Monday 1 January 2007

What to do?

What to do when you've discovered how the mind works? For so long many have argued about its nature and processes, and what it all means.
Let's be clear on this. I am not talking about the brain, that physical mush consisting of billions of highly interconnected cells. The mind is the system that sits above the bio-mass and comes into being once those cells act according to their dynamics. The result too has its dynamics; they can be observed, defined, analysed.
What happens in detail is explained on the Otoom website. Here's a very general description. Think of the entire system as a dynamic entity consisting of smaller units, they in turn made up of smaller units again... and all of them capable of receiving signals, responding to them, and sending out more to each other and beyond. The whole scenario resembles a vibrant, flexible feedback loop which continues for as long as we are alive.
Is there any rule set that governs the system? Yes - it relates to the playing out of affinity relationships in terms of attractor-type behaviour in the context of chaos. Hence the Otoom emblem is the fractal to the right.
As far as human behaviour is concerned, from an individual's thought structures to group behaviour to society and culture at large, what has been described above holds at any scale - but in the realm of chaos one would expect that. In fact, this would be the major proof the Otoom model is valid.
Obviously such knowledge has ramifications. It becomes possible to examine our behaviour at varying scales and test it for its ultimate usefulness. But what is 'useful'?
The only definition that makes sense in the long run is this: a culture works if it has managed to settle into a harmonious state within itself.
Just as a bicycle can afford to be slightly wobbly but a high-performance car can definitely not, so can smaller groups afford to be idiosyncratic but larger ones must be more rational. The adherence to ideology is a major obstacle to growth and cohesion.
Since it's all scalable, any system can be considered as part of a still larger one, and so the same considerations apply. Domains co-exist harmoniously or they grate against each other to the point where one may get destroyed. Under Parallels over 140 examples from around the world are listed that show how this works.
The more time goes by the more apparent it becomes how important this kind of information actually is. Therefore the question: what to do with it?

No comments: