To Give Examples is to Give Less Information
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1989-05-10 (0553)
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below
Summary = See Below
Diagrams =
Transcript = See Below (ck edit)
Curation = 4D Science
Summary
#553 Oct 4, 1989 – 1:22
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :04.
Note how impossible it is to see, or remember, that all activity is the chemical churnings of the brain, pleasant or unpleasant. The difference between entertainment (non-serious) and education (serious) is clearly drawn in ordinary life yet having no basis in the chemical activity of the brain. For instance, education never comes in for the criticism, the application of pleasant/unpleasant judgment, the way entertainment does.
The illustrating of the phenomenon that beyond a certain scale/momentum a process cannot be innovative, with the example of a tank not being able to “turn on a dime”, it would seem to be an invalid since a tank CAN turn on a dime. Yet the use of the example illustrates nevertheless the intended point. What does this say about examples in general? What would be a really invalid example? Every example is indicative of something.
Man uses examples to “prove a point”, but any point needing proof is a weak one…i.e., needing support of examples. Quotations as supporting examples are “scaffolding” of soft reality relating, connecting things together. The quoting of others is considered as a sign of intelligence, but this is not so of Revolutionary Intelligence. Ordinary intelligence constantly quotes others and plagiarizes at every instant.
History notes the special arising of intelligence in the uneducated: e.g., Jesus, Mohammed. They quoted no one, used no source materials. That they were then thought to be in touch with supernatural forces arises naturally from ordinary intelligence in face of the outsize proportion of the extraordinary information given out; the intellect reverses its perception of the origin. This amounts to the dismissal, discounting by soft reality of a frightening, incomprehensible hard reality: forces its conformance into local proportion, imposes scaffolding relations.
There is an unrecognized “active” resistance (vs. passive, inertial resistance) which arises out of an inappropriately directioned, timed, tempo’d, interval’d pressure. It increasingly results in unexpected, unhoped for, and finally, opposite effects. The Real Explorer must know what he is doing so as to avoid this useless, all pervasive process in life. When limited to ordinary intelligence, cause and effect cannot be properly distinguished (better: effect cannot be distinguished from effect). To give examples is not to give more info, it is to give less info, to restrict possibility.
And Kyroot Said…
If you find any verbally based activity out-there more
interesting than your own, in-here, you’re not yet in launch
mode.
***
The efficacy of all visible power is local.
***
Imagining his death bed scene, a father-voice told his son-
voice, “If the time should ever arrive that I only have one thing
to tell you, I won’t tell you anything.”
***
In the drier section of one galaxy, merely sayingù you have
done something is the same as having said it.
***
On this one particular planet they not only know that you’ve
either “got it, or you don’t,” but live with a constant awareness
of same with no apparent ill effects.
***
On this one planet their basic medical postulate is: If you
get over it you weren’t very sick to begin with.
***
Talk will have its revenge.
***
Don’t look nutritious in cannibal country.
***
When you’ve done about all you can do don’t say, “I’ve done
about all I can do.”
***
…and Kyroot added: By-de-by: Why mistake “all you can
do,” with “all you careù to do?”
***
In most parts of this universe, no one is truly an artist
until they have produced their own critics.
***
The only distinctions you can make are those you can make.
***
I once passed through this one world that had their own
singular form of government called Krapistocracy — rule by the
shittiest.
***
At the center of all things is also an off-center.
***
The proposition of, “Paying for what you get” does not
presently need any additional support.
***
A supremely important voice in this one area of the universe
recently stated, “There are someù things that aren’t funny, but I
don’t know what they are.”
***
A sub-species on this one lunar satellite has as their
slogan, “If you can afford it, who needs it?”
***
In a certain district of that constellation over there is a
collection of small planets who are not only behind the times,
but somehow aware of it as well, and who have taken as their
collective motto, “A lot of good it’ll do you.”
***
I heard of this one place where everyoneù was “in the know,”
but since this was so, they weren’t quite sure what good it did
’em.
***
Don’t pursue info that’s gotta be memorized.
***
There is only one place I know that has a name for “things
that have no name.” Guess where it is.
***
Transcript
#553 Edit 10/4/89 Copyright 1989 J.M. Cox
I want to remind you again of how Life will not allow people to observe, or remember, what I am about to describe, no matter how obvious it appears once I describe it. With everything that goes on in Life — art, entertainment, sports — people are wired up to comment on the activities themselves, when it is actually one thing going on. It is the chemical activity of their brains.
