Throwing Bones

My Online Portfolio

2008-09-11T12:07:00.000+02:00

Get your own - Open publication

The Apprentice Guide

2008-09-07T02:28:00.002+02:00

Get your own - Open publication

Creative Throw

2008-08-17T12:53:00.002+02:00

Get your own - Open publication

The Psychology of Divination

2008-07-17T23:29:00.001+02:00

Article >>>

Throwing Mat

2008-06-29T16:45:00.003+02:00

The Bones

2008-05-14T21:32:00.000+02:00

Bag of Bones

2008-05-14T21:30:00.001+02:00

	MEANING	OBJECT
	Variables
	Mystery	Black
	Experimentation	White
	Individuality	Red
	Group Work	Blue
	Interpretation	Yellow
	Influence	Green
	-	Violet
	-	Orange
	-	Grey
	-	Teal
	Fixed
	£1 Note	Material Wealth
	Allen Key	Transformation
	Black Chip	Completion
	Black Film Tube	Luck
	Black Pebble	Stability
	Black Plastic with Holes	Deception
	Brown Chip	Forgive & Forget
	Brush Tip	Faith
	Clear Tube	Knowledge
	Computer RAM	Control
	Coral	Wisdom
	Crystal Knob	Religion
	Cup & Saucer	Friendship
	Dice	Interactive
	Felt Pad	Instability
	Flat Shell	Fairness
	Flip-Flop	Balance
	Floppy Disk	Screen
	Golf Ball	Father Figure
	Ink Pad	Print
	Lego	Child
	Light Bulb	Inspiration
	Li-Ion Battery	Potential Power
	Memory Stick	Handheld
	Metal Coil	TV
	New Key	New Start/Rebirth
	Nut	Physical Strength
	Old Key	Suppression
	Orange Plastic	Happiness
	Paint Tube	Intellect
	Red Nail Polish	Mother Figure
	Rubber Letters	Combining
	Spiral Shell	Spirituality
	Spoon	Mental Strength
	Strawberry Lip-Gloss	Love
	Teddy Bear	Emotions
	Telephone Card	Audio
	Tiger's Eye	Passion
	Toy Car	Movement
	Toy Wooden Candle	Reassessment

The Body

2008-04-20T23:16:00.005+02:00

"Almost all spiritual traditions use posture and gesture as a means whereby we enter into relation with the divine," Leder writes. "This body's roots reach down into the soil of an organismic vitality where the conscious mind cannot flow."

The body knows a link to the world that the consciousness cannot sense. That is why almost all spiritual traditions involve body positions and many therapeutic traditions body attributes. One might say that our bodily attitudes to the universe express far more than our consciousness knows: By crossing our arms we display closedness toward our fellow human beings; by stretching we experience well-being and show trust, because one is vulnerable when one stretches.

The consciously controlled body deals with everything to do with willpower and thinking: everything "one can do" with one's body if one wants. The other body does everything "one" cannot control: It deals with the circulation, the reflexes, digestion, sexuality, and emotional reactions. The most important bridge between the two bodies is respiration. [324]

The Infant

2008-04-20T23:11:00.004+02:00

An infant had no sense of itself. "There is no such thing as an infant," Winnicot asserts in a famous remark. The infant exists only together with the mother or other people. The notion of an "I", an identity, does not appear until the third year of life. The original state of the infant is an experience of non-separation, non-identity. [322]

The "I" and the "Me"

2008-04-20T22:27:00.010+02:00

Two very important concepts in Jayne's analysis of the origin of consciousness are those of "I" and "me". An "I" arises at the same time as the idea of a world. When you have a picture of an outside world that you can think about, you can also think about yourself in that world: You can see yourself from without; you can think your way into situations and ask how you would react. The "I" concept is closely associated with seeing yourself from without: having a map of the world where you, too, are present. The "Me" concept, which Jaynes himself admits is unclear compared to the "I" concept, also in Jaynes involved a self seen from without.

In the light of the I/Me distinction, we could put things another way: A preconscious person is only a Me, whereas a conscious person believes he is only an I. Man has moved from a period in which there was only a Me to a period where there is apparently only an I. In the Me period, behaviour was controlled by voices, while in the I period, consciousness thinks it controls everything.

Once it has arisen, the I must necessarily insist that it has control of the person. That is the very idea of an I. The idea of an I with a free will is irreconcilable with a bunch of gods operating through commanding voices. Because then it would not be the I doing the deciding.

But conversely, the I faces the problem that it can not explain or necessarily accept all that happens in the person covered by the I. The I view, which would claim that the I supervises and sees through everything, runs into the problem that this is obviously just not the case. Neither the happiness and the joy a person can feel nor the hatred and vileness he or she can contain are anything the I can explain.

The I must necessarily bow and kneel to something greater than itself. But it is a central characteristic of an I that this greater thing cannot be the person him- or herself, for that is controlled by the I.

The solution is monotheism: the idea that there is one, and only one, God.

The notion of God is the I's salvation when it is confronted with characteristics of the Me that it cannot explain: a power that is far greater than the I and that operates through every thing and event in the world. Divine intervention can be used to explain everything the I cannot explain in the person that the I ostensibly sees through and controls.

We can go even further and make the following assertion: The concept of God covers everything about the Me that is not the I. Instead of acknowledging subliminal perception, non-concious thinking, and a pile of other activities in a person that the I cannot explain, the I can say it is not the person that embodies this providence and these abilities: It is a divine principle.

The inability of the I to explain the Me is thus shielded by the notion of God, a notion that permits an irrationality that the I claims does not quite have tabs on everything. Hence monotheism.

Almost every monotheistic religion contains more or less dominant traditions that "heaven is inside you"-that the divine principle is in every man: not just out there but also in here.

One may interpret prayer and meditation, ceremonies and blessings, as contact to this divinity within. But we can go a step further and assert that what the I tries to contact via prayer, chanting, and scriptures is the very Me that the I must consciously deny the existence of. [318]

Christianity

2008-04-20T22:24:00.002+02:00

Christianity is the religion of consciousness because it makes consciousness-instead of something from outside-the regulator of human behaviour. [317]

Human Action

2008-04-20T22:16:00.003+02:00

The religion of the Old Testament involves monotheism. Religions with lots of gods correspond to the bicameral mind, while those with a single God correspond to the conscious mind. For the really huge difference between polytheism and monotheism is not so much superstition, hallucinations, or rain dancing: The big difference is the perception of who the real executor of human action is. [314]

I-consciousness

2008-04-20T22:08:00.004+02:00

One can certainly function without I-consciousness. In fact, most of us function most of the time without I-consciousness. We just do not know it, because we are not conscious of it while we do so. For if we were, we would not be without consciousness of it: We cannot be conscious of not being conscious. Only the conscious is conscious. [312]

The Origin of Consciousness

2008-04-20T21:20:00.006+02:00

In 1976, Julian Jaynes, of Princeton University, proposed a shocking theory: Three thousand years ago, a man had no consciousness, Jaynes asserted in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

"If our reasonings have been correct, it is perfectly possible that there could have existed a race of men who spoke, judged, reasoned, solved problems, indeed did most of the things that we do, but who were not conscious at all."

The great epics of ancient Greece, Homer's Iliadi and Odyssey, are about people who do not possess consciousness but are as if automatons who act on the basis of the god's speech through them. But the Odyssey, especially, was written during the period in which consciousness began to mark human life: The origin of consciousness is a historical process, which can be traced in the evidence surviving from the oldest civilisations, Jaynes claimed.

Consciousness, he explained, is not all so essential to a human's functioning thought as is thought. Consciousness is a relatively new invention: a historical phenomenon. The notion of the I is part of the historical product that consciousness constitutes. Consciousness and the notion of the I were created historically and can therefore be changed historically.

Julian Jayne's theory aroused attention-and opposition. Both because the theory changes our understanding of consciousness and because it changes our understanding of a whole range of events in historic time. Jaynes reinterprets the history of mankind, with the origins of consciousness as a central theme.

His idea is as follows: In the very old days, more than three thousand years ago, no consciousness existed, no notion of the I, no idea that people had a mental space inside them. This did not mean there were no social structures, experiences, or language. But it meant that the perception of man's actions was completely different: People acted at the gods' command, not because of their own urges. Emotions, desires, and decisions were the result of the gods' working through man: They were caused by divine intervention.

According to Jaynes, the human mind was bicameral-had two chambers, corresponding to the right and left hemispheres of the brain. All the non-linguistic activity in the right brain half was passed on to the left brain half in the form of voices talking inside people's heads. Just as schizophrenics can hear voices when there are none, these ancients could here the gods speaking inside them, telling them what to do. Through the bicameral mind, the social order could speak to the individual in the form of divine voices. Nowadays we call such voices hallucinations.

