As I continue to work on the upcoming volume to be published, one of the opening chapters that has emerged concerns seeing the world in terms of patterns.  This thesis (that the world can be perceived, modeled, and treated as an intermeshed collection of patterns) is central to establishing the entire field of static pattern engineering as well as orienting individuals toward the activities (patternsmithing, pattern engineering, and architecting) that arise from it.

One of the problems I have struggled with is that the term Pattern has a lot of connotations surrounding it and most of them are seemingly purposefully and annoyingly vague.  For current examples across the web, see the following google query.  In a future post, I will reveal the formalization of the term pattern that underlies static pattern engineering (intuitive hints have been spread throughout this blog) and  with this formal definition I will give plenty of exercises of seeing the world (including that which is formed, that which is forming, and that which is yet to be formed) in terms of patterns.

Once patterns are defined and examples are identified, it will be important to introduce how forces are operating on this pattern and the terms static pattern, dynamic pattern, and active pattern will come into focus.  At that point, it is hoped it will become clear how and why individuals work on creating, transforming, and operating on patterns in their daily lives and why we need a field and set of activities for working with these patterns directly.  Once this post is published, I’d welcome feedback on it, as I am hoping this will be an intriguing opening for the book and ultimately an introduction to the field for many.

Also, on another note, as a reader please begin registering your interest levels (via the polls available) which topics you would be most interested in reading next, as the frequency of posting on this blog is fairly low, I want to make sure you have a voice and that I am made aware of what you are looking to discover.  As always, contact me at http://xri.net/=joel.kotarski with any questions or feedback.

In order to sense resonance clearly, it is my belief that a mind should be able to achieve a state called Unconditioned Consciousness, if only for a moment (which at times is all that is possible). The conditioning of consciousness is necessary (that is a question) to manage the complexity of the physical and mental domains — the usefulness and utility of conditioning can be observed by how well we can achieve such a wide array of useful and varied functions in our daily personal and professional lives (sometimes simultaneously) while still having a large reserve of attention available for achieving so much more.  I like Mihaly Csikzenthalyi’s classification of attention as psychic energy – and the organization of attention down coherent paths of consciousness as psychic order [whilst the opposite is considered psychic entropy].  As for ordering consciousness, a good percentage of learned behaviors (including reflexive reactions) order the flow of consciousness for a period of time and interestingly enough, reflexive reactions can likewise organize consciousness automatically to achieve goals (an often referred to example is that of driving a car between destinations without any awareness at all of the task at hand, while thinking about or attending to other things).

In order to describe how to achieve Unconditioned Consciousness, it is necessary to talk about the relationship between awareness, perception, and attention more deeply.  For a first slice at a model and analogy, let us picture that attention is the currency of consciousness[1] (which gives new meaning to the phrase ‘pay attention’).  Regardless of whether we are aware of the these transactions of consciousness, they are still occurring moment by moment.  Awareness applied reflectively to the contents of consciousness can be thought of a sort of meta-attention, that is attention about the target of attention, or where attention is being absorbed.  In order to suspend (and later rework) the automatic triggering of reflexive reactions, it is necessary to reach awareness of all reflexive reactions.

Early work on static pattern engineering examined two boundary conditions of interest:  Unconditioned Consciousness and Complete Absorption of Attention Without Awareness.  In the latter case, which takes many forms, I was most interested in cases of extreme depression and catatonia:  In catatonia, attention is completely absorbed – none is available – and when questioned later, those that went through this state have no recollection (awareness) of what the contents of consciousness were nor what was external to them (thus attention wasn’t attached to perception).  Nearly everyone would agree that this state is one of complete degeneration.  Short of medication that alleviates or changes the state of consciousness, how do people in this state move out of it?  The solution is a bit counter-intuitive: Awareness (which is completely or nearly nonexistent) is activated and then gradually expanded to encompass the content of consciousness[2].  Of course, the state of the content of consciousness is that nothing is moving – the economy of consciousness is completely frozen, attention is absorbed in apparently nothing, and not even perception is properly processed by attention[3].  Nonetheless, the gradual widening of awareness restores the flow of attention toward perception and gradually awareness detects the slow, painful flow of thoughts (which nearly always have a negative slant). Through this gradual expansion of awareness, the mind seems to reorder itself, allowing attention to work once again as the currency of consciousness.

