really change them. The emotional one is a bit of an in between. Where the first two are in basic aimed at the internal structure of the organism, emotions are aimed at the rudimentary well being of the organism within groups. It is a differentiation that alters decisions of the organism, not based on the requirement by the chemical balance, or the neurological stimuli, but by the added value of shortterm and long term memory adaptions (learned instincts/learned behavior).

Read very carefully, emotions are (depending on the importance of the survival of the species) instinctive or learned. Often emotional behavior associated with pain or imminent death are often instinctive, as evolution has caused those who had the ‘liberty’ to experience the fear and pain and survived, over the ones that either did or did not experience it and died.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings

Emotions are, especially for a social species as humans, important in many levels of development throughout a organism’s life. For mammals, awareness of the response of parents to emotional distress of offspring causes the offspring to use such emotion to indicate requirements, until it can fend for itself. Humans, who have a totally different (artificial) native habitat, are still required to ‘teach’ their offspring to adapt to different patterns than previous primates. ‘No, you will not get food whenever you start crying. You will get food on set times, so you will grow strong, but not overweight’. In a sense, humans develop slower because of the need to first break down some of the instinctive habits, and then start teaching the offspring how to behave.  Whether this will eventually not be required anymore, is unknown (the fun part of evolution. We can predict, but not ‘know’).

Three tiers of tired

How to address an anxiety, depends heavily on what disorder is observable. See, a person can even act and be perceived as fully normal, yet be subject to several anxieties. So, even if there is nothing observable, one might want to see, if one has an anxiety.

Symptoms of anxiety can range from urges (instinctives), to feelings (emotions), to physical malfunction (chemical/neurological), to a combination. Because one can cause the other, it is imperative to be aware of what layer influence which, before addressing any symptoms.

For instance, if you feel tired at a certain moment, drained of all energy, but you are sure that it is not because of lack of rest, what should you consider?

Don’t get sad, Get even

Taking the above, the following table is a matrix you can use to fill out A. what gives you the reason why this connection could be investigated, B. what symptoms you see, or expect to see. C. What you think could be an actual action to address it.

 drained/apathic shifted/irritatedheated/elevated
chemical   
neurological   
emotional/cognitive   

Be very careful! This exercise is meant to give you insight, it does NOT nor ever can replace professional medical help!

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awareness Culture Mythology / Religion

Religion is binding

Ever wondered why you didn’t speak up to your dad again after he gave you a smack on the bum?
Because you knew the possible implications.

This is the same way that nature works. If we look at older species or contemporary family species (Monkeys, other mammals), we see the same behavior in ‘discipline’ of the young.

Define the bind

First off, what is religion? Well, according to Wikipedia it means:
a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organisation that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called “an order of existence“.[1]

Culture club

What does that mean, a cultural system, how does it evolve?
Culture is “the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time.” (Cambridge University)
As a defining aspect of what it means to be human, culture is a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. (Wikipedia)

Since social groups evolved in nature, or groups in general in living entities (plants or animals alike), culture has been a general concept of how certain species create a temporary statis or coherency in way of living within the group. This happens within bacterial cultures, insect cultures and all other species that live in groups.

Smart enough or too dumb?

Religion only exists in species that are able to observe causality (but fail to recognize the actual causality due to missing data and technology to determine). This requires some brain functions that humans have, but are lacking in other species (‘key areas of the brain for intelligence were the left prefrontal cortex (behind the forehead), left temporal cortex (behind the ear) and left parietal cortex (at the top rear of the head) and in the areas that connect them.’ – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2128457/New-brain-study-maps-parts-brain-make-intelligent.html)

Now, how does a smack to the bum relate to religion?

We as children are learning to observe causality. We also learn discipline from our parents in very diverse ways. Some parents address the cognitive abilities of a child directly, some use physical signals, others use both. We learn language, trust, dependency and after that how to conceptualize causal connections. When these are not taught properly, we will fail to recognize connections later in life. Where we can’t recognize connections, we will assume. Often we are a following kind and assume what another person tells you the causality is, you can accept. This is partially laziness, but often depending on the way you were raised: Don’t speak up against authority, accept without questioning. This is exactly what religion is: Accept without questioning. IF you question, you are only allowed to question within the boundaries of what supports the religious base.

Inner circle

Within any religion, most often there is a ‘teaching’ that is comprised of three things: Text, music and ‘guidance’. The text contains the following structure: A story representing why the religion exists and a promise to anyone who will follow the rules of this religion. The text most often will show extensive ways how misinterpretted causality shows that what ever happens to the follower of this religion will be for the better. The second part in the text is based on the way evolution has taught every species to survive: Fear. By getting the individual to consider the intangible danger to be connected to acting against the rules for the promise, the individual itself will cause a ‘causality-loop’ between emotion and rationale.