A critic tears things apart, or adds to the thing he criticizes — but all he’s saying is his brain likes whatever it is. Or, doesn’t like it, if he’s more D-based. HIS brain chemistry did NOT react favorably to whatever he experienced. It doesn’t matter if it is a movie, a new play, a musical concert or a sporting event. That’s all he’s saying. That’s all anyone CAN say.
Look at your own brain in regards to this information I’m giving you now. Then look off and tell yourself how clever you are. You think you’re commenting on the information/stimuli you experience, but all that’s happening is your brain is saying, “My, my, I like this.” The chemical activity of your brain either finds something pleasant, or unpleasant, like eating semi-cooked rutabagas. That’s all it is.
People would believe there is a difference between that which is instructional/educational, and that which is entertainment. And the two are treated differently. Is it a Greek philosophy? Is it someone trying to teach you how to sell real estate? If it’s educational, it’s more serious, and it seems to be coming from a stage of some sort. Being entertained is NOT the same as being instructed. Right? Education is more serious. You don’t have professors on university campuses walking around with fake nose and glasses. Education is serious stuff.
“How UFO’s actually killed Elvis.” Or, “How to make money in Real Estate.” No matter what it is, you feel different during the intake of such information (lecture or whatever), than afterward, when you go down to the bar for some entertainment.
I say this because, since people divide the two, it’s almost as thought you’re overwhelmed with evidence that the two are divided. Any semi-sane person would agree. It’s back to me saying, whatever you think about ANYthing — a play, lecture or TV show — is simply your brain chemistry commenting on whether it liked the experience or not. To say, “That music is Phuuuuh!” is the same as to say, “Well, that pot you gave me from Albania made me sick.”
It’s the same thing. But it’s divided up in such a way that people do not react the same way to educational material. They are not critics at the academic level. It is another way that Life, through man’s nervous system, through man’s intellect, divides up reality into smaller and smaller local pieces. There so much information, divided up into different little pieces, that your ordinary intellect has a harder and harder time realizing all those little pieces are all part of a continual reference to something else. INCLUDING THIS! You can say This is wonderful, and changed your life, but if all you’re saying is something verbal about it, all you’re saying is that your brain chemistry is doing back-flips over it.
I could use everyday terminology and say, “You don’t find that weird?” If you find that at all strange, just wipe it from your mind. That requires no effort. How about if all suggestions from parents, priests and rabbis, in regards to keeping you the right track, the straight and narrow road to salvation, struck you just right and each and every one of said suggestions required no effort to accomplish? Of course, then I could refer back to the good old gym philosophy: “No pain, no gain.” You see the problem? Everything they want you to do, “for your own good,” ALWAYS requires effort. (Will somebody check with Guinness and see if that qualifies for something…how about an hour and fifteen minutes worth of introduction?)
Do you recall what I was talking about last time we met? When things get too far out of scale, ordinary intelligence can’t deal with it. And when organizations or systems get too large, too cumbersome, boo busy, if they had an internal department for innovation, it would almost be overlooked. Little attention would be given to it. It would be like trying to turn a tank on a dime. Well, you’ve had 48 hours. Did anybody notice I could have used anything else? An 18-wheeler? Because a tank is the ONLY thing that COULD turn on a dime. And you people do know, they way a tank is, you can stop one set of treads and keep the others going…I’m not going to ask whether anyone noticed, but you have had 48 hours…
I wanted to point you toward the question of “valid examples.” Take a huge organism like General Motors: The internal system is so heavy and big, that trying to change its course would be like turning a tank on a dime. Sounds probable, right? A tank is big, it’s clumsy, just like General Motors…Now, let me point out: that example was the worst type of fallacious example I could have chosen, because a tank is the ONE thing that CAN turn on a dime.
Now, that would seem, then, to turn out to be an invalid example. I could have used a Subaru or a truck, almost anything except a tank. Would that have changed your perception, now that you know? Wouldn’t you have to say, now, that “that was a bad example”?
Does this not bring up the question of what passes for the limits, in Life, or ordinary example? People do not, as a rule, use a double-barrelled term when they refer to a “valid example.” The tacit statement is that your example IS valid. If you just say, “for example…” you are also stating that this is a valid example.