The central difference between this and our own view of man was that there was no independent reflective activity in people's heads: no consciousness and no decisions. The gods-called demons-looked after that kind of thing.

Men had no free will at all in those times; they did not even have will, in our sense. "Men and women were not conscious as are we, were not responsible for their own actions, and therefore cannot be given the credit or blame for anything that was ever done over these vast millennia of time," Jaynes wrote. [311]

Dreams: User Illusion without a User

2008-04-20T20:29:00.003+02:00

What about dreams-seen in relation to the user illusion and simulations? One factor springs to mind: When we dream, we may as well be carrying out a simulation: We visualise something and understand (often weird) connections in it. But we do not use this simulation while we are experiencing it. In the dream state, so-called REM sleep, our limbs are locked, because the motor areas of the brain that control movement are inhibited. Dream sleep is a state where there is no user but there are masses of illusion. In the light of how unexplained the function of dream sleep is, it is not unreasonable to suggest that dreams are a kind of simulation test bed.

The brain tests its simulation of reality by trying out new connections or by integrating new (or very old) memories and experiences. But the precondition for being able to test out crazy possibilities is precisely that they do not get used. So movement is specifically blocked during dream sleep while our other body functions run full steam ahead: Our pulse rises, our breathing increases, our eyes move, and oxygen metabolism in our brains is as it is when we are awake.

If dreams are trial runs peculiar new simulations, this is an example of a situation where there is consciousness but the I is kept outside. We cannot act with our bodies, nor can we influence our dreams with our I. But we are fully conscious when we dream. A user illusion without a user. [296]

Simulation

2008-04-20T19:37:00.004+02:00

It is not only the I experienced as our personal identity and active subject that is an illusion. Even what we actually experience is a user illusion. The world we see, mark, feel, and experience is an illusion.

There are no colours, sounds, or smells out there in the world. They are things we experience. This does not mean that there is no world, for indeed there is: The world just is. It has no properties until it is experienced. At any rate, not properties like colour, smell, and sound.

I see a panorama, a field of vision, but it is not the identical with what arrives at my senses. It is a reconstruction, a simulation, a presentation of what my senses receive. An interpretation, a hypothesis. [293]

The User Illusion

2008-04-20T19:01:00.004+02:00

The user illusion is a metaphor, indifferent to the actual 0's and 1's; instead it is concerned with their overall function. The claim, then, is that the user illusion is a good metaphor for consciousness. Our consciousness is our user illusion for ourselves and the world.

Consciousness is not a user illusion for the whole world or the whole of oneself. Consciousness is a user illusion for the aspect of the world that can be affected by oneself and the part of oneself that can be affected by the consciousness.

The user illusion is one's very own map of oneself and one's possibilities of intervening in the world. As the British biologist Richard Dawkins puts it, "Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself."

If consciousness is my user illusion of myself, it must insist that precisely this user is the user; it must reflect the user's horizons, not that which is used. Therefore the user illusion operates with the user by the name of I.

The I experiences that it is the I that acts; that it is the I that senses; that it is the I that thinks. But it is the Me that does so. I am the user illusion of myself. [292]

Some Characteristics of the Right Brain

2008-04-01T22:09:00.007+02:00

Our right brain perceives the longer wavelengths of light. As a result, the visual perception of our right mind is somewhat blended or softened. This lack of edge perception enables it to focus on the bigger picture of how things relate to one another. Similarly, our right mind tunes in to the lower frequencies of sound that are readily generated by our body gurgles and other natural tones that form a part of the body/gut-based intuition. Consequently, our right mind is biologically designed to readily tune in to our physiology.

We need to remember that there are enormous gaps between what we know and what we think we know. We need to learn that we need to be very wary of our left brain-storyteller’s potential for stirring up drama and trauma.

As our left brain enthusiastically manufactures stories that are promoted as the truth, it has a
tendency to be redundant - manifesting loops of thought patterns that reverberated through our minds, over and over again. For many of us, these loops of thought run rampant and we find ourselves habitually imagining devastating possibilities. Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.

Some Characteristics of the Left Brain

2008-04-01T21:16:00.004+02:00

The left brain communicates to the external world, it thinks in language and is the constant voice inside your head-your brain chatter. The left brain gives you your sense of identity and individuality creating the "I am" that makes you independent. It makes you a solid, separate entity from the world.

It organizes, categorizes, describes, judges, critically analyses, contemplates, calculates, theorizes, rationalizes, memorizes and multi-tasks. It is sequential and focuses on the differences and distinguishes characteristics. It is a natural builder and identifies patterns.

It responds to short wave-lengths of light to distinguish sharp boundaries; the separation lines between adjacent entities. It also identifies more with higher frequencies in sound that are associated to verbal language.

"I Am" & The Energy

2008-04-01T21:11:00.002+02:00

Without the linearity of constant brain directives of the left brain, one will struggle to maintain a continuous flow of experience that could be divided into past, present and future. Without linearity and language, every moment that passes you will exist in perfect isolation, all verbal cues and all your worldly wisdom dissipates without it.

A purpose of the left brain is to create the essence of self. The feeling of "I am", that my physical body is solid and independent of the world that surrounds me.

The right brain however releases us from those constraints. The right brain tunes us into the vibrations of everything around us. It allows us to expand, to integrate and to relish in the flow of energy and vibrating atoms and molecules that make up the physical world around us.

The left and the right brain work congruently with each other and complement our perception of the world. Each plays a specific role and without one or the other, our perception is altered dramatically.

The Story-Teller

2008-04-01T21:05:00.001+02:00

One of the most prominent characteristics of our left
brain is its ability to weave stories. This story-teller portion of
our left mind’s language center is specifically designed to
make sense of the world outside of us, based upon minimal
amounts of information. It functions by taking whatever
details it has to work with, and then weaves them together in
the form of a story. Most impressively, our left brain is
brilliant in its ability to make stuff up, and fill in the blanks
when there are gaps in its factual data. In addition, during its
process of generating a story line, our left mind is quite the
genius in its ability to manufacture alternative scenarios. And
if it’s a subject you really feel passionate about, either good or
awful, it’s particularly effective at hooking into those circuits
of emotion and exhausting all the “what if” possibilities.

Edward De Bono's: Six Thinking Hats

2008-03-25T15:17:00.002+01:00

To use Six Thinking Hats to improve the quality of your decision-making, look at the decision 'wearing' each of the thinking hats in turn.

Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

White Hat:
With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.
Red Hat:
'Wearing' the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
Black Hat:
When using black hat thinking, look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan or course of action. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.
Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher' and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance, leaving them under-prepared for difficulties.
Yellow Hat:
The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

Green Hat:
The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.
Blue Hat:
The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, and so on.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

2008-03-24T16:20:00.002+01:00

Our two hemispheres perform differently when they are connected to one another than when they are surgically separated. When normally connected, the two hemispheres complement and enhance one another’s abilities. When surgically separated, the two hemispheres function as two independent brains with unique personalities, often described as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde phenomenon.

Because our two hemispheres are so neuronally integrated via the corpus callosum, virtually every cognitive behaviour we exhibit involves activity in both hemispheres – they simply do it differently. As a result, the relationship between the two cerebral hemispheres is more appropriately viewed as two complementary halves of a whole rather than as two individual entities or identities.

It makes sense that having two cerebral hemispheres that process information in uniquely different ways would increase our brain’s capacity to experience the world around us and increase our chances of survival as a species. Because our two hemispheres are so adept at weaving together a single seamless perception of the world, it is virtually impossible for us to consciously distinguish between what is going on in our left hemisphere versus our right hemisphere.

Mind + Music

2008-03-16T15:02:00.000+01:00

Music is another great example of how our two
hemispheres complement one another in function. When we
methodically and meticulously drill our scales over and over
again, when we learn to read the language of staff notation,
and when we memorize which fingering on an instrument
will create which named note, we are tapping primarily into
the skills of our left brain. Our right brain kicks into high
gear when we are doing things in the present moment – like
performing, improvising or playing by ear.

