Ideas on Fractal Ordering & Such

Brent, I seem to be slow to understand some of this and I may have to wait for life experience to catch up with some of these ideas and principals. Though maybe by inquiring and listening I am laying the groundwork to understand - what is really meant by some terms may still be eluding me. You have done a good job of spreading this out on the table to see more of the pieces.

Maybe I'll try just talking about where I am and some of the bits and perspectives that I get, and maybe that will move me along and us closer together in understanding. I suppose you are expressing what you have learned and put together in your way, and what reaffirms what KW, RK, CG and others have said about the evolution of connectivity within and among creatures, and in other ways, to life more generally.

Looking back and around now I can imagine quite clearly that there has been a movement towards more complexity that occurs in at least momentarily coherent forms and those more enduring. I tend to default to seeing a lot of this as dynamic kosmic experimentation and latent fecund fertility, but there may be a lot more to it than that, hence attempts to explain this perhaps elegantly lacy and crudely utilitarian manifestation as "intelligent design" and such. That complexity is an elaboration outwardly, as I imagine it, that changes in the heat and nature of this the remaining inward qualities as well. Critical thresholds are hit in these early times of evolution and the dynamisms unleashed need to go somewhere, elaborate, find pathways of release - this results in expression and can be seen to have laid down tracks of connectivity. As I say this I realize that there are certain kinetic metaphors that I favor and that are part of my history and science's - sometimes mechanical-hydraulic-like, sometimes chemical, sometimes electrical, sometimes relating to less understood and less certain field dynamics, varying I guess with the level of focus and perspective. This elaboration of form/connectivity occurs within the available material, energy, and then newly created materials and energy, that have been given us and our world, that are present in this ultimate game space.

Much of what I enjoy so much is hearing about and imagining into the early parts of this historical and ongoing process, and you have done a sweet succinct overview of critters on earth that leads to human's elaboration of complexity that can be described as a progressive development. I guess we can say that assumedly this development is considered to be an improvement in valuable ways over simpler forms and expressions. Please excuse, Brent, if this catch-up I'm doing is plodding and tedious - I'm trying to get some firmer ground under me at this moment before I try to accelerate my getting these further forms of development that you are speaking of.

You point out that animals and human's have progressed to levels of complexity (in which survivability of species is always at least implicit , and always unconsciously or consciously dependent on sensing, perception, and basic processing) that are organized to allow attention and focus at varying degrees of closeness and distance. This awareness through small windows onto environment (and sufficiently, though basic and assumedly largely unconscious, of internal states and happenings) somehow flowered and organized in a way whereby the being began to become more aware of internal and especially mental phenomenon. Phenomena could then be cognized to reside inside oneself, be a part of oneself - hence, I guess, as you say, "self-reflective" experiencing/"looking at" what's going on in one's experience at a level of processing and abstraction and from an ongoingly stable functioning of oneself, that can be identified as oneself. (A fundamental "witness" function has come into being?) Slices of awareness into these internal happenings become separated objects in a sense, and we witnesses are the subjects of the self-reflective activity. When awareness of inner events have been facilitated through development sufficiently to have an inner standpoint apart from the relatively undifferentiated and in articulable experiencing of them is, I think, what you are calling the third-person perspective.

It's first-person until this self-distancing specialization occurs.

Second-person perspective is what? When a child interacts with another person? Or do we call it second-person when there is sufficient cognitive/verbal differentiation whereby she consistently says "you"? Or has a clear differentiated inner picture/memory that distinguishes sufficiently those occurrences that belong to her and those that belong to the other? LLQ, correct? OK. My inclination is to say that intersubjectivity, the intersubjective field is actually existing between the inner experiences of the baby and the mother as a shared space, though maybe since the objective has not been sufficiently, articulately differentiated from the subjective, and also self from other, we don't call it intersubjective. Or yes? I am suddenly wondering.

Plod, plod.

So we can differentiate via a witness standpoint that things are outside of us, and even phenomena within us are objectifiable, we have tetra-arisen - animals don't articulate this and many mammals and earlier probably aren't close to the developmental organization as described through the right-sided quadrants to be inter-objective.

OK, man - if I continue at the moment it would probably be gibberish, if it isn't totally already. I went as far as I could now, here at the coffee shop, sipping yerba matte.

I look up from my mental immersion and look around at the people. I look out the window and scan for trees and "lower life-forms" - I see trees and bushes and grass. I see the mountains, rugged and spottily green and tan. I see and can almost feel the overcast and post-rain moisture in the air. I feel this hard stool under my butt that humans developed and built. Living within a field of mentality, highly intensified by this task, I try to descend to ordinary materials and energetics so that I can feel that maybe I have integrated, have understood something, stood under and on that which is more firm and enduring and universal. Truth be told, it's questionable. There are huge gaps. I dwell in a somewhat conscious way mainly in the virtual of this mental functioning that apparently is a developmentally adept and important function. I don't think I am integral. The splits and gaps and momentum of virtual modeling are too great.

I have taken your presentation into my fragmented world. I have to smile to connect - that's a way I can hook up with you and you all. Cut through the clouding verbiage with a chuckle - if you were here, I'd smile and you probably would do. It could turn into laughter.

What'd I say? Oy, and hello.

ambo