De kern van dit document is in 1993 geschreven na het uitkomen van het boek Paths of Change van Will McWhinney.
Een voorbeeld van een Paths of Change (PoC) Model met Vier (2×2) verbonden Wereldbeelden.
Het is daarna gebruikt om een nieuwe (meer sociale) strategie voor de ABN AMRO te ontwikkelen. Het is later gebruikt als discussie-stuk toen er sprake was van het oprichten van een coordinerend Centrum voor Vitaliteit in Regio Leiden (Project 071).
Het centrum was bedoeld om lokale centra op te richten waarbij er aandacht werd besteed aan de samenhang tussen de geestelijke, lichamelijke, sociale en economische gezondheid van de mens in alle levensfasen.
Een Bank Typologie gebaseerd op PoC (let op de kleuren): Tot aan het begin van 19de eeuw heeft het bankwezen zich vooral geconcentreerd op vermogende bedrijven en de vermogende burger (i.h.a. ondernemers). De banken waren handelsbanken. Rond 1900 kwamen drie nieuwe bankvormen naar voren die zich gingen richten op de minder draagkrachtige (Giro & Postspaarbank, de Standaardbank), het Collectief (Raiffeisen, de Relatiebank) en het verstrekken van consumptief krediet (Pandjesbaas, Bank van Lening, de Consumptiebank). Deze laatste functie wordt nu vrijwel overal uitgeoefend door de Retail (Kopen op afbetaling).
Als laatste is een deel gebruikt als discussiestuk voor een Smart City-beleid in Den Haag (SUS: Smart Urban Space). Hier werd aangetoond dat Smart City niet alleen een besturingsmodel is maar dat net als bij de Vitaliteit het lichamelijke, het sociale en het creatieve van de mens een rol moet spelen in het “slim” aanwenden van Smart Technologie.
Het model van SUS (Smart Urban Space). Het bevat vier lagen (1) de Urban Space waar de inwoners voorzien van een Persoonlijkheid gebaseerd op PoC de ruimte hebben (2) De Sociale netwerken in de stad die volgens PoC zijn ingedeeld waarbij 1 netwerk (de community of Practice) zich toont als een bedrijf (3) Een waardeketen gebaseerd op PoC en (4) een Bestuur waarbij wederom PoC wordt gebruikt en waar duidelijk wordt dat Democratie een proces is waarin Geel (Visie, Creativiteit,) een grote rol speelt. Aan de rechterkant staat weer een PoC-cycles waardoor het duidelijk wordt dat er hier sprake is van PoC X PoC.Een slimme stad is een combinatie van vier soorten steden met een monitor in het centrum. De viersoorten zijn de vier wereldbeelden van Paths of Change.
Een stad, “een verzameling verbonden mensen, is net als de mens zelf een organisme en is op zoek naar zelf-ontplooing, datgene wat in de genen al aanwezig is.
Het document is gebaseerd op de verander-methodiek Paths of Change (PoC) van Will McWhinney. De wereldbeelden van PoC hebben in dit document overal dezelfde kleuren: Blauw/Unity/Regels/Waarheid, Rood/Sensory/Waarnemen, Groen/Sociaal/Waarderen en Geel/Mythic/Verbeelden.
PoC maakt het mogelijk om met behulp van steeds hetzelfde model heel verschillende vraagstukken op te lossen zoals het inrichten van een Community of Practice.
PoCkan ook worden gebruikt om Geestelijke Problemen in kaart te brengen met behulp van de Interpersonal Theory.
Op dit moment heeft de bank de wijk verlaten en wordt de klant geacht gebruik te maken van geldautomaten en het Internet. Om dit waar te kunnen maken zijn de bankproducten gestandaardiseerd waardoor het autorisatieproces vrijwel automatisch en dus context-onafhankelijk plaatsvindt. Bankieren is niet meer een klantgedreven maar een datagedreven proces geworden.
Inmiddels is de overheid bezig om een groot deel van zijn sociale taken met aanmerkelijk minder geld over te dragen aan de stad die ze wijkgebonden maakt. De sociale taken van de overheid moeten dichter bij de burger worden gebracht en worden ondergebracht in een wijkcentrum of een winkelcentrum.
De traditionele kerken in Nederland krimpen omdat hun leden ouder worden en overlijden. Het diaconaat binnen de kerken houdt zich in zijn regio, meestal wijkgebonden, bezig met eenzamen, armen, zieken, werklozen en andere medemensen die een moeilijke tijd in hun leven doormaken. Door de krimpende kerk wordt de onbaatzuchtige hulp aan de medemens steeds minder.
Uit het diaconaat zijn vele organisaties ontstaan die dreven op giften, subsidies en vrijwilligers. Sommige van die organisaties, zoals ziekenhuizen en de ontwikkelingshulp zijn sterk geprofessionaliseerd en hebben zich van hun wortels losgemaakt. Ze worden nog steeds grotendeels uit het overheidsbudget bekostigd.
De bijdragen uit het overheidsbudget die richting deze organisaties gaan worden minder en moeten volgens de overheid net als vroeger worden gecompenseerd door sociaal ondernemerschap, giften en de inzet van vrijwilligers.
Om hun hoge vaste lasten te kunnen dragen moeten de meeste partners beiden werken waardoor ze weinig tijd over hebben voor kinderen en hun oudere ouders. De zorg voor de kinderen wordt overgelaten aan de kinderopvang en de school.
De zorg voor de ouderen is uitbesteed aan de gezondheidszorg. Ook hier lopen de budgetten terug en moet de burger zich als mantelzorger gaan inzetten voor zijn zieke familie, vrienden en buurtgenoten.
De zowel qua inzet als financiering krimpende sociale hulpverleningssystemen zijn in deze tijd van crisis juist meer nodig dan in de tijd van hoogconjunctuur.
De enige manier om dit probleem op te lossen is door een totaal nieuwe weg in te slaan. Die weg kan gevonden worden door moderne technologie te koppelen met medemenselijkheid.
2. Introductie Paths of Change): De Mens is een Relatie
Paths of Change ontwikkeld door Will McWhinney rond 1980 blijkt relaties te hebben met hele oude inzichten die allemaal zijn gebaseerd op de vierdeling die eigenlijk een 2×2 (x2,..)deling is die begint met de Dualiteit Contractie (versimpelen, inpakken) en Expansie )complex maken, uitpakken), die samen werden vergeleken met het proces van Ademhalen.
We beginnen bij de mens zelf. Een mens wordt gekarakteriseerd door zijn persoonlijkheid. Die persoonlijkheid is een combinatie van drie kenmerken, n.l.
(1) Richting Rotatie: Introvert/naar Binnen gericht, Linksdraaiend (<-) vs Extravert/naar Buiten, Rechtsdraaiend (->) gericht
(2) Afstand: Geheel/Observator Boven de Wereld vs Deel/Ervaren In de Wereld en
(3) Psychische Functie: De psychische functie wordt beschreven door twee variabelen die Agency (Besturing) en Communion (Verbinding) worden genoemd.
Ze vormen samen vier functies die ieder een andere richting op bewegen (bv. Geest, Naar Boven, Abstractie of Ziel, Naar beneden, Depressie, Aarde) en samen een richtingsvector bepalen die de mens als staande golf door de Tijd/Ruimte stuurt.
De persoonlijkheid van de mens is een relatie tussen deze twee functies in combinatie met de Draairichting en de Afstand.
De functies worden Geest/Ordenen/Waarheid, Lichaam/Waarnemen/Handelen (Sensory Motor Systeem), Spirit/Verbeelden en Ziel/Emoties/Waarderen/Samen, genoemd. Een combinatie tussen Verbeelding en Ordenen wordt een ontwerper genoemd.
Als er twee gelijke functies worden gekoppeld is de mens psychopathologisch. Het ordenen van het ordenen wordt bijvoorbeeld Paranoïde genoemd.
John Holland ontdekte dat de persoonlijkheid sterk voorspellend is voor het beroep. Daardoor kunnen we met behulp van bovenstaand persoonlijkheidsinstrumentarium ook veel zeggen over bedrijfsculturen.
Met als mogelijke verklaring dat mensen de geschiedenis maken blijkt het ook mogelijk te zijn om het model van de persoonlijkheid te gebruiken om korte en lange cycli te beschrijven en te voorspellen.
3. De Mens in Crisis
A model of the theory developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler–Ross suggests that we go through five distinct stages of grief after the loss of a loved one: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
De Life Event Scale van Holmes bevat de gebeurtenissen die de meeste invloed hebben op de mens. Deze gebeurtenissen kunnen meerdere van de psychische functies raken.
De psychische functies van de mens zijn tegendelen die elkaar aantrekken en afstoten. Het persoonlijkheidssysteem van de mens fluctueert daarom rondom een evenwichtspunt, het set-point genoemd. De krachten die tussen de verschillende onderdelen spelen en daarmee de bandbreedte van de golven zijn per mens verschillend. Sommige mensen (Kinderen, Ouderen, Zieken) zijn kwetsbaar.
Als een gebeurtenis een te hoge schok veroorzaakt reageert de mens in eerste instantie niet (freeze). Daarna volgt ontkenning en agressie (fight). Na een depressie begint men om de nieuwe situatie weer te waarderen, te exploreren en te accepteren.
De traumatische fase kan bij kwetsbare mensen vele jaren duren. In deze periode is men niet in staat tot productieve arbeid. Het is de kunst om extreme gebeurtenissen en de negatieve effecten daarop te voorkomen of te verhelpen. Dit kan gebeuren door therapie en verzekeren.
4. Sociale Netwerken zijn soms Sociaal
Mensen zoeken vergelijkbare mensen op en vergelijkbare mensen hebben vergelijkbare persoonlijkheden.
Aangezien persoonlijkheden erfelijk zijn vindt de meest voor de hand liggende koppeling plaats met familie en andere mensen die sterk (genetisch) op elkaar lijken. Dit wordt een Community of Affinity genoemd. De leden van Facebook vormen een dergelijk netwerk.
Linkedin is een hulpmiddel waar mensen hun interesses en inzichten delen (Community of Interest) en Wikipedia bevat gedeelde kennis (Kenniscentrum).
