In the beginning ...

A provisional start in the mandelbrot

The beginning is a provisional construct. Provisional conceit? Too often, I make the mistake of ending with a provisional construct, and mistake it for meaning … mistake the street sign for its destination. If not a mere mistake, that is definitely a conceit.

I will use this provisional beginning as both a bus stop and the bus, chatting with passengers along the way, and letting topics emerge and submerge as they will.

Any readers who have reached this far, and are interested in a post-in-itself for a topic of discussion, please feel free to make a suggestion. Otherwise, like a buzzard on an updraft, I will periodically circle this single post, editing and expanding indefinitely … or making seemingly random posts as time permits.

The road on which I travel was paved by René Descartes, but not in the typical way many presume. He is not an historical relic of academic philosophy. For me, he is still very much alive, and still paving the road.

’I think, therefore I am.’

I will not presume to know what he meant by that, but I will use it as I will.
I use that ground, not as a metaphysical proclamation. It does not say anything about the fundamental nature of reality. I use it as a provisional ground for a way of doing things. A heuristics.

The scientific process, not scientific authorities or institutions, is an extension of those heuristics.

American educator and philosopher John Dewey, similarly argued against ‘‘… “psychophysical dualism”, the erroneous and radical separation of perceiver and world.’’ — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/.

As far as I know, he thought of science as a way to solve problems, common sense, simply slowed down in a methodical attempt to catch our all-too-human biases and errors. A tool. A tool that can be used to exert the will of whoever uses it, for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

How many cases of corruption within the sciences, and its conceit of impartial objectivity, can we count? Forget ‘How to Lie With Statistics’ or ‘The Politics of Excellence'‘. Just today alone, Aug. 3, 2022 … (in case it is deleted by YouTube as going against corporate community standards, Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity ‘This is the worst I’ve seen!’.

One of the fathers of quantum mechanics, Neils Bohr, similarly argued against the naive ‘impartial’ Cartesian dualism of subject / object in that even physics can not tell us about the nature of reality. At best, it can tell us how we observe nature.

I do not now have, nor will I pursue the mathematical language of physics for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I don’t have the motivation and may not have the capacity to pursue higher mathematics. It is a never ending domain which will not pay my rent. I think it was Aristotle who said the equivalence of ‘You must eat before you can think.’ Unfortunately, he was not the only one to understand that.

https://rumble.com/v1dx497-eva-vlaardingerbroek-controlling-the-food-supply-is-the-best-way-to-control.html?mref=6zof&mc=dgip3&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Chief%20Nerd&ep=2

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

— Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient? Ha.

But another reason is because no matter how predictive or aesthetically pleasing the mathematical model, I am content to push conversational language to its limits and talk about physics in the same way we ‘dance about architecture’.

By temperament and experience, I am a believer in the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity) which restricts mathematical models, musical motifs, and literary metaphors to fractals of each other … and a mirror of my own psyche. We are not so much rational beasts as we are rationalizing ones … constantly bootstrapping our provisional constructs … and if we are not careful of falling to the Imposter Syndrome, hamstringing ourselves against action.

This post of my present understanding of self and other, is a dynamic mandala, not a static statement carved in stone. Stare at a YouTube mandelbrot set long enough, and there, the reader may find me, themselves, and any domain or subject of expression the reader is looking for. Maybe this is by biggest take-away from the Jungian inspired, Joseph Campbell -Bill Moyers interviews on ‘The Power of Myth’ … as well as Post Modernist Theory in general.

For the time being, I will pause at the edge of this rabbit hole, and mosey along.

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One inspiration for this provisional beginning is the TED presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor. I can’t remember if someone suggested it to me, or I stumbled upon it while grazing, but I was completely unprepared to face such a powerful verification of experiences I seldom talk or write about. By the end of her presentation, I was in tears of mutual recognition. I exchanged a few e-mails with her, which I still keep in this digital treasure box, before I had come to realize how famous she was.

Sub contractors for Japanese educational television (NHK-E) were soon to make two documentaries of her, and Japanese was one of many languages in which her book was translated.