I wanted to illustrate the extreme boundary case of Complete Absorption of Attention Without Awareness and the mechanisms that lead away from it to state quite simply what Unconditioned Consciousness is:  Complete Absorption of Attention With Complete Awareness.  Consciousness often operates with a mixture of reflexive reactions operating at a threshold below awareness (or at least only partially illuminated by awareness): to move toward unconditioned consciousness, it is necessary to follow the same mechanism of applying awareness as described above to expand awareness to the contents of consciousness.  It is easiest to apply awareness to perception and then to expand it across the entire content of consciousness.   Just as described in the previous post in this series, proprioception of thought (the sixth sense) is possible via invoking awareness.

In the next post in this series, I will continue the journey toward unconditioned consciousness (or complete absorption of attention with complete awareness) and talk further about reflexive reactions and dissolving, activation energy, sensing resonance, and finally resonant reactions.

[1] I know the skeptical mind will immediately transfer to this footnote: To answer any questions and to point out the immediately obvious flaws in this analogy, I will give the more expanded model for completeness sake: static patterns and reflexes are the currency of consciousness while attention is the current of consciousness (when it is causing an ordered flow of consciousness rather than just being absorbed).  Nonetheless, the model used above effectively illustrates the intended point.

[2] Please note that I am not simply stating that the complex treatment of degenerative mental states can be abolished and replaced with ‘awareness therapy’ nor that this works in all cases; however, this is based on studies and cases where a reversal of catatonic states and extreme depression have been reversed by the application of awareness by the volition of the person suffering this state.

[3] This state is intensely interesting in the sense that is attention is completely bound. All of this is more completely described and diagrammed in the upcoming book (sorry title of the book is still pending).

Thingk is a union of the words think and thing, and when pronounced sounds deceptively identical to think.  I like it because it embeds a lot of semantic hints that convey what a static pattern is:

• The first word in static pattern, static, comes from Greek and Latin roots for standing, remaining, and implies persistence.  When something persists, we usually identify it (generically) as a thing.
• When you first encounter (or create) a static pattern that resonates with you, it has the effect of gathering such awareness and attention in consciousness that it seems less like a thought and more like a thing.  It usually invokes active mentation and becomes a think in Bohmian terms.  This duality, as it grows, begins to qualify it as a thingk (in the cognitive domain).
• In the physical or virtual domains, before that thingk is manifested, it is just a thought ( think ); however, as you, the creator, drive it toward manifestation, it becomes not just a thought ( think ) but also a thing that exists (stands, remains, persists) with some degree of physical persistence (depending on degree of virtuality).  Yet, behind that now existent thing is the thought(s) that resonate with the creator such that they evoke active mentation and thus are still think(s).  Thus, the manifested static pattern is a thingk spread across multiple domains (cognitive, physical, virtual).
• If you encounter a thing that you can perceive with your senses, there are thoughts that brought it to creation.  When these thoughts and the thing itself invoke resonance in a perceiver, it can be now be described as a thingk.
• When you find a talented individual with a personal connection to the work they create, you can certainly be assured that everything they create has the quality of also being a thingk.
• If you begin to approach the things you work with with the intent to turn them into thingks (or to change your work so that the things you work with have a higher rate of probably of being thingks for you), or you begin to have the intent to find thoughts that resonate enough to become thingks in consciousness and then reified thingks in the cognitive, virtual, and/or physical domains, then the nature of your creative work is transformed.

I intend to not only use this term for describing static patterns in a more easily graspable semantic framework, but also intend to use it drive the fluxpoints project further.  A fluxpoint, by criteria, will be in fact a thingk; however, I am actively working on a partner project to actively get people moving from thought => think => thingk, which will ensure a natural evolution path toward turning those thingks into FluxPoints as well as physical, virtual, and/or cognitive creations.  This will most likely be a free community web site that will allow for active work on static patterns (or thingks) with the intention of bringing them about as creations.

Until then, I still prefer to use the technical term static pattern, but after discussing this more compact and expressive reduction with people who have talked to me about SPs for years, it immediately catches on and they finally ‘get it’.  Nonetheless, this particular journal about static pattern engineering will probably continue to use the technical term – I intend to post a link to the community site once I get it going and that site will probably make scarce use of the technical term, favoring the one described in this post.

Thanks for reading.

