Analog world

Just like theories;
All analogies are wrong.
Some are useful.

Analogies are wonderful things.
They are the way we learn and understand.

As analogies help us see similarities,
They help us connect many differing observations,
They weave loose phenomena into a more sturdy coherent world view;
A steadier platform from which we can operate.

Unlike theories;
Analogies don't attempt to present themselves as true.
They don't attempt to be perfect,
Just useful.

Good vibrations

This week I received a new concrete vibrator. Immediately I started to experiment with vibrating mud. It does a marvelous job liquefying stiff mud and helping it flow. When the vibrations are removed, the mud gets stiff again.

Then I noticed that the mud flows counterclockwise around the vibrating wand. There was something oddly familiar about the picture of the mud circling the wand. Finally I remembered...
It looks a lot like pictures I have seen many times in basic electricity books; it looks like a magnetic field flowing around a current carrying wire.

This has to be an analogy telling me something about why a moving electric charge creates a magnetic field. Hopefully the lesson will make itself clear in due time.

Stable structures

One of my lessons this week was about service, and how it relates to multi-level structures.

Members:
Everybody and everything is an organization made up of members. In the case of your body, the members are cells. They are all working hard to make your body systems healthy and viable. In return, the cells get services like food and oxygen and waste disposal and protection.

Hosts:
In turn, everybody and everything are members of larger host organizations. For people it includes governments, corporations, schools, clubs, etc.

Stability:
Any entity that wants to be survivable and stable in the long term needs to provide value to both its members and its hosts.

My take home lesson:
When I need to make a decision, it is usually best to choose a path that benefits both my body and my community.

The royal "We"

I is We
We are Many
Many is one


As I woke this morning, I was still firmly in my dream character while another part of me noticed the state of my physical body and realized I was dreaming, while another part of me was planning my next project. Each was a different persona; a different consciousness.

For a moment I wondered...
Who is this "I" that is observing this?

A burst of parallel answer; too instant, too broad for words; referring to the recursive and fractal nature of community at many overlapping scales. Then the simple words...

I is We
We are Many
Many is one

One track mind, many track brain

Artists, philosophers, physicists, mathematicians, theologians;
The lucky ones are among those who occasionally get such an insight that it leaves them with the thrilling feeling that they have just seen right into the mind of God.

Me?... I seem to keep bumping into God's brain.

Everywhere I look; every dimension, every scale, every interaction of anything, I eventually see how it functions like a brain.

If everything is one big brain, it couldn't help but be omnipotent and omnipresent.

Life in time-space

At some point, your pan dimensional self decided to string together an interesting experience by trying out life in time-space. Time-space is a game, a set of rules you agree to follow; such as limiting yourself to only a four dimensional path (like when we play a board game). If you break the basic rules (actual rules of physics) you must exit the game. Within those rules, you find an infinite freedom of choices.

In this game, you and other players near you collectively blaze a narrow path through the jungle of the pan-dimensional all. We call this path "Time". While following the path, you also have other degrees of freedom. Some of those we collectively call "Space".

One popular strategy in this game is to make your path strong and resilient like a string. When individual fibers intertwine, they become string. The strongest strings have long fibers intertwined with many others. Those fibers are mostly aligned with the length of the string.

Our string is our path; time.

To create long fibers in time;
we pay attention to lessons of the past, learning from it and building on it.
we predict the future, then act to make it comfortable, safe, exciting, noble, etc.

We intertwine these fibers by interacting with each other.

Short fibers are created by;
Breaking basic rules (you die)
Ignoring the past
Don't care about future
Don't prepare for tomorrow

Short fibers don't add much strength to a string, but they do have other characteristics;
They add fluff, fuzziness, body, lubrication,
They dust off the main string, like spores in the wind leaving seeds in other places.
They aid digestion and help scour a path clean.

The difference between the two functions are remarkably like how a brain is structured;
Long fibers are the neurons;
Short fibers are the glial cells.

just a Fiber

This morning I took a little extra meditation time while the teacher showed me a lesson.

I was graphically seeing how and why all of time-space is...
just a fiber,
in a thread,
in the cloth,
in the great tapestry of life.

As I leave the meditation, it is hard enough to even hang on to some of the pictures and logic and feelings; I am not even going to try to put it into words here.

As I write, I am eating lots of fiber for breakfast.