A heads up, and thanks to Tereza for posting the link …

I do have some minor problem with the logic of her inviting us to make a choice in moving toward right hemisphere thinking, because who makes the choice and the act of making a choice are both probably left hemisphere phenomenon. Rather, I think that ‘grace of god’, ‘born again’, nirvana, satori, ‘who spilled the bong water’, ‘nervous breakdown’, aesthetic transcendence is beyond choice … and many blissfully go through life, never feeling the need, or having the opportunity and courage to leap down the rabbit hole.

But Jill’s moral thrust is unmistakably spot-on. If one side of the moral continuum is heavily weighted with dark-triads — the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psycopaths among us (much more on that later), she symbolizes the morally mature and autonomous among us at the altruistic end of the continuum. She encapsulates those Platonic ideals of the good, the true, and the beautiful that I have pursued and will continue chasing.

’’Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? — Robert Browning

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Yet another inspiration is primatologist Frans de Waal. Although his Ted talk was both hilarious and informative, he reminded me of something I’ve perhaps always assumed, but rarely articulated. I’m not ashamed to admit I am an ape.

If this blog is the bus, and Descartes paved the way, the raw materials are nature in general and biology in particular, though Joni Mitchell and Carl Sagan make a compelling argument for stardust …

Like Jill Bolte Taylor, I have some minor points of disagreement with Frans de Waal, otherwise I risk falling into a cult of personality. Not my favorite genre, but a very good warning …

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Born in Germany, raised in rural North Carolina, tempered in the mountains of Arizona, and molded for over half my life in Japan … when asked by students of my nationality (as in identity), I reply with a laugh invoking Japanese pun … ‘‘ninjin’ (carrot) instead of the more conventional ‘‘ningen’’ (human). Implied, is the assumption that I don’t identify with any nationality.

As much as I fear the aims of concentrating power in the hands of the globalists, I am reminded that the idea of the modern nation-state is only a few hundred years old, still an experiment among otherwise ‘social primates’, the results of which are arguably as self - destructive as the globalist agenda. History is littered with the hubris of empires that would presume to last a thousand years, now merely zombies and corpses littering our museums or evolving into the present era of ‘awakened enlightenment’.

In communicating with Japanese friends and college students, I find myself struggling to find a common ground to stand on. Typical Western religions arising from the Judeo-Christian tradition, or even the question of ‘Do you believe in god’ are a non-starter over here in a secular land of a thousand gods.

For the time being, I am content to identify myself as an aspiring social primate, differing from other primates in degree. The conundrums emerging from this stance have been, and will continue to be the source of many essays and other forms of expression.

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Another inspiration for my provisional beginning is my oh-so-provisional life. Once, I was director of undergrad biology labs at a major American university. Once, I was a tenured Associate Professor at a Japanese college. Once, I was one of only two foreigners in Japan working as a cultural consultant and textbook editor for MEXT, the Ministry of Education.

But I never finished my doctoral degree, I resigned in protest from that tenured position, I never married, I never started a family, and am now a provisional, minimum-wage Assistant Language Teacher for public schools in a small township of West Tokyo. Occasionally called upon to come up with a spur of the moment lesson plan, but far too often, a Stepin Fetchit for young teachers, full of self-confidence, who were born after I had began my journey through the halls of academia in Japan.

No Ph.D. to attach to my name. No title of ‘Professor’. And nearing 67 years of age, 40 of which has been spent consecutively living in Japan, little-to-no chance of ever regaining those titles or forging those identities. Provisional, and a social primate without much of a social context. Hoo rah!

I can see this through a dark lens, as someone without any authority to back his opinions. Or I can see this as an advantage, without the burdens and obligations of authority, to share my opinions. Many an entitled intellectual has amassed social currency, not by virtue of thought or deed, but by title and marketing, and that Panglossian ‘best of all words’ rings true, but only within their gated community.

I will begin, and rise or fall, on the merits of my thoughts, words, and deeds alone.

I will end for the moment, with the intention of coming back now and then, to polish the first of many drafts, and as a reminder that problem-solving is the aim of our bus-ride chats.

Should I have no passengers, no problem. I am getting used to muttering to myself in my old age, and will post eclectic memories or thought, observations, or thought experiments.

For those with leisure and interest, welcome aboard.

Let(s kick back, and enjoy the ride.