…The virtual side of static pattern engineering is going to take further form in a new project codenamed ‘FluxPoints’. A fluxpoint will be a virtual and active representation of a static pattern (or an aggregation of static patterns) on the Internet…

[From a previous post]

Formerly called the ‘endpoints’ project, after further development of the idea I have renamed it to the FluxPoints project. The endpoints idea started as a thought experiment: provide a way for an individual or group to secure an authorative identifier for a static pattern (or aggregation of static patterns) [1] and:

• represent the evolving structure on the world wide web in multiple rendered formats depending on consumer [data]
• provide a common set of framework operations against the static pattern [behaviors]

I can modestly say this initial concept was nothing more than morphing together a few existing ideas that have developed over the last two decades. The endpoints idea was intended to take the web service endpoint concept and apply it toward static patterns at the service layer with all types of interesting convolutions of the usual infrastructure surrounding web services [2].

This first phase of thinking, which encompasses ‘releasing’ or publishing a static pattern, is still going to be part of the process (with some as yet undisclosed modifications to the way it is represented) — this notion of allowing a pattern’s representation to become static is enforced by the criteria that it:

• has an authorative and established identifier that gives it an identity
• has a physical location that hosts it [3]
• has a structure and set of behaviors that define it, otherwise it is neither active nor static

This last criterion, which defines whether the pattern [virtual] representation (not necessarily the underlying pattern itself) is static also defines whether it can be active introduces the notion of active pattern. In consciousness (the cognitive domain), a static pattern becomes active when cognition is actively operating with that pattern to produce transformations in the pattern itself or other patterns. If the sole purpose of the endpoints project was simply to reflect the products of consciousness as virtual representations, then endpoints would be a proper name; however, the purpose of static pattern engineering is to operate on and transform these patterns — in the transition states they are active patterns. With the tremendous potential of a global network, if the endpoint were designed to release the pattern in a way that allowed it to be activated by bidirectional information flow according to its orientation and exposure then there would be many opportunities for the pattern to become an active pattern (not just for consumer but for creator and aggregators). Thus, we are most interested in the flux through the endpoint — and the sole purpose of the endpoint is to serve as a FluxPoint.

I have most likely become somewhat vague in the -how- this last part will be achieved. This is for several reasons – first and foremost is because I wanted to announce the initial ideas (endpoints) but not necessarily reveal the whole progression since then. Nonetheless, I can assure you that this project will be an interesting experiment that I hope will generate very positive results, not just for the field itself but also for the people that use it. [Insert typical grandiose vision statements here]

[1] analogous to a domain name in concept but not at all in syntax

[2] for instance, web services are usually unique type definitions that usually delegate to a well-known data source while an endpoint represents a unique manifestation using a standard type definition with variable data sources (often other endpoints)

[3] in the first implementation, this will be a hosting location I will provide; however, the infrastructure will be designed from the bottom up that this location can vary for each endpoint

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!

I’m going to redefine two terms from psychology for the means of making a simpler paradigm for discussion — these terms are ‘Reflex‘ and ‘Unconditioned‘. In classical behavioral psychology, we have conditioned responses and unconditioned responses. The unconditioned responses are innate to a species (e.g., human beings, geese, african or european swallows) [1a]. Conditioned responses are learned by ‘hooking attention’ (this is one of those ‘iceberg phrases’ I will use to signify that a massive structure of useful theory lies below the surface and will be a ‘complex to crack open’ (using one of my best friend’s favorite phrases) later) [1b].

So we have learned behavior and inherent behavior. Not only for linguistic purposes, but for a deep level of integration with core SPE theory, I like to call these behaviors and responses reactions (for now, just assume I’m using a linguistic sleight of hand). I am going to use the term reflexive reaction to define any reaction or behavior that has assumed some degree of automaticity — where the degrees of freedom have been yielded either by choice, by genetics, or subconsciously. Like most terms in SPE, I want to use the notion of ‘degree of’ to qualify and quantify how much this definition is true for a particular instance or event. Thus, for an innate reflex (e.g., if I tap your knee with a rubber hammer) there is an extremely high degree of reflexivity (with little choice) but for a learned behavior it can be considerably lower because a mental choice (a degree of freedom) still exists. Note that at the point of learning a new reflex (those awkward moments of knowledge acquisition), the degree of reflexivity could possibly be nearly zero (unless the new behavior is a combination of previously reflexive behaviors, but even then it is much lower than the sum of the parts).