Right Hemisphere + Language

2008-03-16T14:57:00.000+01:00

Our right hemisphere complements the action of our
left hemisphere language centers by interpreting non-verbal
communication. Our right mind evaluates the more subtle
cues of language including tone of voice, facial expression,
and body language. Our right hemisphere looks at the big
picture of communication and assesses the congruity of the
overall expression. Any inconsistencies between how
someone holds their body, versus their facial expression,
versus their tone of voice, versus the message they are
communicating, might indicate either a neurological
abnormality in how someone expresses himself or it may
prove to be a telltale sign that the person is not telling the
truth. [d40]

Left Hemisphere + Language

2008-03-16T14:45:00.003+01:00

Although each of our cerebral hemispheres process
information in uniquely different ways, the two work
intimately with one another when it comes to just about every
action we undertake. With language, for example, our left
hemisphere understands the details making up the structure
and semantics of the sentence – and the meaning of the
words. It is our left mind that understands what letters are
and how they fit together to create a sound (word) that has a
concept (meaning) attached to it. It then strings words
together in a linear fashion to create sentences and
paragraphs capable of conveying very complex messages. [d39]

I Am

2008-03-16T14:34:00.002+01:00

One of the jobs of our left hemisphere language
centres is to define our self by saying “I am.” Through the use
of brain chatter, your brain repeats over and over again the
details of your life so you can remember them. It is the home
of your ego centre, which provides you with an internal
awareness of what your name is, what your credentials are,
and where you live. Without these cells performing their job,
you would forget who you are and lose track of your life and
your identity.

Along with thinking in language, our left hemisphere
thinks in patterned responses to incoming stimulation. It
establishes neurological circuits that run relatively
automatically to sensory information. These circuits allow us
to process large volumes of information without having to
spend much time focusing on the individual bits of data.
From a neurological standpoint, every time a circuit of
neurons is stimulated, it takes less external stimulation for
that particular circuit to run. As a result of this type of
reverberating circuitry, our left hemisphere creates what I call
“loops of thought patterns” that it uses to rapidly interpret
large volumes of incoming stimulation with minimal
attention and calculation. [d38]

Our Left Hemispheres

2008-03-16T14:28:00.004+01:00

In contrast, our left hemisphere is completely different
in the way it processes information. It takes each of those rich
and complex moments created by the right hemisphere and
strings them together in timely succession. It then
sequentially compares the details making up this moment
with the details making up the last moment. By organizing
details in a linear and methodical configuration, our left brain
manifests the concept of time whereby our moments are
divided into the past, present, and future. Within the
structure of this predictable temporal cadence, we can
appreciate that this must occur before that can happen. I look
at my shoes and socks and it is my left hemisphere that
comprehends that I must put my socks on before my shoes. It
can look at all the details of a puzzle and use the clues of
colour, shape, and size to recognize patterns for arrangement.
It builds an understanding of everything using deductive
reasoning such that if A is greater than B, and B is greater
than C, then A must be greater than C.

Just opposite to how our right hemisphere thinks in
pictures and perceives the big picture of the present moment,
our left mind thrives on details, details, and more details
about those details. Our left hemisphere language centers use
words to describe, define, categorize, and communicate about
everything. They break the big picture perception of the
present moment into manageable and comparable bits of data
that they can talk about. Our left hemisphere looks at a
flower and names the different parts making up the whole -
the petal, stem, stamen, and pollen. It dissects the image of a
rainbow into the language of red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo, and violet. It describes our body as arms, legs, a
torso, and every anatomical, physiological, and biochemical
detail one can imagine. It thrives on weaving facts and
details into a story. It excels in academics, and by doing so, it
manifests a sense of authority over the details it masters.

Via our left hemisphere language centers, our mind
speaks to us constantly, a phenomenon I refer to as “brain
chatter.” It is that voice reminding you to pick up bananas on
your way home and that calculating intelligence that knows
when you have to do your laundry. There is vast individual
variation in the speed at which our minds function. For
some, our dialogue of brain chatter runs so fast that we can
barely keep up with what we are thinking. Others of us think
in language so slowly that it takes a long time for us to
comprehend. Still others of us have a problem retaining our
focus and concentration long enough to act on our thoughts.
These variations in normal processing stem back to our brain
cells and how each brain is intrinsically wired. [d37-38]

Our Right Hemispheres

2008-03-14T14:05:00.003+01:00

Our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor. Information enters our brains through our sensory systems. Bit by bit, our right mind creates an overall collage of what this moment, frozen in time, looks like, sounds like, tastes like, smells like, and feels like. Each moment is rich with sensations, thoughts, emotions, and often physiological responses. When information is processed this way, it allows us to take a detailed analysis about the immediate space around us and how we can relate to that space.

Thanks to our right minds, we are able to photographically remember isolated moments with uncanny clarity and accuracy. Most of us can remember our first kiss with a girlfriend or a boyfriend, the first time a loved one passed away or the first time your newborn smiled. Our right hemisphere is designed to remember things as they relate to one another. Borders between microstates are softened and complex mental collages can be recalled in their entirety as combinations of images, kinesthetics, and physiology.

Only the present moment exists in the right mind, and this moment is vibrant with sensation. Life or death occurs in the present moment. The experience of joy happens in the present moment. Our perception and experience of connection with something that is greater than ourselves occurs in the present moment. To our right mind, the moment of now is timeless and abundant.

In the absence of all the rules and regulations that have already been defined as the correct way of doing something, our right mind is free to think intuitively outside the box, and it creatively explores the possibilities that each new moment brings. But its design, our right mind is spontaneous, carefree, and imaginative. It allows us our artistic juices to flow free without inhibition or judgement.

The present moment is a time when everything and everyone are connected together as one. As a result, our right mind perceives each of us as equal members of the human family. It defines our similarities and recognizes our relationship with this marvellous planet, which sustains our life. It perceives the big picture, how everything is related, and how we all join together to make up the whole. Our ability to be empathic, to walk in the shoes of another and feel their feelings, is a product of our right frontal cortex.

The Field of Touch

2008-03-13T22:17:00.000+01:00

Our skin is our largest sensory organ, and it is
stippled with very specific sensory receptors designed to
experience pressure, vibration, light touch, pain, or
temperature. These receptors are precise in the type of
stimulation they perceive such that only cold stimulation can
be perceived by cold sensory receptors and only vibration can
be detected by vibration receptors. Because of this specificity,
our skin is a finely mapped surface of sensory reception.

Fields of Smell and Taste

2008-03-13T22:14:00.002+01:00

Our most obvious abilities to sense atomic/molecular
information occur through our chemical senses of smell and
taste. Although these receptors are sensitive to individual
electromagnetic particles as they waft past our nose or titillate
our taste buds, we are all unique in how much stimulation is
required before we can smell or taste something. Each of
these sensory systems is also made up of a complex cascade
of cells, and damage to any portion of the system may result
in an abnormal ability to perceive.

The Auditory Field

2008-03-13T22:12:00.003+01:00

Our ability to hear sound also depends upon our detection of energy traveling at different
wavelengths. Sound is the product of atomic particles in space colliding with one another and emitting patterns of energy. The energy wavelengths, created by the bombarding
particles, beat upon the tympanic membrane in our ear. Different wavelengths of sound vibrate our eardrum with unique properties. Similar to our retinal cells, the hair cells of our auditory Organ of Corti translate this energy vibration in our ear into a neural code. This eventually reaches the
auditory cortex (in the temporal region of our brain) and we hear sound.

The Visual Field

2008-03-13T22:02:00.003+01:00

Our visual field, the entire view of what we can see when we look out into the world, is divided into billions of tiny spots or pixels. Each pixel is filled with atoms and molecules that are in vibration. The retinal cells in the back of our eyes detect the movement of those atomic particles. Atoms vibrating at different frequencies emit different wavelengths of energy, and this information is eventually coded as different colors by the visual cortex in the occipital region of our brain. A visual image is built by our brain’s ability to package groups of pixels together in the form of edges. Different edges with different orientations – vertical, horizontal, and oblique, combine to form complex images. Different groups of cells in our brain add depth, color, and motion to what we see. Dyslexia, whereby some written letters are perceived in reverse from normal, is a great example of a functional abnormality that can occur when the normal cascade of sensory input is altered.

Senses and Reality

2008-03-13T22:01:00.001+01:00

Each of our sensory systems is made up of a complex
cascade of neurons that process the incoming neural code
from the level of the receptor to specific areas within the
brain. Each group of cells along the cascade alters or
enhances the code, and passes it on to the next set of cells in
the system, which further defines and refines the message.
By the time the code reaches the outermost portion of our
brain, the higher levels of the cerebral cortex, we become
conscious of the stimulation. However, if any of the cells
along the pathway fail in their ability to function normally,
then the final perception is skewed away from normal reality. [d26]

Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight [d]

2008-03-13T21:50:00.002+01:00

Jill Bolte Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained and published brain scientist when a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of a curious neuroanatomist, she watched her mind completely deteriorate whereby she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Because of her understanding of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and an amazing mother, Jill completely recovered her mind, brain and body. In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, Jill shares with us her recommendations for recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functions of the right and left halves of her brain. Having lost the categorizing, organizing, describing, judging and critically analyzing skills of her left brain, along with its language centers and thus ego center, Jill’s consciousness shifted away from normal reality. In the absence of her left brain’s neural circuitry, her consciousness shifted into present moment thinking whereby she experienced herself “at one with the universe.”

