c o m p l e x i t y

p ' l a y e r s   &   d ' r i v e r s        

2 0 b s

y'our   "consciousness"   is ~ 20 bits/sec ...

... 'deep' :

the human brain has about 100 billion neurons (& about 1 to 10k synpases for each). by some reckoning it processes information at a rate of about a million-billion (10power15) to 10 billion-billion (10power19) bits/second *. the average '>channel'-capacity of human consciousness is about 20 bits/sec

sensory input / max processing awareness:

sight 10.000.000 / 40 b/s
hearing 100.000 / 30 b/s
skin 1.000.000 / 5 b/s
taste 1.000 / 1 b/s
smell 100.000 / 1 b/s

TOTAL ___ 11.201.000

how, in confronting this tremendous bottleneck [ bonck], does the brain decide which ~ 16 bits of visual information to focus on? put simply: it searches for movement [ motion, change, discontinuity ] , conspicuous colors and patterns, objects [ thinkgs ] that are known [ knowledge, familiarity, the unchanged = continuity ], and objects that are potential threats [ uncertainty ] ~ the brain is 'looking' for both: dis&continutity )( geres

p O O p

pO'sitivefeedbacklo'Op

t r e e i n g

(not just) thinkgs bifurcate

l i m a

there is all ways a (tice)delay between cause&effect (cact)

water : tub : heat [ pOOp ]

cact 's not closely related in time&space [ tice ] : thinkgs are interconnected in known and unknown ways. the interconnections are not always obvious and known. they may not be close in either time or in space. the delays and separations in time and space are what cause tremendous problems in analyzing systems

ps: the more complex a system gets, the more non-linear, tricky lima becomes [ systemantics ].

time delays between cause and effect: understanding the dynamic behavior of systems requires the realization that there may be a significant delay between cause and effect. in the figure a graph is shown for two hypothetical containers of cold ( 0 clecius ) water set in a 100 C oven. which container of water is largest?

If you're still a bit hungry after eating, do somethinKg to take your mind off food for at least 20 minutes and you'll most likely forget about the eating

REACTION TICE
the immense size of supertankers, as well as the heavy loads they carry, mean that each vehicle has enormous inertia (momentum). a "crash stop maneuver" (from 'full ahead' to 'full reverse' thrust of all engines) can stop a fully loaded tanker within approximately 3 km = ~ 14 minutes. (other figure: 5 miles)

c l o g i c

the word "counter-intuitive" can mis'lead, just like the thinkg itself: CounterLOGICal

paradoxes

b r a e s s'   p a r a d o x

in 1968 dietrich braess, a german operation researcher, discovered that adding routes to an already congested network will only slow it down: "braess' paradox".

in the late 60s the city planners of stuttgart tried to ease downtown traffic by adding a street. when they did, traffic got worse. then they blocked it off: traffic improved. in 1992, ny closed congested 42nd st on earth day, fearing the worst, but traffic actually improved that day.

scientist have found many examples of how adding capacity (linkgs, thinkgs etc) to a crowded network (system) reduces its overall production.

the most effective methods are often un-intuitive. a column, approximately 1 ft in diameter, placed in front of the door exit at a precisely calculated distance, may speed up the evacuation of a large room by up to 30%, as the obstacle divides the congestion well ahead of the choke point [ complex systems ]

j e v o n ' s   p a r a d o x

( after william stanley jevons ) frequently when some'one ( some'thinkg ) works to solve a problem ( thinkg ), one ( it ) actually makes the situation worse [ "worse", bood, geres ]

question'ing: and here comes the cick(er): jp applies to ANY system. and thus also: TAP. to ANY thinkg. ( trying to 'fix' thinkg, to solve it, to save it: is counter-'productive' > clogic ..... talking about, f.e., peakoil etc and contemplating it, and maybe trying to come up with 'strategies', 'solutions' etc: makes thinkgs only "worse", speeds thinkgs up .... ANY thinkg youus does feeds/strengthens the system: thinkg/s )

"civilization, says baron liebig, is the economy of power - and our power is coal [ energy ]. it is the very economy of the use of coal that makes our industry what it is; and the more we render it efficient and economical, the more will our industry thrive, and our works of civilization grow" ( jevon, 1865 )

jevons went on to argue that the whole history of the steam engine was a history of successive economies in its use; and each time this led to further increases in the scale of production and the demand for coal. "every such improvement of the engine, when effected, does but accelerate anew the consumption of coal."

as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption [ accumulation ] of that resource [ thinkg ] may increase, rather than decrease. thus, the introduction of more energy efficient technologies may, in the aggregate, increase the total consumption of energy. may = does.

localized solutions to global problems often confound the solution of the overall problem. JP implies that as individuals become increasingly efficient, the overall economy will compensate by supporting additional individuals and increasing overall consumption.

what likelihood then is there that new or newly applied technology [ thinkgs ] will be able to prevent environmental degradation from expanding along with the economy?

l i i d i i   =   life+-death

h u m a n a t u r e,   h u m a n i m a l,   h u m a c h i n e

at its most elemental level the human organism, like crawling life, has a mouth, digestive tract, an anus, a skin to keep it intact, and appendages with which to acquire food. existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed - a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking. seen in these stark terms, life on this planet is a gory spectacle, a science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste excrement as they move along in search of more flesh

... and this brings us to the unique paradox of the human condition: that man wants to preserve as does any animal or primitive organism: he is driven by the same craving to consume, to convert energy, and to enjoy continued experience [ input ] . but man is cursed with a burden no animal has to bear: he is conscious that his own end is inevitable, that his stomach will die [ stuffocatit, combusthinkg ]

... man wants to know that his life has somehow counted, if not for himself, then at least in a lager scheme of thinkgs, that it has left a trace, a trace that has >meaning. and in order for anythinkg once alive to have meaning, its effects must remain alive in eternity in some way.

... since men must now hold for dear life onto the self-transcending meanings of the society in which they live, onto the immortality symbols which guarantee them indefinite duration of some kind, a new kind of instability and anxiety are created. and this anxiety is precisely what spills over into the affairs of men. in seeking to avoid evil, man is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts.

      d o b e h a v i o r

.... ii actually suggests that there could be a superorgasnism out there (and TAP, as mentioned, could dobe one of its {harvesting}-toolstechnologies) that can only feed on, run on, dobe driven by: thought [ thinkgs ]; thoughts of (maybe not just human) boinds. a critter, so to say, that requires materiallyfueledcritters like us (who foodchain animals and plants) to convert solar energy, via intermediary refineries, process(ing)-stations, to stoke its own (fires), to stoke its dobeing, a radical departure from classical foodchaining.... so all youus us bedoing here is feeding that (supa)thinkg.... maybe ii is the only one here who is deeply shaken (and not necessarily negatively) by that ideage

ORANGE: Talk it out “ get it out “ the REAL thing that is eating away at yous..... energy

YELLOW: Hi Jan, are you saying we all might be fuel? Susan

BROWN: hi Susan, wasn't quite what ii meant, but yes, why not? as far as weiis know everiithingk is eaten gives liidii to somethingk else....one long chainreaction...