Ervaring ontstaat als mensen een fout maken en van deze fout leren. Een fout is een afwijking van een verwachtingspatroon. Een succesvolle vorm van ervaringsdelen is de zelfhulp-groep.
De sensory-motor component van de mens is expansief en is het complement (het tegendeel) van de ordelijke kant.
Terwijl de ordenende component steeds comprimeert (analyse) en daarmee de werkelijkheid versimpelt ontstaan er steeds weer nieuwe vormen van praktisch toegepast handelen die de werkelijkheid complexer maken. Netwerken waar ervaring wordt gedeeld worden een Community of Practice genoemd.
Als we naar de persoonlijkheidstheorie kijken zien we dat de deelnemers aan een Community of Affinity en een Community of Practice samenwerken terwijl ze in de andere netwerken als individu optreden.
Het concept van de coöperatie past perfect bij de sociale sociale netwerken.
De Communities of Practice leven niet lang. Het zijn veel meer tijdelijke projectorganisaties die na het behalen van hun doel weer worden ontbonden of worden overgedragen aan een producent.
5. Van Hulp naar Levensloopbegeleiding
Het leven is een introvert (“naar binnen gericht”) proces en begint en eindigt in een staat van volledige afhankelijkheid (Low Agency, High Communion, Wij).
In de eerste fase van de levensloop vindt het proces van socialisatie plaats, eerst in de context van de ouders en later in de eigen groep (de cultuur).
In de pubertijd neemt de behoefte om zich los te maken van ouders en familie toe (Agency,Ze) en richt men zich vooral op gelijksoortigen (de peer-group).
Aangezien het “erbij horen” de hoogste prioriteit heeft neemt men onnadenkend ook veel negatief gedrag over en zet men zich zeer nadrukkelijk af tegen de gevestigde orde, de volwassenen.
Tijdens de pubertijd vindt de laatste training plaats voor de volgende fase. Als jongeren sterk negatief worden beïnvloed door hun soortgenoten wordt deze fase niet afgerond en worden ze een drop-out die moeilijk aan het werk komt.
De persoonlijkheid trekt zich niets aan van de levensloopfasen. Er zijn mensen die altijd kind of puber blijven of weer puber worden (midlife-crisis).
Aangezien de persoonlijkheid ook bepalend is voor het beroep is het mogelijk om in iedere fase van de levensloop begeleiding te bieden met de juiste leeftijd.
Theoretisch hebben oude mensen in het begin van hun fase nog genoeg energie en de meeste levenswijsheid. In een groot aantal culturen wordt hiervan gebruik gemaakt door het drie-generatie-systeem te hanteren.
Het principe van het drie-generatie systeem wordt in Nederland gebruikt bij de begeleiding van mensen die socialisatie-problemen hebben (“Op eigen kracht”).
Het huidige schoolsysteem is nog gebaseerd op de tijd van de massaproductie van de Industriële revolutie en lijkt op de fabriek waarvoor de arbeiders en managers geschoold moeten worden om aan de lopende banden hun werk te doen. Deze tijd is definitief voorbij.
In de pubertijd gaat het om doen, ervaren en uitproberen. Kennis verzamelen is dan niet echt aan de orde. Die kennis kan men veel beter verkrijgen door te reflecteren. Reflectie vindt plaats als er iets mis is gegaan.
Aangezien kennis zeer snel verandert is het niet zinvol meer om preventief veel kennis te vergaren. Kennis kan just-in-time worden verkregen als men praktisch in de problemen zit of overzicht nodig heeft. Ze heeft dan ook een veel hogere retentie.
In de nabije toekomst gaan instrumenten of zichzelf bedienen of krijgen een simpel user-interface dat de gebruiker vertelt wat hij moet doen.
In de productieve fase (volwassenheid) wordt de mens bestuurd door en maakt hij gebruik van regelsystemen (“het”). In deze periode wordt hij geacht een buffer op te bouwen voor de tijden dat er niet kan worden geproduceerd. Een volwassen zorgt in eerste instantie van zijn leven voor zijn kinderen (en soms partner) en later voor zijn ouders.
6. Het Begeleidingssysteem
Ondersteuningsgroep
Rondom ieder individu wordt een sociaal netwerk gevormd dat bereid is om elkaar te helpen en indien nodig ook te waarborgen. In het algemeen bestaat dat netwerk uit naaste familieleden en vrienden. Het is de bedoeling dat deze groep zo vroeg als mogelijk is in het leven wordt gevormd en zo lang als mogelijk in stand blijft. Denk daarbij ook aan de oude functies van meter en peter.
Coach
Een Coach is een persoon die over praktische levenswijsheid beschikt. Het is iemand die zijn/haar loopbaanpad heeft verlaten en zich als vrijwilliger aanbiedt aan mensen die steun nodig hebben in het leven. Coaches kunnen door een persoon of door zijn ondersteuningsgroep worden gevraagd om te helpen. Een ondersteuningsgroep is een absolute randvoorwaarde om aan de slag te gaan. Een coach kan gebruik maken van een simulator om mogelijkheden te onderzoeken.
Case Manager
Een case manager is een rol die er voor zorgt dat een dringend probleem wordt opgelost. Case managers kunnen zich in allerlei instanties bevinden en kunnen daardoor fors langs elkaar heen gaan werken. Het is de taak van de coach om de probleemhebber (zijn “maatje”) te helpen om een dergelijke situatie te vermijden of te corrigeren.
Case-Management Systeem
Alle betrokkenen maken gebruik van één Case-Management-Systeem (CMS). Een CMS is een procesmanager die op basis van condities zijn werk kan doen. Met behulp van dit systeem kunnen afspraken worden vastgelegd maar ook andere partijen betrokken en aan hun afspraken worden gehouden.
Zelfhulpgroep
Een zelfhulpgroep is een groep mensen die in vergelijkbare omstandigheden heeft verkeerd en bereid is om anderen te ondersteunen met praktische raadgeving. Mensen kunnen deelnemen aan meerdere groepen.
Case
Een case is een gestandaardiseerd beschrijving van een situatie in combinatie met een niet gestructureerde beschrijving. In het laatste geval lijkt het op een dagboek.
Cases kunnen problematisch zijn en om een oplossing vragen maar ze kunnen ook een beschrijving zijn van een gebeurtenis (bv. een ongeluk, een ziekte, een verhuizing, een aankoop). Cases worden gebruikt om een kwalitatief historisch overzicht te krijgen eventueel aangevuld met kwantitatieve informatie. Cases worden zoveel als mogelijk is automatisch aangemaakt.
Verzorgers
Indien een ondersteuningsgroep onvoldoende tijd en mogelijkheden heeft om de benodigde hulp te bieden kan externe hulp worden opgeroepen. Die wordt toegevoegd aan de groep en communiceert ook met de groep.
Specialisten/Hulpmiddelen
Indien nodig kan een case manager tijdelijk of permanent specialisten of hulpmiddelen toevoegen om de case op te lossen.
Kennissystemen/Deskundigen
Indien nodig kan een case manager tijdelijk of permanent deskundigen en kennissystemen tijdelijk of permanent toevoegen om de case op te lossen.
7. Financiering van de Levensloop
Het lichaam is verbonden met kort cyclische zon- en maanritmen zoals de dag, de maan/maand en het jaar (de seizoenen). Het gedrag is meetbaar (sensors), sterk voorspelbaar en daardoor budgetteerbaar mits er geen sprake is van verslaving, de behoefte van het lichaam om eindeloos te genieten.
Het complement van het lichaam, de geest, zoekt zekerheid en zoekt en formeert voorspelbare lange termijn patronen (soms een onderneming genoemd) die zich tonen in de vele economische cycli (Kitchen, Juglar, Kuznets, Kondratiev, …).
Aangezien de patronen onderhevig zijn aan verstoringen moet men ze niet als een absolute zekerheid gaan hanteren. Cycli herstellen zich altijd weer.
De korte cycli moduleren op lange cycli en hebben een voorspelbare verhouding (één Kondratieff = drie Kuznets= zes Juglars = twaalf Kitchens).
De Kontratiev-cyclus duurt +/- 54 jaar wat betekent dat de gemiddelde mens in zijn leven altijd profiteert van voorspoed en tegenslag. Dit betekent dat men met behulp van een lange termijn planning en een adequaat sociaal netwerk de cycli ongehavend door kan komen.
Sommige mensen hebben last van teveel geluk, teveel ongeluk, teveel passie of teveel wantrouwen om flexibel om te gaan met de toekomst.
In dat geval kunnen er voor deze mensen ondersteunde systemen worden ontworpen die zowel het geluk als het ongeluk delen door elkaar een waarborg te verlenen of elkaar te helpen in het besturen van het levenspad.
8. Smart Computing: De Mens in de Machine
Software gaat steeds meer psychische functies van de mens overnemen waardoor er uiteindelijk volledig autonome systemen zullen komen.
Op dit moment zijn vooral patroonherkenning (Big Data) en sensors gekoppeld aan procesmanagers (‘robots”) bruikbaar.
In de volgende stap kan de mens zich gaan koppelen aan zeer krachtige simulatoren die aan de ene kant de buitenwereld voorspelbaar zullen maken (“Early Warning”) en aan de andere kant een persoonlijke fantasiewereld (“het Holodeck”) kunnen maken waarin de mens eindeloos kan doorbrengen.
In de laatste fase kan de mens zich voorzien van lichaamssensors die het onbewuste zullen gaan ontsluiten.
Producten zullen worden gestandaardiseerd middels onderling gekoppelde product-configurators waarmee de klant kan gaan spelen (of andersom).
9. Van Coöperatie naar Banking Robot
Bankieren is heel oud. In de code van Hammurabi (1700 v Chr) werd er al gesproken over verzekeren. Rond 1200 ontstonden in Italië de handelsbanken.
De Treasury voortgekomen uit het graanpakhuis van Hammurabi is de functie binnen de bank die moet zorgen voor de levensloopbegeleiding van de bank door te zorgen voor een goede balans tussen sparen (productie) en lenen (consumptie) op zowel de korte- als de lange termijn.