Based upon her academic training and personal experience, Jill helps others not only rebuild their brains from trauma, but helps those of us with normal brains better understand how we can ‘tend the garden of our minds’ to maximize our quality of life. Jill pushes the envelope in our understanding about how we can consciously influence the neural circuitry underlying what we think, how we feel, and how we react to life’s circumstances. Jill teaches us through her own example how we might more readily exercise our own right hemispheric circuitry with the intention of helping all human beings become more humane. “I believe the more time we spend running our deep inner peace circuitry, then the more peace we will project into the world, and ultimately the more peace we will have on the planet.”

Feeling Creatures

2008-03-13T21:44:00.001+01:00

Sensory information streams in through our sensory
systems and is immediately processed through our limbic
system. By the time a message reaches our cerebral cortex for
higher thinking, we have already placed a “feeling” upon
how we view that stimulation – is this pain or is this
pleasure? Although many of us may think of ourselves as
thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures
that think. [d25]

Jill Bolte Taylor at TED this year

2008-03-13T20:53:00.001+01:00

Two Hemispheres

2008-03-13T20:22:00.009+01:00

The portion of our brain that separates us from all
other mammals is the outer undulated and convoluted cerebral cortex. Although other mammals do have a cerebral cortex, the human cortex has approximately twice the thickness and is believed to have twice the function. Our cerebral cortex is divided into two major hemispheres, which complement one another in function.

The two hemispheres communicate with one another through the highway for information transfer, the corpus callosum. Although each hemisphere is unique in the specific types of information it processes, when the two hemispheres are connected to one another, they work together to generate a single seamless perception of the world. [d21/22]

The Human Brain [d]

2008-03-13T19:59:00.002+01:00

As much as we would like to think that human life has
attained biological perfection, despite our sophisticated
design, we do not represent a finished and/or perfect genetic
code. The human brain exists in an ongoing state of change.
Even the brains of our ancestors of 2000 or 4000 years ago do
not look identical to the brains of man today. The
development of language, for example, has altered our brains’
anatomical structure and cellular networks.

Most of the different types of cells in our body die and
are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons,
the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for
the most part) after we are born. That means that the
majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you
are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why
we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of 10 as
we do at age 30 or 77. The cells in our brain are the same but
over time their connections change based upon their/our
experience. [d19]

The Nervous System & DNA

2008-03-13T19:49:00.004+01:00

For any two of us to communicate with one another,
we must share a certain amount of common reality. As a
result, our nervous systems must be virtually identical in
their ability to perceive information from the external world,
process and integrate that information in our brains, and then
have similar systems of output including thought, word, or
deed. [d18]

It is perhaps of interest that our
human genetic code is constructed by the exact same four
nucleotides (complex molecules) as every other form of life on
the planet. At the level of our DNA, we are related to the
birds, reptiles, amphibians, other mammals, and even the
plant life. From a purely biological perspective, we human
beings are our own species-specific mutation of earth’s
genetic possibility. [d19]

Conceptual Space

2008-03-03T20:44:00.004+01:00

A conceptual space is a style of thinking. It's dimensions are the organizing principles that unify and give structure to the relevant subject. Some exploration, by contrast, shows us the limits of the space, and identifies specific points at which changes could be made in one dimension or another. To overcome a limitation in a conceptual space, one must change it in some way. One may also change it, of course, without yet having come up against its limits. A small change (a "tweak") in a relatively superficial dimension of a conceptual space is like opening a door to an unvisited room in an existing house. A large change (a "transformation"), especially in a relatively fundamental dimension, is more like the instantaneous construction of a new house, of a kind fundamentally different from (albeit related to) the first.

Creativity

2008-03-03T18:17:00.001+01:00

People of a scientific cast of mind, anxious to avoid romanticism and obscurantism, generally define creativity in terms of novel combinations of familiar ideas. Accordingly, the surprise caused by a creative idea is said to be due to the improbability of the combination. Many psychometric tests designed to measure creativity work on this principle. [Extracted]

The Visual System

2008-02-20T17:11:00.008+01:00

Crick and Koch wrote: "There is also much neural activity in the visual system that does not reach full awareness. Much of this corresponds to the computations needed to arrive at the best interpretation of all the incoming information that is compatible with the stored, categorical information acquired in the past. It is the 'best interpretation' of which we become aware."

The strength of this theory is that it makes it intuitively understandable why consciousness is able to alternate so rapidly and efficiently between such widely differing objects: There is constantly a vast army of nerve cells oscillating in synchrony. But only one of the sets of oscillations wins and becomes consciousness. The rest compete for consciousness' favours.

In this way, 40 Hz oscillations can convey a kind of searchlight that peruses the various activities of the brain. But note that the metaphor is no longer just spacial, like a searchlight. The coherence between the nerve cells is expressed in time, not only in space. [205]

"If there are several possible interpretations of the incoming information," Crick and Koch write, "then it may take some time for the one particular interpretation to dominate its rivals and establish itself. In the case of 'rivalry,' when the percepts alternate, as in the well-known case of the Necker cube, we assume that the oscillations that first become established eventually habituate somewhat so that the other interpretation gets the upper hand by establishing the oscillations relevant to it and in doing so pushes down its rival. After a delay it is then itself pushed down, and so on."

The Human Brain

2008-02-20T17:04:00.002+01:00

The human brain has to cope with coordinating the processing of more than eleven million bits that arrive every second and are divided among hundreds of millions of nerve cells, so that all these different impulses are composed into one conscious picture of what's going on. It has to do so consistently, for up to sixteen hours a day. Without the experience going out of sync. [203]

The Nervous System

2008-02-20T16:55:00.005+01:00

The fact that we see is not primarily the result of messages from the retina (which are more than just light received there in the first place). It is the result of an extensive inner processing, where data from outside is linked to inner activities and models. Apparently the whole thing is a closed circuit; the nervous system does not collect information from the surroundings. The nervous system consists of a self-regulatory whole where there is neither an inside nor an outside, only coherences between impression and expression - sensation and behaviour - in order to ensure survival. [200]

Social Loafing

2008-02-09T11:55:00.000+01:00

In the social psychology of groups, social loafing is the phenomenon that persons make less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone. This is one of the main reasons that groups sometimes perform less than the combined performance of their members working as individuals.

Causes

The main explanation for social loafing is that people feel unmotivated when working in a group, because they think that their contributions will not be evaluated. According to the results of a meta-analysis study (Karau & Williams, 1993), social loafing is a pervasive phenomenon, but it does not occur when the group members feel that the task or the group itself is important.

Solutions

The answer to social loafing is motivation. A competitive environment may not necessarily get group members motivated. For Rothwell, it takes "the three C's of motivation" to get a group moving: collaboration, content, and choice.

Collaboration is a way to get everyone involved in the group by assigning each member special, meaningful tasks. (CSCW, 2000) It is a way for the group members to share the knowledge and the tasks to be fulfilled unfailingly. For example, if Sally and Raúl were loafing because they were not given specific tasks, then giving Sally the note taker duty and Raúl the brainstorming duty will make them feel essential to the group. Sally and Raúl will be less likely to want to let the group down, because they have specific obligations to complete.
Content identifies the importance of the individuals' specific tasks within the group. If group members see their role as that involved in completing a worthy task, then they are more likely to fulfill it. For example, Raúl may enjoy brainstorming, as he knows that he will bring a lot to the group if he fulfills this obligation. He feels that his obligation will be valued by the group.
Choice gives the group members the opportunity to choose the task they want to fulfil. Assigning roles in a group causes complaints and frustration. Allowing group members the freedom to choose their role makes social loafing less significant, and encourages the members to work together as a team.

Production Blocking

2008-02-09T11:53:00.000+01:00

Production blocking is a common problem in brainstorming groups. It is a tendency for one individual to block or inhibit other people during a group discussion. For example, if six people are in a group and one person is talking about his or her idea, then the other five people are "blocked" and less able to provide their own creative input. They may not have time to think of an idea, or they may be distracted or forget about their idea before they have an opportunity to share it. Production blocking becomes more of a problem as the size of the group increases.

Mind Mapping

2008-02-09T11:45:00.000+01:00

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

It is an image-centred diagram that represents semantic or other connections between portions of information. By presenting these connections in a radial, non-linear graphical manner, it encourages a brainstorming approach to any given organizational task, eliminating the hurdle of initially establishing an intrinsically appropriate or relevant conceptual framework to work within.

