The -Mancer Mindset
I love the insights we have gotten from game theory, but I want to explore how games can be used as Operators or even, remarkably, as Transforms (both operators and transforms as two fundamental SPE constructs will be discussed in a future upcoming post). The idea of using games is to get the brain out of the bounds of traditional thought. I’ve devoted a whole new category to the discussion of games in SPE.. using games as tools.
In this post, I want to talk about indulging in Magical Thinking merely for play — only as a game. In this game, we will use the ‘-Mancer Mindset’ — this suffix derived from Greek indicates ascertaining information through non-conventional means. If you had the power to ascertain information using one of the channels shown in the previous link, which would you choose? This little game may be falling flat at the moment, because it seems absurd to even assume someone could gather information by watching the way an animal moves or how a natural or created substance arranges itself in patterns.
Now, what if I told you there actually was a sixth sense… David Bohm, in his excellent book (dialogue transcripts) Thought as a System
(one of the cornerstone members of the list of SPE references), says the sixth sense is developing ‘proprioception of thought’. I’ll also discuss proprioception in depth later (as it is quite important), but I’ll just use Bohm’s excellent example: in the physical world, you demonstrate proprioception when you close your eyes and know the exact position of your arm as you swing it in circles behind your back. So, to become that aware of the movements of thought is developing the sixth sense. Of course, the numbering of it as the sixth sense is ranking its cardinality above all other proposed extra senses.
Now, back to the -Mancer Mindset. Instead of applying this to actual belief of obtaining extra information in the physical world, imagine developing this ability in the realm of thought but analogize it toward the realm of thought. For instance, aeluromancy normally involves watching a cat jump. Since thoughts rarely look like cats, picture instead observing a thought jump to a higher energy level. Amathomancy involves observing sand, dust, or dirt — there is a connotated version of that analogue in how you classify your thoughts (it depends on how you value sand, dust, or dirt by making the analogical jump to looking at thoughts whether the thought that could thus be categorized was valuable or not).
Observing one class of material, energy, or momentum exchange using proprioception alone could take months to develop. Now, using this catalog of {*}mancies, you have an entirely new way of observing your thoughts.
From this exercise alone, many of the serious SPE operators (and some transforms) can be derived. What static pattern engineering will do is combine these operations and transformations into a coherent system of operating on and transforming thought to more useful arrangements (thus, leading to interesting and innovative yields).
Hope you enjoyed the post and expect more in the coming weeks – I’m quite behind on posting!
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