(New Instrument of Threes)
- page sixteen -
(The Study of Threes)
http://threesology.org
Some readers may consider that philosophy and art are subjective, while mathematics is objective... even though a mathematician must use art to visualize and philosophy for extending considerations beyond mere accounting tabulations. Each of the three disciplines uses a different pallet upon which to mix the different colors of their thoughts. While some use a singular color represented by a singular idea, others mix and match two or more colors. Mathematicians, philosophers and artists, to name but three types of "disciplined" perspective, all use varying levels of elementary and complex design elements, with some using the same items over and over again in different ways.
Whereas an artist may use a singularly stark geometric form such as the line with discreet interconnections concealed by and colors inter-mixed in shading and a conventional portrayal such as a landscape or portraiture, a writer or mathematician whose mind works similarly, but with different mediums of expression (words or symbols), might be misunderstood by those whose minds are unable to artistically visualize the printed word or a mathematical equation. In other words, each is using a different language to describe a similar (but not necessarily the same) perception, yet art, mathematics and the written word are juxtaposed translations on, for some, an unrealized Rosetta Stone or Behistun Rock awaiting the arrival of one or more effective translators. But the same goes for the mathematician and writer whose minds can not visualize pictures from single words or even singular sentences, but requires the picture to be produce by way of a anatomically written landscape involving human personalities, usage of a particular language, etc...
And yet, in using the above illustration and aligned commentary to impart some measure of comprehension for those unfamiliar with this type of thinking, I have set into play a convention with which they might use to compare and explain to others something central to their life; yet that which they are attempting to convey with this formula is falsely interpreted by their audience as something of value, and make them susceptible to manipulation. They are placing a value on the form of the explanation and imparting this on the subject matter it is being used for by a particular speaker (or writer), thereby giving credibility to that which may not be deserving of anything at all. In other words, the attempted comparison looks good and sounds good, but is actually worthless, like many advertised products. And yet, some may latch onto this expression as a means of arguing against something that is truly worthwhile, simply because they fear change.
If you are an artist, philosopher (writer) or mathematician whose mind is steeped deeply in a single type of perception, you might well have on blinders and can not see beyond them, much less understand why one or more others do not grasp what you see in the way you think you are conveying what you think you see. In this case, what you say is not what you see, only what you think you see, and others realize what you are attempting to convey but realize you can not articulate the perception because you are constrained by the rules by which you use to perceive the world. Like an artist whose tools of possible expression are the best money can buy, and the canvas upon which the possible expression can be portrayed likewise is of the best quality, the rules for "creating an original masterpiece" can only re-create the type of work created by artists of old because it is the same rules of perception they used. And yet, you don't want to be viewed "like them", whereby you refrain from producing anything if it suggests to you that you are "merely" mimicking the same types of artistic expression as the Masters of old.
Like a writer trying to establish their own "unique voice", a philosopher might attempt to articulate a unique logic, while an artist attempts an individually unique artistic style and imagine themselves to be originating a new art form, a mathematician might want to establish the mathematical rationale of an overlooked formula and proof, and some musicians want to find a unique sound or original song not yet sung or even thought of. While such desires are laudable, and each of us may want to express varying measures of emphasis for one or another consideration of an original perspective, a revision of an old one, or some inter-intermediary position; efforts to reach such ends can be confronted by many and varied constraints as an act of personal sabotage, intentional distraction by jealous others, or an ambush set up by those you may have considered to be on your side. Such things, on occasion, can and do occur.
Thought there are many different kinds of constraints such as physical, educational, familial, gender, financial, intellectual, emotional, religious, career issues, racial, environmental, nutritional, etc... other constraints can also be born directly out of one's culture, one's language in a given culture, and the traditions we think are important to practice by way of repetitive observations and attendance. And in mentioning one like Religion, the constraints to which I refer to are those which places one's mind into a conveyor-belt repetition, and not those revolving around constraints used to monitor and counsel one's morality. Having multiple sex partners, engaging in murder, rape, child molestation, homosexuality, incest, adultery, intoxication, and various other "different-than-the-norm" behavior, does not mean one frees their mind from constraints which will enable them to think better, more intuitively, more creatively, or establish them as a genius in whatever they care to pursue. Such thinking is its own debilitating restraint.
