I’ve shared so far in Everyman’s Collection a brief celebration of the amazing opportunities we encounter when recognizing assumptions and embracing ambiguity’s role in relating to each other and existence. Cool observations. Clever visualization. But wait. Soon enough, it lands deeper in the psyche, poking the part of it that regulates futility.
Facing assumptions and grappling with ambiguity, taken to its logical extension, would have us navigating our day to day life in the most challenging ways possible. Think: ocean voyage. Alone. Throw in to that the prospect of limited provisions, or some relentless storms and most people do not embark and launch significantly into ambiguity without… something else. I assert the something else – in a timeless sense, the challenge you will have to be willing at least to some degree to enter throughout – is orderliness. Specifically and generalizably here, that means the representational map that is OKIC. Rejecting it, you can be guaranteed business as usual… by a different name.
OKIC is a stereo navigation tool for the modern age. Invisible and yet bringing orderly and meaningful synchronization between inner and outer. Dual because what it grants us is two-fold. One is our agency, our individuality, our participation, navigable through inner compass. The other side is our systematicity – that is, control-conform, governance, connection with humanity, connection with our wider nature, environments, collective creativity – realized through organizations, businesses, nation-states.
OKIC is an invariant structure within which we can relate to the world beyond our narrow selves, and also not lose ourselves. Invariant and timeless are synonymous. The full meaning of this connection will take a bit of effort to unpack, with hints and suggestions sprinkled throughout. It’s a major focus on the chapter in Part 2 of Everyman’s, on Paradox and Universal Heart.
People who make music understand that musical scales do the same thing when people make music. In music, as in OKIC, invariant structure is key to the collective perception of patterns and possibilities that is being orchestrated, composed or listened to (as in, anticipating a musical piece). For music, think of rhythm, melody, or harmony.
- If it is new information to you that musical notation creates an invariant structure using the frequency of sound, pause and do a bit of research.
The similarity between OKIC and music is transmission through a pervasive medium. In normal conditions, instruments affect airwaves. OKIC connects through physicality, a subject covered in detail [insert link]. Einstein evoked something similar in his more philosophical musings about physics, articulating and hypothesizing extensively about a cosmological constant. In a phrase, representational reality works via cosmological flow.
Flow is, in a literal sense, the familiar action of liquid, such as movement of water in a river or from a faucet. Flow has a more general connotation, which is of dynamic, unimpeded movement in a given environment. I examine flow in detail in Chapter 2, where the dynamic of flow is used to represent the geometric encodings of the figure series that comprise a major part the book’s contents. An introductory word on the subject, combined with the concept of progression here is intended to help you make sense of the significance of the particular progressive set of figures.
Flow can be used to describe a certain dynamic state in intangible resources as well, like life energy, work processes, natural cycles, or finances. What is common among broader connotations of flow is a notion of no perceivable limit, of an infinitude of possibilities. One could even conceive of it as change unfolding before an unknowing, or at least unwitting, being. In this way we might also lose the sense of it being navigable. There’s a common saying in the complex systems: the map is not the territory. To which a representational system responds: “Yes, and.”
Those with a bit more knowledge of music will understand that, when a given structure is understood as the music’s container, musical combinations like chords (notes played together) and progressions (possible “logical” pattern sequences of notes and/or chords) become possible.
In OKIC, you will find a similar role for progression. It begins with flow, introducing novelty, and is patterned through its progressive, invariant structure (geometric encoding or form). Musical form, progression styles (dependent on available scales), while varying among cultures and through time, tends toward certain predominant sets of invariant notes. For example, the Circle of 5ths is a system in which eight distinct notes punctuate a circle where sharp and flat notes link or blend the eight. Circle of Fifths [Musical Connotation] Progressions in OKIC are analogous to that particular musical pattern: an invariant set of eight that links and blends in complex ways.
The next step in introducing the precise though most basic structure is to add the computational representations of 0 and 1, where 0 is for novel (flow analogy) and 1 is for pattern (progression analogy).
