co M un I C at I on

co M Un(ion) I C at Ion

“I will speak about the circle and the snake, and about changing sizeSpeed a bit, because it will be a useful precursor to later conversations. In fact, we shall examine some features of conversations in general, as well.

Let’s begin with some stories, noticings about and examinations of communication.

When two creatures come into the range where overt contact is possible, the chance of intentional contact activity increases. There is probably some formula with which one could map the probability of intentional or semi-intentional contact. Size would play a major role in such a formula, as would velocity, and the natures, features and idiosycrasies of the myriad transports of contact. Contexts would also loom large from a statistical perspective — and this sort of perspective is amongst the most useless we could pursue. It’s a broken knowledge-mirror, masquerading as the vastly more powerful toy that it is descended from.

Beyond the realm of formulas, in the realm of that which we may ourselves experience, participate in and observe, the transports are far more numerous and magical than is popularly supposed.

In truth, there is a universal language, and it can easily assemble connection betwixt any possible set of scales or forms of participants. But it is not a language, per se — as much as it is a connectivity game.

For two lifeForms to connect intentionally — they first must establish certain features of unified transport. Presuming for the moment that such contact is mutually intentional, there is still a source from which the desire for unity in contact, or communion, arises.

In other words, something is pressing, from somewhere, for this animation of contact, assembly, and mutual elaboration — and that pressing results in response at every scale of biocognition — organisms, collectives — even living worlds. We don’t have to decide what this source is — instead it is useful to merely notice that it is there, tap-a-tap-tapping at all of organismal activity and awareness.

So what we really have, in essence, is an elaborate living library of connectivity games, all inspired by something quite everpresent which we are leaving unnamed.

[At the root of all possible games of this sort, lies something like ‘a most essential schema’, or — a way to assemble games from elements. And of all possible elements, there are also a variety of essential schemas and forms. And, in the game of ideas we are playing together at the moment, we might consider this to be closer to the root of all possible communications games than we might expect. If we render our contact and relation with these elements into a position of mechanistic or statistical primacy, we’ve ‘begun by throwing away’ the most valuable terrains and fruits of our explorations.]

Consider the way technicians of your modern species engineered and built the devices called modems that connect some of your physical networks. This game is recapitulated in their design.

The ‘caller’ or ‘one who desires to connect’ references ‘the address’ of a known or suspected host. This caller is the guest.

If the guest finds a host ‘present at an expected address’ — these two begin a conversation — but it isn’t so much information they are conversing about — at least not at first — it is connectivity.

The game begins is a self-referencing connectivity conversation — they are mutually converting each other, through songs of ‘tone-ions’ — until they can verify (and unify) their connectivity. Amongst animalian participants, such dances form the very roots of organismal connectivity — which are only far later expressed in the shape of some technological toy which humans will claim authorship of. The authorship does not lie with humans, however. It lies in stars, and in beings and assembllies that make the boldest of fictions appear tame in comparison.

Fundamentally, the game has much to do with identity, and guardians of knowledge.

Here we may examine an idealized analog of this technological modem-game for a moment from a human perspective:

guest: i support these protocals (sends short list)
host: protocal selected (answers in the selected protocal)

guest: touching you at 9600, 14000, 28800...
host: acknowledged, proceed.
guest: touching you at 57,600...
host: speed matched, basic connection established.

guest: testing the transport for erroring. (long string follows in timed bursts)
host: (repeats long string verbatim)
guest: (acknowledges string) I support the following error-correction protocals (sends list)
host: (selects protocal) EC Protocal selected.
guest: Acknowledged.

host: I demand your connectivity credentials.
guest: I claim to be of your body. (sends credentials)
host: You are of the body. Proceed.
guest: acknowledged.

(actual exchange of information begins)

This is a truly fascinating game, and rather than having been invented by humans, it was recapitulated from their own connective natures, directly into the focused artifacts of those natures — their machines. Let us examine what is actually happening from a more general perspective, looking at the schema rather than the instance of it.

In our analog, we will let the host be represented by a circle, and the guest by a snake. The host rePresents reUnion with the body for the snake (who actually is there on behalf of a distant circle, as a sort of agent). Essentially, a distant circle has sent its snake to meet another circle present in the snakeWorld’s domain.

