The best failure I can be- Beyond words there are shapes hinting at what can't be said outright
... But I still think, though that is obviously better, using language at all in our thinking limits our thinking only to ideas we have been exposed to previously. We need to go beyond the past embodied in language. ... And within that are the great lessons of Eastern thought, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen: the need to recognize the limitations of languages, and by extension, of cultures, as contextual, limited in scope to those they were originally developed within or for, but needing constant expansion and having that past, that foundation, being put in new contexts through new experiences and greater histories which they cannot contain without constricting them.
"Why limit yourself to 3 dimensional shapes for clues," the researcher replied with a wink and a smile. "To the 1 dimensional person, the pattern of the square was simply in the only 2 shapes he knew, lines and dots. With memory and intellect, he could have envisioned a square from it but also could have seen it as anything else. Though the pattern of the square was there to be found, it was more apparent to a Flatlander than it would seem to a 1 dimensional person. "What is it with these repeating patterns of lines and dots?" he might think, and think nothing more of it. A different 1 dimensional person might pick up on it right away. ... because we are trained to think in those terms or see it in that light. If it were something purposely trying to get us thinking in terms unfamiliar to us to begin to be able to explain it and expand our perceptions, it would have that effect on us. Others might pay it no mind at all. Others still yet might see it as a sign from God to do this or that."
"Through time," he went on, "anything can seem to mean anything to anyone. Higher dimensions need not be divined from geometric shapes for someone to see a pattern that makes them think other dimensions exist. They might see it in a rise and fall of species over time, or the beginning and ending of Universes, or in the stages of life they have lived through. When time itself can be thought to be the medium by which 1D people can envision 2Dness, or 2D people can imagine or deduce 3Dness, anything and everything we experience is as valid as any square or triangle, cube, tetrahedron or Tesseract, for opening our minds to dimensions beyond what we perceive."
"As scientists we see the logic in understanding or communicating knowledge of our dimensions through shapes down to other lower dimensions when possibly only other scientists would make the connection. Life itself might be the means to convey such information. Life itself is not only to be lived, but begs to be understood. It may be an answer in the form of a question, a question with no definite answers, or nothing needed to be understood at all, just lived. If it does have a point of view to be conveyed, it is best apparent or easiest to understand if it is within all we experience, not hidden in complex numbers or geometric shapes. As a scientist, I might choose to start communicating with a Flatlander or one of lower dimensions by use of number or shapes over time but many other 3D beings might take a different approach entirely."
"Yes, I think", he concluded, "that life itself is the best thing to use to open up 2D beings to the possibilities of the more confusing to them but simple to us, realities of life in our world. If it was in every aspect of their and our lives, everyone would have an equal chance of realizing, if not by one method, then another. Yet it is not for me to enlighten 2D beings on 3D realities. I as always am content to solve the puzzle immediately before me. As always that is to understand everything or my part in everything."
(I am) Going a little bit further with shapes in lieu of words before throwing in the towel today at Truthrevival.org. To match my clear dodecahedron, I now should soon be getting a clear cube and clear tetrahedron. Of the so-called 5 Platonic solids, to me there is only 3 really, again matching the 3, 4, 5. The Octahedron and Icosahedron are interesting but only triangular reverses of cubes and dodecahedrons with points (vertexes) in place of sides (faces) and vice-versa. Reversing a Tetrahedron results in another tetrahedron. The MerKaBa shape is a good example of showing this concept of inversing one Tetrahedron to create another identical one in the same way Cubes and Dodecahedrons result in Octahedrons and Icosahedrons. Plus those two are triangular and not of true different sides, so I and some ancient Greeks would regard them as lesser shapes than the Tetrahedron, Cube, and Dodecahedron.
Much as I saw languages as keys to getting into culture's heads, what concepts they choose to think about or discuss out of all possible to any one in any culture at any time, regardless of opinions about them as regards to their 'morality' or 'rightness' to be thought about or discussed, that limitation down to concrete consciousness-jumping 'communication' or 'thought action' or 'proactive contemplation', :-), which defines a culture at a given time, not by what they think of, but understanding the greater palette, what they purposely choose not to think of, what they willfully omit from their thinking processes, I saw shapes as a more universal contemplation mechanism. They exist much as everything else physical in this world, according to their own logic and rules, not that we don't not see them by our religious, philosophical, and academic biases, the lenses through which we try to impose our own thought 'orders' onto things, to project our attitudes upon nature and universal physical orders.