A mind map is similar to a semantic network or cognitive map but there are no formal restrictions on the kinds of links used.

The elements are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts and they are organized into groupings, branches, or areas. The uniform graphic formulation of the semantic structure of information on the method of gathering knowledge, may aid recall of existing memories.

Brainstorming Method

2008-02-09T11:27:00.000+01:00

Set the problem

One of the most important things to do before a session is to define the problem. The problem must be clear, not too big, and captured in a definite question such as “What service for mobile phones is not available now, but needed?“. If the problem is too big, the chairman should divide it into smaller components, each with its own question. Some problems are multi-dimensional and non-quantified, for example “What are the aspects involved in being a successful entrepreneur?”. Finding solutions for this kind of problem can be done with morphological analysis.

Create a background memo

The background memo is the invitation and informational letter for the participants, containing the session name, problem, time, date, and place. The problem is described in the form of a question, and some example ideas are given. The ideas are solutions to the problem, and used when the session slows down or goes off-track. The memo is sent to the participants at least two days in advance, so that they can think about the problem beforehand.

Select participants

The chairman composes the brainstorming panel, consisting of the participants and an idea collector. Ten or fewer group members are generally more productive than larger groups. Many variations are possible but the following composition is suggested.

Several core members of the project who have proved themselves.
Several guests from outside the project, with affinity to the problem.
One idea collector who records the suggested ideas.

Create a list of lead questions

During the brainstorm session the creativity may decrease. At this moment, the chairman should stimulate creativity by suggesting a lead question to answer, such as Can we combine these ideas? or How about a look from another perspective?. It is advised to prepare a list of such leads before the session begins.

Session conduct

The chairman leads the brainstorming session and ensures that the basic rules are followed. The activities of a typical session are:

A warm-up session, to expose novice participants to the criticism-free environment. A simple problem is brainstormed, for example What should be the next corporate Christmas present? or What can be improved in Microsoft Windows?.
The chairman presents the problem and gives a further explanation if needed.
The chairman asks the brainstorming panel for their ideas.
If no ideas are coming out, the chairman suggests a lead to encourage creativity.
Every participant presents his or her idea, and the idea collector records them.
If more than one participant has ideas, the chairman lets the most associated idea be presented first. This selection can be done by looking at the body language of the participants, or just by asking for the most associated idea.
The participants try to elaborate on the idea, to improve the quality.
When time is up, the chairman organizes the ideas based on the topic goal and encourages discussion. Additional ideas may be generated.
Ideas are categorized.
The whole list is reviewed to ensure that everyone understands the ideas. Duplicate ideas and obviously infeasible solutions are removed.
The chairman thanks all participants and gives each a token of appreciation

The process

Participants who have an idea but no possibility to present it are encouraged to write down their idea and present it later.
The idea collector should number the ideas, so that the chairperson can use the number to encourage quantitative idea generation, for example: We have 44 ideas now, let’s get it to 50!.
The idea collector should repeat the idea in the words he or she has written it, to confirm that it expresses the meaning intended by the originator.
When more participants are having ideas, the one with the most associated idea should have priority. This to encourage elaboration on previous ideas.
During the brainstorming session the attendance of managers and superiors is strongly discouraged, as it may inhibit and reduce the effect of the four basic rules, especially the generation of unusual ideas.

Brainstorming Rules

2008-02-09T11:21:00.000+01:00

Focus on quantity: This rule is a means of enhancing divergent production, aiming to facilitate problem solving through the maxim, quantity breeds quality. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.
No criticism: It is often emphasized that in group brainstorming, criticism should be put 'on hold'. Instead of immediately stating what might be wrong with an idea, the participants focus on extending or adding to it, reserving criticism for a later 'critical stage' of the process. By suspending judgment, one creates a supportive atmosphere where participants feel free to generate unusual ideas.
Unusual ideas are welcome: To get a good and long list of ideas, unusual ideas are welcomed. They may open new ways of thinking and provide better solutions than regular ideas. They can be generated by looking from another perspective or setting aside assumptions.
Combine and improve ideas: Good ideas can be combined to form a single very good idea, as suggested by the slogan "1+1=3". This approach is assumed to lead to better and more complete ideas than merely generating new ideas alone. It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by a process of association.

Visual Illusion

2008-01-24T02:06:00.002+01:00

We do not see what we sense. We see what we think we sense. Our consciousness is presented with an interpretation, not the raw data. Long before this presentation, an unconscious information processing has discarded information so that what we see is a simulation, a hypothesis, an interpretation; and we are not free to choose.

In the case of Necker's cube we can choose between two possibilities, but our consciousness cannot choose the two possibilities it wants to chose between. Or that there should be two possibilities.

The interesting thing, of course, is that visual illusions like Necker's cube are carefully refined and researched examples of some of the few cases where we can in fact make a choice, or realise that our sight does deceive us.

The Flashlight

2008-01-24T00:21:00.000+01:00

It is most practical to be able to remember a telephone number by heart the moment we need to make a call. But it is not particularly clever to remember a hundred phone numbers and the shopping list the moment we want to make the phone call. It is super to be able to spot a berry in a wood when out for a stroll, but it is not too smart if there is a tiger after you.

Consciousness is ingenious because it knows what is important. But the sorting and interpretation required for it to know what is important is not conscious. Subliminal perception and sorting is the real secret behind consciousness.

Everyday examples are legion. Just take the local main street: Is there a fabric shop or not? Many people have lived near a specialist outlet for years and never known it was there - until the day they need just such a store and either are directed to it or spot it themselves. Afterwards they cannot imagine how they managed to wander along that street so many times in ignorance of the shop's existence.

"Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of," Julian Jaynes. "How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not." [174]

Consciousness by Kihlstrom

2008-01-24T00:13:00.000+01:00

According to John Kihlstrom, consciousness is not to be identified with any perceptual-cognitive functions such as discriminative response to stimulation, perception, memory, or the higher mental processes invloved in judgement or problem-solving. All of these functions can take place outside of phenomenal awareness. Rather, consciousness is an experimental quality that may accompany any of these functions. [172]

Meaning

2008-01-21T09:31:00.000+01:00

Effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. In using words, sounds and gestures the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it remains implied. This shared context is called exformation.

Exformation is everything we do not actually say but have in our heads, when or before we say anything at all whereas information is the measurable, demonstrable utterance we actually come out with.

If someone is talking about cows, for example, what is said will be unintelligible unless the person listening has some prior idea what a cow is, what it is good for, and in what context one might encounter one. From the information content of a message alone, there is no way of measuring how much exformation it contains.

In 1862 the author Victor Hugo wrote to his publisher asking how his most recent book, Les Misérables, was getting on. Hugo just wrote “?” in his message, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate it was selling well. This exchange of messages would have no meaning to a third party because the shared context is unique to those taking part in it. The amount of information (a single character) was extremely small, and yet because of exformation a meaning is clearly conveyed.

From: Exformation

The Mystery Box

2008-01-17T11:36:00.001+01:00

Treating Design as Art

2008-01-17T11:34:00.000+01:00

Road Sign

2008-01-15T11:39:00.000+01:00

A bend is approaching. The sign shows that in a moment the road will swing sharply to the left. It would be wise to slow down. Useful information which reflects the fact that an accident has occurred here: Last year a businessman ended up in a shopkeeper's garden because the road was too slippery for him to steer around the bend. A chicken was run over. But we do not wish to know all that; we simply assume that the easily digested information provided by the sign refers to a mass of information that is not present {exformation}. We would not be able to take it in as we sped past, anyway. But we perceive the sign {through exformation}.

The figure on the sign is a map of the bend-highly stylized. Practically all that is left of the bend is that it bends. But that is enough in this context.

The road sign tells us very clearly that the person who had the sign put up knows a lot more about the bend than the sign reveals. There has been knowledge: This is announced by the fact that it is an authorised road sign. The sign tells us explicitly that it has come into existence during the conversion of information that is no longer present. That is what makes it a sign and not just a sheet of metal covered in paint. [123]

Tree

2008-01-15T11:36:00.000+01:00

There is no reason to consider thought as being different from the rest of what the body does. Thought requires calories just like tennis. So it is perfectly sensible to say that there is a kid of tree in our head when we are talking; we can measure and prove that something goes on in the heads of people who are talking to each other. [119]

Intelligence

2008-01-15T03:49:00.000+01:00

Intelligence is not about remembering lots of microstates at once in sequence. Intelligence is about being able to see which macrostates best combine all the microstates. Macrostates = Symbols

Symbols are Smart

2008-01-15T02:03:00.000+01:00

Symbols are smart. They help us remember masses of information, even though we can keep only seven things in our minds at once. Symbols are the Trojan horses by which we smuggle bits into our consciousness.

