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Physics

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 4, 2005 - 9:39am.
on About me, not you

And so it begins...again

I think I need to start over. Not that I've written anything here that is incorrect, it's that I want to use the correct metaphors at the correct levels. That's what I meant the other day about working in mythic mode.

A mythos, to me, provides a framework, a set of assumptions, from which you can reason or on which you can base your decisions or within which your decisions make sense. A myth is a specific story or narrative that communicates or supports specific elements of a mythos. Unsupported elements of the mythos I call beliefs. Now, I could tell you about the unsupported elements of my personal mythos because there are very, very few. And I could tell you my personal mythology is organized around metaphors of physics and geometry. But my mythos...that's a tough one. It would sound like the recitation of a set of rules.

Any mythos sounds like a set of rules and baldly stated mythos is entirely unconvincing to those who have any grip on any other mythos at all. You don't learn a mythos that way. You learn through stories, parallels and examples. For instance, I use gravity as a metaphor for social structures in general. It's seeped into the general consciousness that space (spacetime, actually) "bends around" mass and energy. I don't know if it's so widely known that gravity is that very curvature of spacetime, that falling into a gravity well is simply the path that uses the least energy. The more mass in one place, the greater the curvature and the stronger the gravity.

In my metaphor, humans are mass and space is the world (I need to say right here I see a difference between the world and the planet). When a bunch of humans get together they change what is necessary to fulfill any need by their very presence. They affect what is available to solve problems, providing some tools, depleting others and making some impossible by their behavior. You can see that, right?

It's all much messier than physics though, because the bending of spacetime only "produces" gravity. The bending of social structures produce a panoply of effects, pretty much one for every behavior impacted, all feeding back into each other in fractal fashion. Still, it gives me a handle I can use to consider many things.

Let's take slavery.

The world has always had humans held as chattel, but in general that chattel had rights of a sort. Much as you can be punished for cruelty to animals, most societies with a slave component would punish masters for excessive abuse of a slave. More, when slaves were freed they had no stigma. They were full members of society. In the North American colonies, the thing closest to that condition was not known as slavery. It was known as indentured servitude and differed from "traditional" slavery by having a fixed term. The Peculiar Institution differed from slavery in that one could never actually escape the stigma and in being hereditary. And by pulling so many Africans into the condition, the social space was warped, bent, and social institutions adapted accordingly. Best example of the adaptation? The myth that white women need protection from the depraved lusts of Africans.

In order to preserve domestic tranquillity, the leading groups in the colonies made it a matter of public policy to destroy the solidarity of the laborers. Laws were passed requiring different groups to keep to themselves, and the seeds of dissension were artfully and systematically sown. Indians were offered bounties for betraying black runaways; blacks were given minor rewards for fighting Indians; and poor whites were used as fodder in the disciplining of both reds and blacks. At the same time masters used Draconian measures to stop the mingling and mating of blacks and whites. From the last quarter of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, policy-makers legislated against these practices. In the process white women were whipped, banished, and enslaved to keep them from marrying black men. "The increasing number of mulattoes, through intermarriage and illicit relationships," Lorenzo J. Greene writes, "soon caused alarm among Puritan advocates of racial purity and white domination. Sensing a deterioration of slavery, if the barriers between master and slaves were dissolved in the equalitarian crucible of sexual intimacy, they sought to stop racial crossing by statute." In this instance, as in so many others, it was necessary to teach whites the value of whiteness.

Under the ground rules of the time, a master could virtually enslave a white woman who married a black man and could hold in extended servitude all the issue of such a marriage. In this situation, as might have been expected, Puritan greed triumphed over Puritan morals, and many masters encouraged or forced white women to marry black men. It finally became necessary to pass laws penalizing masters for forcing white women to marry black men. The Maryland law of 1681 said:

Forasmuch as, divers free-born English, or white women, sometimes by the instigation, procurement or connivance of their masters, m's-tresses, or dames, and always to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires, and to the disgrace not only of the English, but also of many other Christian nations, do intermarry with Negroes and slaves, by which means, divers inconveniences, controversies, and suits may arise for the prevention whereof for the future, Be it enacted: That if the marriage of any woman-servant with any slave shall take place by the procurement or permission of the master, such woman and her issue shall be free.