And I also know how 'science' does this as well. Our thoughts frame how we think about things. Though many scientists claim to be secular, non-religious, I see, through my own biases no doubt, the Big Bang as yet another creationist myth, a search for a beginning because that is the frame of reference most have to line up their thoughts by like getting ducks all in a row, or all charges pointing north or south in a magnet, a beginning and end, neat and above all else, simple.
As I stated in the first post about the Dodecahedron, I am aware through contemplating a hyperspheric shaped Universe without beginning or end, all relative to other points in space, that some cosmic topologists have suggested that the Universe is more dodecahedral than hyperspheric. I did not read the article enough to know why exactly that shape, and as I mentioned below, that there was probably something in their data that they interpreted that that explanation was preferable to fit the facts as they knew them at the time.
This fits in quite oddly with the fact that of the Ancient Greeks associations of the five platonic solids, fire, air, water, etc., it was the dodecahedron which represented the heavens or the Universe beyond earth. The first 'explanation' of this 'co-incidence' is that those who proposed such a recent 'theory' were aware of this and basically, as with all theories, however sound on data, begins with imagination. Essentially the key kernel is realization, or what I can also be called, thinking of something, or lesser put, making -hit up.
Or one could take the philosophical approach (the word itself coming from the Sophists who basically sat around the Acropolis (came close to getting there and sitting there at one point myself) and basically just mused about the nature of things, essentially making -shit up to talk about and think about) and say that if the Universe is indeed shaped like a Dodecahedron, that intuitive reasoning alone could have led the Ancient Greeks to 'discover' this relationship. Ooh, ah, magical new age mumbo jumbo. Go grab yourself a crystal and sit in the Lotus position and unlock the secrets of the Universe through feeling its vibrations! (Sorry, no disrespect for those who do. That like everything else, that is a valid thing to do, plus it is cheap, better than drugs, and certainly more moral than what most people are doing at the moment.)
Regardless of cart or horse first, our reasoning gets in the way sooner or later and we frame things according to our frame of reference. The thing about shapes, like numbers, have an order outside of our localized in space and time forms of references. Yes our cultures take these relationships and build up philosophies, religious and otherwise, about these relationships, (tarot cards, numerology, celestial calendars, sacred shapes, etc.) but because they seem to hint at orders beyond our ability to explain them, they will fascinate any being with a mind, a body, and sight or perception to recognize them and make -hit up about why they, those shapes, are there, and by extension why they, those beings, are there.
I know with a post-perusal viewpoint my own journey through shapes. I know now which 2D things I drew were 'flattened down' 3 and 4 dimensional shapes, which I drew intuitively without knowing why. More in the conscious-of realm, why I thought to make Cube and Tetrahedral-based games, to better understand the internal relationships of sides to faces and internal to external inversion which reaches it logical conclusion when contemplating curved spaces or Universes. My only regret is that I never thought of, in time, actually making a Dodecahedral playing surface to complete the 3, 4, 5 set, though in defense, it would have been hard to draw on a 2d screen without constant spinning it around required to play it.
I understand now how contemplating Tesseracts led me to have to write 2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple because there was no such book for me to read, so I had to write if first pretty much for the sole purpose that I could read it after finishing it. I understand by my own limited means, how objects 'unbend' curved space, and how that made up word relates to another made up word, 'gravity'. This is all simple now and mostly beneath me to contemplate but I have been left with nothing else to do, while awaiting my 'betters' decisions on how best to screw up the world through their lack of courage at confronting events which they pretend not to see about to force themselves through institutions they pretend not to know have failed them and everyone else in the most extreme ways possible.