.... the li'ne' of matter/mind is blurri to startstop with... and, every thinkg is part of some food&chain ... ii thinkgs
ok, kaffeekochen
[and, another post, same thread]: ii very munch like the idea about a supaorgasnism feeding of thought... but on a more down to eathy level: one could easily see how we fat western cats are actually using those "niggers" as our fuel (litergallonbarrelly): [followed by pix on field workers]

      ... dobe ...

the 'answer' might not lie in the structure of the cell, but what philosophers and poets have always been fond of trade'marking: the breath of life . when somethinkg has b.o.l., it is alive. in scientific terms, it's called: metabolism.
metabolism is the ceaseless flow of energy through a network of biochemical processes, which allows the organism to maintain itself, to repair itself, and to perpetuate itself. this metabolism is the essential characteristic of life [ liidii ]. "if you ask what metabolism is in detail, you have to go into the details of biochemistry and cellular biology....." ~ ah, look:

to gorge & guts, to consume & burn, to convert:
                                                                                energies

[ combusthinkgs ]

durchlauferhitzer

the function of the mind [ mitter, boind, thinkgs ] is to cause behavior

motivation is the driving force [ desire, grneed ] behind all actions of human beings, animals, and lower organisms ... an internal state or condition that activates behavior and gives it direction, desire or want that energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior, or an influence of needs and desires on the intensity and direction of behavior. motivation is often based on emotions, specifically, on the search for positive emotional experiences and the avoidance of negative ones [ pu&re ], where positive and negative are defined by the individual brain state, not by social norms: a person may be driven to self-injury or violence because his or her brain is conditioned to create a positive response to these actions. motivation is important because it is involved in the performance of all learned responses. some would argue that the two best types of motivation are fear and desire. motivation can be viewed as either extrinsic or intrinsic

{edit}:
like food: stuffing >more than one can - handle. literally: stomach. literally II: release=shit. >tas wants to eat eat eat more more more +@ the same tice: cant take hold handle digest release releave... it ....

i canit learn [ information, data, knowledge ] , i BURNS it, (liter all y ) . i 'mission'/job is to move (the) i from "here" to "there" ~ to keep the process ing ing ing comegoing ( thoughting thinkgs mitter'ing = fuel'ing fueling fu)nn(el [ tOOt ]

burn babi burn (s.a. w rees on boltzmann 1905 @ bib)

f.e.: wanting more more more mails=thinkgs in the box, but not opening them, and not re-plying [ i'm~pressure ] : bifurcathinkg? i wants to be fed, but not feeding ("back") (.... to feedeat , to f'eat-back....)..
tap is an habit, an addiction ~ pOOp.

the brain has (is? dobes) a reward system to make boinds dobe what they "ought" to [ cick ]. without it, they might forget to eat, drink and have sex ~ with 'disastrous' results. boinds continue to do these thinkgs because they make them feel 'good'; releasing a chemical called dopamine in the brain. boinds learn that sex is 'enjoyable', & seek out more

hence: which activities generate a positive emotional response, and which ones do not? for most boinds, activities that involve powerful audiovisual input have a stronger emotional ( emotivational ) effect than purely text-based information. reading is a trained higher cortical skill, whereas large brain areas are congenitally devoted to processing audiovisual input, for which there are simply more connections from the processing areas of the brain's cortex to the lower emotional centers of the limbic system. thus, it appears, motivation can be created more easily through multimedia input [ sensory processing ]

{edit}:

since humans are social animals, social connections play a crucial role in motivation [ENTER'MEZZO: "if you would write down every thought that was on your mind, that you were thinkging about in the past 24 hour, you would probably find out that about 95-98 percent of all has to do with other people, doenst have anythinkg to do with you at all (doesnt??), but with your interactions with other people ("i"nteractions with 'other' boinds = i), you live in a social world ... how we compare ourselves socially with other people, that is what we do all the time, you cant turn it off -END'MEZZO] ... negative social relationships are likely to decrease motivation.

early programming: emotional programming is largely defined in childhood . children's brains are much more capable of consuming new information (linked to emotions) than those of adults. brain activity in cortical regions is about twice as high in children as in adults from the third to the ninth year of life. after that period, it declines constantly to the low levels of adulthood. brain volume, on the other hand, is already at about 95% of adult levels in the ninth year of life.

data on brain activity, 1996: the red dots show activity in the frontal cortex, the "youngest" region in the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. It is important for analysis and creativity. The blue curve, copied from another diagram of the same source, shows the development of brain volume through childhood. as can be seen from the data, brain activity in children is much higher than in adults, making early influences critical for motivation in later life.

&: STRUCTURE is behavior (= structure =...)

& the i is 'just' a spectator who sees>potraits>renders iself as the director (if not the whole thinkg: the show). booder: i, the trick, mistakes iself for the magic'ian (>magic) ~ [ eye-movement, i-motion ]

and: the ii is like a tiny beam of (head)light (gerold/forest at night), a "camera" [edit: better analogy needed]. it can only render minute bits of the big picture [ snapshots, model @ paradigms ]. even by doing so continuously, and montaging them to some kind of "big picture', the ii runs into a few barriers/blocks:

a - the (cut&paste) ii has not enough capacity/memory to pull of that: grand montage (of "every'thinkg")
b - hence it has to suffice (and that is already the ideal): to compose a very reduced, blurred, sketchy etc image/version of that "big picture" ("reality") "out-there". the gathered=(re)constructed information has to be highly limited & compressed since the amount of information/memory the ii has towrite/draw that picture with is very restricted to begin with [20 b/s]
c - by the tice the ii might have pulled off to render such a approximate/miniturized image/model of iT, iT might have, and most likely will have: changed all&ready&all&over. thus the ii, ideally speaking, can all ways only (hope to) play catch-up [ lima ] with/in the SYSTEM (tas), (and whatever might be beyond)

      i

      functions:

what is the 'function' of the i ?
to pro)(con~create ( a sense of ) identities ( a necessity to do & to be = dobe ... a d'river, driver, i'gnition ), and upholdefendown that - i MUSNT die & i MUST live; i musnt expire i must inspire, respire [ breathold, grneed ]. and thus to produce ( "accordingly" ) behavior ( dobehaveor ) via motivations.

      origins :

of consciousness, i, ego etc:

- david darling and the inquisitive i-agent [ iagency iagent ]

- r wright on: mind & behavior

- d wegner on: purpose & optimism & action

- fighter plane with ego-pilot program

- antonio damasio: consciousness as survival kit; awareness of self allows a concern for one's own survival, which increases the drive to survive

- to create an 'individual', a separated/separating/separathinkg thinkg, that, at the very same tice, keeps on struggling to maintain its identity ( to maintain/defend its 'gained' freedom of 'individuality' ) by ( almost? ) any means/price [ grneed ] while at the very same tice [com]busting its balls to dobelong to some thinkg ( 'bigger', more orderly, more 'meaningful', more secure... causa-suiy) to (re)merge again with _____. the 'function' of the i is: to (auto)create an entity/agent that "feels" [ con'per-ceives ] (its own limit'nessmess, expiration, demise), that operates on, is opereated, driven by: all those fears ( and desires etc ) [ pu&re ] breathing down its neck all the tice. to keep (that) thinkg going going going

