Before we begin. . .
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. Shall we begin? When you spell my name right. S O C R A T E S. OK? And you’re P L A T O, right? On second thought, you can be L A U R E L and I’ll be H A R D Y. Ladies and gentlemen, does anybody know what this dude is talking about? Of course not! Why do you think the station just kicked us off the air? And told us never to come back.
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Spontaneity
Bluebirds
Spontaneity is all about love and relationships. That couldn’t feel loving without an attribute of spontaneity that makes it possible. Memorably visualized in “Song of the South” (1946) when Uncle Remus (James Baskett) sings a lyric from the song Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah: “There’s a bluebird on my shoulder. It’s the truth! It’s actual. Everything is satisfactual.” A bluebird on the shoulder comes and goes as it pleases. It answers to what, we don’t know, but whatever it is can’t be captured if it’s spontaneous. If Uncle Remus even thought of possessing it goodbye bluebird!
In a fantasy of the way things aren’t everything is satisfictional. Spontaneity turned on its head and inside-out. By being foisted on the easily misled as animal instinct. One never knows about extinct volcanoes. Exactly. One never knows when they will erupt. Except that animal instinct is the will of a predatory beast. Willing its prey to become extinct. Or human to be dehumanized so that it can be added to the king of beast’s trophy case. Another slave trapped in captivity, possessed and controlled like an object by its owner. Willed into “action.” Pointless distractions for the amusement of its captor. Performed by a play-actor so skilled at impersonation that it’s become who it isn’t. Unaware of who it is.
Wart hogs
How’s this for a visual: a wart hog rooting around in the underbrush. What idea could that express? The thinking of a personality type guided by one perspective. The perspective of an animal limited to its five senses – taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound. Letting its snout tell it everything there is to know.
Without being aware that there’s a whole lot more to know. More to life than satisfying bodily appetites. In fact, life is a riot of looking at things differently that makes creativity possible. How else could Creation radiate diversity and freshness in the moment? Full of life. Joyful and playful. Vibrant because it’s spontaneous .And because it’s made up of many different perspectives.
Where would that come from? From something you and I have that the nice wart hog snuffing and grunting doesn’t have. Snorting. And farting. The nice wart hog ripping off good ones in the underbrush has a primitive brain. Poor thing. It can’t visualize. Yes. It’ll never enjoy the thrill of doing TV commercials.
Inseparability
Being aware that there’s more to life comes from understanding something that human wart hog’s one-perspective can never understand: that loving relationships aren’t between identicals. Whose “love” for one another is love for themselves. Dinner and dancing for one. They’re between parties who aren’t identical.
Wart hog “wisdom” says spontaneity and order, freedom and boundaries, are contradictory — opposites to be kept apart. The same with love and logic, thought and feeling. With the way things are and creativity. Contradicting the most obvious fact of life on earth: evolution. When they’re inseparable. At a standstill when separate, functional and dynamic when brought together.
Because they complement one another. Parts contributing to one cause not because they do the same thing but because they do something different. The reason why the attack of the clones failed. Yes. And a good visual for common cause being ineffective instead of effective. Trying to function with sameness when what it needs is variety. Differentiation instead of regimentation. Passion instead of insensitivity.
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Willfulness and Hierarchy
Keeping incompatibility under control
The prototype for all relationships: Spontaneity with Order that got everything started. For Creation and Mind the Creator – everything Relationship. Two distinct functions side-by-side with a boundary between them. So that they can function as one without interfering with one another. Spontaneously.
Why spontaneously? Because the opposite of everything is willfulness. A wart hog content with its one perspective. Letting instinct ruled by body rather than thinking enabled by mind dictate its behavior.
Human-ape’s “home” is an animal “kingdom” of hierarchy ordered by comparative levels of dominance and submission. The way that apes determine at the outset which one is dominant and which isn’t. It’s been keeping incompatibility from getting out of control since animal kingdom’s origin eons ago. And humans, being animals, do it too.
What price integrity?
Which is fine if you’re a personality type that thinks aping apes is cool. Many do. But “human” shouldn’t be surrendering to another’s will if it wasn’t meant to be an animal. If it has integrity.
Don’t animals have integrity? In an animal kingdom of hierarchy relationships can’t perform any function without one or the other surrendering it. Voluntarily or involuntarily, ritually or by force. In a hierarchy one must be above, the other below. So, yes, our wart hog has integrity in theory. But not in practice, when it’s either establishing its own primacy or yielding to another’s.
