Collective Awareness

Essay 1: The Bag

Introduction

The following is a list of relationships which obtain between biological, natural & artificial objects, but are critically present in biological forms. They structure our perceptions, concepts & actions. Since, our focus is the behavior of people, we need not go too far into the weeds of material properties, but awareness of psychology, art & design are helpful.

An aged, indistinct word for this study was ‘cybernetics’ which means ‘government’. It aims to embody the valencies within & between collectives. It refers to the catalog of antecedents with a category of resultants that are associated with each.

The relationships I refer to are not necessarily formal or geometrical but can be demonstrated as such. They can be calculated to figure a quantity, but this is not the purpose of looking, which is to understand the register of displacement, remoteness that affects the independence of items. Inversely, rules of grouping, addition, association also modifies the perception & strength of elements.  The purpose is to study structure as to its dynamic, psychological, life implications. These also form the basic consideration of architecture & planning

We do this because the cosmos itself is in motion. Motion imparts discontinuity. Discontinuity is not always favorable for organisms. They must transform or negate the drastic change to a manageable event & possibly use it to advantage.

The grain of our study is ‘information’ that transits space, either as bits(packets) that emphasize an independent aspect of an issue, or as channels(waves) that set forth a container for such packets & are made of other information nets.

Information is projected or bleeds into the surrounding space with its contents: A message (virtual object).

The route & mode of information is relative to the significant entities receiving & sending. However, one important difference between the content of information medium & that of an objective entity is that the relative speed of travel for information is faster.

Information always travels faster than the significant participants which gives information its important role in growth & behavior. Information also skips barriers unless restricted; it also modulates, tacitly revealing the transmitter.

This is also the case between the organs & neurons of our own bodies that communicate via chemical, electrical channels. These modes differentiate their idiom to focus their communications separately & distinctly for differing activities.

Another difference between information content & physical content is that information is ‘virtual’, unmanifest, unreal but is carried superficially in a physical(material) vehicle. Information merely refers to the quality & quantity of things by a tag not directly co-dimensional with its reference. This defines a code. A coding system defines virtual ‘an exchange’ substrate, for persistence of forms that are themselves ephemeral. We have therefore, the eternal within the ephemeral, & vice versa.

1. The Bag

The first of these primal organizations is the ‘bag’. It is a natural collector, protector & transporter of objects. If permeable, the bag becomes a sorting, filtering mechanism. In another context, the bag creates an aperture into & out of its dark recess, effecting projection, translation of image, pressure or frequency.

This primal shape serves primarily as a container that divides inside from outside in the first relationship of arising in polymorphic awareness… gas pain, blinding light.

Thinking of First Cause, we may appreciate the form in pre-physics, which issues from a primal, infinitesimal circular motion, when the ultimate bag inflated as the universe, that contains matter & associated space, but has no external barrier. Such makes it difficult to objectify the cosmos in one static vision, & perhaps why it escapes the classification of life form, & is not recognized as God, whom we perceive in our philosophy as Duration, Being.

Next, we ask, which came first, the chicken or egg?

Now you may answer this for your friends. The egg came first & before all else; even we emerge from an egg within the womb. This kind of bag is somewhat permeable but does not have a direct opening & requires rupture to fulfill its function. It is specialized from a cell which had developed within a prior example. It divided & differentiated according to another level of contents within the egg & cells, namely DNA which is coded instructions from another time & place, making DNA a species of communique.

DNA is not the chicken though, but a virtual one requiring subsequent additions & subdivisions to ‘grow’. In this way DNA provides the animal with a base structure, destiny & fate without having to completely rehearse evolution in real time again.

Again, DNA is…, appears to be, an intentionally coded message due to its highly specialized structure & function. But this intentionality is local within the extended system that is self-limiting, self-actualizing. The structure has evolved by such efficient means that it accomplishes replication thru an auxiliary ‘shepherd’ mechanism that rachets ‘mechanically’ along the string thanks to borrowed motion external to it. By another avenue, energy for macro-biological processes come from the mitochondria with a separate DNA channel.

Clearly the bag shape gives a very practical solution for carrying persistent life. It offers defense against constant motion & hard assault from the cosmos by forming a shell surrounding a relatively quiet interior. The geometry of the bag offers much but hinders complete information acquisition, obviously. So, articulation, mobility & some permeability of the shape is preferable.

To the extent the organism can overcome the inherent hindrance of the shape but retain its protection is advantageous.

2. Host/Guest

These differences illuminate another relationship concerning the content(s) of the container. There is a Host/Guest relationship between a container & contents & between contents. The host is anchored to or most associated with the function of the container. Within the cell & body, there other ‘shepherding’ bodies that impel or modify other bodies, exhibiting a ‘host’ relationship to other contents informed by coding.

As to DNA within the cell & body, it resides as a guest whose protective host is the body that adds layers of tissue between the cosmos & its coded information. Beyond the life of the body & external to it, DNA on the other hand is the protective host, & the actual body becomes the guest. We can see this alternating relationship creates a persistent relay space for the storage or memory of information, code.

