Personal implication and embodiment: transcending personal twitter

Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? (Part #10)

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The interplay of the four dynamics, described and configured above (biomemetics, biomimetics, epimemetics and epimimetics), merits exploration in terms of their personal cognitive implication.

Internal discourse as "twitter": There is a case for recognizing the extent to which "twitter" aptly describes what schools of meditation notably recognize (and challenge) as inner dialogue or internal discourse -- a constructive act of the human mind and a tool for discovering new knowledge and making decisions. With respect to meditation, many comments are however made as follows:

Probably the greatest challenge in developing a strong ability to meditate is the obstruction to inner silence that comes about from the internal verbal dialogue, as Carlos Castaneda called it. When our minds are working throughout the day, we talk to ourselves through our thoughts. When we're working and actively thinking, this verbal thinking is very useful. It helps us organize our thoughts, decisions, and strategies for doing things. When we attempt to achieve inner silence for meditation, however, it becomes the chief obstruction to achieving a peaceful, quiet mind. (Silencing the Internal Verbal Dialogue in Meditation, 2010)

Estimates might even be made as to the number of such dialogue elements -- "internal tweets" -- a person "transmits" in a period (thoughts per day?). Given the 140 character limitation on tweet length, one might also ask, as is the case in Buddhist reflection on the matter: "how long does a thought last"? The question presumably needs consideration in relation to the speed of electrical synapses in the brain and the fact that synapses there can function simultaneously.

Google Answers presents a range of estimates from different sources based on references to a widely-cited estimate from a National Science Foundation study (not located) that the "average person" thinks about 12,000 thoughts per day, whilst a "deeper thinker" puts forth 50,000 daily -- 1,000 per hour, and 2,500 per hour "when writing." In relation to synapses, the issue of whether a thought is a "wave form" or "digitized" is of secondary interest.

Integrative thinking: The creative "coming together", or integrative convergence, of thoughts might well be experienced and presented as the arrival of an "angel" (as with reference to a muse or daimon in the classical Greek sense). This would typically be a "smaller" one, but occasionally a "larger" one -- perhaps dependent on how many "angles" had been configured together. Might a "larger", more integrative, angel indeed be of higher dimensionality and symmetry?

Under such circumstances, any experiential or cognitive distinction between "angle", "angel", "chordal harmonic", "overtone" or pattern of "movement" is irrelevant. The harmonies of "birdsong" may then also be an appropriate metaphor. Whether in the arts (as an evocative poetic rhyme or a melody) or in the fundamental sciences (as an equation), it is the integrative experience of the creative inspiration in the moment which renders any distinctions irrelevant. It is also in this sense that poetry is recognized as a "divine language". A related metaphor of potential significance is that of the "circulation of the light", as mentioned above (Circulation of the Light: essential metaphor of global sustainability? 2010).

A challenge lies in the encounter of the product of such elusive higher-order integration by others -- especially when associated with their unique claims to originality and scope -- as discussed separately (Musing on Information of a Higher Quality, 1996; Engaging with Questions of Higher Order: cognitive vigilance required for higher degrees of twistedness, 2004).

However, as noted above, it is curiously appropriate that integrative ("holistic") schema are most evocative of sexual interjection in the larger world -- potentially indicative of both fruitful corrective insights and equivlent to the reproductive motivation. This is consistent with the paradoxes of "knowing thyself" as previously explored (Intercourse with Globality through Enacting a Klein bottle: cognitive implication in a polysensorial "lens", 2009; Engaging with Globality through Knowing Thyself: embodying engagement with otherness, 2009).

Personal globalization: In the above sense, the title of this exploration -- Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? -- is therefore appropriately considered from an individual perspective. This is especially the case to the extent that such processes and categories are understood as "externalities" (Existential Embodiment of Externalities: radical cognitive engagement with environmental categories and disciplines, 2009).

It is consistent with explorations of the personal cognitive significance of globalization (Personal Globalization, 2001; Being the Universe : a metaphoric frontier, 1999) and with the sense in which a personal website might be reframed as a "wizdome" (Transforming Static Websites into Mobile "Wizdomes": enabling change through intertwining dynamic and configurative metaphor, 2007).

Given the sense in which fundamental value-charged categories have been associated (metaphorically) with deities, whether as muses or as in a classical pantheon, there is also a case for recognizing the extent to which such categories are internalized. With regard to the Greek pantheon -- the Dodekatheon -- there is an implication, reflected in traditional tales, of the relationships between the deities. How such interactions might be understood as formulated within a "language of the gods" is another matter. There is however the intriguing sense in which the organization of the pantheon can be considered a reflection of the operation of the (collective) human mind (Union of Intelligible Associations: remembering the dynamic identity of a dodecameral mind, 2005).

Tone-based language: Further clues to the nature of the harmony through which any Language of the Birds (or gods) might be formulated are offered by Antonio de Nicolas (Meditations through the Rg Veda, 1978) regarding the use of languages based on tone -- in his study of the four complementary conceptual languages of the Rg Veda. These were considered necessary to hold the complexity of insights and experience. His explorations were associated with the musical theory of Ernest G. McClain (The Myth of Invariance: the origins of the gods, mathematics and music from the Rg Veda to Plato, 1976). He offers the following insight relevant to the nature of personal cognitive embodiment.

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 relationship 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; continuity, and the 'world' is the creation of the singer, who shares its dimensions with the song.

In ancient times, the infinite possibilities of the number field were considered isomorphic with the infinite possibilities of tone...Rg Veda man, like his Greek counterparts, knew himself to be the organizer of the scale, and he cherished the multitude of possibilities open to him too much to freeze himself into one dogmatic posture. His language keeps alive that 'openness' to alternatives, yet it avoids entrapment in anarchy. It also resolves the fixity of theory by setting the body of man historically moving through the freedom of musical spaces, viewpoint transpositions, reciprocities, pluralism, and finally, an absolutely radical sacrifice of all theory as a fixed invariant. (Antonio de Nicolas, Meditations through the Rg Veda, 1978, pp. 57

For those in expectation of "planetary consciousness", might the "global brain" be faced with a problem of "twitter" in the absence of "re-cognition" of an emergent Language of the Birds -- or does that "problem" constitute fruitful counterpoint, implying  larger harmony? How might such considerations relate to the initiative of the Global Consciousness Project ?

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