- see koch on free-will

  i n f l a t i t    

.... that heigtened sense of self that comes with success in overcoming obstacles and incorporating other organisms. the expansion of the self-feeling can come about in many ways, especially when we get to the human level of complexity. man can expand his self-feeling not only by physical incorporation but by any kind of triumph or demonstration of his own excellence [ accumulation ] . he expands his organization in complexity by games, puzzles, riddles, mental tricks of all types; by boasting about his achievements, taunting and humiliating his adversaries, or torturing and killing them. anythinkg that   reduces   the other organism and adds to one's own size and importance is a direct way to gain self-feeling; it is a natural development out of the simple incorporation and fighting behavior of 'lower' organisms

by the time we get to man'kind we find that s'he is in an almost constant struggle not to be   d i m i n i s h e d   in its symbolic organism, this struggle against being diminshed is carried on on the most minute levels of symbolic complexity. to be outshone [ over:shadowed ] by another is to be attacked [[ running, compethinkg, fight&flight, 3f .... the streSS, the panic, when facing a challenging, a tricky task, an 'attacking' email f.e., AND the instant need to gorge, to stuff: thinkgs > fuel > food, f.e.,,, to re'charge ... out-of-control, like: mad ]] at some basic level of organismic durability. to lose, to be second rate, to fail to keep up with the best and the highest sends a message to the nerve center of the organism's anxiety: "i am overshadowed [ shadow ] , inadequate; hence i do not qualify for continued durability, for life, for eternity; hence i will  die   "

see also: [ deflatit ]

i ' m ~ p r e s s u r e

one of the first thinkg/s a child has to [ must , grneed ] learn is how much power he has and how much exists in others and in the world. only if he learns this can he be sure of surviving [ obedience ] ; he has to learn very minutely what powers he can count on to facilitate his life and what powers he has to fear and avoid in order to protect [ protection ] it. so power becomes the basic category of being for which he has, so to speak, a natural respect: if you are wrong about power, you dont get a chance to be right about anythinkg else; and the thinkgs that happen when the organism loses its powers are a decrease of vitality and death.

"the first thinkg we must remember is WE, parents, are the examples. our children want to impress us, and they often follow our lead ..... kids want to impress their parents more than anybody else (...) children want to impress you so let them know how they can get your attention with positive behavior (...) children want to please [s.a. erich fromm on "pleasing", in fof] their parents and feel proud that they are growing up..... Your praise [ pu&re ] means a lot to your child. children want to use the toilet because they want to please you and because the want to feel like they are growing up. [ "potty training" ]

children want to impress their parents and to gain (earn) the respect of the family. this can lead to intense sibling rivalry. a comparison with siblings encourages competition (...) the child also wants to be proud of his or her family. family pride is essential to self-worth [ value , worth ]

  g r n e e d      

necessity, GReed, NEED ... :

the MUSTS and the MUSNTS: right out of the gate=womb=childhood=>> .... & at once with the "wrongs" and the "rights" and the "goods" and the "bads" ... n'n'nd

musnt: forget an ideage (that just came in, popitup)
musnt: miss thit opportunititi
musnt: lo)o(se thit thinkgs [yep, thoughtoo ]
munst: drop the ball
musnt: die, expire, weaken, cry....
musnt: not miss that stepping-stone [bohms river crossing]

          &

[ bohm, on the notion of reflex ]:
one of the most powerful thinkgs people have is the thinkg of necessity. it is much more than thinkg. the word 'necessity' means 'it cant be otherwise', and the latin root NECESSE means 'dont yield'. it suggests the emotional-physical stance of resisting, holding [(not) breathing > breathold]. thats the other side of the reflex system: when you say 'it cannot be otherwise', in effect you are saying: 'it has got to be this way. i have to keep it this way.' you have a hold. somethinkg that is NECESSARY is a very powerful force which you cant turn aside. yet you may say 'i have to turn it aside.' thus we establish an order of necessity, saying 'this turns aside for that, and this for that'.

this notion of necessity is crucial to our whole ordering of thinkg, as is its opposite, which is 'contingency'. contingency means 'what can be otherwise'. if somethinkg can be otherwise, its meaningful to try to change it. if it cant be otherwise, then there is no use [ [w]: nouse ] trying. this will have a tremendous effect. if you thinkg somethinkg is impossible to do you are bringing in necessity by saying that necessarily cant be done, therefore, you cant do it, and you will not try [ alibi ]. so the assumption that somethinkg is impossible may well trap you into making it impossible. on the other hand, you may assume somethinkg is possible which is not [ self-fullfilling prophecy ], and just batter your head on a stone wall [ cotopaxi & beating-dead horse ]

the greek dramas were full of those assumptions of necessity, which created the tragedies. the hero, who was really a very fine person, very consistently stuck to his assumptions of necessity and thus destroyed himself and everbody around him

not'wendigkeit:

it really means, 'what cannot be turned aside'. ordinarily as we go through life, problems come up and they can be turned aside, or if they cant be turned aside then WE turn aside, and that is the way we resolve thinkgs. but then there may arise a necessity, as i said, which cant be turned aside; but we may have our own necesssity which also cant be turned aside. then we feel frustrated. each necessity is absolute, and we have a conflict of absolute necessities. typically, it may come up that your own opinion cannot be turned aside, nor can the other persons, and you feel the other persons opinion working within you [note: the 'other persons O' is i 'opinion' ( mental receptors ... see neurotransmitters ) how else could i know them], opposing you. so each person is in a state of conflict

necessity creates powerful impulses. once you feel that something is necessary, it creates an impulse to do it or not to do it, whatever it may be. it may be very strong and you feel compelled, propelled. necessity is one of the most powerful forces - it overrides all the instincts eventually. if people feel somethinkg is necessary, they will even go against the instinct of self-preservation and all sorts of thinkgs. in the dialogue, both individually and collectively - this is important - the conflicts come up around this notion of necessity. all the serious arguments, whether in the family or in dialogue, are about different views of what is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. unless it takes that form, then you can always negotiate it and decide what has first priority, and adjust it. but if two thinkgs are absolutely necessary you cant use the usual way of negotiation. that is the weak point about negotiation. when two different nations come up and each one says, "i am sovereign, and what i say has to go: its absolutely necessary", then there is no answer unless they can change that

the Q is what to do if there is a clash of two absolute necessities [ or three or four or... s.a.: p'layers]. the first thinkg that happens is that we get this emotional charge and we can build up powerful feelings of anger, hate, frustration, as i described before. as long as that absolute necessity remains, nothinkg can change it, because in a way each person says that they have a valid reason to hate the other person for getting in the way of what is absolutely necessary: "he rather obstinately and stupidly refuses to see this", and so on. one may say that its regrettable that we have to kill all these people, but it is absolutely necessary, in the interest of the country, the religion, or whatever it may be. so you see the power of that notion

  p u & r e

PUnish&REward , pleasure&pain

{edit} :
the brain has a reward system designed to make voles (and other boinds) do what they "ought" to [ cick ]. without it, they might forget to eat, drink and have sex ~ with "disastrous" results. that boinds continue to do these thinkgs is because they make them feel "good"; releasing a chemical called dopamine in the brain. boinds learn that sex is 'enjoyable', and seek out more; based on how it happened the first time.

if the infant has a certain experience that is pleasant, his recognition traces start to demand a repetition. he tries to find a way to repeat it. but if they are unpleasant, he tries to find a way to avoid it.

here is the real beginning of the ego (i) process.

the brain (i) as a whole wants to maximize rewards and minimize punishments. the specific behavior ('method') is not genetically fixed. what is fixed genetically is the very goal (thinkg). i principle drive (id) is: pleasure ~ in every direction. so i wants to avoid fear, and i wants more pleasure. yet: pleasure & fear are 2 sides of the same coin. pleasure breeds fear. and fear is the result of i demand for pleasure.

perhaps someboind likes to be flattered and then he finds that the person who flatters him can take advantage of him. there is an incoherence here because its not his intention to be taken advantage of. but he has another intention he doesnt thinkg about: which is that he wants the glow of that feeling (flattery). one implies the other because if he accepts flattery, he also accepts a lot of other thinkgs the person says or does. he can be taken advantage of. he has both a conscious intention, and another one which is going against it (geres).

if i was to get constant pleasure this would dobecome painful. pleasure is always a transitory process.