"Our memories are limited by the number of units or symbols we must master, and not by the amount of information that these symbols represent. Thus it is helpful to organise material intelligently before we try to memorise it." - Miller

Food for Thought

2008-01-15T01:05:00.000+01:00

The fact is that every single second, millions of bits of information flood in through our senses. But our consciousness processes only perhaps forty bits a second-at most. Millions and millions of bits are condensed into a conscious experience that contains practically no information at all. Every single second, every one of us discards millions of bits in order to arrive at the special state known as consciousness. But in itself, consciousness has very little to do with information. Consciousness involves information that is not present; information that has disappeared along the way.

Consciousness is not about information but about it's opposite: order. Consciousness is not a complex phenomenon; it is what consciousness is about that is complex.

It is presumably this fact that is the reason many scientists over the decades have tended to perceive information as something involving order and organisation. Because consciousness is about an experience of order and organisation. But consciousness is a state that does not process much information-consciously. Consciousness consists of information no more than a person who consumes large amounts of food can be said to consist of food. Consciousness is nourished by information the same way the body is nourished by food. But human beings do not consist of hot dogs; they consist of hot dogs that have been eaten. Consciousness does not consist of hot dogs but consists of hot dogs that have been apprehended. That is far less complex. [125]

Freewriting #1

2008-01-13T03:57:00.000+01:00

In the beginning I though "wouldn't it be great to take African divination and use it in today's creative world?" Could a tradition, a belief, a superstition, a spirituality be initiated in today's society without underlying connotations? How can spirituality be taken away from intuition, away from destiny, away from faith? Because faith must be a foundation rock for divination to flourish right? Trying to sound objective and not subjective, I'll try not starting my sentences with "I think/I believe/I know/I..." But I tried to approach divination from two perspectives; one from a scientific point of view, where things tend to blend in with communication, information, the conscience and the subconscience. The other angle I wanted to approach divination was from the intuitive, more new age side. I tried to see if I could create a link the process and skill of divination to these two separate entry points.

From the scientific perspective, it could go on forever. Deep into crevices of the mind, analyzing recognition and association. Where knowledge is all about remembering the right things at the right time. Being able to recall the information in a systematic way, embedding symbols for later use.

In the more intuitive perspective, things get a little more personal. Things blend more with how you perceive things, how you create your own symbols (or short-hand mental dictionary.) It gets all soft and slow and more of a process of building up relationships when you see things from an intuitive perspective.

After reading Lightning Bird, I realized that African divination specifically, is only effective when blind faith is present. Where by believing something with all your heart it becomes real. Where when an entire village can make or break itself by believing they are cursed or blessed. Divination in Africa is more of a traditional characteristic of the society that is supported through general belief in Earth and in the ancestors. It goes a little before and a little beyond religion, but does not quite hit it. It's definitely a way life.

Symbolic References

2008-01-08T00:22:00.000+01:00

By building up your knowledge of your visual flashes, you build up a set of symbolic references. You'll also discover that the same image will have embedded meanings; standing for several things. Basically, embedded symbols are both literal and symbolic. They are layered with meanings. [b51]

Visual Flashes

2008-01-08T00:09:00.000+01:00

Visual symbols of knowing work much the same way as dream symbols. They represent information of two types: literal and symbolic. Let's say you sit down with someone to do a practice consultation to test drive your visual intuition. You immediately obtain a visual flash of a tree. Now, it's time to explore the meaning of that symbol to both you and the other person.

If the meaning of the tree is literal, what type of tree your visual intuition shows may be relevant. If you're practicing with another person by presenting your knowing to him or her, don't ask your client to make meaning out of that tree. Extending your Knowing is the key here, not a game of 20 questions.

To help build your initial visual flashes, ask your Knowing Self for more information. Let's sayyou now become aware that the tree you initially flashed on is a very large, old oak. This gives you a bit more to work with.

By asking the person if the tree has any significance to him or her. If the person says that he use to live on Oak Lane where the street was lined with oak trees, throughout his schooling, you know that you are being taken back to that period of his life. The next visual flash could be related to a particular event relevant to the person's childhood school years. Always pay attention to where you just came from in this chain of symbols.

If however the person has absolutely no association to a large, old, oak tree, but you do, it's symbolic. In this case your own vision is the key element that you must "translate." [b50]

Fear

2008-01-08T00:06:00.000+01:00

Fear is only a sign to move on... Through ongoing practice, people learn to Know in which direction to move. The old saying "knowledge is power" becomes a new reality, one where Knowing adds even more power, because your inner wisdom, your full potential is awakened. [b23]

Magic

2008-01-07T11:56:00.000+01:00

Dramatic ritual is a procedure for grasping the unknown, a way of binding what is grasped into a system of belief. It is a method of incorporating into a daily life what is thus grasped and bound. Such a process make use of all the resources of the culture in which it occurs-everything from instinctive behavior at one end of the scale to language, song, dance, and art at the other. The result is a rich variety of ceremonies that tend to conceal the true concerns, dressing them up in elaborate symbols and disguises, or projecting them onto others in the environment.

Many people do not have our scientific understanding of lightning. If their homes are struck by lightning, it is easier and more acceptable for them to assume that this is the work of a particular moloi, or black magician, than to assume that the planet itself has something personal against them.

A belief in magic makes it easier to account for misfortune, and the existence of appropriate ritual permits people to take action of some sort in the face of uncertainty and insecurity. All this helps to make the occult at least partly manageable. Having identified the source of trouble and having given it a human face, one fights is with magic of one's own, or employs a magician to do so.

There is a choice. Magic has two sides, one "white" and one "black". In general, white magic involves ritual that is open, has collective authorization, and is good. Black magic is secret and antisocial. It is supported by collusion, not consensus, and is bad. Black magic in Africa is practiced by individual moloi, who may be either sorcerers or witches, or more occasionally both.

A sorcerer is one who casts spells against, or puts curses on, others. The acts themselves are usually simple and can theoretically be done by anyone who takes the trouble to collect the necessary materials, or who buys such "medicines" from a specialist. A witch, ont he other hand, is someone who has personal power to harm other people directly. Witches, male or female, are thought to be able to travel great distances instantaneously, to use familiars or to turn themselves into animals such as leopards, and to go out in spirit while leaving their bodies asleep at home.

Sorcery is open to investigation by anyone who takes the trouble to find it. Witchcraft is by definition impossible to observe, but belief in its existence is almost universal. In Africa it is a fundamental part of most people's thinking about illnesses, misfortune, causation, and mortality. It is impossible to deal with African society without understanding the role of such beliefs in the lives of people who hold them. It would be simplistic and misleading merely to dismiss these beliefs as products of ignorance and error. A belief in magic is not, after all, so very different from the faith that underpins most religions and provides for secular and social stability. In Africa it has produced an elaborate and sophisticated system of social checks and balances that works as well as most formal constitutions.

Put very simply, it seems to have evolved in this way: The experience of misfortune and the need to account for it produced witches. In societies where they did not exist, they would have had to be invented. And once there were witches and witchcraft, there had to be "witch doctors". The classic "witch doctor" was simply someone who smelled out witches, but some specialists are rare. In practice, all those who detect and combat witchcraft also do other things. They have additional technical and social skills that make the term "witch doctor" misleading and best avoided altogether. [c151/2]

The Stone Age

2008-01-07T11:47:00.001+01:00

The passing of the San people is sad, but perhaps our only chance of understanding the meaning of the paintings on the rocks of Africa does not rest and die with loss of "Bushman" mythology. The oral tradition of contemporary Bantu, "the People," is extraordinarily rich. In this tradition may be all the clues we need-if we care to look for them.

The physical Stone Age may vanish with the last true hunter left alive in the Kalahari. But its after-image lingers on, burned forever into the imagination of other living Africans, embodied in their life and lore. It lies at the core of all human history. The problem is to gain access to it-to make the giant river crossing of the soul. [c112]

Science vs Magic

2008-01-07T02:48:00.001+01:00

The use of terms such as "supernatural," with reference to Africa, is misleading. They imply a dichotomy between the "natural" universe, which is subject to the laws of science; and another superimposed realm of the spirit, in which these laws do not operate. This dichotomy is an artifact of our European literate culture; it does not apply to African belief.

A member of a tribal society sees the world as made up things plain and things hidden, and draws no distinction between them. He understands that they present themselves together, mixed into one common reality. For instance in the rust-red soil of a bushveld trail, there lies an imprint of a single cloven hoof. A tracker squats easily down beside it on his haunches, examines the depth and shape of the spoor, feels the texture of the soil, and notes the direction and extent to which the surface has been disturbed by the passage of the animal. He concludes that it was made by a kudu antelope, a young female, injured in her left front leg by an unsuccessful attack by a crocodile two hours ago as she drank by a nearby pool. This we call science.