(This all sound like words, we talk about language, sociology and rugby, yet it’s energy. Life is doing something, and part of what it does is that through words, the thing becomes manageable.)
Now consider that people would agree there are valid examples and invalid examples. To wit, my example of a tank turning on a dime. So there would apparently be valid examples and invalid examples. May I ask you again (forget my ploy of the lat 48 hours) what would be an invalid example? Everybody take a second and consider this.
Well now, if I was going to speak for the ordinary parts of your brain, you didn’t necessarily have to come up with an example, you’d just have to say, “Well, the example they chose is incorrect. It doesn’t fit what they’re trying to say.” Valid or invalid. But could I suggest that to a new intelligence, playing on a clean playground, there is not such a creature as an invalid example. Even if you KNEW the example was incorrect, the example would be indicative of the speaker’s ignorance. But that’s kindergarten. Not only is it indicative of the speaker’s ignorance, it should also be an example to you of, “Why would he think that?’ It would be an awareness that that kind of mis-example is indicative of a large part, maybe, of the human race. It might tell you WHY they can’t predict the weather. Or WHY whenever Macy’s has a sale, everything is always 40% off.
You’re talking about a really strange/curious place, where there could be an example that would be truly invalid. That it would mean nothing. That, “The only thing that’s exemplary of is human stupidity.”
Can you see that this is another case of Life cutting up things into little bitty pieces? Perhaps you don’t think you like what you just heard about something and you say to yourself, “There is another example of the kind of crap up with which I don’t like to put.” You take it as being an example, again, of man’s stupidity, cruelty, cupidity. Your own thoughts, your own intellect, wants to strip the example and show it to be an absolute straw-man, totally invalid.
There is no such thing as an invalid example, and that’s not a linguistical trick. If you try to consider a more universal view of what examples seem to do: ordinary people are using them to try to prove points. And I’m trying to point out to you, in a non-caustic manner: whatever the point is, it’s pretty weak if it’s got to be proven. Everything from science to social viewpoints. How are points made and proven? “How can I describe it…?” By example. That’s how things are proven.
Back into local soft reality, where I can describe everyday affairs. All of you are aware how common it is for any speaker to quote other people. Under almost any condition, from rabbis to rabid real estate seminarists — anybody trying to take on the aura of being instructional (as opposed to purely entertaining), you can almost count on your watch about sixty seconds before they’re going to paraphrase somebody else. “Thank you ladies and gentlemen, as Marcus Aureleus once said…”
They not only quote, but…what seems to be the purpose of this in the ordinary flow of life? What it seems to do is be an indication of not only how intelligent they are, but they are also saying, “Look, this famous person agrees with me too.” Even if the quotee is dead, which most quotees are.
People almost always quote those with “known scaffolding.” IN other words, a man delivering a speech, trying to round up tupperware salesmen in Alabama, who shoed up in hopes of free beer and hot dogs and his sales pitch, as opposed to quoting Mark Twain, is more likely to quote Joe Namath or Bear Bryant — somebody who fits in with what he’s trying to say. He is NOT going to stand there and go, “Uhhh…uhhh…I’ve got this stuff here you should buy and, uhhh, I’ve gotta go.” In fact, probably the first person he’s going to quote is Abraham Lincoln. It seems in this country, if you quote lincoln first, the rest of your speech will be cool and believable. How about Lincoln and Vince Lombardi?
The quote is not just an example, it makes the thing vibrate through the audience. By you mentioning Lincoln, you build a kind of invisible scaffolding, a positive association — as though Abraham Lincoln, in a sense, is saying, “That Hulio Herschfield is really quite a guy.” It’s almost as if you and Abe are on the same level, or your scaffolding is like an unpermitted out-building right next to the Abraham Lincoln building.
Back to the question of examples. Before I get to the second area, let me say this: They are pulling in the quotes as an example…no matter if the quote apparently had just a verbally tenuous connection, the point is, the speaker is using it as an example. You see? The example can have NOTHING to do , really, with the subject. No one goes, “God, is that incongruous.” Even if you just mention Lincoln, your audience sort of feels like Abe agrees with your views. Are you beginning to see the connection this has with the limits of valid examples?
You don’t in some way analyze whether the quote, the example, is invalid. It’s beyond all question of that. you just take in the whole building, the whole scaffolding, as part of the building the speaker is trying to build. Nobody says, “Wait a minute, I’ve read Abraham Lincoln, and I don’t mind people using valid quotes, but boy was THAT an invalid one!”