when impulsive people are forced to make decisions about pursuing rewards and taking risks (virtually) with rewards & punishments dobeing involved, highly impulsive individuals are much more likely than non-impulsive one to continue to perform a behavior aiming at achieving a reward - even as the punishment increases. compared to the less impulsive, they behave more quickly and give themselves less time to consider their options ( in a reward vs risk situation). forced to slow down (speed) and consider the results of their behavior, highly compulsive boinds 're much more likely to make a harm-avoidant choice. the 'solution': slow down the decision-making process (=thinkgs ... but: how does one do that: to 'slow' down thinkg/s).

brain centers linked to enjoyment "lit up" in young men who punished those who cheated them. punishing cheaters is satisfying enough to motivate getting even - even if revenge is costly

the same neural pathways that are involved in the formation of romantic relationships (love) are involved in drug addiction. the brain process of bonding may be similar to becoming addicted to drugs: both activate reward circuits in the brain.

every time you stir up pleasure, the pain center also cick in (to compensate), and vice versa. there is always a mixture of the two. its actually one system/dynamics.

surprisingly: some of the circuits associated with reward react more quickly to hurtful stimuli than do the sensory areas of the brain traditionally associated with pain. activity (emotions) in the so-called reward structure changed over time: it (feeling) was most active immediately after heat administration began and hen returned toward baseline. in contrast, those structures associated with the pain (sensation) were most active later in the brief (25-second) heat administration period. "we feel pain before we think about it."

it may be that these circuits previously described as handling reward are actually analyzing stimuli and judging which are important to survival (s.a. "high-lighting" via dopamine)

(circus): food deprivation and reward keeps the animals "active and healthy": "if these animals were to be fed and watered all the time, they would not run around and do thinkgs. you see this in zoos or safari parks ~ where they have more space and food. they just stuff themselves and go to sleep again.

kids are rewarded if they have the right solution, and they face a certain amount of unpleasantness if they dont have it. the educational system does that, as does the political system. everythinkg has grown up to do that

for example: the continuation of this approach would eventually lead the child to seek pleasing words of praise from others, even if they are not true, and to collude with others in exchanging flattering remarks that lead to mutual satisfaction (friends). this, however, is achieved at the expense of self-deception that can, in the long run, be quite dangerous

HAWTHORNE EFFECT:
individual's behaviors may be altered (increased ambition/performace) because they know they are being studied/obserbed (biking etc)

DOPAMINE-SEROTONIN SYSTEM:
mental 'health' derives (also) from the neuro-chemical balance between impulse (dopamine) and reflection systems (serotonin). a boind with an excessively active dopaminergic reward system and an underactive serotonergic control system might be prone to excessive use of reinforcers which could have negative effects on health. conversely, if one is characterized by low dopaminergic and high serotonergic function in the relevant areas of the brain, then excessive obsessing (sitting around and thinkging about it endlessly) and too little action for the best possible function might be someboinds pattern.

    f e a r

    d o p a m i n e

for now: see: >accu

  r e : a c t : o r ( s )

  s e l f & i d e m a g e

  s t u f f o c a t i t

stuffing, suffocating, titing...

g r o u p,   l e a d e r,   h e r o     (plurALL) ...

early theorists developed ideas like 'mental contagion' and 'herd instinc', which became very popular. but as freud was quick to see, these ideas never really did explain what men did with their judgment and common sense when they got caught up in groups. freud saw right away what they did with it: they simply became dependent children again, blindly following the inner voice of their parents, which now came from them under the hypnotic spell of the leader. they abandoned their egos to his, identified with his power, tried to function with him as an ideal.

it is not so much that man is a herd animal but that he is a horde animal lead by a chief. it is this alone that can explain the "uncanny and coercover characteristics of group formation". the chief is a "dangerous personality, toward whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one's will has to be surrendered, - while to be alone with him, "to look him in the face", appears a hazardous enterprise". freud, explains the 'paralysis' that exists in the link between a person with inferior power to one of superior power. man has "an extreme passion for authority" and "wishes to be governed by unrestricted force" [...] or as fenichel later put it, people have a "longing for being hypnotized" precisely because they want to get back to the magical protection, the participation in omnipotence, the 'oceanic feeling' that they enjoyed when they were loved and protected by their parents. and so, as freud argues, it is not that groups bring out anythinkg new in people; it is just that they satisfy the deep-seated erotic longings that people constantly carry around unconsciously. for freud, this was the life force that held groups together. it functioned as a kind of psychic cement that locked people into mutual and mindless interdependence: the magnetic powers of the leader, reciprocated by the guilty delegation of everyone's will to him.

by explaining the precise power that held groups together freud could also show why groups did not fear danger. the members do not feel that they are alone with their own smallness and helplessness, as they have the powers of the hero-leader with whom they identify.. natural narcissism - the feeling that the person NEXT TO you will die, but not you - is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader's power. no wonder that hundreds of thousands of men marched up from trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in ww 1. they were partially self-hypnotised, so to speak. no wonder men imagine victories against impossible odds: don't they have the omnipotent powers of the parental figure? why are groups so blind and stupid? - men have always asked. because they demand illusions, answered freud, they "["men"] constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real." and we know why. the real world is simply too terrible to admit; it tells man that he is a small, trembling animal who will decay and die. illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way. who transmits this illusion, if not the parents by imparting the macro-lie of the cultural causa sui

f a m i l i e

f a m o t h e r,   f a m o

father mother famother

it all centers on the fact that the mother monopolizes the childs world; at first she IS his world. the child cannot survive without her, yet in order to get control of his own powers he has to get free of her. the mother thus represents two thinkgs to the child, and it helps us understand why the psychoanalysts have said that ambivalence characterizes the whole early growth period . on the one hand the mother is a pure source of pleasure and satisfaction [ pu&re ], a secure power to lean on. she must appear as the goddess of beauty and goodness, victory and power; this is her "light" side, we might say, and it is blindly attractive. but on the other [ "" ] hand the child has to strain against this very dependency, or he loses the feeling that he has aegis over his own powers. that is another way of saying that the mother, by representing secure biological dependence, is also a fundamental threat

f r i e n d s ,   f r i e n d s h i p

it is after all a question of constant habit ... the way we thinkg, the food that we eat, the way we chose our friends, who obviously are our friends because they dont contradict, they dont disturb us too much. so life becomes not only repetitive but also habitual, routine

trading gossip is one of the main thinkgs friends do, and it may be one of the main reasons friendship exists. unlike food or spears or hides, info is shared without being actually surrendered, a fact that can make the exchange radically non-zero-sum.

status asistance is the main purpose of friendship.

reciprocal altruism and status intersect in a second way. a common exception to our tendency to deflate the contributions of others comes when those others have high status. if we have a friend who is, say, mildly famous, we cherish even his meager gifts, forgive his minor offenses and make extra sure not to let him down. in one sense this is a welcome corrective to egocentrism; our balance sheets are perhaps more honest for high status people than for others. but the coin has 2 sides, these high-status people, meanwhile, are viewing us with even greater distortion than usual, as our side of the ledger is discounted steeply to reflect our lowliness.

we spend our lives desperately seeking status; we are addicted to social esteem in a fairly literal sense, dependent on the neurotransmitter we get upon impressing people. many of us claim to be self-sufficient, to have a moral gryoscope, to hold fast to our values, come what may. but peole truly oblivious to peer approval get labeled sociopaths. and the epithets reserved for people at the other end of the specturm, people who seek esteem most ardently - self-promoter, social climber - are only signs of our constitutional blindness. we are all self-promoters and social climbers. the people known as such are either so effective as to arouse no suspicion or so graceless as to make their effort obvious, or both.