Now – the problem with observing behavior externally is the same as was addressed in previous posts: we are looking at the individual once action has taken place (a knee jerk, a survival reflex, job interview responses to practiced questions, a complex defense against a political coup). Just as I expanded the criteria for knowledge from ‘information with potential for action’ to ‘information with potential to produce effects’ (see the Towers of Knowledge, Part One post), I would also like to, as a first slice, define a reaction as a ‘response capable of producing effects’ (which may produce variable actions). To use a mundane and easily graspable example, I’ve learned that if I grow extremely tired, I can respond with a cup of coffee. This usually involves a quite careful choice (is it 11pm at night? how much coffee have I had today?) — if it doesn’t, and there is a high degree of automatization (a high degree of reflexivity), you could say there is an addiction at play. This example has both an observable action from a person (getting the coffee) and a learned effect from the response (increased alertness unless the coffee is decaf). What I want to stress is that the effect is of primary importance and it is only because the action is tied to the intended effect by some mechanism (in this case, the tie is pharmacological) that the action has any importance at all. If I were aware of about a dozen equally effective actions that spanned approximately the same amount of time, then really my action would only be a matter of choice.

Even though I have requalified with an emphasis toward effect, my example of learned behavior does however manifest in an action that interacts with the ‘outside’ world [2] (drinking the coffee), but I used this to make it more tangible. To truly extend the notion of what a reaction is to the bounds required for SPE analysis later, I want to show that a learned reaction need not result in any external action whatsoever [3]. If instead the scope of the system that is affected by the reaction is only the mind of the learner, then we have a reflex that has little or no outside manifestation/action whatsoever.  A good example of this is the ’self-calming’ behavior we often learn on our own in childhood (which may have language structure or not, may have overt action if it calls attention or not).

As an aside, this is a good opportunity to talk about human minds as ‘idiosynchrasies’ or private mixtures of thought, knowledge, and reflexes. From the pragmatic side of human affairs, we often talk about thought, knowledge, or behaviors that serve a common useful function — a sort of ‘agreed to’ matrix of thoughts + actions that forms a common system of thought [4] which you will continue to internalize throughout your life (and which goes through its own evolution as all systems do). What I want to talk about now are the unique ’survival’ behaviors we invent, concoct, or learn on our own from the moment we begin to interact with the environment. Please note that in doing so, I am flying squarely in the face of the reason why behavioral psychology (or behaviorism) sought to exclude the subjective abstractions of personal mood, emotions, and reflexes — what really mattered was observable behaviors (which I am calling ‘actions’). Let me start by saying that this abstraction started by Watson over a century ago was extremely useful at the time — an idealization that allowed for a tremendous amount of early results. The field has since moved toward a belief that internal and external stimuli influence behavior (reactions) — but the line I am delineating is one in which internal effects (which may lead to present or future observable behavior) change the internal state of consciousness.

So, why am I taking you through this tortuous and careful journey from focusing not on just observable behavior (and therefore action) toward a paradigm of focusing on the reflexive reactions that produce internal or external effects as well as internal or external actions (behaviors) [5]? Quite simply, it is easy to have awareness of one’s observable behavior but to become aware of internal reflexive behavior opens up another realm of possibilities, which I am going to address in the second part of this set of posts: Unconditioned consciousness. This is actually a recent, complete reworking of the theory of resonance that is core to SPE theory. To be honest, I want to postpone discussing it until I’m completely refreshed and ready to write about it… but basically, let me talk narratively and freely about it. I love when this happens in life: Unconditioned consciousness was my ‘first’ slice at resonance a few years back — I considered it too unrefined and coarse at the time (not enough to define it) and thus took a different approach. It was an intuitive flash, however, and my early notes on it describe perfect what I have come to realize after a long and careful approach toward this realization. As happens often in insights, the first glimpse was full and correct, but it would take years to properly qualify it. That side of creativity, to me, is refreshing and fulfilling. The glimpse gives a large blast of energy that can sustain one on an endeavor for months or years of intense concentration — if this didn’t occur throughout my life in different contexts, I doubt I would have taken up half of the projects I have.

FOOTNOTES

[1a] These ‘unconditioned responses’ are often called reflexes (a single operation or response) or fixed action patterns (this is a series of behaviors in a sequence that goes to completion). An example of a reflex which is common to both animals and humans is the natural withdrawal in the opposing direction from a source of pain (i.e., fire, a stab wound, etc). An excellent example of fixed action patterns in female geese: If the female goose sees an egg outside the nest (key stimulus), it will repeatedly drag the egg toward the nest with its beak and neck — this movement will continue until the goose is back in the nest whether a researcher removes the egg or not.