Establishing a new genre of thinking, for example, that is if no one else is already flirting with the same; may be quite difficult to establish as a "truth" if everyone is comfortable where they are in their own designed systems of truth. However, analogously, Hitler might not have come to power if there had not been a receptive environment and additional events did not come into play to solidify the allowed usage of such irrationality which became contoured into "a necessary truth" to reach certain goals, with certain (warfare) instrumentation under the prevailing conditions. Such conditions included the silence exhibited by the established elite in academia and other intelligent groups of society who, for whatever excuse they could provide, didn't want to get involved just like those of today who exhibit a like-minded level of cowardice. However, despite all the irrationality of Hitler, his followers and those intellectuals whose lack of bravery persists to this day in most countries, some useful truths were established and are subsequently used in different subject areas (psychology, sociology, machine design, political science, etc.), though they were hard fought by way of establishing themselves through a swamp of a grandiose system of lies. Such systems are alive and well today, for example, in all the world's religions and government structures. There are so many lies, deceptions, and illusions, it's no wonder there is a wide-spread irrationality. The followers of a Hitler mentality have merely changed tactics.
The the usage of "prevarications" advertised as an unimpeachable value of truth, can take on many guises. When a system, be it religious, political, scientific, educational or otherwise, has or begins a standard of duplicity represented as its maximized perpetuity, in order to live within the respective confines, a person finds themselves adopting the same mentality as the given reality. In effect, if I may be permitted the usage of an old adage, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", even it is against one's better judgment. Otherwise one must either fight the system, or flee from it. Doing as the others do is thus akin to the 3rd "freeze" option available to animal instincts.
- Killing people as witches.
- Kissing the ring of a Pope.
- Permitting multi-million dollar religions and charities to have a tax exemption.
- Acceptance of homosexuality as a rewarding "alternatively viable" lifestyle, while also being able to snub your nose at some presumed self-defined conventionality like many a defiant teenager who thinks they know everything.
- Teaching science to elementary kids with examples of bad tasting experiments in order to "encourage" a memorable image of science class.
- Adoption of national and local lottery systems which gives the government and businesses the notion that people have excess money to spend which means taxes and prices can be increased.
- Creating a Ponzi-run social security system without regard to laws against such, and prosecuting those who attempt to do the same money making scam in other venues.
- Letting Bush Jr. and his cohorts get away with murder.
- Permitting guns to be worn openly in Arizona.
- Having legal whore houses in Nevada which keeps businesses away.
- Living downstream from an eroding dam or next to any water system with a poor levy system that requires a "levied" insurance system paid for by those no where near the danger.
- Enforcing an insurance system that got its beginnings by copying the protectionist rackets used by gangsters.
- Use of a ludicrous American Electoral (i.e. rigged) voting system.
- And various other perspectives rationalized into a social level of acceptability.
All of the above examples have their own multiple adherents ready and willing to provide a self-esteemed wisdom of rationality. Some give very plausible sounding reasons buttressed by such examples as "it doesn't do any harm, "it does more good than harm", or "it is substantiated by majority opinion". While there are variations of these same examples and other examples could well be provide, these three suffice to give the general idea. And their are some adherents, when their argument is held up to examination, they become vehemently opposed to anything which might expose an underlying personal motivation or that the opinion represents a projected defense against a detailed recognition of some behavior or thought that is felt to be suspect in terms of incredulity.