If the snake is allowed entrance, this‘distant circle’ (or snakeMother) is then directly connected to the host, via an invisible transports that connect the snake to its sourceCircle. So the snake is a vehicle of connectivity, and often of transport establishment between domains. The circles, or hosts, in their sense, represent living libraries — who prosper from the penetration of the novelty-laden snakes.

So there is a very romantic notion at play here, even though we are selecting for it with perspective, which is that the child of a distant mother is approaching another mother, and asking for the opportunity to unify their lineages via a rather magical form of connectivity.

If we look into the lineage-history of snake or circle we find a snake ‘just before’ the circle, and a circle ‘just before’ the snake. There is no necessity of course to call the snake masculine and the circle feminine — but for the sake of our game, we will continue as though this is the case.

As the snake approaches the circle, it communicates its natures and intentions (speed, desire for connection, form of error-correction, lineage, identity, etc) with its dance (which is actually occurring in some scalar portion of the eggSphere’s sensing sphere).

We might say that the ‘approach’ of the snake causes a disturbance in a mutually connective media — or contexts of connectivity transports, history, &c. What is meant by media is a lot more complexly hyperstructural than we can easily point at with language (including all of the language ever generated by all the sciences and philosophies), and bearing this in mind will serve us well as we proceed.

The circle, in turn, responds by actively embodying the specific structure to be connected with — it sets the contexts for which the snake is requesting to become a commune-Ion.

The snake desires to penetrate the membrane, join with the circle, and thus establish lineage-connectivity between circleSource(s). The circle, or host, on the other hand, may be enhanced by the essential novelty (and division-power) that the snake brings as its offering. The circle is like a spherical rattle attracting snakes, and the snakes are like arrows seeking to join the source of an an assembly-signal. Which we might model as the sphere’s danceSong.

So while the snake is ‘announcing its identity, lineage, novelty and intention’, the circle is modulating its sensing spheres and its surface in response — growing larger if it desires to be more receptive (thus reducing the struggle to touch or enter its membrane) or smaller, in order to make penetration impossible. In some cases the circle has methods of repelling unwanted suitors as well. Constriction renders the membrane less permeable. Enough ‘shrinkage’ and the membrane will not be passed.

Let us transport our already lifeLike model such that we may use the metaphor of human fertilization. We will disregard the incredible feats of attraction that result in live human sperm achieving local presence with a fertile human egg — and look more closely at what happens during the approach.

Essentially, a sphere is about to come under attack by hundreds, thousands or millions of snakes. And essentially, it only wants to allow one of them to enter. If this is not actively managed with great care and consideration for present and future circumstance — nothing but a cataclysm will result.

Some large portion of the incoming sperm are seemingly arbitrarily misdirected immediately. Not having understood the ‘assembly song’ properly — they select the wrong tube and are subtracted from the game. This is the egg’s first defense against unwanted suitors — if this were translated into words it might sound like the egg herself saying: if you can’t tell which (of two) directions I am signalling from — you will not be welcomed...

In the extended domain of nature, and in human beings, there are different classes of sperm, for example, there are ‘helper sperm’ that effectively aid the successful penetrant and also ‘confuser sperm’ that could or do malign sperm from a different donor. But it is the egg that must orchestrate this distant symphony — from the approach of the donor through and beyond penetration.

While science may decide that the egg itself has no transports across which to know or affect these outcomes, the flatness of science misses the magnificence of its sources due to their incredible simplicity and essentially poetic structure.

The egg is like a sort of iris that is an entire sphere, instead of a flattened lens. It senses as a sphere senses, and signals as a sphere (like a cell, or a planet or a star — or something that is more than their mere unity — which an egg certainly is). Furthermore, the surface of the eggSphere is not ‘smooth’ at all, but is in fact (at the scale of a sperm) more like a striated lattice of threads, tightly knit together. Even the the planet and star are thus, though their ‘striations’ are often more energetic than physical.

Pretend for a moment that this is a picture of Earth’s membrane-shell, primarily physical in atmospheric, magnetic, gravitic and energetic domains. If that were the case, what would the sperm rePresent? The symmetries of animalian fertilization cannot be much different from those used by flowers and islands. Suitors and spheres — and a truly ancient game of ‘calling and answering’ which is far more powerfully poetic than it is mechanical.

Understanding this feature, we can observe that slight modulations in the sphere’s size (expansion or compression) will radically affect the chances of all local sperm (generally) as well as each local sperm (uniquely).