Example

You will go to a community place, or you will not benefit from the promise (good fortune, eternal life, etc). Being a social species, an individual human will want to be surrounded by others. If one has many friends outside of the religion, it is unlikely this ‘disguised threat’ will influence the specific individual. What happens often? An individual of interest is being approached and ‘loosened’ from its friends and family. ‘If you stay with your friends, you will never learn the real secret’, ‘They don’t understand you, but it is written that those…etc’ (especially in time of emotional crisis, for instance loss of a dear one, this is used).

You choose from the options you are given

But, you will say, there are many who step into the religion on their own choice. Yes, correct, however the same threat is evident. However it is not by influence of ‘guidance’, but simply the lack of friends and family that will cause people to turn to the community of faith. Rationalization happens afterwards. Because religion is build on promise (curiousity and longing), and enforced by punishment (superstition and fear), every iteration of the motions, causes a person to make a habit of the motion.

A different kind of soul music

How about the music? The human brain is only half the work. We are still mere biological species that have evolved from ancestral species. All species respond based on instinct/reflex/emotion. Music is the creative way that religion uses to cause the neuro emotional response to accept cognitive concepts easier. Some sound combinations are simply and without scrupules hijack the instinctive responses to them to influence the emotional parts of the individual to accept binding to these emotional responses of illogical concepts. Of course, it all starts with ‘guidance’ of the religion. These people are (sometimes ignorant themselves, but more often very well in the know of how irrational the concept is.  They will have a very difficult task to influence the individual to accept the parts that are becoming less and less acceptable due to change of time and culture.

Concluding

To be short about it, as the smack on the bum is meant for the child’s pain receptors and fear instincts for pain to cause it to not take certain actions again, the religious promise of pain (bad luck in this life or afterlife) or pleasure (good fortune in this life or afterlife) causes an individual raised with these distinct disciplining actions, to follow even on same fear regarding things they don’t understand.

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awareness Culture Redevelop Society

Human architecture – inventing the ‘wheel’

So, using humanity as a principle, how does that work?

Well, as a person who likes to ‘normalise’ things as much as possible, I see things as entities.

What is the prime entity for care?

You can imagine that from my point of view, this is a human being (or living being if you will, taking the level above just humans). A human is the driving force, the central measurement, main subject and actual linchpin concerning his/her health. A human is even a part of the health of humanity. Like a cell is a part of the health of a body. As is the behavior of a human of influence of the health of his environment. But more important, every human, whether they are living their lives, or living to improve other people’s lives, are looking from themselves as a perspective.

How would that be visualised?

Well, for one: The center element is the life of a person (lets keep it to human health care for now). A person, with history, future, current state, body, mind and environment.

Great, so now you have the base of a human life…so…er…how are we going to incorporate that in a system for health care?

Imagine someone goes to a physician or hospital.

In the above image, you can also identify the ‘group’ identity. An individual hardly ever lives entirely alone (or should never). Such group has the same characteristics as a accumulation of the individuals it is comprised of.

A health institute doesn’t really deals with the individual as such, but rather a part of its sympthoms. Institute is a very broad item here: Local doctor, physician, physiotherapist, psychiater, psychologist, pathologist, etc. Especially if you incorporate the connection the group the individual is part of. Imagine pandemics, epidemics, forensics, etc.

Why would you want to change the setup? Can’t you just adjust the existing systems?

I honestly don’t know whether they can, but I think it is important to have an architecture worked out that takes the honest and right approach towards the ownership and entity base of information.

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Art awareness Writing

Writing is not just a word

Writing words isn’t just making the characters connect, or making a word of a string of characters. Writing means a process of changing non-tanglible ideas into a concept, into a protocol of signs that are understood by another.

A simple word can have a simple meaning, but a simple word can also have a complex meaning. Worse even, a simple word can even be a complexity in itself and the connected emotions. It can build a world or just a short flick of the eye.

Consider the word Word. It is a concept of everything you have read right here. It is simply the defining combination of symbols that should translate in someone’s mind into: A concept of combined characters that has meaning in or outside a context. Here you see, that the simple word Word, already gave more words as an explanation of itself. And even now, as you read this, you are even wondering whether I am right about it. Whether your definition is the same, or more extensive. Perhaps your mind lingered from this text and you started to think of a poem about the word Word, or you have suddenly seen recollections of texts that resembled this. So much happens when you read a word. So much a word can mean.

So when you write, you aren’t just writing words, you are writing ideas.

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