Creativity’s cause: not being “number one”
A defining trait of human-ape’s animal mindset is its territoriality. Dogs are ubiquitous because they’re useful. A deterrent to trespassing on their turf, natural burglar alarm systems. We’re all jealous of our turf, but not all personality types are instinctively territorial. Because the mindset I’m describing is unrelatability. Necessitated by the meaning and purpose of hierarchy: being at the top of it. Number one.
A perspective characteristic of an unthinking, unfeeling beast who could never be our friend rather than a thinking, feeling equal who could be. Because of its context: hierarchy. An idea that could never co-exist with spontaneity with order. With its perspective. Its context, whose very definition is meant to exclude it. Whose purpose is to affirm and express values opposed to it.
Creativity’s cause: to stand for a state – reality – radiating the light of love inseparable from logic, freedom inseparable from order. The value of life learning, growing, and sharing itself.
Order is Definition
Instead of its opposite: willfulness assuming supremacy:
- Already knowing what there is to be known, with no need to question the way things are.
- Already perfect with no need to grow.
- Already a monopoly of everything of value with no obligation to share. Entitling it to be the only voice to be heard, the only feelings to be considered. The one-and-only-coordinate from which all others are to get their bearings. The center of the galaxy whose gravitational force shapes it in the form of a spiral. All objects being absorbed into itself. A black hole of selfishness “radiating” self-centered darkness.
A bizarre idea of “order” in reverse. Accomplished by force rather than by every part of Creation working together in harmony voluntarily. Because relationships among friends in equality are enabled and empowered by relatability within order. Rather than relationships among competitors for supremacy, willed by hierarchy to be unrelatable. Disorder.
You mean order isn’t authority calling the shots? That’s how beasts in their animal kingdom view it, When granting equality to another is giving up supremacy. Self-inflicted vulnerability, a sure sign of weakness. When in truth the cause of creativity would be impossible were it not for order. The function of definition without which nothing could come to be.
Managing the boundary
Love needs definition? Certainly! It’s fine to be boundaryless. To be anything you want. Who cares? But what can Love do without something that says what it’s for? Something to define its function. Its usefulness to creation. Which is why love is inseparable from logic and vice versa. One completes the definition of the other. Giving it the capacity to act instead of just smoking cigarettes and plucking on a harp.
Creation is relationships expressing the ideal of love and logic functioning together as one. Not in spite of being different but because they’re different. But only when the boundary between them divides them with respectfulness for their differences, their integrity. Staying out of each other’s way, while uniting them — two parts of one function — with the power of attraction.
Gee! You just hit it out of the park! Yes. And I did it without your stupid bat. You’re aware, of course, of where I already learned all this stuff? From Raina Telgemeier. No. From Chinese Intelligence. They intercepted the Tao ordering Chinese takeout.
Relatability
The ultimate prototype for relationships isn’t a hot romance between feminine love and masculine logic. It had to be preceded by an even more fundamental relationship: between spontaneity with order. The founding event that set in place definition first. Like our Constitution, the voice of authority for the way things are. Order. So that love together with logic can only be and do what Mind-Relationship is defined to do.
By the boundaries of definition set by an ideal: the worth of life earned and freely chosen by its creators. In relationships like the original, love and logic brought together by spontaneity and order. To function as equals. Relatable.
Unadulterated by willfulness. A king of beasts reining supreme over its animal kingdom of hierarchy. Discipline exempt from discipline, answerable to no one. A warped “ideal” of wildness exempt from all limits including definition, free to trespass and transgress with impunity. Unfeeling, self-centered arrogance, Unrelatable.
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Mind-Relationship
The original Relationship
Role-modeled by four relationships that got evolution and creativity started. Possibly more, but for our purposes they ought to be enough. For what? For making it clear that while loving relationships must be a coming together they must also be a keeping apart. Respecting and protecting their different perspectives because that’s who they are and what they have to contribute. To relationships between different perspectives or they would have no creativity. Or love.
Mind itself, the Creator, had to be activated by spontaneous relationship between different parts within it. To do what? To get all of evolution and creation started. With spontaneity instead of conformity. Free spirited creativity instead of willfulness. With the original relationship between love and logic. The prototype and precedent for every relationship to follow.
One visual is worth a thousand words
Soulmates are two people thinking and feeling the same way, Right? Not if our role model is the way things really are. Where soulmates complement one another instead of mirroring one another.
I’m literal, you’re visual. Words speak to me, images to you. Your talent for expressing thought with image impresses me because I wish I had it. Then it’s true! You should be more like me. Of course!. But I’d much rather we be one mind literal, comfortable communicating with words, and another visual, good at communicating with images. An author and an illustrator with different perspectives as well as talents. Accessible not because we’re the same but because we help one another with what every human-ape needs: to learn and grow into something better.
