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Friday, May 31st, 2002
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4:04p - from 'The Laws of Form', by George Spencer-Brown
Discoveries of any great moment in mathematics and other disciplines, once they are discovered, are seen to be extremely simple and obvious, and make everybody, including their discoverer, appear foolish for not having discovered them before. It is all too often forgotten that the ancient symbol for the prenascence of the world is a fool, and that foolishness, being a divine state, is not a condition to be either proud or ashamed of.
Unfortunately we find systems of education today which have departed so far from the plain truth, that they now teach us to be proud of what we know and ashamed of ignorance. This is doubly corrupt. It is corrupt not only because pride is in itself a mortal sin, but also to teach pride in knowledge is to put up an effective barrier against any advance upon what is already known, since it makes one ashamed to look beyond the bonds imposed by one's ignorance.
To any person prepared to enter with respect into the realm of his great and universal ignorance, the secrets of being will eventually unfold, and they will do so in a measure according to his freedom from natural and indoctrinated shame in his respect of their revelation.
In the face of the strong, and indeed violent, social pressures against it, few people have been prepared to take this simple and satisfying course towards sanity. And in a society where a prominent psychiatrist can advertise that, given the chance, he would have treated Newton to electric shock therapy, who can blame any person for being afraid to do so?
To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them.
current mood:  satisfied (comment on this)
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4:29p - Yes! Yes! Yes! Motherfucking YES!
The trouble is, mappers have to work with things they don't understand, so the language inevitably gets a little fluffy in places. That's where new theories come from (and one might say that a program is the programmer's theory of the problem domain). Unfortunately this kind of language drives some people crazy, even though most of the good stuff has some of it kicking around, if only in the form of saying that things `want' to do this or that, and filling in the unknown mechanism with an anthropomorphism that is just as silly, applied to an electron, let alone an ant, as proposing an `ineffable spirit', but is for some reason more acceptable.
---Programmer's Stone --- http://www.reciprocality.org
BINGO. Slap that mapper label right on my forehead. That's me right there.
For those of you that have occasional difficulties understanding me... go read reciprocality.org's materials.
current mood:  accomplished (2 comments |comment on this)
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