What is actually going on? What’s going on to ordinary intelligence is whatever it can hear. But if that’s all that’s really going on, I’ve wasted my time here tonight. An I don’t mean the travel — you don’t’ know what a hell of a long bus trip is it…
The other area I wanted to point out is perhaps a little more obvious. That is: the quoting of other people, passes for a sing of intelligence, and no one questions it. A man starts out talking,a nd you don’t know who Hulio Herschfield is. But every few minutes he quotes Wagner, or Nixon…he even dug up a quote from Picasso. And nobody ever notices, but this passes for being intelligent. Quoting a polyglot of other minds. No one questions it.
Enough of you now know there is a difference between that kind of literate, well-read intelligence, and then some other kind. Some other kind. And I for one am not going to try to name it. But enough of you know it for me to point it out, and for the rest of you, I was going to point out that there IS another kind of intelligence, besides quoting people.
Even if you’re not a speaker, you’re CONTINUALLY quoting people anyway. Even though you don’t give those others credit. It’s not an attack on quoting, because the speech is probably better with quotes than if the speaker were left to his own devices. A speaker who uses quotes is well-read, has a good memory (can you imagine the guy standing up there and saying, “As Mark Twain said…could you excuse me a minute while I look that up?”)
But there is another kind of intelligence. Life, that is history, takes some note of this. But in a way, the way Life is still chemically running through man, what it does is note that there is a place where this other intelligence pops up — and specifically, it pops up in uneducated people. Take Mohammed for example. Mohammed was an illiterate. Supposedly, an angel told him, and he came back and just started talking nonstop. Or look at Jesus. Jesus wasn’t an educated man. That happens all over the world. Individuals who have a real impact on history are all the way from illiterate to unbeknownst to any education. They did not have front men come out to the audience and tell how Jesus did his undergraduate work at such and such school and got his masters degree from so and so.
These prophets, these guys just pop up, and open their mouths, and they don’t quote other people. (History says they quote the gods.) History notes that there are people who periodically pop up, who have a special kind of intelligence, and they are always uneducated. The great scribes of all religions seem to be either uneducated or else the question of whether they are or not just doesn’t arise.
Rather than humanity being able to recognize that these people are genetically wired up intelligences that just pop up — explosive, different intelligences — people do the only thing they can: they attribute it to supernatural sources. What else could they do? When that happens, and assuming there is enough scaffolding in that time and place that the person is recognized as a “special kind of guy,” what do people do? Do they say, “Wow! We’re going to have to take away all our negative definitions of mutations. Look at the guy! We knew him in grammar school, do you believe it??” Then they look at each other and sort of think, “How in the hell did this happen, that this guy got this way?” And Life won’t quite let people get it right. Especially, maybe, the highly educated people. Where does that leave them? With supernatural intelligences. Life doesn’t let anything else verbally arise. They wonder how it came about, and Life will not allow them to wonder if maybe it’s genetic and that maybe it’s got nothing to do with education.
As soon as they start discussing how the great guy came about — now that he’s dead — the first thing they decide, almost on a silent cue, is that the way he could have on education, be illiterate, almost, and still be great is — supernatural. They then have a soft, local reality dismissal of a frightening, hard reality. “You remember sometimes he’d be talking about other planets, or other forces — do you know what he was really saying? He was talking about the gods…” Now everything back in place. But that was not just some human view. It was not voices, messages from the gods. It was basically the same intelligence that you have. Life is not yet prepared — and never will be — for people to confront that. Because then you’d be left with stuff people couldn’t deal with, like “What causes crime?” How could society exist if people believed that the say the “great guy” got to be great is the same way criminals got to be criminals?
In the past criminologists claimed to be able to spot criminals by the size of their cheekbones, noses and foreheads. But not now. We’ve progressed beyond evil spirits; now we sit the criminal down with his uneducated, abusing mother and try to get them to talk. Or you get these illiterate people and they open their mouths, and the gods speak through them. You see, when Life has a sale, everything some with it that Life want to come with it. You’ve got no choice. It’s like buying a car loaded with all the extras. If you take the car, you take the extras.