The usage of an authority, such as a court system to establish a law for permitting an irrational perspective to be viewed as normal and thereby acceptable, does not mean the law is a valid argument for defining a rational truth. It may be a national law called the "law of the land", but it typically is a law not voted on by the people in a referendum and should not be a determinate factor for defining what is logical and truthful. The people permit too much rationalized nonsense to become laws by way of a Legislature that very often has its head in its back pocket. Very often, irrational truths are codified and enforced.
The problem for future generations occurs when such irrationality is not viewed as being logically constructive (i.e. "responsible") for setting up intellectual barriers which act as constraints set into forms of tradition that most wear as panoramic intellectual blinders defracting any ability with which to correctly view reality beyond similarly mandated social extravagances of artificiality. This is particularly harmful when the educated elite do not voice opposition to irrational constructs even when a majority falls prey to the irrationality.
The intellectual elite construct barriers constructed of rationalized intellectualisms from which they defend their absence, and build their presumed values of truth on the prevailing foundations of socially practiced irrationality. They participate in the generation of further stupidity which obfuscates logic even more and "raises the bar", by "dropping the blinds" of visibility for being able to look for, much-less find, a further reaching landscape of available truth without the very forms of artificial environment humanity has thrust upon itself and calls it "civil"-ization.
So many intelligent people are so blinded by their own intellectual nonsense, they can even perceive any irrationality taking place around them except to occasionally disparage one or more others when they are caused to be distracted from their personalized intellectualized Olympics! And if they do, they minimize into some level of acceptability by way of very pedestrian excuses for non-involvement; through self-convincing labels of various professionalism that enables them to claim they are too busy due to an extended involvement with exercises which they have long ago mastered into labyrinths that corridor all perspectives into pre-formatted Platonian cave shadows.
In terms of contrasting mathematics without subjects such as philosophy and art, mathematics is more often, defined as a "serious" subject, despite personal views to the contrary, because it has a long history of being more easily aligned with monetary tabulations of costs for such things as the construction of expressed art forms called buildings, dams, roadways, aircraft design, budgets, etc... If we were to take away mathematic's ability to be used as a tool for monetary accounts, it would more readily be recognized as the artistic and literary forms which it is... and might also be applied to personal considerations of spirituality, philosophy and overall religion, for which the latter's usage of ritual can be seen in the usage of set theory. For some, math is their religion, their philosophy of life, their "signage" for a personalized augury by which they steer their daily course.
While art could be used for accounting, by adopting a consistent art-related symbology. However, it should be mentioned that some people that have lots of money or are in charge of lots of money, might necessarily be devoid of "advanced" (serious) levels of artistically-inclined creativity; though they may indulge to imagine they are so inclined, because they use their money to collect one or more types of art work to give the impression of possessing something of that which they would like to possess... namely, artistic creativity.
The usage of mathematics as a dominant form of applied thinking is the very thing Gödel's Theorem outlines... and warns against assuming it as a catch-all system of logic. A society using mathematics as a standard axiom can not see it as a fallacious form of thinking because its usage is reinforced by its application to those whose efforts enforce and encourage its usage to denote a personal wealth that takes on numerous other traits such as "financial health", "fiscal responsibility", "profit margin", etc..., all of which give evidence of the varying labels applied to personal egos. Human society is trapped by its own forms of mathematical measurement which tethers it from looking elsewhere for too long a time. And, let us add, is not only a theorem which describes a limitation of usage, but also implies that even thought the theory itself admits the existence of a limitation, like being confronted by an obstacle, it remains as a limitation even when there is a wide-spread recognition of an inherent limitation; thus becoming part of the equation as a counter-balancing effort.
While a presumed counter-balancing effort of intellectual accommodation may make us feel we are being the more comprehensive and judicious in our intellectual efforts, we are not going around the obstacle. It becomes an icon, a revered edifice upon which we place different fruit offerings as if it were some naturally occurring Buddhist statue to which we pay intellectual homage to... unaware we have been placing intellectual fruits on one side of a scale that we come to defend with the sharpest of intellectual swords that we can confidently wield. We have various intellectual discussions involving one or another counter-balancing theorems, (i.e. uncertainty principle, survival of the fittest, political correctness, etc...), but we are not going around, through, over or even under the obstacle.