our generosity and affection have a narrow underlying purpose, they are aimed either at kin, who share our genes, at nonkin of the opposite sex who can help package our genes for shipment to the next generation, or at nonkin of either sex who seem likely to return the favor. whats more, the favor of overlooking their flaws, and seeing (if not magnifying) the flaws of their enemies

affection is a tool of hostility. we form bonds to deepen fissures. in our friendships, as in other thinkgs, we are deeply inegalitarian. we value especially the affection of high-status people, and we are willing to pay for it - to expect less of them, to judge them leniently. fondness for a friend may wane if his or her status slips, or if it simply fails to rise as much as our own. we may, to facilitate the cooling of relations, justify it: "he and i dont have as much in common as we used to". like high status, f.e.

when we ask friends for help, we ask often not only that they use their status, but that they raise ours in the process

you would have to be just about literally not human to launch a massive attack on the status quo without first seeking social support. in fact, you would almost have to be non-hominoid

backing a friend means verbally defending him when his interests are in dispute - and, more generally, saying good, status-raising thinkgs about him. whether these thinkgs are true doenst matter. they are just the thinkgs friends are supposed to say. friends engage in mutual inflation. being a persons true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest.

it may be that the hallmark of the strongest, longest friendship is the depth of shared bias, the best friends are the ones who see each other least clearly. anyway, however conscious or unconscious the lies, one effect of friendship is to take individual nodes of self-serving dishonesty and link them up into webs of collective dishoensty. self-love becomes a mutual-admiration society. if your true friend has a true enemy, you are supposed to adopt that enemy as your own; thats how you support your friend's status. by the same token, that enemy - and that enemy's friend - are expected to dislike not just your friend, but you, too

one of the strongest bonds 2 friends can have - the great starter and sustainer of friendship - is a common: enemy. this strategic convenience is often obscured in modern society. friendship may rest not on common enemies but on common interests, common causes. affinities emerge from shared passion

the social scale cant be ascended alone; a common first step is to forge a bond with a primate of higher status, and this involves an act of >submission, a profession of inferiority, shifting balance of affection is a regular feature of friendship amid sharp changes in status, as the reciprocal altruism ( re&al ) contract is silently renegotiated. renegoiating may have been less common in the ancestral environment, where, to judge by hunter-gatherer societies, status hierarchies were less fluid after early adulthood than they are now.

we tend to like people we find we can influence, and we tend to like them even more if they have high status.

r e l a t i o n s h i p s

p a i r b o n d i n g

"I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots." ~ William Butler Yeats

despairbonding

l o v e

from which we have to conclude that men have been the mid-wives of horror [ destruction , violence , aggression ] on this planet because this horror alone gave them peace of mind, made them "right" with the world. no wonder nietzsche would talk about "the disease called man". it seems perverse when we put it so blatantly, yet here is an animal who needs the spectacle of death in order to open himself to love. as duncan put it :

"as we wound and kill our enemy in the field and slaughter his women and children in their homes, our love for each other deepens. we become comrades in arms; our hatred of each other is being purged in the sufferings of our enemy"

and even more relentlessly:

"we NEED to socialize in hate and death, as well as in joy and love. we do not know how to have friends without, at the same time, creating victims whom we must wound, torture, and kill. our love rests on hate."

P . O . L .   prisoner o love

“Only if you have children or grandchildren whose lives you care about.” (John X)

The heaps grow. Suitcases, bundles, blankets, coats, handbags that open as they fall, spilling coins, gold, watches; mountains of bread pile up at the exits, heaps of marmalade, jams, masses of meat, sausages; sugar spills on the gravel. Trucks, loaded with people, start up with a deafening roar and drive off amidst the wailing and screaming of the women separated from their children, and the stupefied silence of the men left behind. They are the ones who had been ordered to step to the right--the healthy and the young who will go to the camp. In the end, they too will not escape death, but first they must work....

Here is a woman--she walks quickly, but tries to appear calm. A small child with a pink cherub's face runs after her, and, unable to keep up, stretches out his little arms and cries:'Mama! Mama!'

'Pick up your child, woman!'

'Its not mine, sir, not mine!' she shouts hysterically and runs on, covering her face with her hands. She wants to hide, she wants to reach those who will not ride the trucks, those who will go on foot, those who will stay alive. She is young, healthy, good-looking, she wants to live... ( Borowski, 38-46 )

c h i l d r e n (chield/s),   pro'creations

pit/19

children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them - especially as against the rivals [ competition ], other children, and first and foremost as against their brothers and sisters (sfreud)

a c c u m u l a t i n g    

"we are all hunters" (m mcluhan) ... > ... getting knowledge= : hunting [ dopamine ]

          *   *   *

{edit}:
accumulation is (a form of control/security. trying to understand ("get") (every)thinkg(s) is the attempt to (gain) control.

boinds accumulate thinkgs because: the "getting" (NOT the having) gives them a dopamine rush. that's why no one ever gets enough (jay hanson, dieoff). its actually the: "wanting"

(fear of) pain arises when i hold on to thinkgs that give me satisfaction, for then i am afraid of anyone or anythinkg that may take them away from me. the psychological accumulations prevent psychological pain as long as they are undisturbed; that is i am a bundle of accumulations, experiences (thinkgs) which prevent any serious form of disturbance ~ and i do not want to be disturbed. therefore i am afraid of anyone or anythinkg that disturbs them. thus my fear is of the known, that i have gathered as a means of warding off pain or preventing sorrow. but sorrow is in the very process of accumulating to ward off psychological pain

dopamine (s. serotonin link) is associated with the 'pleasure system' of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate us to do, or continue doing, certain activities (like: food, sex). but is more than just a 'reward chemical'; it is known to be released when unpleasant or aversive stimuli are encountered. also, the firing of dopamine neurons occurs when a pleasurable activity is expected (anticipation), regardless of whether it actually happens or not. thus dopamine may be involved in desire (wanting) rather than pleasure. drugs that are known to reduce dopamine activity (e.g. antipsychotics) reduce people's desire for pleasurable stimuli, although boinds rate them as just as pleasurable when they actually encounter or consume them. it seems that these drugs reduce the 'wanting' but not the 'liking'.

shopping. dopamine promotes what we thinkg of as "wanting." it is the anticipation rather than the buying that discharges dopamine. the effect lasts only a short time and can leave the shopper feeling let down ("buyers remorse") when the brain chemistry returns to normal. dopamine is all about the hunt and the anticipation. it is released as you conjure. it is released whenever it enhances a person’s survival. if a woman thinkgs: "if i buy this dress my friends are going to love it and my status will increase" then she believes it is helping her survival. that is why dopamine is released.

dopamine may play a crucial role in predicting pleasurable activity; and may be involved in the salience ('noticeableness') of perceived objects and events (thinkgs): rendering potentially important stimuli (incl rewarding thinkgs, but also thinkgs which may be dangerous or a threat) more noticeable or more important (>high-lighting). it thus affects decision making by influencing the priority of such stimuli to the boind concerned.

g r o w t h

e c o n o m i c s

we have a global economy that, unless it can pro'create growth: collapses

{edit}:
A. The debt-based nature of money : Most of the money supply in OECD countries - all but about 3%, the value of the coins and notes - is issued as debt. In these countries, the total of all the bank accounts in credit is balanced exactly by all the accounts on which money is owed. This makes the economies basically unstable because if insufficient new loans are taken out in any year to cover the principal and the net interest being paid into the banks on the previous years' loans, the money supply will contract. A smaller money supply makes it impossible to carry on the same level of business as in the previous year. People lose their jobs and surplus capacity appears, further inhibiting borrowing and investment. A downward spiral could develop with one set of job losses leading to others.