In a word, shapes can unlock perspectives inherent within any who have existed or will. They will look at them, and what they will see you can see. What they can know or learn from they, or even just imagine and make -hit up about, you can equally as well. An ancient Greek could possible use them to get inside the head of a modern physicist just as modern physicists through words got into their heads and used their concepts to make atomic weapons from. Time is irrelevant to contemplation, and thinking does defy causality in some ways I have tried to explain, notably in Deconstructing the Universe's Shattering Time, and in some ways best not left attempted to be explained. Despite going off for awhile, I am by and large limited by identity and intended effects of what 'order' I would try to impose on the world, as we all are when we admit it, whether by the religion or culture you were raised it, or by your own unique (and as always, not as unique as you think) viewpoints.
So before I quit, again, I will end with a relevant quote from Toward Tomorrow to move on to cap my latest 'defeat' as best I can, and hope others will not be so limited by culture as I have been by my own. I tried to improve it, but the 'rules' always required me to defer to those who would lead others lost in the woods until they starved to death, if that was, and remains, their choice.
... When we consider great men or women of the past we take into account the worlds they were born into, the level of knowledge common to their times and existences. The less knowledge they had to work with, the less developed science, mathematics, or philosophy they had with which to build up their own ideas or inventions, the more remarkable their achievements can seem. For a child to draw a triangle or square and ponder its significance today seems inconsequential but for the first human who did so, no matter what their age, how remarkable indeed! With that began geometry, which begat trigonometry, which made space travel possible, not only possible but even a logical conclusion to one prehistoric human scribbling shapes in the sand millennia ago. ... Given the length even of what is now thought to be the age of the universe, certainly every great discovery such as the secrets inherent in geometric shapes, or of the atom, or of space/time, or of transdimensionalism, surely all of these have been discovered countless times before and will be rediscovered countless times again after humanity has gone.
And if time and the universe are infinite in ways we cannot yet begin to fathom, giving birth to itself or new universes in yet another endless cycle of life, if it then could be that nothing can be done, said, sung, drawn, theorized, or lived which had not been done before, it still is no more or less incredible. Thoughts, ideas, dreams, experiences, aptitudes, ambitions, ignorances, and discoveries constantly rearranging themselves trying to come up with something new, something exciting, something different, always failing and yet never really failing completely.
However many universes are born, or galaxies, or solar systems and planets, however many new species are born and mature enough to contemplate it all, it always is as new and as fresh and as wondrous as each new being born and seeing it all with amazement and joy for the first time, again.
"Why limit yourself to 3 dimensional shapes for clues," the researcher replied with a wink and a smile. "To the 1 dimensional person, the pattern of the square was simply in the only 2 shapes he knew, lines and dots. With memory and intellect, he could have envisioned a square from it but also could have seen it as anything else. Though the pattern of the square was there to be found, it was more apparent to a Flatlander than it would seem to a 1 dimensional person. "What is it with these repeating patterns of lines and dots?" he might think, and think nothing more of it. A different 1 dimensional person might pick up on it right away. ... because we are trained to think in those terms or see it in that light. If it were something purposely trying to get us thinking in terms unfamiliar to us to begin to be able to explain it and expand our perceptions, it would have that effect on us. Others might pay it no mind at all. Others still yet might see it as a sign from God to do this or that."
"Through time," he went on, "anything can seem to mean anything to anyone. Higher dimensions need not be divined from geometric shapes for someone to see a pattern that makes them think other dimensions exist. They might see it in a rise and fall of species over time, or the beginning and ending of Universes, or in the stages of life they have lived through. When time itself can be thought to be the medium by which 1D people can envision 2Dness, or 2D people can imagine or deduce 3Dness, anything and everything we experience is as valid as any square or triangle, cube, tetrahedron or Tesseract, for opening our minds to dimensions beyond what we perceive."
"As scientists we see the logic in understanding or communicating knowledge of our dimensions through shapes down to other lower dimensions when possibly only other scientists would make the connection. Life itself might be the means to convey such information. Life itself is not only to be lived, but begs to be understood. It may be an answer in the form of a question, a question with no definite answers, or nothing needed to be understood at all, just lived. If it does have a point of view to be conveyed, it is best apparent or easiest to understand if it is within all we experience, not hidden in complex numbers or geometric shapes. As a scientist, I might choose to start communicating with a Flatlander or one of lower dimensions by use of number or shapes over time but many other 3D beings might take a different approach entirely."