That "always to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires" is kind of denied by the "sometimes by the instigation, procurement or connivance of their masters, m's-tresses, or dames" part to my way of thinking. Also telling is that the punishment is economic. Slaves were the major repository of wealth in the South in those days…the amount of land you were allocated was determined by the number of servants (indentured and slave) you had. Your political leverage was increased by 3/5ths of a vote for each slave you owned as well when the USofA struck out on its own. And all that was self regenerating as long as you owned the children of your slaves. That means "miscegenation" had to be prevented because before this point it was just going on all the time.

Just one of the panoply of effects that followed the bending of society to accomodate hereditary slavery. And like the gravitic effects of mass on spacetime, the social distortion is such that you will either orbit it, fall in or your trajectory will take you outside the system entirely.

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Submitted by memer on March 4, 2005 - 6:11pm.

Interesting analogy P. You know how to move the mass-es. Somehow I suspect you don't really want to escape the inertia, but scribe a new line toward a new collaborative(?) well. Til now (the way i sees it), all light bends around a heavyset 2-headed hydra: Greed and Necessity. Will you use some new element(s) to pave a different way?

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...my gawd, there's more >> mememomi

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 4, 2005 - 7:24pm.

I think I see useful things, and if I can figure out how to describe them, I will.

Consider, though, that gravity wells being the result of the presense of mass and humans being mass, humans could by conscious choice gather until they form their own gravity well. It's never before been done consciously...

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Submitted by cnulan on March 6, 2005 - 2:19pm.

Slaves were the major repository of wealth in the South in those days…the amount of land you were allocated was determined by the number of servants (indentured and slave) you had.

Black Gold, texas tea...,

Anyway, in the light of the unintended gravitic consequences of certain gatherings [jes grew] - perhaps a conscious instantiation [black wagon train charter] can be crafted which articulates the unconscious emergent properties of the collective into a conscious cultural system of competency?

One would of course have to believe then that a mythos describes a set of proprioceptive, right hemispheric, or other presently liminal significations and analogs that unfold all around us and invisibly permeate everything that we do, when we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear it.

Acquiring the eyes to see and the ears to hear such a thing is usually a rather gradual process absent methods that Work to accelerate the objective constatations of the silent observer such that they rival and become accessible to awareness in much the same way that the active mentations of the left hemispheric self-talker are accessible...,

viewed in this way, it appears that conscious gathering is perennial rule for a particular stream of humanity, and an exception for the mass...,

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 6, 2005 - 4:54pm.

Anyway, in the light of the unintended gravitic consequences of certain gatherings [jes grew] - perhaps a conscious instantiation [black wagon train charter] can be crafted which articulates the unconscious emergent properties of the collective into a conscious cultural system of competency?

I read your wagon train charter stuff. It's a call for self-sufficiency, which I think is slightly (but only slightly) off the mark.

There's a difference between being self-sufficient and pulling your own weight.

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Submitted by memer on March 6, 2005 - 7:28pm.

"Acquiring the eyes to see and the ears to hear such a thing is usually a rather gradual process absent methods that Work to accelerate the objective constatations of the silent observer such that they rival and become accessible to awareness in much the same way that the active mentations of the left hemispheric self-talker are accessible..."

Hanh? Ok, cnulan, you did that runon on purpose. Dumb it down a little, will ya? Starting to lose the thread.

Do you simply mean, make what is unconscious conscious?

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...my gawd, there's more >> mememomi

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Submitted by cnulan on March 6, 2005 - 11:39pm.

Dumb it down a little, will ya? Starting to lose the thread.

That's unfortunate...,

Do you simply mean, make what is unconscious conscious?

Is peak psychedelic experience which cannot subsequently be articulated the same as making something unconscious conscious?