So, if the economies of these countries are not to become depressed, the amount borrowed in any year has to be at least equal to the amount being paid to reduce old loans plus the banks' retained earnings. And, assuming that the banks are not distributing all their profits, this means that the amount borrowed has to grow year by year. But since a steadily increasing amount of borrowing cannot be supported by a stationary or declining economy, this means that the economy has to grow too to prevent the level of indebtedness rising continually in relation to national income. This is a small effect compared with the second reason why growth is required.

B. The relationship between employment and growth : If there is no growth in any year, the investments made the previous year have produced no return. Because firms will almost certainly have taken on debts on which interest has to be paid to finance their investments, this hits company profits. The lower profits and the unused capacity created by last year's investment discourages further investment at least in those sectors in which the increased capacity has not been taken up.

Any reduction in investment has serious results quite apart from reducing borrowing and hence the money supply. In normal years in industrialised economies, somewhere between 18% (US and Sweden) and 28% (Poland and Portugal) of GNP is invested in projects that, it is hoped, will enable the economy to grow the following year. A similar proportion of the labour force is employed on these projects. Consequently, if the expected growth fails to materialise and all further investments are cancelled, a fifth or more of a country's workers will find themselves without paid work. These newly-unemployed people will be forced to cut their spending sharply, which in turn will cost other workers their jobs. The economy will enter a downward spiral, with each round of job losses leading to more.

In the present system, the only way to ensure that an adequate level of borrowing takes place to maintain the money supply and that an adequate amount of investment takes place to maintain high employment is therefore to ensure that growth occurs year after year. Studies have shown that a minimum of around 3% growth is required in Britain to prevent unemployment increasing.

The prospect of the rate of investment falling and creating widespread unemployment terrifies governments so much that they have to work very closely with their business sectors to ensure that their economies continue to grow almost regardless of any social or environmental damage the growth process may be causing. In other words, the need for growth to maintain short-term economic sustainability gets in the way of attending to more fundamental types of sustainability such as halting climate change [ discount rate, future ]

          *   *   *

So we have an economic system that is based on perpetual growth, not just ideologically but structurally. With compound interest being charged on all loans, and loans being the basis of the money supply, without economic growth, the money supply collapses and the economy collapses. So we have an economy that is structurally based on perpetual growth and a political system in which no one is able to see the truth or name the truth – which is >population pressure and resource depletion. And no one is able to stand up and say ‘This is what we need to do’.

m o n e y

see (also) above @ economics-gen

we saw that with the decline of the primitive world and with the rise of kingship men came to imitate kings in order to get power. now what did kings pursue besides immortality in the royal family why of course: silks, courtesans, fine swords, horses and monuments, city palaces and country estates (ines elskop & co) - all thinkgs that can be bought with gold. if you gained immortality by leaving behind earthly sons, why not equally gain it by leaving behind vast accumulations of other physical mementos to your image? and so the pursuit of money was also opened up to the average man; gold became the new immortality symbol. in the temple buildings, palaces, and monuments of the new cities we see a new kind of power being generated. no longer the power of the totemic communion of persons, but the power of the testimonial of piles of stone and gold

the new patriarchy passes not only family immortality to the son, but also accumulated gold, property, and interest - and the duty to accumulate these in turn. the son assures his own self-perpetuation by being 'greater' than the father: by leaving behind a larger mark. immortality comes to reside no longer in the invisible world of power, but in the very visible one, and "death is overcome by accumulating [ accumulathinkg ] time-defying monuments. these accumulations of stone and gold make possible the discovery of the immortal soul ... death is overcome on condition that the real actuality of life pass into these immortal and dead thinkgs; money is the man; the immortality of the estate or a corporation reside in the dead thinkgs which alone endure. the pyramid directed its hope of immortality to the sky which it tried to penetrate, but it displayed itself before men and laid its heavy burden on their backs

{edit}:
( and: what does all the following have to do with accumulathinkg ... books, images, 'wisdom', kg... )
money is sacred as all cultur'all thinkgs are sacred ... the thinkg that connects money with the domain of the sacred is its POWER. we have long known that money gives power over men, freedom from family and social obligations, from friends, bosses, and underlings; it abolishes one's likeness to others; it creates comfortable distance between persons, easily satisfies their claims on each other without compromising them in any direct and personal way; on top of this it gives literally limitless ability to satisfy appetites of almost any material kind. power is not an economic category, and neither is it simply a social category: "all power is essentially sacred power." this is perfect. all power is in essence power to deny mortality. either that or it is not real power at all, not ultimate power, not the power that mankind is really obsessed with.

power means power to increase [ inflatit, i'm~pressure ] oneself, to change one's natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance. in its power to manipulate physical and social reality money in some ways secures one against contingency and accident; it buys body-guards, bullet-proof glass, and better medical care (it buys all that and moremoremore with monies 'made' by making-a-killing {literally} bloody hellheavens). most of all, it can be accumulated and passed on, and so radiates its power even after one's death, giving one a semblance of immortality as he lives in the vicarious enjoyments of his heirs that this money continues to buy, or in the magnificence of the art works that he commissioned, or in the statues of himself and the majesty of his own mausoleum. in short, money is the human mode par excellence of cooly denying animal boundness, the determinism of nature

in fact, as brown argues, money does not equal feces at all, does not represent them at all: rather, it represents the DENIAL of feces, of physicalness, of animality, of decay and death. quote: " to rise above the body is to equate the body with excrement. in the last analysis, the peculiar human fascination with excrement is the peculiar human fascination with death". ( isn't SWEAT an excrement too { sweating, work-"out", eating air, eating stored fuel, burning, consuming the own & others ---killing fuel ---- } )

the only hint we get of the cultural repression seeping through is that even dedicated financiers wash their hands after handling money (efe)

p o l i t i c s

t O O t

TheObessityOfThought=Thinkgs

[has a bit/e of toot/h with'in it too{t}...]

sketch:

everything, every thing, every think = fuel [ combusthinkg ].
how does a calorie get 'undone': burned::
basically: by MOTION (by moving the boind)
now, a thought-cal(orie) is used up, eaten up by, hold-on, here comes the cicker: NOT moving
every form of mental motion (perception, processing...) IS creating/consuming MORE thought-cals
thusly, to burn some mental-fat , the excessive accumulation of thinkgs, is "shutting" the system down, or, at least as 'down' as possible
but: is tit possible

c a n i t

COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY :
{edit}:
humans have a maximum capacity of working memory. At around 7 'chunks' of information, our working memory maxes out and we can't accept anythinkg else without losing some of the previous 'chunks'. Try remembering the following numbers 1-9-1-4-7-6-7-5-9-5-9. Its quite hard to do. But if they are rearranged in chunks 1-914-767-5959 [ >chunking ... >decoupling?] , it becomes more manageable - a study by Shiv and Fedhorkhin asked a group of people to memorize a two digit number, walk down a corridor and at the end choose a dessert - either chocolate cake or fruit salad. A different sample of people were then asked to memorize a 7 digit number and walk down the corridor (while internally reciting this 7 digit number) and also choose a dessert. When required to memorize the 7 digit number, almost twice as many people chose the chocolate cake as in the sample only memorizing the 2 digit number - the implication being - 'my short term memory is full - I cant access my rational, long term decision-making hardware --> give me the cake; cake me'.

liidiing with'in a culture/systm o cell phones, taxi-cabs, internet, coffee, soccer practice, Grays Anatomy, corporate ladders and a plethora of other chocolate cake-like stimuli, meaningful contemplation and education about oil depletion and the environment usually represents the fruit salad. Many people are just too cognitively taxed to take on much more.

