Hyperstructures:
To model a hyperstructure conceptually, we might make
an imaginal bubble in which every cognitive, energetic or physical
gesture executed by every terrestrial organism (or possible assembly
of organisms) since the formation of the Earth as a planet is available
as a unified symmetry. Examine this organism from a position outside
of ‘time’, such that each moment is ‘currrently
emerging’ at all positions in the bubble — past, present
or future. Allow for multiple ways, speeds, sizes and assemblies
of ‘touching’ the various streams and positions in the
bubble, as well as similar ways for addressing multiple contexts
simultaneously.
This would be one version of a biocognitive hyperstructure.
Any entity comprising it is a unique instance of the entirety,
and is thus ‘hyperconnective’ — meaning non-locally
existing, and connective across all possible dimensions of time,
speed and scale. This means that each participant is constantly
‘totally updated’, and not merely a frozen instance
of a given moment — such as when it was made or born.
o:O:o
This term is a holophore and a uniphore — it
is a way of refering to everything or anything, and it gets folded
to create higher-level (more abstract) metaphors. Since it means
something akin to ‘what everything fundamentally is (from
one important perspective amongst others)’ — we must
understand that no participant is anything but an instance of the
whole, uniquely embodied in terms of history, character and other
qualities — yet entirely complete in that it is not possible
for anything to be ‘missing’ from any instance (at this
fundamental perspective).
This concept relates fundamentally to matters of cognition
and also to its general basis in connectivity. The dimensions
of human semantics, logics, mathematics and languages are each instances
of interconnected ideological hyperstructures which leak
into reality until they overwhelm organismal experience by virtue
of our constant and habituated obligation to them.
The human concept of ‘God’ is an example
of what we would consider to be the primordial hyperstructure which
is penultimate (first) in all possible dimensions. The idea of being
‘made in the image of god’ refers not to a physical
form so much as to ‘hyperinclusiveness’ — an impossible
and sacred sensitivity which is the result of a similarly unthinkable
‘transport of constant updating’.
The combination of these qualities creates in each
organism a very general but extremely inclusive replica of all
of organismal time and also ‘the ways of assembly’
which create and envitalize these potentials. It is this that is
meant by ‘in the image of God’ — that we ourselves
are linkable instances of the primordial hyperstructure.
But then — so are cells...
o:O:o
Take a pack of playing cards and remove the Queen
of Hearts. While holding this card, imagine a ring of cards growing
as you observe it — containing every unique instance of a
‘card’ representing the Queen of Hearts or one of the
ancient precursors to this card — such that every instance
from all of human history is included. Although your structure is
produced from the perspective of a given moment in human history,
notice that it is connected to many ‘positions’ in time
through the inclusion of artifacts from that time in its ring. The
ring is not locally temporal, but multiply so in that each member
is from a different position in time.
This is the first ‘scale’ of the hyperstructure
we will call ‘The Queens of Hearts’. To add the next
scale, imagine all the objects ever touched by any card of this
type — not just the unique instances in our ring, but also
any ‘copies’ of them which may have existed.
To add the next scale, imagine every human being that
ever crafted or touched any of these cards.
To add the next scale, imagine all the complex dimensions
of relation and cognition necessary to assemble and activate those
human beings in making, touching and moving the cards around.
The next scale would be all of the outcomes in human
terms of moving any of those cards.
The next would be the outcomes of making or moving
cards at all.
The process is continuable as long as we are willing
to follow it, and the result is an ‘ever-more inclusive’
metaphor which has multiple dimensions of scale, instance, context,
transport, meaning and application. This is a way of coneptualizing
experience or understanding of a hyperstructure which ‘grows’
while we attend it. In general, the growth is mutlivalent, and multidimension
— along with the transports of connectivity which cross these
significantly arbitrary set-boundaries.
o:O:o
It is not merely the concept and its many unique scales
and connectivities which we must craft, but also the ability to
reach into this bubble from a variety of simultaneous perspectives
of size, speed, lineage and relation simultaneously —
with the goal of assembling something a lot like our ‘metaphors’
from this activity. A hyperstructure cannot be said to exist if
one cannot experientially access it directly — it is not a
‘theory’. I am suggesting not only that we can, but
that we do mostly this — in every moment of our experience.
Although my own understanding of and use of this term
is from my direct experience rather than reading and research, theoretical
explorations of related topics may be found here
and here.