Bankieren was tot 1900 uitsluitend voorbehouden aan de welgestelden. Rond die tijd ontstonden er twee nieuwe bankvormen die zich gingen richten op het vergaren van vermogen onder de minder draagkrachtigen (Giro & Postspaarbank) en het besturen van collectieve bedrijven en het dragen van collectieve risico’s (Raiffeisen, de Coöperatie of Onderlinge Waarborg Maatschappij).
De Consumptiebank (Bank van Lening) kreeg een enorme impuls toen de arbeiders in de jaren zestig verplicht werden om een salarisrekening te openen. Vanaf dat moment raakten de Nederlanders hun vrees om te lenen en te spenderen kwijt. Deze ontwikkeling werd natuurlijk sterk geholpen door de opkomende Kondratieff-golf.
Aan het eind van 20e eeuw hebben de banken geprofiteerd van de verder oplopende economie en hebben daarbij vergeten om een geldvoorraad voor de slechte jaren op te bouwen. Dit geldt natuurlijk niet alleen voor de bank zelf maar ook voor zijn klanten.
Rond 2000 op de top van de golf werd door de ontwikkelaars van de handelsbank Binck-Bank, Knab gelanceerd als een nieuwe vorm van klantgericht bankieren (Personal Financial Planning).
Knab probeert om de nieuwe mogelijkheden van de IT-technologie ten volle aan te wenden. Tot op heden slaat deze moderne vorm van bankieren niet erg aan omdat de klant de diensten te duur vind. Het grootste probleem is natuurlijk dat deze bank geen aansluiting krijgt bij de duurzame socialen, de expanderende genieters en de comprimerende zekerheidzoekers.
Het ligt in de lijn der verwachting dat rond de tijd van de Singularity de bank zich zal hebben getransformeerd in een begrijpend pratende alleswetende bankrobot die perfect waakt over de belangen van de klant. De teerling voor een Dr.Watson-bank is deze maand door IBM samen met de DSB-bank in Singapore geworpen.
Het lijkt er op dat deze ontwikkeling wel eens sneller kan gaan dan men denkt omdat IBM wederom een miljard dollar heeft gestoken in de toepassingen van zijn Dr.Watson-technologie. Deze investering zal vooral worden besteed aan het verbeteren van de medische Dr.Watson.
Dr. Watson ook wel Semantic Analytics genoemd kan in korte tijd eindeloos veel kwalitatieve (tekst, plaatjes) en kwantitatieve data tot zich nemen, patronen ontdekken, logische redeneren en praten.
Om de uitdagingen van de komende cyclus-periode aan te kunnen zullen de banken zich moeten gaan concentreren op het balanceren van hun eigen geldvoorraden en daarmee ook de waardenvoorraden van hun klanten. Dit kan alleen als ze zich gaan bezighouden met de volledige levenscyclus.
Dit betekent dat een bank niet alleen alle soorten dienstverlening moet gaan bieden maar ook alle soorten banken onder één noemer moeten zien te brengen.
In dat kader zal de bank ook weer een sociale kant moeten gaan tonen.
We hebben gezien dat deze kant van het bankwezen zich in het verleden heeft getoond in de coöperatie en de waarborgmaatschappij. Deze banktypen zijn grotendeels verdwenen en hebben zich getransformeerd in een “normale” bank en verzekeraar waarbij de inbreng in het beleid van de klanten niet groot meer is.
Het herstellen van de klantbetrokkenheid (zie Knab) is een “hot issue” en “customer co-creation” staat hoog in de trend top tien. Daarnaast rijst het aantal nieuw opgerichte kredietunies de pan uit en is de regering al druk bezig om deze vorm van onderlinge solidariteit een wettelijke basis te geven.
Het ligt dan ook voor de hand om onderlinge solidariteit (“de naaste”) weer als uitgangspunt te nemen voor de mensen die dat willen en dat zijn de mensen met een sociale persoonlijkheid.
10. Integrale Gezondheidszorg
We zijn weer terug bij het verdwenen bankkantoor in de wijk. Het stond in een winkelcentrum waar inmiddels door de snelle opkomst van de Internetwinkels alleen nog de lichaamsgerateerde kort cyclische retail aanwezig is.
De kans is groot dat die zich zelfs op den duur terugtrekt als de winkel-logistiek zich volledig heeft aangepast aan het aan huis bezorgen.
Vaak is zo’n winkelcentrum gekoppeld aan een gezondheidscentrum dat zich nu ook druk moet gaan maken over de psycho-sociale zorg. De overheid heeft bedacht dat de huisarts in de wijk in samenwerking met de wijkverpleegkundige moet gaan optreden als personal case-manager.
Opvallend is dat de economische gezondheidszorg (de armenzorg) nog grotendeels een kerkelijke aangelegenheid is. Er zijn vele organisaties die de hulp van levenswijze “maatjes” aanbieden om mensen te helpen ook economisch orde op zaken te stellen.
Wat tot op heden nog volledig ontbreekt is een integrale benadering. De vele professionele hulpverleners (“de sociale kaart”) en vrijwilligers werken notoir langs elkaar heen, het aantal specialismen is sterk gegroeid waardoor ieder probleemhokje een eigen loket heeft en men kan door de soms zeer complexe vaktaal moeilijk onderling communiceren.
Wat vaak wordt vergeten is dat er naast hulpverleners en vrijwilligers ook nog commerciële partijen zijn die belang hebben bij een gezonde medewerker of klant.
Die belangen worden bij voorbeeld gedragen door Arbo-diensten, Verzekeraars en Banken die schadeclaims moeten afhandelen en natuurlijk ook voorkomen. Een vergaande samenwerking rondom het wijkgebonden integrale gezondheidscentrum ligt voor de hand.
Het is hierbij van belang om te beseffen dat de technologie veel werk uit handen kan nemen zodat de mens zich volledig kan richten op het persoonlijk contact zowel in de vorm van een gesprek als van de zorg zelf (totdat de zorg-robot zich aandient).
11. De Zelf-Ontplooiende Stad
Een stad is een verzameling gebouwen, waarin mensen samenwonen, werken, worden verzorgd of plezier maken. De mensen en de gebouwen zijn verbonden door allerlei soorten netwerken (energie, vervoer, telecommunicatie, sociale netwerken, waardeketens, ..).
De stad kan net als het Integrale Gezondheidscentrum verdeeld worden in vier onderling verbonden onderdelen n.l Besturing, Bedrijvigheid, Sociaal en Cultureel.
Boven de Stad kan een Monitor worden gedefinieerd die erg veel lijkt op het menselijke bewustzijn. De Monitor moet er voor zorgen dat de verschillende onderdelen niet te dominant worden.
De vier onderdelen kunnen weer worden opgesplitst in vergelijkbare onderdelen waardoor er in totaal (1+4) x 12 = 60 onderdelen kunnen worden gedefineerd. Die onderdelen kunnen als nodig is nog veel dieper kunnen worden opgedeeld als we de mens weer opsplitsen in bijv. organen en de organen weer in cellen. Op ieder niveau gelden dezelfde wetten.
This blog was a Dutch blog put into a Powerpoint Presentation.
Anti-fragile (a term coined by Nassim Taleb) systems are resilient systems that benefit and grow from shocks and stress.
A body benefits from training (= stress) but too much training destroys the body.
Even anti-fragile systems have boundaries.
The term “Resilience” comes from Latin resiliere, “to spring back, start back, rebound, recoil, retreat”, and is often intended and defined as the ability to cope with or recover from change.
Fragile systems are destroyed by a low level of stress or a small crash.
Fragile systems have to be protected by resilient systems otherwise they break.
2 Resilience shows the boundaries to sustainability.
Resilience is defined as: “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks” (Brian Walker).
Resilience corresponds to the Aristotelian concept of entelechy“exercising activity in order to guarantee one’s identity.
It shows what type of systems are able to survive a long time of low/medium stress or a short duration of high stress.
The resilience of a system is influenced by the level of outside disorder the system has to cope with and the internal state of the system itself.
If you increase the size of a fragile system, it becomes more fragile. If you increase the size of an anti-fragile system, it becomes more anti-fragile.
For the fragile, the cumulative effect of small shocks is smaller than the single effect of an equivalent a single large shock. A fragile entity is hurt a lot more by extreme events than by a succession of intermediate ones.
Big systems are almost always anti-fragile unless they are one-sided. In this case they are an easy target for a one-sided big calamity.
Agile systems are many sided.
They are able to react and adapt to different situations all the time. They have no robust structure that connects their components. Agile Systems are fluent.
Anti-Agile systems resist change. They protect their interior with huge boundaries.
Resilience resolves the opposition between internal order (stable) and external disorder (volatile, not stable).
In the end the disorder (entropy) always wins. It wins by making every thing the same.
3 Resume
Humans are forward foragers with a bilateral circular brain.
This brain creates paradoxes by constantly uniting (zoom-in) and not-uniting (zoom-out).
Humans want to protect themselves for what could happen in the future.
Humans need social structures to become resilient. In these structures they have to balance the paradox of selflessness and not-selflessnes (selfishness).
Humans want to be a wHole and part of a wHole.
In the first part of this blog we explore human resilience. Human resilience has a lot to do with Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs.
Resilience happens when we actualize our Self (our wHole), when body, mind, spirit and soul are in balance.
Paths of Change (PoC) is the name of a theory about Change. PoC is used in this blog as a general scale-free reference model.
The Four Worldviews show themselves in four Colors (Yellow, Green, Blue and Red.
PoC is based on four Worldviews that show themselves on every scale with different names. Body, mind, spirit and soul are used on the human scale. What happens on the human scale happens on every scale. As Above so Below.
Humans have bodily mechanisms that keep them from growing boundlessly. Social structures tend to expand beyond the limit.
Nature uses positive (increase) and negative (decrease) feed-back to control growth. When too much growth is measured by the bodily sensors the not-growth system is activated.
4. Alan Fiske
The anthropologist Alan Fiske has created a model that classifies human relations. The model of Fiske is compatible with PoC.
Fiske explains his model with measurement theory and structure preserving mappings. We measure others the same way we measure objects and situations.
The most flexible structure preserving mapping, the symmetric groep (combinations), explains the most selfless human relation, Communal Sharing.