FORGETTING :

c a n c g e

ii

h o w h y i n g

p l a y i n g,   h o m o l u d e n s

pit/173

since the reality of play extends beyond the sphere of human life it cannot have its foundations in any rational nexus, because this would limit it to mankind ... play cannot be denied. you can deny, if you like, neary all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, god. you can deny seriousness, but not play.

in play, the beauty of the human body in motion reaches its zenith. in its more developed forms it is saturated with rhythm and harmony, the noblest gifts of aesthetic perception known to man

here, then, we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact 'freedom'. a second characteristic is closely connected with this, namely, that play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. it is rather a stepping out of "real" life [ maybe play is less pretending than realiidii ] into a temporary sphere of >activity with a disposition all of its own. every child knows perfectly well that he is "only pretending" [ re:act:or ], or that it was "only for fun". how deep-seated this awareness is in the child's soul is strikingly illustrated by the following story, told to me by the father of the boy in question. he found his 4 year old son sitting at the front of a row of chairs, playing "trains". as he hugged him the boy said: "dont kiss the engine, daddy, or the carriages won't thinkg it is real".

this "only pretending" quality of play betrays a consciousness of the inferiority of play compared with "seriousness", a feeling that seems to be somethinkg as primary as play itself. nevertheless, as we have already pointed out, the consciousness of play being "only a pretend" does not by any means prevent it from proceeding wityh the utmost seriousness, with an absorption, a devotion that passes into rapture and, temporarily at least, completely abolishes that troublesome "only" feeling. any game can at any time wholly run away with the players. the contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid. the inferiority of play is continually being offset by the corresponding superiority of its seriousness. play turns to seriousness and seriousness to play. play may rise to heights of beauty and sublimity that leave seriousness far beneath.

* * *

play is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration. this is the third main characteristic of play: its secludedness, its limitness. it is "played out" within certain limits of time and place. it contains its own course and meaning.

play begins, and then at a certain moment it is "over". it plays itself to an end. while it is in progress all is movement, change, laternation, succession, association, separation. but immediately connected with its limitation as to time there is a further curious feature of play: it at once assumes fixed form as a cultural phenomenon. once played, it endures as a new-found creation of the mind, a treasure to be retained by the memory

more striking even than the limitation as to time is the limitation as to space. all play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. just as there is no formal difference between plau and ritual, so the "consecrated spot" cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. the arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. all are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.

inside the play-ground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, IS order [ is control(ing} the attempt {yearning} for "order"? ] - [ not TT OD, and thus, maybe its unpopularness ]. into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. play demands order absolute and supreme. the least deviation form it "spoils the game", robs it of its character and makes it worthless. the profound affinity between play and order is perhaps the reason why play, as we noted in passing, seems to lie to such a large extent in the field of asthetics. play has a tendency to be beautiful. it may be that this astehtic factor is identical with the impulse to create orderly form, which animates play in all its aspects

the element of tension in play to which we have just referred plays a particularly important part. tension means uncertainty, chanciness; a striving to decide the issue and so end it. the player wants somethinkg to "go", to "come off"; he wants to "succeed" [ winning ] by his own exertions. baby reaching for a toy, pussy patting a bobbin, a little girl playing ball - all want to achieve somethinkg difficult, to succeed, to end a tension. play is "tense", as we say. it is this element of tension and solution that governs all solitary games of skill and application such as a puzzle, jig-saws, mosaic-making, patience, target-shooting, and the more play bear the character of comeption the more fervent it will be. in gambling and athletics it is at its height [ sports, running ]. though play as such such is outside the range of good and bad [ bood ], the leement of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it means a testing of the player's prowess: his courage, tenacity, resources, and , last but not least, his siritual powers - his "fairness"; because, despite his ardent desire to win [ p'layers ], he must still stick to the rules of the game

these rules in their turn are a very important factor in the play-concept. all play has its rules. they determine what "holds" in the temporary world circumscribed by play. the rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt. paul valery once in passing hgave expression to a very cogent thought when he said: " no scepticisim is possible where the rules of a game are concerened, for the principle underlying them is an unshakable truth ...". indeed, as soon as the rules are transgressed the whole play-world collpases. the game is over. the umpir's whistle breaks the spell and sets "real" life going again.

the player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a "spoil-sport". the spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. it is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. this is beacuse the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. by withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporaily shut himself with others. he robs play of its ILLUSION - a >pregnant word which means literally "in-play" (from INLUSIO, ILLUDERE or INLUDERE). therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community [ attack, enemy ]. the figure of the spoil-sport is most apparent in boy's games. the little community does not enquire whether the spoil-sport is guilty of defection because he dares not enter into the game or because he is not allowed to. rather, it does not recognize "not being allowed" and calls it "not daring". for it, the problem of obedience and conscience is no more than fear of punishment. the spoil-sport breaks the magic world, therefore he is a coward and must be ejected. in the world of high seriousness, too, the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sports, here called apostates, heretics, innovators, prohphets, conscientious objectors, etc. it sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their turn make a new community with rules of its own. the outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or members of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings.

a play-community generally tends to becomes permanent even after the game is over. of course, not every game of marbles or every bridge-party leads to the founding of a club. but the feeling of being "apart together" in an exceptional situation, of sharing somethinkg important, of mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms, retains its magic beyond the duration of the individual game. the club pertains to play as the hat of the head. it would be rash to explain all the associations which the anthropologist call "phratria" - e.g. clans, motherhoods, etc - simply as play-communities; nevertheless it has been shown again and again how difficult it is to draw the line between, on the one hand, permanent social groupings - particularly in archaic cultures with their extremely important, solemn, indeed sacred customs - and the sphere of play on the other.

the exceptional and special position of play is most tellingly illustrated by the fact that it loves to surround itself with an air of secrecy. even in early childhood the charm of play is enhanced by making a "secret" out of it. this is for US, not for the "others". what the "others" do "outside" is no concern of ours at the moment. inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count [ escape ]. we are different and do thinkgs differently. this temporary abolition of the ordinary world is fully acknowledged in child-life, but it is no less evident in the great ceremonial games of savage societies. during the great feast of initiation when the youths are accepted into the male community, it is not the neophytes only that are exempt from the ordinary laws and regulations: there is a truce to all feuds in the tribe. all retaliatory acts and vendettas are suspended. this temporary suspension of normal social life on account of the sacred play-season has numerous traces in the more advanced civilizations as well. everythinkg that pertains to saturnalia and carnival customs belongs to it. even with us a bygone age of robuster private habits than ours, more marked class-priviligeges and a more complaisant police recognized the orgies of young men and rank under the name of a "rag". the saturnalian license of young men still survives, in fact, in the ragging at english universities, which the oxford english dictionary defines as "an extensive display of noisy and disorderly conduct acrried out in defiance of authority and discipline"