This relay of properties concerning one entity is between virtual or seed-code aspect & the unfolded, developed entity. This has implications farther on.

3. Empedoclean Cycle

is observable in internal relationships that impel recovery or balance between two or more limits when these are exceeded. The interaction of these relationships exhibits a phased cycle that governs them, & promotes over-all persistence of the organism.

These ‘forces’ embody a system of host/guest relationships, that add, hold or remove elements within the container or alter organic function. Naturally those that are useful are taken, those that are extraneous or harmful are rejected; even as a good substance transforms to a useless one.

Essentially these phases exhibit three properties of exertion: attraction(love), tension(stasis), repulsion(strife). The coordination of the body’s processes are a further development of the same self-governing processes that exceed limits & exerts a change for recovery, built upon the same differential of host/guest.

Again, to clear a confusion of a poor metaphor: In a simple bag holding an engraved stone, the bag is the host & the stone is the guest. But in living systems the bag is the host relative to a lifetime, but beyond the lifetime the information on the stone is host to the body.

4. Appearance

A fourth relationship is Appearance, that concerns the external shape & cognizance of the organism or group relative to internal activity. This process is projection. The external structure has to accommodate the processes mentioned above, but it also has to manage these same host/guest relationships externally. Qualities, assaults or requirements may also shift, according to what container or domain traversed.

The external aspect of an organism sends information about it faster that it can move. For vision & hearing info travels quickly, broadly. These elements enter the milieu & reside in the surrounding observers, usually subconsciously, unless or until it becomes salient.

However, over time the appearance of a certain entity entails predictable behaviors. & once these are anticipated & rewarded by observation, an external knowledge base or noosphere is erected for this one, by which a collective or group can have cognizance of another entity or group.

These bases are noumenal & contagious since quick perception, judgement informs them, & they move quickly through the field. Knowledge-bases carried by other people are united by those people & the people are united by them. These incorporeal exchanges are called a loci, lokah; also called astral environments or asterisms that also contain astral beings, personages & VIPs that are virtual.

The thing about imaginary worlds is that they are not visible to all lookers just as the constellations are not. In the global view, we see the same stars connected differently in different cultures & or connecting to those not visible during sky-watching periods.

In a semantic, lexical context, meanings are carried in different word forms in different locals. Or, within a specialized lokah vocabularies drift in meaning, undergo cynical turns of meaning reversal, annex words by connotation, add new words for more specialized activity.

These external knowledge-bases offer short-cuts across a domain as ‘rules’ of a domain by which significant entities are observed to move freely or purposefully. Similar to obeying traffic rules, we observe a limited scope of detail for each vehicle to enable quick spatial-vector calculation & muscle activation. A limitation in general awareness adds to heightened awareness specific to an activity, locus or access.

For the above account we find in nature & animalia another use of coding, that breaches the body barrier & genetic functioning for the wider environment, is the use of effigy. Figuration that is displayed externally, appears superficially, virtually, decoratively apart from the essential entity or group.

5. Effigy & Chimera

These  important projections extend the relationship between the actual body & the way its perceived & cognized.

Effigy in nature is used a camouflage as a defensive measure. It is also used to capture food by disguise, or complete a genetic cycle via an enthralled third party, in the case of plants. Darwin suggests these forms evolve by trial & error. Well enough, then.

Entities use trial & error intelligently which is mirrored internally in physical tissue contained within. & what is mirrored within is the external container & its contents’ external appearance. It is a short route then to accommodate this reflection through habituated behavior, function & form into the next generation.

Body effigy has become voluntary and literalized in tattoo cults, applied within a lokah grounded in intense endurance or obliterating stimulus, that allows participation or access to relevant domains. However, anything worn or inserted can become an effigy or key. As such it remains superficial & apart from the primary organism.

Effigy is a form of symbol, by which is most often a recognizable object or animal that conveys the unfolded meaning. But other non-word forms can be called effigy that enter the awareness visually or aurally that are abstract yet imply a possible event. Color & warning sounds are used in nature as negative antecedents.

But now, let’s look at the creation of a type of effigy that departs from external nature but carries information about the inner nature of some presence. These populate the mythological & didactic stories recited by adults & children. These effigies are often described in story allowing the listener to imagine to his ability the figure; sometimes they are brought to greater reality in artistic effort, yet these are never born. These are chimera.

A formula for composing chimera available to the ancient artists is thus: Divide the body (soma) in the usual way: Head, Thorax, Abdomen. Apply to these divisions the appropriate parts of a symbolic animal, such as cat, bird, cow, lizard, bat, fish to arrive at a coded message about someone or something . These animals carry meanings that people who observe them can know & then transfer to the subject of the chimera, but the composite animal is not real.

Another kind of chimera is another human sourced composite that rides within the imagination only as a personal figuration of reality or deep desire.

Still another figment resides within the imagination. It enters naturally, this is the reflection, where two channels of awareness are brought face to face in...

The Mirror… Next time, next Wednesday.

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