"Yes, I think", he concluded, "that life itself is the best thing to use to open up 2D beings to the possibilities of the more confusing to them but simple to us, realities of life in our world. If it was in every aspect of their and our lives, everyone would have an equal chance of realizing, if not by one method, then another. Yet it is not for me to enlighten 2D beings on 3D realities. I as always am content to solve the puzzle immediately before me. As always that is to understand everything or my part in everything."
(I am) Going a little bit further with shapes in lieu of words before throwing in the towel today at Truthrevival.org. To match my clear dodecahedron, I now should soon be getting a clear cube and clear tetrahedron. Of the so-called 5 Platonic solids, to me there is only 3 really, again matching the 3, 4, 5. The Octahedron and Icosahedron are interesting but only triangular reverses of cubes and dodecahedrons with points (vertexes) in place of sides (faces) and vice-versa. Reversing a Tetrahedron results in another tetrahedron. The MerKaBa shape is a good example of showing this concept of inversing one Tetrahedron to create another identical one in the same way Cubes and Dodecahedrons result in Octahedrons and Icosahedrons. Plus those two are triangular and not of true different sides, so I and some ancient Greeks would regard them as lesser shapes than the Tetrahedron, Cube, and Dodecahedron.
Much as I saw languages as keys to getting into culture's heads, what concepts they choose to think about or discuss out of all possible to any one in any culture at any time, regardless of opinions about them as regards to their 'morality' or 'rightness' to be thought about or discussed, that limitation down to concrete consciousness-jumping 'communication' or 'thought action' or 'proactive contemplation', :-), which defines a culture at a given time, not by what they think of, but understanding the greater palette, what they purposely choose not to think of, what they willfully omit from their thinking processes, I saw shapes as a more universal contemplation mechanism. They exist much as everything else physical in this world, according to their own logic and rules, not that we don't not see them by our religious, philosophical, and academic biases, the lenses through which we try to impose our own thought 'orders' onto things, to project our attitudes upon nature and universal physical orders.
And I also know how 'science' does this as well. Our thoughts frame how we think about things. Though many scientists claim to be secular, non-religious, I see, through my own biases no doubt, the Big Bang as yet another creationist myth, a search for a beginning because that is the frame of reference most have to line up their thoughts by like getting ducks all in a row, or all charges pointing north or south in a magnet, a beginning and end, neat and above all else, simple.
As I stated in the first post about the Dodecahedron, I am aware through contemplating a hyperspheric shaped Universe without beginning or end, all relative to other points in space, that some cosmic topologists have suggested that the Universe is more dodecahedral than hyperspheric. I did not read the article enough to know why exactly that shape, and as I mentioned below, that there was probably something in their data that they interpreted that that explanation was preferable to fit the facts as they knew them at the time.
This fits in quite oddly with the fact that of the Ancient Greeks associations of the five platonic solids, fire, air, water, etc., it was the dodecahedron which represented the heavens or the Universe beyond earth. The first 'explanation' of this 'co-incidence' is that those who proposed such a recent 'theory' were aware of this and basically, as with all theories, however sound on data, begins with imagination. Essentially the key kernel is realization, or what I can also be called, thinking of something, or lesser put, making -hit up.
Or one could take the philosophical approach (the word itself coming from the Sophists who basically sat around the Acropolis (came close to getting there and sitting there at one point myself) and basically just mused about the nature of things, essentially making -shit up to talk about and think about) and say that if the Universe is indeed shaped like a Dodecahedron, that intuitive reasoning alone could have led the Ancient Greeks to 'discover' this relationship. Ooh, ah, magical new age mumbo jumbo. Go grab yourself a crystal and sit in the Lotus position and unlock the secrets of the Universe through feeling its vibrations! (Sorry, no disrespect for those who do. That like everything else, that is a valid thing to do, plus it is cheap, better than drugs, and certainly more moral than what most people are doing at the moment.)