Communal Sharing is Agile. Every time when the environment changes new combinations can be made. A sharing community looks like a living system and achieves resilience by repeating the same proven functionality in a different way.
The less flexible mapping is standardization. In this case we are focused on efficiency. By reducing the complexity of our reality (analytics) we are preparing the way for the machines to take over.
Standardization and the related Market-Pricing Social Structure is anti-agile.
Hierarchic analytic structures (Authority Ranking Social Structure) have big problems with adapting. That is why they want to control everything. They become fragile (and die) when they are disconnected from the rest of the social structures.
Anti-fragility is related to Equality Matching, the social structure of the Creators. The creators are needed to make sure that the diversity of the system is not going down to the level of Collapse.
Resilience has to do with Category Theory, Combinatorics, Fractals, Symmetry-Breaking and Scaling.
5 5P-Systems
A combination of highly stable flexible structures is repeated on every Level of Scale.
Systems are a structure preserving mapping from physical space to mental space.
Systems have Potential (Components/Resources/Connections), Possibility (Mental State Space, Combinations), Plan (One Occurrence of a Possible Combination of Components), Practice (Physical World, Flow, Input, Process, Output) and Protection (Boundary).
The output of a System is the Input of another System.
Boundaries are not walls. They are semi-permeable filters. Just like the walls of a city they contain gates to let the good things in and throw the bad things (waste) out. When you destroy the boundary, the system falls apart.
Sensors are the gates in de wall of the boundary. They determine what the system is able to perceive. Sensors are selectors. They divide the outside world in two parts, the perceived world and the not-perceived world.
Cell Membranes are Filters
Systems produce cascades of events. Events are reactions of other systems to events of other systems. The resilience of a system is dependent on the resilience of its parts and the whole, the ecology, it is part of.
After a destructive event a system can be repaired or restore itself in a certain timeframe. Pushed to the extreme, a system may also transform itself into a completely different structure because the components are put into another Order.
This order is functional or not-functional. In the last situation the structure is left behind and will deteriorate because everything deteriorates on the long term.
Another Order can be caused by a new shuffle of the cards or a new principle that defines why a component has more value than others.
At the End of Time called the Big Freeze everything will be the same. That’s why there is a constant fight between diversity and equality.
Diversity moves against the flow of the Universe and is therefore always a temporary state.
6 Evolution
Extreme stress kills a system but stimulates a new evolutionary path.
‘“In fact, the most interesting aspect of evolution is that it only works because of its antifragility; it is in love with stressors, randomness, uncertainty, and disorder — while individual organisms are relatively fragile, the gene pool takes advantage of shocks to enhance its fitness”. (Nassim N. Taleb)
Nassim Taleb’s body of work on uncertainty reminds us that we should focus on the non-perishable and avoid some of the pitfalls of modernity, like our constant desire to fetishize the ‘new’.
Bicycles, kitchens and cars are all very similar to what they were thirty years ago. “Once in a while you have a breakthrough like the computer but otherwise, it pretty much stayed the same. If anything, we use technologies to produce old goods in a cheaper manner“.
Evolution is a combinatorial game that tries to improve the whole. Evolution reuses parts of the old structure and adds something new by creating new connections.
7. Dual Brain
In the beginning the chemical soup generated self-reproducing chemical factories. These factories combined into bigger factories by exchanging and combining their factory-designs (DNA-parts).
Every time when the factories fused they became more efficient, bigger, stronger, older and therefore more competitive. When the factories became more competitive they started to protect themselves against the other factories.
To protect themselves the multi-cellular systems began to sense in many directions and became better and better in predicting the future.
Humans are clusters of bacteria. In the first stage of our evolution, the Sponge, the cluster was static. In the next stage the cluster began to move in circels and developed a radial brain (a nerve net).
Humans are part of the Bilateria, organisms that forage forward. We make use of a radial connected dual brain in which one part is synthetic and the other part is analytic.
The dual brain is a paradox. It unites and not-unites.
Nerve Net vs Bilateral Brain
Humans use a combination of three bilateral brains: the brain of the reptiles, the social brain of the mammals, and the neocortex, our own calculating talking mind.
This triple brain is a good example of an evolutionary process in which old structures were reused and new parts were added.
The reptile brain of the body gathers data by its sensors and reacts (Stimulus/Response) with the motor-system.
The social brain looks for a partner (to create children), friends, family and competitors to fight/flight or to freeze with (enemies). The enemy is something the social brain shares with the reptile brain.
The neo-cortex is the computer. It is able to reason about the causal chains that are sensed by the social and body brain.
The imagination (spirit) controls the whole of the brain and the body and is situated in the thalamus. The thalamus projects the calculations of the neocortex on our internal screen.
8 Human ivilization
In our earliest societies humans lived as hunter-gatherers.
The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals.
Agricultural production leads to food surpluses and this in turn supports sedentary societies, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor.
Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which leads to larger organizations that want to control the world.
For a very long time the hierarchy was the most important control-system in use.
Currently the center of the system is moving from the top to the bottom because of the rise of communication technology (Internet).
9 Human Needs
Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs included five motivational needs divided into basic (or deficiency) needs (e.g. physiological, safety, love, and esteem) and growth needs (self-actualization).
A violation of a need motivates a human into action. When the violation is too big (a disaster) most humans get into violent action (fight), flight the disaster zone or freeze and don’t do anything. The fight/flight/freeze-respons is related to the reptile brain.
The needs can be divided into four independent categories: (1) The needs of the body, (2) The social needs, (3) The needs of the mind and (4) the needs of the spirit (growth, creativity, insight, idea, identity, whole).
The spirit is the power that stimulates us to reach the Top of the Pyramid of Maslow, to become a whole, realize our potential and find self-fulfillment. With the imagination humans get insight about the future and make plans to prevent calamities.
The mind expands to its ultimate potential by training. It needs to find patterns to control and predict its environment. This has to do with the so called “Illusion of Control”. Too much control (paranoid) generates the fear to lose control.
The body expands to its ultimate potential by physical exercise (but not too much exercise).
The spirit (or self) grows by exploring every thing and keeping the good.
The soul needs many others to praise him/her. To much praise creates the state of narcissism, the soul is in love with its self (spirit).
Human needs are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied.
Human needs are interrelated and interactive. Some needs are conflicting. Others are synergic.
An attempt to satisfy one need can inhibit or destroy others. For example, an Arms Race satisfies the need for protection, while destroying the need for subsistence, freedom or participation.
Humans feel happy when the four conflicting and synergic needs are in balance. When their needs are in balance they are able to handle small and big, positive and negative events.
10 Holmes Life Event Scale
In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe examined the medical records of over 5,000 medical patients as a way to determine whether stressful events might cause illnesses. He found that a disturbance of social needs has the highest impact in life.
11 Kubler Ross Transition Curve.
The Kubler Ross Transition Curve shows how people react when a mostly social (loss of partner) life event becomes too big to handle.
In this case the resilience of the human fails. The first step in the transition is controlled by the Fight, Flight, Freeze Respons of the Sensory-Motor System.
12 Human Set Point
Set Point Theory predicts that wellbeing tends to fluctuate around a level that generally remains uniform over time.
An event of which the pulse is bigger than the bandwidth of the fluctuation around the set-point triggers the FFF-respons of the reptile brain.
After sometimes a very long time of grieve eventually a human returns to his personal fluctuating path.
Set Point Theory shows that Life is a Cyclic Proces that always tries to restore it self. The stability of wellbeing can be ascribed to a dynamic equilibrium model, a homeostasis.
The tangible mechanisms that underpin homeostasis (resilience) are wealth (potential) and relationships (connectedness).
If individuals experience negative events, compromising their immediate wellbeing, they can utilize some of their wealth to purchase resources that can be utilized to defend these problems.
Similarly, they can utilize the support and intimacy of other people in their life, especially partners and children.
The other mechanisms are cognitive processes. For example, individuals can reconceptualize their goals to accommodate negative events.
If debilitated by age or disease, they can derive meaning from other pursuits. They can trivialize the importance of adversities.
People who respond rapidly to a threat with a surge of the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol and recover quickly cope better with stressful situations.
Resilient people are better at using the hormone dopamine to keep them positive. They have a healthily large hippocampus which as well as enabling the formation of new memories also helps regulate the release of the fight-or-flight hormone adrenalin and have a strongly active prefrontal cortex, the brain region dubbed ‘the seat of rational thinking’.
This inhibits the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes negative emotions such as fear and anger, allowing the prefrontal cortex to come up with a sensible plan to cope with a threat.
The Human Set-Point moves up when you are young & down when you are old and is highly influenced by extreme life-events.
Such an event triggers the Sensory Motor System and almost stops the other Systems (Emotions, Imagination, Rationality) until the Pulse has dampened.
13 Human Resilience
Psychological resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity.
Stress and adversity can come in the shape of family or relationship problems, health problems, or workplace and financial stressors, among others.
The primary factor in resilience is having positive relationships inside or outside one’s family.
There are several other factors which develop and sustain a person`s resilience:
(1) The ability to make realistic plans and being capable of taking the steps necessary to follow through with them.
(2) A positive self-concept and confidence in one’s strengths and abilities.
(3) Communication and problem-solving skills.
(4) The ability to manage strong impulses and feelings.
Ultimately resilience is a process of connectedness, of linking to people, to interests, and ultimately to life itself.
The seven aspects of Resilience are:
Access to material resources (Availability of financial, educational, medical and employment assistance and/or opportunities, as well as access to food, clothing and shelter).
Access to supportive relationships (Relationships with significant others, peers and adults within one’s family and community).
Development of a desirable personal identity (Desirable sense of one’s self as having a personal and collective sense of purpose, ability for self-appraisal of strengths and weaknesses, aspirations, beliefs and values, including spiritual and religious identification).
Experiences of power and control (Experiences of caring for one’s self and others, the ability to effect change in one’s social and physical environment in order to access health resources).
Adherence to cultural traditions (Adherence to, or knowledge of, one’s local and/or global cultural practices, values and beliefs).
Experiences of social justice (Experiences related to finding a meaningful role in one’s community that brings with it acceptance and social equality)
Experiences of a sense of cohesion with others (Balancing one’s personal interests with a sense of responsibility to the greater good; feeling a part of something larger than one’s self socially and spiritually).