The tracker stands over the hoof print and points at it, palm down with his fingers folded back and thumb spread out at right angles, to hold the spoor in place and keep the antelope from fleeing too far. Then he reaches out to strip a single long white thorn from an acacia growing alongside the trail and plunges this down into the imprint to aggravate the animal's wound. This we call magic.

But in Africa it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference. Both proceed on the belief that cause produces effect. A herd of sacred drums, properly anointed with the blood of the earth, is beaten-and it rains. Our training leads us to doubt any casual connection. You "know" that you cannot make it rain simply by beating on a drum, that wanting something does not necessarily make it happen. Or does it?

Modern physics sees the cosmos as a multiple state system, a closed book with an infinite number of pages. Particular reality, it suggests, does not exist until a reader comes along and opens a book, usually at a well-thumbed page. In the words of quantum mechanics, an observer collapses the system into one of its component states. He is not part of that system and cannot be included in the usual equations that are used to describe it. But neither can he be left out, because without him, there would be no particular pattern, no reality.

It is no longer possible to deny that our thoughts and desires might influence our environment. The most recent cosmologies all include consciousness as an active participating factor in reality. The new explanations of how the world works are strangely like the old beliefs of nonliterate people everywhere. Undogmatic minds are much concerned with magic, and arrive, as a result, at descriptions of reality which to us seem faulty, but may in the final analysis prove to be more meaningful than those we contrive by the elaborate exercise of logic and contingent mathematics. It seems that merely by admitting the possibility of unlikely events, you increase the probability of their occurrence.

Sotho Proverb

2008-01-07T02:06:00.000+01:00

"The earth is like the breasts of a woman, useful as well as pleasing."

African Diviner

2008-01-07T02:01:00.000+01:00

Whether or not he or she is involved in healing, a diviner's prime function is to grasp consciously, and to bring out into the open, the secret and unconscious motives causing an individual to become ill, or creating a social disturbance.

Diviners are, in effect, psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, priests, confessors, counselors, and historians of their people. All these functions are wrapped up in a single and highly effective institution. A sympathetic study of the old ways in which they work provides valuable insights into the origins not only of magical belief, but of all religion.

Snakes

2008-01-05T04:36:00.000+01:00

There could have been no better introduction to Africa, a continent in whose myth and lore snakes play a dominant role.

In the beginning, so the story goes, there was the Great Serpent, the first being, whose seven thousand coils set the planet and the stars in motion. This cosmic snake brought life to the earth by gouging out channels for rivers and streams. He can still be seen, moving in the current of a ricer, or lashing up the waves of the sea.

He is the divine python, arching in the form of the rainbow and flashing in the lightning. He lives in the cave deep underground, from which he will finally emerge to destroy his creation.

The ability of all snakes to shed their skin and to reappear in a new body at regular intervals, has led to a widespread belief in their immortality. The symbol of eternal life in African lore is a coiled snake with its own tail in its mouth, Snakes are imbued with supernatural powers of wisdom and the secret of eternal youth. They represent the forces of life and regeneration, exercising a profound influence over fertility and good fortune. Of course, since they also deal out death, snakes are held in awe in Africa and throughout the world. They have become objects of both fear and respect, veneration and repulsion.

In Africa, snakes are regarded as reincarnations of the spirits of the ancestors. Homage is paid to them in the form of images-either naturalistic or simply in the form of wavy lines molded into rings, carved on masks, printed on clothes, or painted on the walls of houses. Snakes are also much involved in ceremonies of initiation. [c43]

Lightning Bird

2008-01-05T03:40:00.000+01:00

I got this book last month and have just managed to finish it in between all the festive celebrations and the Italian lunches and dinners...

It's quite an old book, written in '82 by an English guy, Lyall Watson. It's about the story of how a white man came to know and understand the African way of life and their beliefs. To be more specific, he was more involved with the Northern Sotho people of the then known province of Transvaal, in South Africa.

When my theory lecturer recommended the book to me for my thesis, I didn't think it would hit home so precisely. I knew it would talk about the African culture and its beliefs, but it got better when it spoke about the Northern Sotho and the land surrounding the people. I grew up in the province, in the land that the book was describing and where the story was based. I learnt Northern Sotho at school and had friends that their parents still spoke Bantu. So I felt very connected and nostalgic reading Lightning Bird.

So here are bits and pieces from the text that got me thinking and really made me click...

The Messy Basement of Our Minds

2007-12-09T10:10:00.000+01:00

Although your unconscious mind is packed with information at any given moment-ideas, thoughts, feelings, flights of fancy, random associations, fragments of dreams-it's not the same thing as your intuition or your inner wisdom. Think of your subconscious as the messy basement of your mind, and your intuitive Knowing as the uppermost window in a meditation room on the top floor, a finished attic with plenty of light streaming through the window and skylights.

Through complex processes we still don't fully comprehend under the right conditions, you are able to sort through and pull up from that basement exactly the bits of information and awareness that create Knowing Moments (or moments of sudden awareness), those flashes of insight that often contain the answers to complex questions, or the seeds of them. With contemplation, those initial "flashes" can be developed into very profound guiding inner wisdom. [b32]

Intuition

2007-12-09T10:06:00.000+01:00

Knowing without knowing how we know, inner awareness without logical thought while conscious. One level up from instinct, intuition is responsible "flashes" of insight. Instinct tells us to run where intuition guides us in which direction. Intuition often has a precognitive quality, which allows the course of events to be changed. Precognitive intuition is most reliable when related to personal situations, less reliable in predicting group events. Usually associated with the right hemisphere of our brain. [b30]

Instinct

2007-12-09T10:03:00.000+01:00

It is hard-wired to us. It is the lowest level of Knowing. It is primarily body-based and kicks in when survival is a concern. Instinct tells us to run, now. Instinct is present-moment awareness. [b29]

2 Worlds

2007-12-09T09:33:00.000+01:00

There are two worlds that infinitely interact: first, the Unseen World. That is the home of your Knowing self, your collective unconscious, and spiritual beings. The second world is the earthly world where we are now.

Fear is transformed when knowledge and Knowing, when your rational left brain and your intuitive right brain are bridged. Fear becomes a motivator and will become a sign to move on.

It also isn't enough to just say be intuitive and to listen to the voice inside. Our rational left brains need something to chew on and that's fine because Knowing needs knowledge. But you need to be open towards both your intuitive side as well as your intellectual side. [21]

Information in Transit

2007-12-09T01:03:00.000+01:00

Communication has nothing to do with the creation or removal of information. Communication is merely transport. [103] When we transfer information, we say which route we took. We provide a brief resume of the choices me made. We thus reveal indirectly that there must have been a lot of roads we did not take. [108]

So when we say “information” in everyday life, we spontaneously think of information-as-the-result-of-a-discarding-of-information. We do not consider the fact that there is more information in an experience than in an account of it. It is the account that we consider to be information. But the whole basis of such an account is information that is discarded. Only after information has been discarded can a situation become an event people can talk about. The total situation we find ourselves in at any given time is precisely one we cannot provide an account of: We can give an account of it only when it has “collapsed” into an event through the discarding of information. Only then can we say “I am sitting reading” without mentioning everything that went before and comes afterward and is present in the room. [109]

What you could say

2007-12-09T01:02:00.001+01:00

There has been plenty of confusion about the concept of information, because the word “information” has been used as a synonym for order and meaning. But this use of the word does not come from information theory, it comes from cybernetics-the science of communication and control. The father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, and pupils such as Leon Brillouin commingled “information” with plus words like “order” and “organization”.

Warren Weaver from the famous Rockefeller Foundation said: “information must not be confused with meaning.” He also said that there are three levels in a communication theory: a technical level, a semantic level, and a behavioral level. The technical involves the transmission of symbols of communication. The semantic level involves the question as to how far the symbols actually convey the desired meaning. Finally, the behavioural level describes the extent to which a communication actually affects the receiver’s actions in the desired way (if such a desire in fact exists). Weaver concluded by saying: “The word ‘information’ in communication theory relates not so much to what you do say, as to what you could say.”