Thus, if the egg can merely contract (a very small amount) or expand, it can radically alter which suitor(s) gain the advantage of more likely entrance. (Remember, we are making a toy — not science — which means this doesn’t have to physically apply to human eggs to be accurate and useful, because our toy is meant to apply to eggs and snakes in the most general of senses). But much more than this is possible, for there are transports of connectivity (and ways of assembling such transports) that your species have no common or ‘systematic’ metaphors for, at all...the sperm must succeed at penetration in a variety of domains. In a very real sense we might say that the best sperm with the best set of helpers succeeds — and in the moment of its success the electrical potential of the egg’s membrane changes such that any binding sperm will fail. And thus the first successful penetration begins a process whereby further penetrations are diverted.

A sphere is really an incredible versatile shape, and the poetic symmetries of and between these two shapes — the ‘flying snake’ and the ‘eggSphere’ are no accident of nature — and they are not a mere accretion of momentums comprising only a locally significant shapeStory, either. They are a universal metaphor not only of connectivity — but of regenesis, communion, and the unity of many complex lineages of psybiocognitive endeavor. They also recapitulate the genesis and general modes of assembly and self-reference that underly the physical and energetic terrains.

Many spheres can modulate individual elements of their membrane — for a wide variety of reasons. To increase receptivity, they expand — which makes their membrane more permeable. To decrease receptivity — they contract, hardening their shell against intrusions of any sort. And just as a cuttlefish can carry on two conversations in light on two sides of its body, so too can many eggSpheres (in many scales and domains) manage multiple conversations — in many simultaneous positions.

So it is for example common for an eggSphere to expand slightly in one area, while shrinking in one or more other areas — in order to achieve what might be loosely termed ‘the best of potential positions’ for multiple simultaneous receptivity and rejection.

Generally we would model this is ‘only occuring on the surface of the sphere’ — in other words, locally to the sphere’s outer membrane-surface. But in truth this is only one domain of the sphere’s presence in spaceTime (and outside it). Remember that in our toy — we decided to ignore the entire set of dances which brings (millions or billions) of sperm from impossibly distant universes of organismal reality — to meet with a single eggSphere’s outer membrane. The sphere acts in time, and vast dimensions of space. Some of the domains in which it is present magnify its effective size — to a degree that for the purposes of conversation we could agree is functionally infinite — at least, at the scale of a human egg — and in domains we might believe to be ‘generally local’.

And it is the same with the snakeMessengers, as well. Rather than magnifying their ‘own sensing’ their ability to ‘cross any gap’ is similarly magnified by the many scales and domains of their actual existence, as well as by what we might call the ‘paradigm’ of which we are speaking — that the eggSphere and snakeMessenger recapitulate something which is essentially foundationally present in every domain of physical, energetic, cognitive and organismal reality — because it recapitulates an elemental shapeSongStory. This shapeSong is enmeshed in all arisal — in some unique way that is always amongst the most foundational of possible schemas we may examine.

And thus, embodied in organismal reality, its powers are far beyond the miraculous — and they are linked, and recapitulated in every organism, assembly and form.

Consider the human, who is itself at once an eggSphere and a snakeMessenger. A female human actually produces eggSphere with(in) hersElf, and the males produce snakeMessengers by the billions.

But both use both elements of the schema in sensing and in conversation. For example, the human iris modulates by enlarging when light carrying what appears to be preferred content is available. It is not that one ‘sees’ something ‘interesting’ — so much as it is that one’s toy of seeing modulates in relation to incoming snakeMessengers in light. Similarly, if there are ‘a lot of snakeMessengers’ — your iris shrinks — reducing its receptivity in the wake of ‘a great many suitors’.

Men and women manipulate objects in spaceTime with their hands — which act as the snakeMessenger of their mind — which reaches into physical reality in a way that is actual, from another reality which is speculatively founded — that of the ‘person’ whom one thinks and acts ‘as’.

Smell, on the other hand, like an eye — is an eggSphere sense. And aspects of the sense we call touch are both. It is not as if every sense is one sort of toy — but rather that any given sense has relations and aspects of both eggSphere and messengerSnake built into it — recapitulating again its own genesis in every moment of organismal reality and sensing.