14 Sense of Coherence
Antonovsky (1979) researched the human ability of being able to integrate extremely stressful life events in one’s own worldview.
He proposed an approach to the origins of health based on the assumption that the human environment causes strain. The stressors responsible for this may be genetic, microbiological, personal, economic, social, cultural or geo-political.
The normal state of the human organism is one of disorder and conflict rather than stability and homeostasis. Antonovsky focused on making order out of chaos, and emphasized the importance of coping resources in dealing with stress.
He sought a construct that would characterize the shared components of a wide variety of generalized resistance resources, such as childhood living circumstances, social support, cultural stability, education and income, and that might explain how they facilitate coping with stressors and promoting health.
Consequently, he found that what these various generalized resistance resources have in common is a life orientation, which he called sense of coherence (SOC). SOC has three main components: comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness.
15 Human Resilience- Forces in Balance
Human Resilience is accomplished when the four parts of the human are in balance. The four parts are synergetic and conflicting. The best way to describe them is to see them as forces that are represented by vectors.
The vectors of the human powers point in different directions (Up, Down, Forward, Backward) just like the Forward Forager of Ken Wilber.
In a balanced situation they cancel each other out.
Resilience is possible when the Sum of the four Forces of the Human: Mind (Up, Abstraction), Body (Right, Forwards to the Future, Cause/Effect), Spirit (Left, Back to the Whole, the Source) and Soul (Down to Earth) is close to zero.
To handle a big Event there has to be enough surplus Potential (Components/Resources/Connections) available to act.
Forces in Balance
The most important Support System for humans is their social network.
Humans Need Humans is a recursive (Fractal) statement.
16 Paths of Change
Paths of Change (PoC) is a general theory about Change developed by Will McWhinney. PoC is used in this blog to compare all kinds of theories and find the best of all worlds.
PoC makes use of the concept of World Views. A World View is an independent way to look at the world.
The term View is perhaps confusing because some people don’t look at the world at all. They feel, imagine or think about the World.
There are four basic World Views that Will McWhinney named Unity (“I know there is only one Truth”), Sensory (“The World is a Network of Causal Chains”), Mythic (“I Imagine my own World”) and Social (“The World is what the Network of Others value”).
“Normal” people are able to play with two (or more) world views. Pathological People use only one Worldview.
The four World Views are described by two variables called Agency and Communion.
Agency emphasises the Self as a distinct unit; it focuses on the persons own individual Influence. Agency has two states (1) I am in Control or (2) Something (or Somebody) is Controlling me.
Path of Change & Cultural Theory
Communion is a motive for the Connection with an Other; it is a motive to participate in a larger Union. Communion has also two states (3) I am alone (4) I am connected.
Bilateral Brain
Behind the two variables lies a 1D model, the model of the Bilateral Brain, Left-Expansion/Analytic (0->) and Righ-Compression/Synthetic (0<-).
Path of Change uses a 2D-model in which the two states are combined: 0->0->, <-o<-0, 0-><-0, <-00->.
There is a Fifth Worldview that is outside the 2×2-matrix in 3D. It represents the Observer/Consciousness. In 2D is shows itself in the Cross in the middle of the matrix.
The Eye of the Observer
Path of Change is a Fractal Theory
Worldviews can be connected. Controlling (Unity) a human who wants to commune (Social) is called Politics. It is also possible to apply a worldview to another worldview. Abstracting (Unity) Human Relations becomes a Social Network.
Path of Change is an Ancient Theory
Path of Change is an ancient theory. It was known and used all over the world with different names and implementations. The worldviews were translated into visible Star Systems (Zodiac), People (“Gods” (India, Egypt,..)), Animals (Medicine Wheel), Games (Chess, Cards (TARO-T)) or Regulations (Laws (China), Religions).
A good example is China. In China Paths of Change was called the Sheng Cycle. In the Sheng Cycle the Observer was projected in the 2D-matrix by introducing a fifth view.
The Sheng Cycle was used to model the body (Acupuncture), the material context (buildings, city, ecology) (Feng Shui) and the state & society (Sun Tsu (the Art of War)).
The organs, the body, the community, the state and the universe were seen as Flow Systems of Energy (Chi) that get into trouble when the flow is disrupted.
This disruption can be caused by blockages or by an input (an event) that is too big or too small to handle. The solution to a problem is to open one channel without causing too much overflow at another point in the system. The diagnosis is done on a place in the system (the pulse) where all the systems get together.
Old Chinese Scientists have developed all kinds of correspondence-tables between worldviews and situations. This makes it possible to reuse a theory by changing the semantics.
Path of Change and Life Events
Path of Change describes the Paths along people (or organizations, or societies) change.
This change is triggered by an external or internal Event. Events are handled by the Sensory-Motor-System.
From the Sensory-Motor-System, the Event can bounce back to the Sensory-Motor-System which reacts with the Fight, Flight, Freeze Respons (FFFR, “I am Afraid”).
The event can propagate further to the Emotions (I Feel what Matters in this Situation), The Imagination (I See What has happened) or the Pattern-Recognition State of Thinking (I know what happened).
The event moves further in the Network until the pulse of the Event comes back to the Sensory-Motor System that Reacts.
Paths of Change are Feed-Back-Systems that try to adapt the human Body (Sensory-Motor), Mind (Patterns, Memory), Emotions or Identity (Imagination) to the current situation.
The possible amount of steps and Time an event travels in the Internal Network cannot be calculated. There are sixteen (4×4) possible paths of length two and many more when the path rotates (with- or against the Clock) and loops through the network. It can take many years before the body acts upon an event.
The FFFR-respons offers a very fast-reaction mechanism which uses predefined scripts when the system evaluates that the Event will be fatal.
The way Events are handled is determinated by the combination of the Worldviews of the Person (his Personality) at stake and his experience (Memory). Almost fatal events are stored in memory.
17. Resilience – Homeostasis
17 Homeostasis
A Homeostatis is a System that determinates what action(s) will compensate an Event and keep the total System in balance.
Our Mind (Unity, Neocortex) is a Homeostasis that controls the Homeostasis of Our (Social, Limbic) Emotions that controls the Homeostasis of the Sensory Reptilian Brain. This part of the brain is concerned with survival.
The thinking Mind, the social Emotions (Soul), the active Sensory-Motor System (Body) and the creative Imagination (Spirit) are coordinated by the thalamus. The thalamus could be the fourth and most ancient brain.
The System (“the whole”, Mythic) has to react to an Event in the Environment but it also has to keep its state of Homeostasis (“Balance”) on all levels.
Last but not least the system has to replace every part that is not able to play its role in the system. This process is called autopoiesis.
Cells are killed (apoptosis) when they don’t fit in the overall picture. Between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the average human adult. For an average child between the ages of 8 and 14, approximately 20 billion to 30 billion cells die a day.
The Four Worldview’s are (Fractal sub-)Systems that keep their own balance and act as sensors for the other sub-systems.
The sub-systems contain sub-sub-systems (Body, Organ, Cell, …) that all have to stay in balance (or die) and send their signals on their own level (electro-magnetic, chemical, ..) using their own communication-infrastructure to their own control center that is monitored by a higher level control center (etc. etc).
The systems are also part of super(-super-super-systems) (Family, Social Group, Organization, …Universe).
The System of Systems (of Systems, …) develops itself in the same pattern as the system itself. Mind (Unity) moves Up, Body/Matter mover Right (Causal), Social/Soul moves Down and Mythic (Imagination) moves Left (back to the Source).
If the four forces are in balance the total system expands and compresses in a Spiral Pattern. The same pattern as we see in the Ancient Cathedrals.
The nice thing is that on every level you look (or analyze, or evaluate, or sense, or see) the same structure comes back so you don’t have to create a new structure to get a better insight.
When you believe PoC is a self-referencing (“fractal”) system you can apply what you know if you are able to distinguish the right level/scale of the many scales there are. If you mix up scales the whole system looks like a big mess.
Just like the five elements in the generating (with-the-clock) Sheng Cycle (or the against-the clock destructing Wu Cycle) every Worldview is connected to the others views and compensates (is a Homeostasis for) another Worldview and vice-versa.
There are twelve connections possible between different views and four with the same view which brings the total amount of possible connection on 16 (4×4).
Mythic, the Interest of the Self compensates the Interest of the Group (Social).
Social (Emotions, Down, Earth) compensates Unity (Abstraction, Up, Sky, Mind).
Sensory (Sense & React, Forwards to the Outside) compensates Mythic (Imagination, Insight, Backwards to Inside).
The Consciousness (“the fifth worldview”) monitors the four Worldview’s and triggers a worldview that brings the system in another state that triggers a new worldview that brings the system in another state (etc etc).
Worldview’s trigger other Worldview’s directly or move to a higher state of abstraction (Mind) that is able to move to a higher abstraction until it has to move back to Earth (Soul/Social).
The system is constantly adapting its adaptions until it dies.
Adaption can only happen when the transport/communication-channels are not blocked and the system is able to remove the blockages in the channels.
18 Flow Systems
The old Chinese scientists believed that every level of our universe is a Flow System that consists of five connected parts. Disturbances in the system are resolved by opening the channels between the parts that are disconnected.
The Scientists of our time see an ecology (and a body and an organization and a city and…..) as a material transport network (an Infrastructure) which distributes energy, information and matter between big macroscopic reservoirs (f.i. Lungs/Air/UP) and small microscopic sites (f.i. Alveoli/Blood/Water/Flow) on many “rhythmic” levels.
The macroscopic reservoirs are filled by repeating macroscopic processes (“weather”, “breath”, “market”) that are controlled by a macroscopic time-giver, the Drum of Shiva, a Clock, our Sun or our Heart.
When a flow system (Bloodvessels, Artery) is disturbed (Arteriosclerosis) it solves its problems by creating a “bypass”. Bypasses create bypasses (create bypasses, …) until it is impossible to change the physical environment (f.i. granite). Bypasses generate a repeating (fractal) structure.
This structure looks like a hierarchy when you look Top-Down and like a Flow-System when you look with an Input (From)/Output (To)-view. In essence it brings the Many (Sensory)-to-the One (Unity).