Generation after generation debate presumed pros and cons of someone's thinking personified into a statue under which is attached a time-enduring label that future generations may not be able to accurately decipher; yet those who have deified the particular bust of rationalism by paying it an honored homage, do not grasp the realization of the engulfing jungle of empiricism about them. Both of which dissipate into the rear view mirror when it is finally decided on to (gasp!) take an intellectual trail elsewhere. While some will never leave, preferring to live out their lives extending a personal level of servitude, Others must venture forth. At present, as it has been in the past, such deifications of presumed impassible truth value, are used as if they are a reptile-preferred convention in which to bask in the sun. The roots of many human thoughts appear to be re-created idealisms of a deeply primitive past attached with a fight, freeze or flee response mandated into some reflexively-styled and syllogistically-framed option. Colloquially noted, with such a usage, they often become hang-ups ritualized into a habit which are granted some measure of socially-observed acceptance instead of obliging us to contend that it's not rational for us to remain here, intellectually or otherwise.
A comparison of the human brain and stem next to a Cobra snake may help some to better grasp the analogy promoted in the foregoing analogy:
Human brain and stem |
Cobra Snake |
 |
|
Then again, you may be one who doesn't see the connection and are more apt to interpret being confronted with some sort of illusion not because you are color blind, but in some respects, blind nonetheless; because your are conditioned, academically, socially, gender, politically, religiously, occupationally, etc., to look in one direction in order to see a particular spot, and do not see the surrounding spots as part of a larger picture. Those readers familiar with the old Dick, Jane and Spot reading materials in Elementary school, might well take stock of how many things in all our lives we are trained to observe particular spots, and are in various ways encouraged to do so.
Even though current systems of mathematics may well be superseded by more advanced forms of logic, these then will be the standard models of limitation... But they may not be viewed as being portrayed in mythological proportions to the extent of current observances and attendance to present theories comprising some form of denoted limitation whether it be called a rule-of-thumb, law, precedent, constant, unpredictability, serendipity, or whatever.
Indeed, what we might call a past culture's mythology might well have been a taken-for-granted matter-of-fact accepted reality; a perspective particularly misunderstood or comprehended from our own position in historical time living with a brain that may well have changed due to either a physiological development and/or nutritional factors, though insidious or overt diseases can and do affect the way a society interprets reality.
So too may our present systems of "advanced" thinking be looked upon as mythologies in centuries yet to come. Imagine that your presumed rationale, your presumed logic— made manifest by socially accepted gesticulations, being viewed as a mythology! In fact, all forms of thinking may be flawed to such a regard, despite all the presently observed practical and innovative applications thereof... because they originate from that which is already flawed in the direction of necessitating survival in an environment (planet and planetary system) directed towards a decay, not to mention the decay presently inherent in the human form of biology as well (called death). And one must consider the possibility that expressed irrationality such as had occurred in past civilizations, was a tell-tale indication of its eventual demise. By the very fact that no past civilization remains in existence today is an indication of the extent of their used and unused knowledge of limitations.
This is one of the reasons for stressing that a "threes" perspective is not, or at least should not be solely linked with the quantitative aspect divulged by numerousity... because of the applied limitations. This is not to say that "Threes" research does not have its own variety of limitations, but there is no need to repeat those which are the province of being associated with a number. Like any science, art, religion or literary enterprise, threes research has its limitations. For example, a strict observance of a "three" enumerated designation does not permit a researcher to identify, search for nor catalogue other attendant patterns such as a geometrically formed triangle, a 1 - 2 - 3 maturational or progressive expression, a "four" representation as a 3 -to- 1 formula, etc., much less various inter-relationships with other pattern formulations existing in other subject areas.
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Your Questions, Comments or Additional Information are welcomed:
Herb O. Buckland
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