Information theory is a very cold theory. It ignores all the meaning-related aspects of communication simply in order to work out how thick telephone cables need to be to carry all the conversations. Information measures conversations from the outside-as physics, not psychology. But the point is, this really need not bother us. [99]

Exformation

2007-12-09T01:02:00.000+01:00

A good communicator does not think only about himself; he also thinks about what the receiver has in his head. The idea of transmitting information is to cause a state of mind to arise in the receiver’s head that is related to the state of mind of the sender by way of exformation referred to in the information transmitted. The idea of sending information is that the mind of the receiver must contain some inner information related to the exformation the sender has in his head. The information transferred must elicit certain associations in the receiver. [93]

Complexity

2007-12-09T00:59:00.000+01:00

“Complexity covers a vast territory that lies between order and chaos,” Heinz Pagels in The Dreams of Reason (1988). For the fact is, the spectrum of possibilities that the notions of order and disorder offer our cosmology is a very poor one.

Total disorder is uninteresting. A mess. Not worth talking about, because we cannot describe it in any explanatory way. There is more to be said about disorder than it says itself. Similarly, total order is not particularly interesting either. A lattice of atoms in a crystal, a meticulously arranged pattern of relationships. What there is to say about such order is quickly said and soon becomes trivial.

So there must be a third possibility, which is neither total disorder nor total order, something that is definitely not trivial but is complicated without being chaotic: complexity. This territory between order and chaos encompasses practically everything worth talking about, everything we talk about and experience in our everyday lives: living beings, changes in the weather, wonderful landscapes, friendly conversation, delicious salads, and fun and games.

Take a piece of writing. If it is totally ordered and predictable, it is of little interest. There is an enormous amount of order in a text composed of regular series of letters such as AAAAAAAAAA. The algorithmic information theory explains why it is boring. It is not difficult to prepare a concise description that permits the reproduction of such a text: 10 times A.

Conversely, a total mess of a text isn’t that interesting either: LIUQWEGAEIUJO. According to algorithmic information theory, the shortest program that can reproduce this string of random letters is the string itself. Because it is a random string of letters. So one could say that there is far more information in a text written by a monkey than in a text written by a famous author. But there is no system in what the monkey writes, so it cannot be expressed more concisely. Whereas the author’s text will always include a certain amount of redundancy, it can always be expressed in a more concise way.

So meaning and information cannot have much to do with each other as regards to a piece of text. Similarly, complexity and information cannot have much to do with each other as regards to the physical world. Information is an interesting concept but not a particularly good measure of complexity. [71]

Surprise

2007-12-09T00:58:00.000+01:00

Information is associated with entropy, a measure of thermodynamic disorder. The macrostate “12 tosses” corresponds to more microstates (binary digits) than the macrostate “3/7”. There is more information in the twelve tosses of the coin. Information is a measure of randomness because randomness is a measure of disorder: something that is difficult to describe.
Information is a measure of how surprised we are; and there are more surprises in disorder than in order. In fact, that is precisely what we mean by order: something that cannot surprise us because it is ordered. Therefore information is defined only when we know the context; when we say which macrostates and microstates we are talking about. Information is defined only when we explain what we mean by order. [61]

Divination Speech

2007-12-03T09:31:00.000+01:00

When a young person is called to be an African Sangoma, he would begin by collecting symbolic objects one by one. Objects can consist of bones, stones, sticks and shells. The process of collection can take years and is a long process of relationship building. Each object in the collection represents some aspect of society. For example; a spiral shell would represent time; a tigers eye would represent obstacles; and sea urchin spines would represent friends. Among African Sangomas, there are certain objects that are standard and represent the same thing throughout different tribes and then you get objects that are unique to the Sangoma that has collected them.

When a Sangoma gets an object he needs to build a relationship with it and that is done through meditation. By holding the object in his hands and at the same time recalling all his knowledge, wisdom and memory about the aspect the object represents, he in a way embeds the information into the object through touch and thought. After hours, days and even weeks of building a stronger relationship with the object, he is then ready to move on to the next object. After years of collecting objects and building up his collection, the young Sangoma is now ready to start practising the process of African divination called throwing bones.

We as the western society often believe that Sangomas cast spells, play voodoo, contact their ancestors, and use animal blood to create magic potions. But if we were to put all the fantasy aside and look solely at the process, at the system, we would understand it better. If I simplify divination, it would go like this: a question is asked, and by using a bunch of symbols, an answer is formulated. The question can be anything, anything relevant to the problem at hand, like career choices, illnesses and relationship problems. The use of the symbols is the process that gives you possible answers. Each individual item is a key that helps the Sangoma remember an aspect of society. Like love, money, masculinity and fear. When these objects are thrown down, they fall randomly to the floor. The Sangoma would then interpret the objects according to their position and how close they are to each other. The answer doesn’t have to be a prediction of the future, but is more like a piece of advice, an equal possibility between a positive and negative outcome.

Now, why is this important to understand? Why would we need a system like this? Firstly let’s not forget that divination has been here for thousands of years. And not only in Africa but also in China with the I Ching, in Egypt with astrology, in France with the Tarot, English tea-leaf reading, Palmistry from India, China, Babylonia and Egypt, and so many more. For divination to have lasted so long means that there was and still is a need for it; our need to know and control our destiny. And one way to try and control destiny is to create a system like divination. A way to find answers to unpredictable scenarios.

What if we were to take one of these systems and reinvent it to help us today? With challenges in design or in any situation where creativity is necessary. By breaking the system down so that we can see that anyone can use it, not only people that have a “calling”, but also the rest of us, like you and me.

Information

2007-11-23T00:30:00.000+01:00

Information is a measure of everything someone can say, not of what someone did say. The information content of a communication is an expression of the volume of communications that could have been transmitted, not of the one that was.

A given volume of information may contain profound insights or a load of baloney. Information can come in loads but it doesn't necessarily have to mean anything. Information could = entropy.

Entropy is a measure of an amount of information we have no interest in knowing. Information is something to be found in bulk in a state where entropy is great. That does not mean that we possess this information; it means only that it is there, that we could obtain it if we could be bothered. Entropy is also a measure of the amount of information we have discarded when we view a system from the outside. If we are inside a system, we can obtain obtain this information if we can be bothered. If we are outside the system, we have "thrown it away"-or have never possessed it.

Information is something that is to be found in disorder. There is more information in disorder than in order. The more disorder, the more information. Information is an expression of the difference between being inside and being outside. [40, 42-43]

Boltzmann's Idea

2007-11-23T00:25:00.000+01:00

It was a simple idea. He distinguished between what are known as macrostates and microstates: between the properties of large conglomerations of matter and the properties of the individual components of matter. Macrostates are such things as temperature, pressure and volume. Microstates consist of accurate descriptions of the behavior of each individual component. [32]

Throwing Away Information

2007-11-23T00:17:00.000+01:00

Information is closely related to entropy, which is a measure of disorder. Once upon a time we could simply pile up our old newspapers in the basement. But information has to be recycled, too, if things are not to drown in so much information that they end in chaos.

But we all feel information is a boon, an expression of disorder, meticulousness, and correct results. That is what we learned when we did arithmetic at school: to discard all our rough calculations on scrap paper in order to present a neatly written sum on a nice clean sheet. We were taught to discard information, not to obtain it. Yet we live in a world which believes that information is what's valuable in an information society.

So there is something wrong with our everyday perception of information. [31]

New book

2007-11-13T00:39:00.000+01:00

Well I've started reading for some background on consciousness. It's Norretranders' The User Illusion. It started of a bit slow but now on the 2nd chapter and it's getting quite interesting. What I like the most is that it's written in a type of grammar I can understand! It's fluent and easy reading... Surprising cause it's about something as serious as consciousness. so I'll update the blog when things get applicable to my subject...

Intro

2007-10-20T11:57:00.000+02:00

How much do you know about divination? How much do you know about fortune telling? Have you ever had your tarot cards read? It's intriguing how people are always drawn to uncover knowledge. I believe that fortune telling techniques have the potential to be harnessed in today's world of Creative Communication Problems.

Take African Divination for example, when a witch doctor uses his or her bones to read into a problem, he or she is brainstorming in a way. Each item represents some part of society; for example young/old, male/female, some might also stand for love and money. The witch doctor then uses these objects together with his/her collective knowledge to interpret and to expand the mind.

How often have we struggled to find a name to a song we remembered, only to get a breakthrough the next morning in the shower? This is random access, and divination has the tools for us to use today.

I want to take what's been here for hundreds of years, what's been a part of all our societies and cultures, and turn it into something that can help us with today's communication problems. What is design? Creative Communication; through fashion, interior, urban and editorial design. And I'm sure that fine art can benefit from this in some way too.

2007-10-20T00:53:00.000+02:00

2007-10-20T00:14:00.000+02:00

2007-10-20T00:03:00.000+02:00

Was talking to a friend yesterday about intuition (cause we just had a lesson about photography and how we should interpret images), anyway, I was thinking, cause I wanna base my theory on using African Divination mainly. Using the techniques African Sangomas use and applying them to our ways of solving creative communication problems...