Fractal Distribution Networks in Humans (Lungs, Air) and Nature (Rivers, Water)
Nature solves its scaling problems by evolving fractal networks. The Law of Kleiber shows that big fractal flow-structures live longer (are more resilient) and are more efficient than small structures. Cities grow because of their shared fysical infrastructures.
Big Cities are also more creative than small cities because of the amount of possible contacts between creative minds. It is clear that the Internet is taking over this function.
19 Social Networks
Human networks are an organism capable of behaviors that are of greater complexity than those of an individual human being.
Humans networks are an abstraction (Unity) of human relations. They are the most important support structure for a human to become resilient.
Humans are two-sided. Human Networks are 12-sided. They are a combination of the 4-fold-Cycle X 4-Cycle without repetition (4**2-4).
That is why there are 12 Star-Systems in the Zodiac (12 + the Sun = 13), 12 Suns of Jacob, 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Disciples of Jesus (12+the One = 13) and 12 Knights of the Round Table (12 + Arthur = 13).
Knights of the Round (= Cycle) Table
The anthropologist Alan Fiske created a 4-fold model that describes how groups of people cooperate.
The four relational models correspond perfectly with the four World-Views of PoC.
The fact that you can use PoC to classify a part of PoC (Social) proves that PoC is a fractal theory.
Social Structures are just like PoC nested combinations of the elementary relationship models:
People live together and share things. People are treated as equivalent and undifferentiated. “What’s mine is thine; what’s thine is mine”.
Fairness is important in such groups and appealing to values may be the best way to persuade. Conflict may be dealt with through mediation and others methods that seek consensus.
In equality relationships there is no authority between people nor is there the deeper responsibility towards one another as in the communal sharing model. Social relationships are long-term and monitored for balance.
Equality matched relationships generally collaborate around shared goals and help one another. Relationships are reciprocal and have equal value. People treat fairly those who treat them fairly.
Social groups are arranged with a hierarchy of power. The top of the pyramid protects the lower layers. It starts with parent and child and then progresses to schools, workplaces and other groupings.
Whilst communal sharing groups are based on trust and fair play, authority relationships are based on command and control where the inferior person has little option but to obey the superior person.
Relationships are structured by proportions. In the market pricing model, the relationship is based around a transaction, where the parties exchange substantive items, often with money being a part of the transaction. Such relationships may be shorter than others and more formal, even with an explicit or implied contract to formalize the exchange.
Alan Fiske, Structure of Social Life
17. About Resilience – How to Preserve Structure in a Social Network
Alan Fiske found out that each of the relationship models resembles one of the classic scale types from measurement theory. We measure others the same way we measure objects and situations.
Measurement starts in de Sensory-mode. Measurement captures information about a system. A system consists of objects, processes, and phenomenon. The system is measured through the attributes of the system also known as characteristics, features, or properties.
Measurement does not directly represent the system. It only addresses the attributes selected to represent it.
All measurement is carried out within a context. This context is shaped by a purpose, existing knowledge, capabilities, and resources; all of which influence the measurement process.
Measurements can be made through the human senses or made through use of a measurement instrument, which is an apparatus or construct used for measurement.
Measurement is the assignment of numerals to a system according to a set of rules. These rules are called a theory.
Our senses or the instruments that are used to measure the system also represent a theory. This theory has a sometimes unknown impact on our measurement.
A theory has to be a structure preserving mapping, a homomorphism. The structure of the system has to stay the same when the rules are applied.
If the theory does not preserve structure the theory introduces its own theory and we are not measuring the original system.
Not only the primary theory has to be a homomorphism. The complete chain of theories we use has to preserve the structure (The Uniqueness Axioma) of the original system.
If a system has to be a resilient system its transformations have to be structure-preserving.
A nominal scale distinguishes Sets. Sets contain Points. Every point is the same as the other points. Points that are the same can be connected by a line.
Sets are split by a distinction made by the filters of the senses. A distinction puts things into non-overlapping categories such as smokers versus non-smokers. There are zero smokers in the class of non-smokers and zero non-smokers in the class of smokers. You can count the amount of points in a class. The zero point of the class is the not-class.
A nominal scale classifies things into categories. The classes are equal. The process of division starts with a whole (One) and divides the whole in parts (Many) after which the parts become a new Whole. Repeated application of a distinction generates a Set of Sets.
A nominal scale defines Sets. Sets contain the same elements. When we want to preserve this structure we have to satisfy the constraint If s1 = s2 ⇔ f(s1) = f(s2) (“the Same stays the Same”). This is called the Symmetric group, the group of all permutations of the objects in the Set.
Living systems achieve resilience by repeating (redundancy) the same functionality in a different way (diversity) and on a different location (distribution). This all is an example of symmetry. Humans are bilateral symmetric. We have two eyes, legs, arms, kidneys, lungs and brain-halves.
Communal Sharing (Social) is the most resilient/symmetric group there is. Every new order (a permutation) of the objects has the same value. New combinations are created all the time and time will tell what their value will be.
If combinations are valued we as a human are creative enough to imagine a reason (“a new selection-mechanism, a distinction”) why the new combination is important.
Communal Sharing is Agile.
(2) Authority Ranking (Unity, Mind, Human Brain) is called an Ordinal Scale. This scale is used when we want to express Comparative Judgement about the observed system.
In nature, all things we observe are nominal. It is we who choose to order (i.e., count) them, in some way according to some theory we propose.
A further step is to transform these orderings into linear measures which are more useful to us. If we construct a theory with a useful “zero” location (as opposed to zero difference), then we can measure away from that zero point.
The members of a class are ordered from the One to Many by a rule that defines what greater (or less) means. It permits the measurement of degrees of difference, but not the specific amount of difference.
The step Sensory -> Social is called Evaluate. Evaluation is putting members of a Set in a favorite (like) or non-favorite (don’t like) permutation. In the Unity-mode like and don’t like are mapped to high and low (or important & not-important).
This is only possible when we are able to find a difference that we can count. Smoking can be defined by the amount of cigarettes a person smokes or the amount of nicotine he inhales.
Sometimes it is impossible to find an amount (what is the amount of “Love”?) and we have to change the distinction and the attribute we want to measure or stop measuring and accept what we observe the way it is.
The ordinal scale is part of the nominal scale. The relational structure preserved during the measurement process preserves equality and order. The set of admissible transformations are relations that satisfy the constraint If s1 < or >s2 ⇔ f(s1) < or >f(s2).
This is called the Order-Preserving Group and is the group of monotonic increasing functions. A monotonic function does not contain Ups AND Downs. It contains Ups or Downs (= not-Ups).
The step Social (Many) -> Unity ((One) is called Seeking Consensus about a Rule. Because this mapping has to be a monotonic function Social (Down (to Earth)) has to be lower than Unity (Up).
In this scale we can Count (Y) the people that smoke an amount of cigarettes (X) and can produce a bar-graph.
Autority Ranking is Fragile.
(3) Equality Matching (Mythic, Spirit, Whole) is called an Interval Scale. This scale is used when we want to measure a distance between pairs of items.
The step Unity -> Mythic is called Insight. We move from the Outside World of the Rules of Unity to the Inside World of the View on the Whole of Mythic and find Insight. In this case we balance the One of the outside with the One of the Inside. We compare our Whole with the Whole we find outside.
When we define an Interval Scale we look for the resonance of the Outside World with our own Inside World. We look for our own Image outside and can find peace and balance in looking at our child or partner, a sleeping cat, a wood in autumn, mountains or a sailing ship.
With this scale people can create balance and specify who owes what to whom but also how much they owe. It is a relationship in which people keep track of differences, with reference to an even balance.
The set of admissible transformations has to preserve equality (nominal), the equality of order (ordinal) and the equality of difference/distance and has to satisfy the constraint If s1−s2 = s3−s4 ⇔ f(s1)−f(s2)=f(s3)−f(s4).
This is called the General Linear Group (or Affine Group). Differences can only be preserved when the transformation is a linear transformation Ax + B where A is a rotation and B is translation.
When you take the difference between two points you create the concepts More/Less and Mean/Middle. More/Less can be associate with Better/Worse.
In our example of the smokers we can subtract the lowest count of cigarettes of all the other counts. In this case the lowest count becomes an arbitrary zero. We can also calculate the Mean of the amount of cigarettes smoked and define this as a Middle.
Equality Matching is Anti-Fragile.
(4) Market Pricing (Sensory, Action, Reptile Brain) resembles a Ratio Scale.
A ratio scale preserves the equality of equality, order, difference and ratio. Most measurement in the physical sciences and engineering is done on ratio scales. Mass, length, time, plane angle, energy and electric charge are examples.
A Ratio Scale relates a measurement to a standardized unit (of time (Sec), distance (Meters), weight (Kg), …). This unit is a physical object.
The set of admissible transformations has to satisfy the constraint If s1/s2 = s3/s4 ⇔ f(s1)/f(s2) = f(s3)/f(s4). This is called the Linear Group.
The only transformation that satisfies this constraint is the functions f(x) = Ax. This scale supports Multiplication (and its opposite Division).
Ratio Scale
In this scale we are able to relate a Part to the Whole.
The amount of people who smoke an amount of cigarettes can be divided by the total amount of smokers. This produces a percentage (and a chance).
Market Pricing is Anti-Agile.
21 Scales and Social Networks
The scales are Equal and Ordered in a Hierarchy in which the Nominal Scale (Social) has the highest symmetry (“All Points are Equal”) and therefore has the highest potential and is the most resilient. The Ratio Scale is the most restricted and less flexibel.
The Hierarchy follows the Path Sensory/Measure (Anti-Agile) ->Evaluate-> Social (Equality, Agile) -> Consensus -> Unity (Ordering, Fragile) -> Insight-> Mythic (Difference, Anti-Fragile) -> Invent-> Sensory (Proportion). We call this the Path of Measurement.
The Path of Measurement is the same path our Bilateral Brain is moving through.