Regardless of cart or horse first, our reasoning gets in the way sooner or later and we frame things according to our frame of reference. The thing about shapes, like numbers, have an order outside of our localized in space and time forms of references. Yes our cultures take these relationships and build up philosophies, religious and otherwise, about these relationships, (tarot cards, numerology, celestial calendars, sacred shapes, etc.) but because they seem to hint at orders beyond our ability to explain them, they will fascinate any being with a mind, a body, and sight or perception to recognize them and make -hit up about why they, those shapes, are there, and by extension why they, those beings, are there.
I know with a post-perusal viewpoint my own journey through shapes. I know now which 2D things I drew were 'flattened down' 3 and 4 dimensional shapes, which I drew intuitively without knowing why. More in the conscious-of realm, why I thought to make Cube and Tetrahedral-based games, to better understand the internal relationships of sides to faces and internal to external inversion which reaches it logical conclusion when contemplating curved spaces or Universes. My only regret is that I never thought of, in time, actually making a Dodecahedral playing surface to complete the 3, 4, 5 set, though in defense, it would have been hard to draw on a 2d screen without constant spinning it around required to play it.
I understand now how contemplating Tesseracts led me to have to write 2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple because there was no such book for me to read, so I had to write if first pretty much for the sole purpose that I could read it after finishing it. I understand by my own limited means, how objects 'unbend' curved space, and how that made up word relates to another made up word, 'gravity'. This is all simple now and mostly beneath me to contemplate but I have been left with nothing else to do, while awaiting my 'betters' decisions on how best to screw up the world through their lack of courage at confronting events which they pretend not to see about to force themselves through institutions they pretend not to know have failed them and everyone else in the most extreme ways possible.
In a word, shapes can unlock perspectives inherent within any who have existed or will. They will look at them, and what they will see you can see. What they can know or learn from they, or even just imagine and make -hit up about, you can equally as well. An ancient Greek could possible use them to get inside the head of a modern physicist just as modern physicists through words got into their heads and used their concepts to make atomic weapons from. Time is irrelevant to contemplation, and thinking does defy causality in some ways I have tried to explain, notably in Deconstructing the Universe's Shattering Time, and in some ways best not left attempted to be explained. Despite going off for awhile, I am by and large limited by identity and intended effects of what 'order' I would try to impose on the world, as we all are when we admit it, whether by the religion or culture you were raised it, or by your own unique (and as always, not as unique as you think) viewpoints.
So before I quit, again, I will end with a relevant quote from Toward Tomorrow to move on to cap my latest 'defeat' as best I can, and hope others will not be so limited by culture as I have been by my own. I tried to improve it, but the 'rules' always required me to defer to those who would lead others lost in the woods until they starved to death, if that was, and remains, their choice.
... When we consider great men or women of the past we take into account the worlds they were born into, the level of knowledge common to their times and existences. The less knowledge they had to work with, the less developed science, mathematics, or philosophy they had with which to build up their own ideas or inventions, the more remarkable their achievements can seem. For a child to draw a triangle or square and ponder its significance today seems inconsequential but for the first human who did so, no matter what their age, how remarkable indeed! With that began geometry, which begat trigonometry, which made space travel possible, not only possible but even a logical conclusion to one prehistoric human scribbling shapes in the sand millennia ago. ... Given the length even of what is now thought to be the age of the universe, certainly every great discovery such as the secrets inherent in geometric shapes, or of the atom, or of space/time, or of transdimensionalism, surely all of these have been discovered countless times before and will be rediscovered countless times again after humanity has gone.
And if time and the universe are infinite in ways we cannot yet begin to fathom, giving birth to itself or new universes in yet another endless cycle of life, if it then could be that nothing can be done, said, sung, drawn, theorized, or lived which had not been done before, it still is no more or less incredible. Thoughts, ideas, dreams, experiences, aptitudes, ambitions, ignorances, and discoveries constantly rearranging themselves trying to come up with something new, something exciting, something different, always failing and yet never really failing completely.
However many universes are born, or galaxies, or solar systems and planets, however many new species are born and mature enough to contemplate it all, it always is as new and as fresh and as wondrous as each new being born and seeing it all with amazement and joy for the first time, again.
posted by Jared DuBois | 1:16 PM
<< Home