Embodiment of extended intelligent identity in time

Sensing Epiterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) (Part #12)

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Identification with cycles: The suggestion that it is not "where" epiterrestrials are located but "how", and that the latter is better understood through wave forms, highlights a degree of strangeness to their embodiment in time -- or to their embodiment of time. This might also imply that it is less a matter of "whether" epiterrestrials exist, but rather "when" (as in speculation regarding Boltzmann brains).

Some insights into this modality are evident through various explorations of cycles, whether circadian, lunar, solar, or otherwise. The focus is clearly evident with respect to climate cycles and business cycles. There is clearly a challenge to rendering longer-term cycles comprehensible in the present (Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004).

Especially suggestive of any epiterrestrial modality is the manner in which the identity of an individual may be associated to a far higher degree with a cycle, as discussed separately (Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined, 2007). This implies a cognitive shift from "body-centeredness" to a form of "virtual-centeredness".

Extended identity: Any association of identity with a wave, implies that that identity is extended by the wave, "along" the wave, to "limits" which are themselves somewhat of a mystery, as partially argued separately (Liberation of Integration, Universality and Concord -- through pattern, oscillation, harmony and embodiment, 1980). The pattern of ripples from a stone dropped into a pond offers one image of an "extended" identity through a pattern of associations -- a meta-pattern that connects in the terms of Gregory Bateson:

The pattern which connects is a meta-pattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that meta-pattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect. (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979)

And it is from this perspective that Bateson warns: Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality (1979, pp. 8-11). Is an epiterrestrial to be partially understood as such a meta-pattern with which quality and intelligent life are associated? Could it be especially associated with the tacit knowledge of Michael Polanyi (The Tacit Dimension, 1966), the implicate order and holomovement of David Bohm (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980), or the "quality without a name" of Christopher Alexander (The Timeless Way of Building, 1979):

There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named,

The search, which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.

Music as an identity vehicle: A further indication is offered by music, especially given the degree to which it can be said to be a vehicle for the extended identity of many -- who may well live "through" music of whatever variety. That diversity effectively functions as a carrier for identity, rather than any conventional focus on the listener. The latter is embedded in a soundscape, as in any forest. The subtlety is suggested by the work of Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, 1979; I Am a Strange Loop, 2007).

In addition to the entrainment of identity by that music, there are the implications of the harmonies engendered between separate tones, forming melodies with which an individual may readily identify. As argued above, whereas the notes may be distinguished as well-defined categories according to various tuning systems, it is the harmonic relationship between them which is potentially suggestive of the nature of epiterrestrial identity -- possibly as overtones.

Fundamental insights into such relationships are offered in the work of Ernest G. McClain (Myth of Invariance: the origins of the gods, mathematics and music from the Rg Veda to Plato, 1976; Meditations through the Quran: tonal images in an oral culture, 1981). Discussed separately with respect to the Rg Veda, related insights are offered from dance, using the non-Boolean logic of quantum mechanics, by Antonio T. de Nicolas (Meditations through the Rg Veda, 1978)

Therefore, from a linguistic and cultural perspective, we have to be aware that we are dealing with a language where tonal and arithmetical relations establish the epistemological invariances... Language grounded in music is grounded thereby on context dependency; any tone can have any possible relation to other tones, and the shift from one tone to another, which alone makes melody possible, is a shift in perspective which the singer himself embodies. Any perspective (tone) must be "sacrificed" for a new one to come into being; the song is a radical activity which requires innovation while maintaining continuity, and the "world" is the creation of the singer, who shares its dimensions with the song. (Antonio de Nicolas, Meditations through the Rg Veda, 1978, p. 57)

Do such considerations offer indications towards the cognitive implications of music, song, and poetry for the expression and embodiment of more fruitful relational dynamics and vehicles of collective identity (A Singable Earth Charter, EU Constitution or Global Ethic? 2006; Poetic Engagement with Afghanistan, Caucasus and Iran: an unexplored strategic opportunity? 2009)?

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