During Evolution the Triple Brain developed itself according to the same pattern: (1) Reptile Brain (Sensory) , Measure, Survival Brain, Body, Ratio Scale, (2) Limbic Brain (Social), Soul, Social Brain, Nominal Scale (3) Neo Cortex (Unity), Mind, Thinking Brain, Ordinal Scale (4) Whole (Mythic), Thalamus, Spirit, Interval Scale -> Sensory.
If this correlation is true Market Pricing is the Social Structure of the Reptiles, Communal Sharing of the Mammals, Authority Ranking of the Humans and Equality Matching the social Structure of the Creators.
Currently we are highly focused on Market Pricing which is the structure with the lowest flexibility/resilience (Anti-Agile).
Because of our focus on numbers, measurement and standardization we are creating reptile structures that are highly vulnerable to external events.
22 Cybernetics Viable Systems
The word “government” comes from the Greek “kybernan” which means “to steer a ship”. The word “kyberman” is used to name the science of “cybernetics”.
A system is a black-box, an Input/Output-relation. Systems become (Value)Chains/Networks when we connect the output to the input of another system.
Stafford Beer developed a cybernetic model of the Human called the Stafford Beer Viable System Model (VSM). VSM can be used to model an organization.
Viability means the survival or preservation of identity in a changing environment. A viable system is a resilient system. The Identity is the Whole (Mythic/Imagination) of a System.
For a system to remain viable, it has to maintain its existence within a changing environment. Systems are not perfect and may experience internal defects and deficiencies. Change can happen slowly or suddenly.
Therefore the internal parts of the system must provide both a mutually supportive internal environment and achieve the desired external effects.
The system has to detect and react to threads (survive), be and keep in balance (homeostatis), be maintained, keep up with its environment (innovation, evolution) and be tolerant to damage (redundant).
VSM uses four nested systems to “steer a ship”: (1) the Boundary of the Whole (Mythic) (2) the Environment of the Ship (Social) which contains (3) the ship itself (Object/Body/Action/Operation/Sensory) which contains (4) the Steering System, the Meta-System (Brain/Unity).
The model can be applied to itself by looking again at four “parts” related to Mythic (Whole, Identity), Unity (Models, Research), Materials (Sensory) and Resources (Social).
The Brain/Body as a Viable System
23 Panarchy
According to the theory (the Model) of Panarchy the Resilience of an Ecology is related to the Potential (Communion) and the Connectedness of a System (Agency). Potential shows what is possible in an ecology. Connectedness shows the control an ecology has over its own future.
In the Exploitation/Conservation phase of the Cycle the ecology becomes more efficient (producing more Potential) and Connected.
The amount of possible paths (the Redundancy) is reduced and the system becomes highly efficient and vulnerable (Fragile) to outside changes.
A stable, resilient system can cope with shocks and disturbances and keep its identity.
In an unstable system, a small disturbance can push the ball over a threshold.
Environmental and social changes can make a system less resilient.
At the state of maximum production and maximum connection (conservation) the system is spending all its potential at self-reproduction. At a certain moment the system collapses (release).
The Adaptive Cycle is the same cycle our Bilateral Brain and the previous mention Path of Measurement of Alan Fiske is moving through.
It moves on many levels with a different cycle time. The levels are connected in two ways. A big calamity can destroy a lot of lower level ecologies or a small calamity (a wildfire) can start a major calamity (revolt).
A system to moves to lower level of Periodicity remembers its previous Cycle to start again.
A Cycle moves up when it revolts. Revolt connects Creativity to Order (called Design in Path of Change) and fuses the diversity of the Cycles to a higher level.
Creativity (fusing the opposites) is the source of Anti-Fragility. In the end it all comes down to Spirit.
24 Conclusion
Panarchy Theory is by far the most interesting theory about resilience. It shows that resilience is the result of a cyclic proces. Resilience is low when the components of the system have a high level of connectedness. There is only one way to reach the goal.
When a system is highly efficient it is also highly vulnerable.
Redundant systems are able to resist a calamity if and only if one of the possible paths of the system is not affected.
Robust, Resilient, Agile
If we don’t know what will happen we need an unknown path to save us. This path is part of an unknown phase space that we are able to calculate if we know more about predictability in general. This issue is covered by Combinatorics a part of mathematics.
Nature has generated a highly redundant system in which it is possible that one of the lines of evolution is able to resist a worldwide calamity.
If we want to destroy resilience we have to destroy the diversity of life-forms on earth.
Local energy-companies are part of a movement aimed at Autarky. Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient.
The word Autarky comes from Greek αὐτάρκεια (autárkeia), itself from αὐτός (autós) = self and ἀρκέω (arkéo) which in its passive form means be satisfied, content or “Out of my own Power“.
The need to become self-sufficient has certainly to do with the current economic-, ecological- and energy crisis. People are afraid that the supply of vital energy and food will suddenly stop or become priceless. This is not the only reason.
Some people think we are wasting our money, food and energy by producing nondurable throw-away goods in which the packaging is sometimes more important than the content. They want to create durable products and services. This is not the only reason.
Some people don’t trust the suppliers of their food and energy, their politicians and/or the caretakers of their savings, the banks, anymore. They believe that their food is intentionally manipulated, their savings are wasted, their country is sold out to the rich and their environment is polluted for just one simple reason, Greed, the opposite of “Being Satisfied”.
The people of the autarkic movement want to recreate the necessary functions (bank, energy, food, work, healthcare, government) themselves in a cooperative way in their own living context.
The local cooperatives are now joining on a higher (mostly country) level and are in need of a shared (real-time)infrastructure. The current infrastructure does not support flows that move between many participants (so called peer-to-peer-networks).
The current system is a Hierarchic Top Down System containing Huge Highways that are connected to Big Production-facilities. This makes it impossible to consolidate, share and distribute resources peer-to-peer on a local level.
The Electric Highway
The Top Down System has created Global Markets where the local production is sold to the highest bidder.
The Global Markets are the playing field for advanced speculators that make a lot of money. After the deal is made the local production is transported to a far away destination. That is the reason why the Top Down Systems are integrated in world-wide Logistic Systems.
If we want to coordinate all the local initiatives we need advanced systems that Up- and download, control, predict, connect, share, balance and distribute vital local resources on the short and long term.
In Nature we find comparable (Fractal) Distribution-Systems in the Lungs, the Arteries, Riverdelta, the Weather Cycle and Ecologies.
All of these fysical Flow Systems, that map 1 Resource-> on Many Resources or Many Resources->on 1 Resource, are based on the third Law of Thermodynamics called Constructal Law.
Virtual Power Plant
In the philosophy of the Stoics and Cynics of Ancient Greece the perfect human was not only arete (“all-around excellent”) but also independent of every need. Arete was associated with a full life as a citizen of a city.
Autarky was the ideal of a complete man who needed no one and no organization. This ideal can also be found in Zen Buddhism, Taoist practise, Early Christians (Nazarites), the Catholic Order of the Franciscans and the Protestant Quakers.
In reality it is almost impossible to be completely self-sufficient as a lonely human being. We need others when we are young, sick and old and we need others because we are specialized (“Talented”). Autarky is a possible aim for a small community.
Resource Balancing in Nature (Lungs, RiverDelta)
The religious, cultural and political movements at the left and the right aimed at living the “good life” (“Living Slow“) are converging in the movement of the Cultural Creatives. The Cultural Creatives are the new Elite that is moving to the AND-state (Left AND Right).
They don’t believe in the old Competitive Ideologies (Socialist, Capitalist, Religious, Liberal, Nationalist, Conservative, Globalist, etc..) but want to focus on the Shared Collaborative Values between all Humans. We all need Love, Food and Shelter.
Autarky has always been a major political aim of countries. Autarky is about the possibility to control your own future and to become independent of other powers that could use your dependency to tell you what to do to get what you desperately want.
At this moment the shortage of fossil fuels, especially oil and gaz, is used to influence the policy of other countries and is the cause of local conflicts in the Middle East.
China is buying all kinds of vital materials to make sure their economy will not become dependent on others. If they will succeed and nobody doubts about that, they will become the economic controlling power of the world.
Reaching a state of local autarky, being satisfied with what your environment provides you, has become the aim of the wordwide sustainability movement.
A strive for (regional) Autarky pushes the need to innovate to a higher level because not all regions contain the right materials, knowledge or experience to realize everything everybody needs. To become fully Autarkic the Production and Consumption Systems in the Region have to be based on simple concepts and parts that are available everywhere. Simple concepts are concepts that are easely copied.
The only way to combine Simple and Complex concepts is to use the Concept of Self-Reference (Fractals). The only way to make use of parts that are available everywhere is to make use of the Simple Building Blocks of Nature. A good example is the use of algea in food processing.
The concept of Autonomy not only plays an important role on the many levels of human (personal, organization, country) and animal society (Competitive vs Collaborative (Ants)). It is also a major subject in the research of (Second-Order) Cybernetics (Control Theory).
Self Reproducing Fractal Systems
Second Order Cybernetics is concerned with the Control of the System of Systems (the Meta-System). Hierarchy is not the solution to this problem because it leads to the logical problem of Infinite Regress (“Turtles on turtles on … all the way down”).
The Meta-System is controlling, reproducing and balancing itself by a Fractal Feedback-Cycle that moves Backwards (Consumption) and Forwards (Production).
A System is an Autarky if all its Levels are capable of Self-Reproduction.
If a human wants to become self-sufficient he has to accept and develop his own talent and find complementary people so he is able to create a Self-Reproducing Unit.
The smallest Self-Reproducing Unit in Human Society is the Family living in one House. This House has to produce more than enough Energy and the Garden has to produce more than enough food to support the Family.
If we cluster all these Self-Reproducing Families/Houses & Gardens in a small City the chances are high that the combined talents of the families will be able to supply every profession needed if the people of the city want to Live a Simple Life.
It is also possible that the surplusses and shortages of the families can be compensated by creating a Market on the level of the small City or one level higher, the Region.
An Autarkic Movement becomes an Aggressive Competitive Nationalistic Movement when the Citizens of the Country feel that their Country is plundered by outsiders and their Leaders promise to get it all back by expanding the Space to Live (“Lebensraum“) to facilitate everything that is needed.
This happened when Germany was preparing for War after the enormous reparation payments of 132 billion gold marks to the Winners of World War I.