This is useful for establishing the difference between systems like music which are strictly about creating new expressions, because OKIC is also deeply rooted in understanding and relating to, eventually navigating, existing patterns.
With the 0 and 1 as values for novelty and patterned, the next step is to combine novel and patterned at three layers to establish a set of invariant values possible when they are combined in all possible ways. The reason for this three-layer approach is established in Section 2 Chapter x. It’s interesting to note that it’s a tried-and-true approach for a wide variety of applications. For those familiar with computing or mathematics, recognize in this invariant structure of a three-bit binary. For those familiar with the I Ching (translates into “the book of changes”), you will understand that the same structure (with 0 as broken line, 1 as unbroken line) informs the eight trigrams from which its 64 hexagram (two trigram) change variations are constructed.
The 3-bit coordinate system plays out in the variety of ways outlined in this book as to how humans are able to continually derive coherent systems of meaning from diverse phenomena like sensory input, memory, digital information and psycho-social dynamics. The complex simplicity of the coordinate system, like the complex simplicity of the 4-base-pairs of DNA, can be understood broadly as what makes meaningful disambiguation, questioning of assumptions, and reinforcement of clarity and optimality possible.
In the table, starting at 000 and going all the way to 111, there are eight orders total where content can be understood, analyzed and even transformed. First value 0 corresponds to inner compass, first value 1 corresponds to outer kaleidoscope. There are 12 positions each for those coordinates beginning with 0 and those beginning with 1 (for a total of 24). They are context-free positions.
You can think of the coordinates as first order combinations for the purpose of re-presentation in any context. Two base geometries stem from the OKIC coordinate system. The mysterioscope, subject of the next chapter, is a systematic representation of the positions true when orientation is held steady. Thus it is a figure with 12 vertexes and with features that correspond to the complex layer of context-free phenomena always at play. The second base geometry is the memory crystal, subject of the first chapter of Part 2.
In the first section of the book, you will learn about the flow and progressions that can be understood by fully realizing the combinations and intricacies – the complex invariant structure – from which meaning can be derived in a different way than we are used to – looking it up in a dictionary or web search – and from which assumptions can be broken down and reformed through effective disambiguation. Colors are present to assist navigation and integration using the OKIC system itself. Geometry represents and relates as do the words and short phrases that accompany figures.
The book’s second section takes us into a number of different directions, all for the purpose of understanding how to integrate what is uncovered in the first section into a meaningful understanding and approach to psychosocial re-orientation. You will learn what it means that the first four (that begin with 0) integrate through future sense, function through paradox and revelation, and optimize through agentive enaction. In short, “inner compass”. The last four (that begin with 1) integrate through first myths (timeless tales), function because memory begets focus, and optimize through soulful reorientation (to governance). In short, “outer kaleidoscope.” Additional specialized terms are masks and shields, covered [insert links]. Colorwise, red, green and purple are behaviors, and when integrated through control-conform, express through direction as well. Direction is covered toward the end of the book. Orange, yellow, blue and indigo correspond to focus. They integrate because context of focus is the integration of behaviors.
Bridge principles you will see emerge as mediating the two – outer kaleidoscope and inner compass – are universal heart, cosmic nature, and soulful creativity. You may even be wondering how those complex things can come of something so simple as eight three-value combinations. Which is where the analogy to music is once again useful. Think of all of the music possible with an invariant structure of 8 notes.
What is the correct recourse when we don’t like the music? When society is haywire? Does bad music mean bad players or flawed scales? This is where the music metaphor breaks down and DNA, with its physical basis, makes more sense.
DNA revolutionized medicine in part by taking scientists and physicians and creating a bridge between their good intentions and the intrinsic capacities of their patients. DNA revealed that, in organisms, wholeness is encoded for. Instead of simply appealing to patients psychologically, DNA as evidence of both whole and fixable, there was a new starting point.
That’s where humanity stands to go building sense once again based in the science of representational reality.