Mythopoesy is >right hemispheric< language of form. It is a system of signification which may or may not *make sense* to the self-talker. I selected that specific terminology to point to the 17 instances in which gospel teachings are expressed in the language of form and explicitly cued by that usage.

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 7, 2005 - 12:02am.

cnulan, you remind me of a doctor with a piss-poor bedside manner. The kind that only answers your health questions in specialist terminology.

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Submitted by memer on March 7, 2005 - 1:07am.

Actually, I thought it was a half-joke to use 57 words in a single sentence, but I see this way of speaking is the norm for this cat. Never thought I'd see someone write more densely than Cobb. Nice. No, it doesn't look like you're trying to impress at alll ;-)

Anyway, you preach on bruthaman. Me an the choir be out at the bbq. Holla.

(p.s. Yes, I'll try to look up your references)
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...my gawd, there's more >> mememomi

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 7, 2005 - 8:32am.

Thing is, I see cnulan's knowledge as sound, and there's a cohort he will reach directly with his approach, just as there's a crew that prefers doctors who wear their learning visibly.

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Submitted by cnulan on March 7, 2005 - 8:51am.

I read your wagon train charter stuff. It's a call for self-sufficiency, which I think is slightly (but only slightly) off the mark. There's a difference between being self-sufficient and pulling your own weight.

Actually, it's a call to render contractually explicit the terms of your utility to the group. You slip, you shirk, you get left by the wagontrail on your own.

Getting left behind is no big deal at the moment, matter of fact, it's the norm. With the passage of time, and increasing cost/scarcity of energy, that will change, dramatically.

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Submitted by cnulan on March 7, 2005 - 9:13am.


Children learn more from what you are than from what you teach!

everything else is merely conversation...,

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 7, 2005 - 9:49am.

Actually, it's a call to render contractually explicit the terms of your utility to the group.

Watching folks try to do that would be amusing as hell.

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Submitted by cnulan on March 7, 2005 - 10:02am.

that's why actually building the wagontrain and getting down to the [existance is truth] level of instantiation is essential.

In a measurable inertial mass such as this, it becomes exceedingly simple to quantify the material and energetic utility of each of the undertaking's constituents - slippers and shirkers can be easily identified in this context - and summarily left by the wayside.

everything else is merely conversation...,

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Submitted by memer on March 7, 2005 - 10:36am.

Ah, so I see that his role is to hook up that sliver of the crowd that prefers its medicine extra dense, with the big, thorny chunks of wisdom. Coo. Some like it with one lump, some ten. But where is this wagon train goin anyway? Who's onboard? Who's playin spoiler to you robber barons hoarding all the good stuff? No Robin of the hood?

I want a role in this play. Is class clown taken?

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...my gawd, there's more >> mememomi

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Submitted by cnulan on March 7, 2005 - 11:54am.

"Ah, so I see that his role is to hook up that sliver of the crowd that prefers its medicine extra dense."

Remember memer, children learn more from what you are than from what you preach, and that's not rocket science to anyone except an ultra-lightweight...,

There is a wagontrain of sorts in your neck of the woods - mebbe you could exemplify your special functional utility by sharing skills and resources with some of these good people.., document your experimental results hereandabouts, advance the collective discipline in practical as well as theoretical terms, and in the process help increase the inertial mass of a genuinely goodhearted node [eso anthropos cardio] there in Toronto.

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on March 7, 2005 - 12:15pm.

But where is this wagon train goin anyway?

In the comments at Vision Circle. Most of it is around here somewhere too...sometimes it's easier to find someone else's reference to a conversation here...

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Submitted by memer on March 7, 2005 - 12:20pm.

Heh! Boy, you are somethin else. Well, finally, something I can use. Thanks for the link, cnulan, I will investigate.

Btw, that's a great DuBois quote, but thing is, I don't know you, so all we've got is your "preachings." Know thyself an all that, but know your audience, too.

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...my gawd, there's more >> mememomi

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