[1b] I do not want to open a can of worms on this one yet, but if interested in further research, google for ‘classical conditioning’ and then ‘operant conditioning’ as a starting point. This thread of discussion will be essential to return to later.

[2] Part of the requalification of SPE will be to do away with the ’subject-object’ boundary except where absolutely necessary, thus terms like ‘outside world’ will vanish.
[3] The interest in behaviors resulting from external action are simply legacy from our initial and crucial experiments while psychology was emerging as a field, examining both animals and humans.  In other words, it was an experimental approach that developed into a theoretical framework.
[4] Here I am using David Bohm’s expanded redefinition of the thought system as explained by Lee Nichol: “The essential relevance of Bohm’s redefinition of thought is the proposal that body, emotion, intellect, reflex, and artifact are now understood as one unbroken field of mutually informing thought.” – this redefinition of the Thought System will be part of a large future discussion.

[5] The notion of internal action has not been described as of yet — let me just qualify it by calling it ‘virtual action’ for now. If you need examples, they are abundant: Visualizing or practicing an event long before it happens, observing behaviors in the outside world as an infant (thus internalizing them) before even attempting to produce or mimic them (this includes spoken language — which is an action in itself), planning/declaring/plotting an action, etc.. I am relegating this notion to a footnote even though it has intense interest for me and will for you later — it simply clouds an already complicated topic. But this will lead to the ‘in order to’ Operator and its associated Transforms later in discussions.

No related posts.

This shift is essential to get to the level of granularity that SPE seeks to obtain, and this micro-level granularity leads naturally to a discussion of how knowledge is often organized. We will start with the Tower of Knowledge metaphor — to friends I have presented it a multitude of ways, but my goal on this blog is to express it in the most concise way. Therefore, I feel best it is best to use the metaphorical picture that produced it:

When you embark on a study of anything, you will find, whether to your delight or your dismay, that unless the field is entirely new (i.e., has just been created in the last five years) there will be a group of ’seminal books’ that have been created on the subject. To find out if you truly enjoy this field, it will be suggested to absorb these seminal books, whether it is by the guidance of a curriculum (in an academic institution or any organized program) or the prompting of industry experts or gurus. Whatever the order of the books suggested to you, you can take these books and stack them on the ground. If chapters or sections are omitted, picture cutting those out of the binding.

What you have before you is a physical representation of the Tower of Knowledge your mind must conquer. If you conquer this tower and can demonstrate (whether by certified testing services or application in a field) you did so, you will have accomplished a great deal. In some curricula, you may vary the order of the floors you climb or the breadth and depth of the building may be changed such that the bottom floor is five books wide with one of your choosing (from an approved list) and the other floors may vary in arrangement. The floors or set of floors may carry different titles like ‘Apprentice’, …., ‘Master’, or they may have no title at all.

You may have a guide through these floors, as in an institution where someone professes the essence (hopefully) of the knowledge contained in these books to you, or you may be guiding yourself. All in all, no matter the case, the fact that your mind is climbing this structured tower is a worthy endeavour.

Yet, how will you know before you take the journey whether you will enjoy the knowledge that is interwoven into this Tower? Based on the previous post of Resonant Knowledge, how will you know beforehand if you will truly resonate with the knowledge contained in this tower? If these knowledge components will be what is used and executed throughout your daily life if this is for a vocation (or way of life), would it not be best to know beforehand that due to resonance there is a strong likelihood that your mind will be energized enough to produce extraordinary results/effects from that knowledge?

Looking at professors, it is easy to spot those who chose the right tower to climb because of the way that they resonate with the knowledge they transmit to students. It is equally obvious to spot those who at the very least are asked to transmit a section of the tower they do not resonate with, or at the very worst simply climbed the wrong tower.

The boundary case that has always been of interest in SPE is those who resonate with a high proportion of the knowledge of the tower they have surmounted. These individuals are especially valuable to us as a society — they are the consultant in a certain industry that your company must hire and who produces tremendous results, they are the professors in the university that everyone recommends to each other, they are the ones who fully immerse themselves in their vocation as if they were playing instead of working.

The opposite case is something we’d like to avoid for all involved for obvious reasons. Usually a crisis will invoke abandoning that tower via a career change or otherwise, but that is often painful for the individual undergoing this journey.

Continued in Part Two….

No related posts.