A little something else regarding scale and proportion. There’s a universal dynamic that’s not generally known: I’m going to call it “active resistance.” It’s not very clearly detailed in ordinary life. It’s not D-force as I’ve used it ordinarily. It’s all the way from the use of resistance when walking, to “I think we should do away with all invalid examples.” There’s resistance, but I don’t mean that. Everything has resistance, or it cannot life. That is the kind of “static, passive, defender-of-the-status-quo” that keeps things going.
But there is an active resistance. And it goes like this: It is the kind of active resistance when you too-hard push in a singular, inappropriate direction, at inappropriate times, at inappropriate intervals. Inappropriate velocity, intensity, times — and rather than getting what you thought was the aim, you being to get less and less. And the real good part is, in the 3-D world, if you push far enough, you will unknowingly being to get the opposite result of what the aim was.
It’s not a mistake that humans make. It’s a part of the growth process. You can find, just on a strictly biological basis, this. In the movements of weather, for example.
If there is a resistance, not all the time but sometimes, it pushes far enough and in inappropriate ways and places, and it actually accomplishes the opposite. You try to get your child to live you: “Say you love me, say it louder, say it faster!” If you keep pushing at inappropriate times, in a singular, local direction, not only will you get less and less of a chance for what you want to happen, but you’ll get the opposite. The atmospheric pressure will go so far it goes in the opposite direction. And there will be an active resistance from the other side.
You can start out with a neutral reaction, and get to positive hostility, such as a man who keeps trying to pick up a woman in a bar. She says no, but he keeps pushing and pushing. Part of the dance of Life is such that everyone gets caught in that. And not just in areas that I can easily verbalize. There’s always resistance. But then you keep pushing, in the American Way. But you push at inappropriate times, with inappropriate intensity, vis-a-vis your original aim — and something else happens than what you wanted.
You’re in the wrong key. You’re speaking the wrong language. And the resistance you were pushing against begins to push against you. The resistance reverses the flow, and you get the opposite of what you’d intended. And you can keep pushing. “At least now she notices me. She’s taken out two peace warrants to get me away from her!”
The use Life makes of this is far, far more extensive than this. It’s subtle, and it’s everywhere. The resistance is no more as direct and linear coming back at you as where you were pushing when you started, so you probably don’t even notice when it starts pushing back. The resistance is not that specific. Your aim is not that specific. It’s all a matter of moving energy, for purposes that are not yours. To realize that, some of you might find agreeable. As though somebody suddenly got off your foot, and you’re not even sure who was sitting on it.
From a local, 3-D view, let me conclude by pointing this out: if all you’re dealing with (with yourself) is your own run-of-the-mill, in some cases cute, chemical workings of your 3-D intellect, then it’s not always possible for you to look into things and tell the front from the back, the beginning from the end, the cause from the effect.
How about this: hold on, hold back all of your tendencies to be cynical — a National Geographic special: the headlines: “Multinational Chemical Corporation for the first time sent medical teams into the Amazon quadrant.” And at first that sounds like one thing. That this corporation, through the goodness of its heart, sent this medical team into the jungle for the natives. And then you find out they never needed any doctors until the Multinational Chemical Corporation build a chemical factory right in their midst. Not if you were ordinary you could be, in spite of all my caveats, just as sarcastic and cynical (or, if you had a little more sensibility, “sardonic”). “Shocking! There is another example of the ills of…”
May I suggest to you that, to get away from your sarcastic, local, ordinary intelligence — Life is THE supreme multinational multilevel corporation. Don’t look for some human example. Don’t bother with that. LIFE is the ultimate game of all that. That’s why you can’t tell the effect from the cause. Or, if you’re really good, the effect from the effect.
Life, with its left hand is diverting attention from the right hand. Big moves covering small moves; small moves covering smaller moves. But if you only look with personal, 3-D intelligence, you’ll never see this.
Looking along one line will give no information. To find an example that supports your view does NOT give MORE information — it gives less; it restricts. That’s the opposite of what most people would think. But remember, there’s no such thing as an invalid example. If all you’ve got is a local view, you can’t tell where Life’s jeans begin, where the zipper starts and where it meets a pocket. The view may seem valid, the example may seem valid, but it is equally invalid.
There is another kind of intelligence. And it’s not the sort of intelligence you get from anybody else. You don’t have to quote anybody. You don’t have to read about it. Just think about all the uneducated people who changed the course of history.
I always like to be able to leave some nights on an encouraging note — for all you who are seeing this who are illiterate…