Speech for example, can be mostly eggSphere, or mostly snakeMessenger, depending upon its sources, circumstance and many other characteristics. Although it is a mistake to stereotype gender, we can observe some aspects of conversation, and apply (only as a toy of observation) our paradigm so far to a conversation between a male (generally uses snakeMessenger form) and a female (generally uses eggSphere form)...

The male is trying to ‘make a point’ as it were, which essentially means something like ‘penetrate a sphere to create self-likeness with(in) itUs’. So the masculine paradigm (in our toy) is primarily projective-penetrative. It is a ‘great going forth’ of snakeMessengers toward an eggSphere or an assembly of them.

The female, however, is doing something very different. She is expanding and contracting her sphere, in such a way as to rePulse or inVite interaction with her membrane — which may or may not lead to penetration. She is really not as interested in words and snakes as she is (in our toy) in feelingTones. These are the result of disturbances in some scale of her ‘sphere’, and each disturbance is a sensing organ for her, which returns very general but highly accurate information about whatever penetrants may be local.

If we condense this even more (again, we are merely making a toy, not a dogma — in reality both genders mix and match the eggSphere and snakeMessenger elements uniquely in each person and moment), we might observe that her goal is to discern good contacts, and his is to cross any gap into sphereUnity. But the metaphor is transposable beyond this. The female can, in a biocognitive way see the natures and positions and dances of any nearby suitors — and she can sense their character and intent, their size and speed, many things at onces. For her, her eye can already tell ‘the truth’ just by looking at someone speaking to her. To have ‘to actually descend into words’ to express hersElf is already an insult, for if you cannot see the truth in her eyes — then how could words make any difference?

And for the man, interestingly, we have a very different set of priorities. ‘The presentation of the point’ for example, and determining whether or not one has penetrated an eggSphere, been rejected, deflected — etc. The male metaphor is one of ‘shooting a cloud of little snakes’ (each quite similar and still unique) out toward connectivity goals, and sensing what returns to them along the paths of the snakeTravel.

This vastly simplified toy projects wild forests of diverse connective complexity, actually embodied as it is in organismal reality, and even human conversation. If you watch an actual conversation, you will see both schema’s represented, and often a single individual will have no idea whether they are ‘sphereSensing’ or ‘snakeSensing’.

Yet in conversation, the variables are vastly magnified, for any participant may use any (of many) possible combinations of strategies. There are also many variables which humans are aware of in physical reality, but commonly pay little or no attention to in communicative domains. Often, the first connective moments of any conversation are spent establishing transports and modulating in order to better and more clearly connect. What would a snakeMessenger (such as a sperm) do if it encountered an egg that was moving? What if the egg was moving so fast that the messenger could not catch up? What if the egg was smaller than the messenger — or so large that it could not be discerned from the swimming media?

In real communication, there is a phase where ‘who is guest’ and ‘who is host’ is establilshed. Sometimes this is a matter of debate, but more commonly it is already clear to all participants, and they are merely establishing more formally that which is already apparent in the ambience of their organisal relation — this is a verification phase. So things such as ‘what size are you choosing’ and ‘what angle and speed are you moving at’ as well as ‘basic language’ choices and ‘how shall we correct miscommunication together’ — all of these are commonly dealt with very rapidly by organisms in physical or cognitive contact — but they are attended attentively — wheras in human communications (which are far more formal and thus more needful of such attention) these aspects are more commonly ignored completely. This leads to serious problems in more domains than one might imagine, because human communications are not merely shaping human experience, they are shaping (and often erasing) their living nursery at the same time.

Consider deeply the confusion that arises when these simple protocals fail in their establishment. No one can tell ‘who is speaking’, and ‘who is listening’ — or why. The whole connectivity event becomes about discussions about discussions about misconnection. Blaming becomes necessary, because it must be at least one of the participants’ fault for having signalled willingness to communicate without being prepared to even establish connectivity.

Size and speed are ignored, error correction is ignored. How do humans manage to communicate at all? The fact is, at least in modern societies, miscommunication is the norm. This rapidly becomes the practiced and expected norm, for long experience with these problems leads most toward the experiential conclusion that they are merely ‘the norm’ and thus an unchangeable portion of the real experience of human and organismal connectivity. This is not now, and never was the case, however. It is the result of an essential misunderstanding of the simple and heartful algorythms of animalian connectivity.

[mark of translation in process]

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