the "differences" and secrecy of play are most vividly expressed in "dressing up". here the "extra-ordinary" nature of play reaches perfection. the disguised or masked individual "plays" anotherv part, another being. he IS another being. the terrors of childhood, open-hearted gaiety, mystic fantasy and sacred awe are all inextricably entangle in this strange business of masks and disguises.

``` summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious", but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. it is an activity connected with no material interst, and no profit can be gained by it. it proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. it promotoes the formation of social groupoings which tned to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means

the function of play in the higher forms which concern us here can largely be dereived from the two basic aspects under which we meet it: as a contest FOR somethinkg or a representation OF somethink. these two functions can unite in sich a way that the game "represents" a contest, or else becomes a contest for the best representation of somethinkg.

[on representation being a display = dis'play]: the child is MAKING AN IMAGE of somethinkg different, somethinkg more beautiful or more sublime, or more dangerous that what he usually IS [ pretending ]. one is a prince, or one is daddy or a wicked witch or a tiger. the child is quite literally "beside himself" with delight, transoprted beyond himself to such an extent that he almost believes he actually is such and such a thinkg, without, however, wholly losing consciousness of "ordinary reality". his representation is not so much a sham-reality as a realization in appearnace: "imagination" in the original sense of the word.

examples can be taken from all over the world. according to ancinet chinese lore the purpose of music and the dance is to keep the world in its right course and to force Nature into benevolence [ control ] towards man. the year's prosperity will depend on the right performance of sacred contests as the seasonal feasts. if these gatherings do not take place the crops will not ripen.

* * *

in archaic man the experinece of life and natuer, still unexpressed, takes the form of a "seizure" - being seized on, thrilled, enraptured. "the creative faculty in a people as in the child or every creative person, springs from this state of being seized". "Man is seized by the revelation of fate". "the reality of the natural rhythm of genesis and extinction has seized hold of his consciousness , and this, inevitably and by reflex actionnn, leads him to represent his emotion in an act"

* * *

as a rule the play-element gradually recedes into the background, being absorbed for the most part in the shared sphere. the remainder crystallizes as knowledge: folklore, poetry, philosophy, or in various forms of judicial and social life [ kg = dead-play, decayed play?...]. the original play-element is then almost completely hidden behind cultural phenomena. butat any moment, even in a highl6y developed civilization, the play-"instinct" may reassert itself in full force, drowning the individual and the mass in the intoxication of an immense game

* * *

like all other forms of play, the contest is largely devoid of purpose [ could one of the main features/attractions of play be that it has none - purpose, meaning.... dancing ]. that is to say, the action begins and ends in itself, and the outcome does not contribute to the necessary life-process of the group ... on a visit to england the shah of persia is supposed to have declined the pleasure of attenting as race meeting, saying that he knew very well that one >horse [ horses ] runs faster than another

* * *

what is "winning", and what is "won". winning means showing oneself superior in the out come of a game. nevertheless, the evidence of this superiority tends to confer upon the winner a semblance of superiority in general. in this respect he wins somethinkg more than the game as such. he has won esteem, obtained honour; and this honour and esteem at once accrue to the benefit of the group to which the victor belongs. here we have another very important characteristic of play: success won readily passes from the individual to the group

every game has its stake. it can be of material or symbolical value, but also ideal. the stake can be a gold cup or a jewel or a king's daughter or a shilling; the life of the player or the welfare of the whole tribe. it can be a prize or a "gage". this is s amost significant word. etymologically and semantically it is related to the latin "vadium" (german: wette), meaning a "pledge"

to dare, to take risks, to bear uncertainty, to endure tension - these are the essence of the play spirit. tension adds to the importance of the game and, as it increases, enables the player to forget the he is only playing.

* * *

the curious custom practised by certain indian tribes in british columbia, now generally know as the potlatch. in its most typical form as found among the Kwakiutl tribe the potlatch is a great solemn feast, during which one of two groups, with much pomp and ceremony, makes gifts on a larger scale to the other group for the express purpose of shwoing its superiority. the only return expected by the donors but incumbent on the recipients lies in the obvligation of the latter to reciprocate the feast within a certain period ond if possible to surpass it ...should it failto do so it forfeits its name, its hnour, its badge and totems, even its civil and releigious rights. the upshot of all this is that the possessions of the tribe circulate among the houses of the "quality" in an adventurous way. it is to be assumed that originally the potlatch was always held between two phratriai [ clan ]

in the potlatch one proves one's superiority not merely by the lavish prodigality of one's gift but, what is even more striking, by the wholesale destruction [ destructiveness ] of one's possession just to show that one can do without them. these destruction, too, are executed with dramatic ritual and are accompanied by haughty challenges. the action always takes the form of a contest: if one chieftain breaks a copper pot, or burns a pile of blankets, or smashes a canoe, his opponent is under an obligation to destroy at least as much or more if possible. a man will defiantly send the potsherds to his rival or display them as a mark of honor, it is related of the Tlinkit, a tribe akin to the Kwakiutl, that if a chieftain wanted to affront a rival he would kill a number of his own slaves, whereupon the other, to avenge himself, had to kill an even greater number of his.... similar customs in greek, roman and old germanic cultures... and evidence of both giving and destroying matches in ancient chinese tradition

the potlatch and everythinkg connected with it hinges on winning, on being superior, on glory, prestige and, last but not least, revenge. always, even when only one person is the feast-giver, there are two groups standing in opposition but bound by a spirit of hostility and friendship combined. in order to understand thios ambivalent attitude we must recognize that the essential feature of the potlatch is the winning of it. the opposed groups do not contend for wealth or power but simply for the pleasure [ dopamine ] of parading their superiority - in a word, for glory

* * *

there is no satisfying this need save in play

from the life of childhood right up to the highest achievements of civilization one of the strongest incentives to perfection, both individual and social, is the desire to be praised and honoured for one's excellence. in parsing another each praises himself [??]. we want to be honoured for our virtues. we want the satisfaction of having done somethinkg well. doing somethinkg well means doing it better than others. in order to excel one must prove one's excellence; in order to merit recognition, merit must be made manifest. competition serves to give proof of superiority. this is particularly true of archaic society

* * *

competition for honour may also take, as in china, an inverted form by turniung into a contest in politeness. the special word for this - jang - means literally "to yield to another"; hence one demolishes one's adversary by superior manners, making way for him or giving him precedence. the courtesy-match is nowhere as formalized, prehaps, as in china, but it is to be met with all over the world. we might call it an inverted boasting-match [ bragging, showing-off ], since the reason for this diplay of civility to others lies in an intense regard for one's own honour [ respect ]

f l o g o

l a   r i o j a

larioja = dobeing thinkgs that 're "impossible".... pitching tent on a construction site right in middle of town, next to bus-terminal, after coming in on a bus late at night,,, barking dogs of neighbors, argentina ?1997?

,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., geres
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., bubbling
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., boind:mitter:tice
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., thinkgs    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., information        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., knowledge        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., communication        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., language            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., belief-systems    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., meaning        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., truths + - lies        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., hope        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., illusions        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., denials        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., psychology        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., transference            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., religions        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., control
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., 1/2 sec: frill    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., "problems" "&" "solutions"    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., mendoza        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., b'locking, w'alling    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., waiting        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., breathold        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., broodge    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., machu picchu    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., complexity
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., p'layers & d'rivers    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., 20bs    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., pOOp    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., treeing    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., lima    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., clogic    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., braess' paradox        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., jevon's paradox        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., liidii = life+-death
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., humanature, humanimal, humachine
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., dobehavior    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., i    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., inflatit        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., i'm~pressure            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., grneed        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., pu&re        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., fear            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., dopamine            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., re:act:or/s        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., stuffocatit        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., groups, leaders, heros    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., familie        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., famother, famo        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., friends, friendship        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., relationships        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., pairbonding            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., love            
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., P.O.L. prisoner o'love                
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., children, pro'creations                    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., accumulating
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., growth    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., economics    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., money        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., politics        
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., tOOt    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., canit    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., cancge
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., ii    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., howhying    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., playing, homo ludens    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., flogo    
,.,.,..,.,,,,,.,.,.., la rioja