Who’s to say which of us is better at getting our point across? I am. Really? Nobody understands a word you’re saying. My readers and I are trying to communicate with different vocabularies: theirs with objects, mine with ideas. Theirs based on five senses that detect objects, mine based on sixth sense that sees through objects to the ideas from Mind that put them there.
Giving my illustrator an opportunity to try something new. Like another line of work. The first step toward Creativity is to stop thinking in terms of appearances. Instead of objects try artistic renditions of ideas and ideals.
An animal kingdom of appearances puts my exquisite talent for visuals on top. Your blathering comes in second. That proves I’m better at getting our point across, so why should I try something new? Queen Bluebird is in charge now. My valet will see you to the door.
One idea is worth a thousand visuals
It’s true. Our animal kingdom of appearances is visuals, and none more revealing of its king’s nature than the structure of human-ape’s brain: left hemisphere-thinking; right hemisphere-feeling; and beneath both, at the top of the spine, animal brain. The amygdala. All action with neither thinking nor feeling. Just predatory instinct.
The same as it was since the time, long ago, when human-ape was just ape. A beast. Housebroken since then by new features that let it speak with words instead of grunts and relate with feeling instead of clubs. And do a lot of other stuff, but still a beast.
Queen Birdbrain forgets that ideas precede visuals. And if you’re not nice to me I’ll take my ideas and go home. So make yourself comfortable and my attaché will let you know when I’m available.
Mount Olympus under new management
What are the four relationships? They’re between:
- Spontaneity and order
- The definition of what is and its implication, what isn’t.
- Love and Logic
- Parents and Child
We can toss ideas around later about the many ways they can be visualized. But first we need to set the stage with the lovely backdrop you’re going to create. An artistic representation of the source and role model for all four relationships: Mind.
Didn’t Michelangelo already take care of that? He did? His thing on the Sistine Chapel, “The Creation of Man.” Right! “God,” a scantily clad human-ape body, bearded of course, reaching out with his finger to issue his first command. Really? Ordering Adam, a massive, muscle-bound hunk, a naked centerfold corrupting innocent girls, to go put on some clothes.
You want me to do an image of your idea of God? Yes. Only “God” is a misnomer as is “supreme being.” Then we can both expect to hear from the Inquisition. Burning at the stake for blasphemy. “Mind” that implies what it’s for – its function — is relatable. “God,” arbitrary “will” to be loved and feared at the same time, an ambiguous figure of authority, isn’t relatable. Feared for what it will do to me if I mess up its face.
The only hierarchical “relationship”
Thinkers trying forever to figure out what it’s all about keep getting it wrong. Thinking it’s some version of an animal kingdom ruled by a king. A “supreme being ” — monolithic, one-dimensional — alone on top of a pile of stuff. “God’s Will.” When Mind is Relationship.
The character human-ape has been thinking all this time is a one-and-only-dude is none of that. An absolute authority who makes the rules and can do whatever he wants because he’s the man. It’s all wrong — “God,” “God’s will,” and “supreme being.”
A perspective can’t make sense that’s a horror of willfulness, bigger beasts preying on littler beasts competing to be number one. “Almighty God” on a throne of aloofness, mystifying everyone with its inscrutable “plan.” A perspective can make sense if it’s Mind functioning with clear purpose. Backed up by the way things really are. By the Force of Necessity uncorruptible by willfulness. Accessible through human-ape minds connected to it through their sixth sense, Intuition.
The purpose of launching evolution and creation with the first requirement of order: differentiating between what is and what isn’t. The first requirement of Definition: putting what is above and what isn’t below. Reality above its would-be “enemy,” unreality. The only hierarchical “relationship” in creation.
The search for something definitive
Understanding that only what is – Reality – can be defined. Its opposites and “alternates” – implications – cannot. Because not being what is, they must be impossibilities. And physics’ failure to prove the coherence and integrity of spacetime-matter by defining it, by certifying the immutable laws that it lacks, can only mean that it’s not definable.
Any more than personality types can be pinned to the corkboard by psychoanalytics. When they’re at the mercy of cross-currents beyond comprehension. Internal and external, rife with contradictions, notoriously mutable. Accessible only with help from Guidance through intuition. From Mind that knows nothing of matter, bodies, or brains.
Leaving human-ape to continue its search for something definitive. Where it can’t be found by rooting around in the underbrush. Perpetuating five-sense body’s lock on ape-human instinct, until Guidance through sixth sense points to a better possibility. To where there is something definitive, in Reality.