The Autarkic Movement could also become a Peaceful Cooperative Social Movement like the Movement of Gandhi in India when the people accept the Good Life they already live and want to share the surpluses with others who are in a worse state.
Thermodynamics, the Science of Heat, became an important science in the 19th century when physicists started to improve the Steam-Machine. This blog is about a recently discovered law of Thermodynamics called the Constructal Law.
The Constructal Law describes How Intelligent Systems emerge out of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Heat is Random Motion
According to Thermodynamics the evolution of the universe has been characterized by an on-going transformation from a simple, restricted, highly condensed, homogeneous state to an increasingly complex, widely dispersed, dynamic, multipotent, granular diversity.
Energy moves from Heat to Cold where Heat is Chaos and Cold is Order
Energy always moves from High to Low Temperature. This is the main reason why most of the energy of Earth comes from our Sun.
With help of the Electro-Magnetic radiation of the Sun we call Light, plants, algae and bacteria transform simple molecules into complex organic structures (Biomass = Potential Chemical Energy) and store the energy of the Sun. Bacteria and Fungi brake up these structures, produce heat, reduce the complexity, and close the Cycle.
Movement
The Input of the Heat of the Sun has to be compensated by a comparable Output of Radiation otherwise Earth would be burned instantly. The difference between the Input and Output of Energy is transformed into Movements on Earth.
The Earth’s climate is a huge flow system. It circulates air and water from the tropics to the poles and back. These flows develop as air and water move from hot to cold regions, a result of variation in the heating of the Earth’s surface by the sun.
The Earth is not only heated by the Sun. The hot kernel of the Earth is surrounded by a small crust. At certain places on Earth and the Sea the rotating pool of the magma-ocean produces a lot of energy.
The Earth with its solar heat input, heat rejection, and wheels of atmospheric and oceanic circulation, is a heat engine without shaft. Its maximized mechanical power cannot be delivered, but is instead destined to dissipate through air and water friction and other forms of heat loss. It produces maximum power, which it then dissipates at a maximum rate.
The earth is wasting a lot of energy because the transmission of most of its energy is not contained in a Tube-like-system.
The system maximizes the sum of the work done driving the planetary circulation, and the heat rejected back to space at the cold end of the heat engine.
Turbulence
When the speed of the planetary circulation is low, so are the turbulent losses. As speed increases, up to a certain point the sum of work done (circulation speed) and heat rejected also increasing until the turbulence starts to interfere with the circulation and actually decrease the total of work done and heat rejected. That is the point, “the edge of turbulence“, at which the system will naturally run.
Balance
Every flow system tries to find the perfect balance between movement and friction.
The biomass on Earth is direct or later (Oil, Gaz, Coal) consumed by all kinds of organisms. In Food-Webs Organisms are consumed by other organisms.
We, the Humans, describe the interaction of the organisms in the Food-Webs as a Struggle for Live, a Survival of the Fittest, but the flow of energy in the food webs could also be seen as an adaptive chain of chemical reactions that are performed in self-moving, self-reproducing chemical factories.
Energy is Potential Movement. The potential energy stored in the biomass on Earth is transformed into circular movement (kinetic energy). During this transformation Heat is produced. Heat is the waste produced by a restrained non-effective movement.
The energy of the Sun produces all kinds of movements on Earth. Examples are river-delta’s, our respiratory system and the weather-system.
Constructal Theory
According to Constructal Theory the generation of design (configuration, patterns, geometry, shape, structure, rhythm) in nature is a physical phenomenon that unites all animate and inanimate systems. Design in Nature always shows itself as systems that flow and improve themselves. Systems improve themselves because the movement from chaos to order takes many discrete steps.
Flow Systems
Biological organisms are flow systems. River basins are flow systems. A Tree is a flow system. The Traffic System is a flow system. The City of Paris is a flow system. The Financial Market is a flow system. The Internet is a flow system. A Proces-Manager is a flow system.
Turbulence is the result of connected vortexes.Flow Systems
All these flow systems must be structured (architecturally designed) in such a way that the currents that flow (Life Energy, Water, Air, Electricity, Gaz, People, Cars, Trains, Airplanes, Content, Money) increasingly get to where they need to go. This gives shape and structure to everything that evolves over time.
Flow Systems always remove the Resistance to the Flow themselves.
Constructal Law is formulated as follows: “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.”.
Resistance to Change
Nature always provides Resistance to Change (Heat, Erosion, Friction) and this resistance is provided by the Systems of the Past. The current Order resists the potential Chaos of Free Moving Energy.
The Paths of Change of our Universe always move in the same way. The pattern looks like a Moebius Ring, the number 8, because this is the only way to cope with the polarity of the movements. In a Moebius Ring two Opposite Cyclic Movements are perfectly United.
A Moebius Ring is a 2D-structure that operates in 3D because it needs a Twist to operate.
Engines and Brakes
According to Constructal Theory the Energy of the Sun creates two types of Systems called Engines and Brakes.
Engines are the most effective and efficient states in the evolution of our Universe. They have found the best way to cope with the resistance that is provided by the Brakes. Brakes are the old systems like trees, forests and natural or constructed dams that slow down the movement so the potential energy can be stored.
If the Energy of the Sun is not stored, the Self-Reproducing Systems are unable to evolve to a higher level of organization. If every Resistance would be gone the Flow-Systems would Flow in a Radial Pattern to every Direction possible.
Stream-lining
If we remove the Natural Brakes (Forests, River-delta’s) the Expansive Flow-systems will take over control and the Smart Highly Improbable Next Generation Brake Systems, the Organisms would die.
We, the Humans, are here to Resist the Engines that give the Flow-Systems the opportunity to make Everything the Same. Every Thing has to become the Same because the Universe does not discriminate. Every configuration has the same chance to be alive.
Dependent on the type of flow there are standard solutions to the dualities that are provided by the eternal battle between engine (movement) and brake (not-movement).
The standard solution can be calculated using the Laws of Thermodynamics. Tree (or Leaf)-shaped fractal systems are for example the best solution for a One-to-Many (or Many-to-One) Flow. The Flow Systems always converge to these Shapes.
Our Earth is rotating, spinning and moving around our moving Sun. The influx of Energy on every area on Earth is changing all the time.
This means that every Flow-System on Earth has to adapt to the short term and long term changing Energy Input of the Sun.
Resilience: Expanding and Contracting a String
The stability of a Flow-System, the Resistance to Change, is highly dependent on the Resilience of the System.
According to the theory of Panarchy the Resilience of a System is dependent on the Potential and the Connectedness of a System.
In the Exploitation/Conservation phase of the Adaptive Panarchy-Cycle the Constructal Engines become more efficient (producing more Potential) and Connected. This means that the amount of possible paths in the River-delta of the System is reduced. This amount determinates the resilience of the system.
At the state of maximum production and maximum connection (conservation) the system is spending all its potential at self-reproduction and is highly vulnerable to external disturbances. At a certain moment when a disturbance destroys the majority of the paths the system collapses (release).
The bits and pieces, the components, of the scattered ecology are reassembled sometimes in a different way (reorganization) and the system starts again most of the time on a higher level of organization.
Law of Kleiber
Kleiber’s Law is an example of the Constructal Law. It shows the many levels of organization that have occured since the chemical factories of the bacteria started to work together. Kleiber’s Law can be extented to the level of the Community and the City.
The Panarchy Cycle is Self-Similar. It repeats itself on many Scales. The higher the scale the bigger the impact and the slower change takes place.
The Scales are interconnected. A huge disturbance on a lower scale (Revolt) can have an huge impact on a higher scale when both cycles are moving into the Release State.
A Slow moving High Level Cycle can help to restructure a fast moving cycle by providing the template of the way the components were originally assembled (its CommunityDNA) (Remember).
To calculate a probability you have to define the Space of all Possibilities of a System, the Phase Space.
When you don’t know what a system will look like it is impossible to calculate the Phase Space.
To calculate the possibilities of Constructal Law you have to imagine the possible constructions of Mother Nature.
Triangle of Pascal
It is possible to play with Probability Theory without knowing the exact Phase Space. In this case you have to look at the probabilities of the probabilities. These probabilities are described by the Triangle of Pascal. Behind the Triangle of Pascal a new Triangular Structure shows itself. This pattern goes on and on until the primary Triangle of Creation, the Holy Trinity, is reached.
Trinity
The Trinity is a combination of Desire (Mother, Female, Expansion, FLOW), Control (Father, Male, Compression, BRAKE) and the combination of both Expansion AND Compression also called the Void or the Tao. In Physics the Void is called the Vacuum or the Zero-Point-Field.
The Triangular Pattern behind the Triangle of Pascal
The Act of Creation
When we have moved back in time and have reached the state of the Trinity we are very close to the Big Bang.
The Vacuum is the Eternal Flow System of Creation. I
t contains everything that is possible even the impossible, the Empty Set.
The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
The Big Bang is a result of the Union of the Opposites (Yin/Yang, Male/Female, Matter/Anti-Matter, Expansion/Compression) that both came out of the Void.
According to Constructal Law every finite-size system must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.
The Tao is the Channel of the Energy of Life.
If Constructal Law is Right we have to give easier access to this Flow. We have to become the River to move to our final destination, the Sea of the Nothing.
De leer van de thermodynamica is in de 19e eeuw ontstaan uit natuurkundig onderzoek dat werd uitgevoerd om de efficiëntie van de stoommachine te verbeteren. Inmiddels heeft deze wetenschap belangrijke wetten over het Universum ontdekt.
Volgens de thermodynamica beweegt de energie in het Universum op de lange termijn zich van een onmogelijke extreem hete situatie, de Big Bang, naar een toestand van extreme kou en een hoge waarschijnlijkheid, de Big Freeze, waarin alles netjes uniform verdeeld is. Het universum beweegt van extreme chaos naar extreme ordening.
Energie Stroomt van Hoge (Chaos) naar Lage Temperatuur (Orde)
Energie stroomt daarom altijd van hoge (chaos) naar lage temperatuur (orde). Vrijwel alle energie op aarde komt van de zon in de vorm van electro-magnetische straling. Met behulp van deze zonnestraling transformeren planten, algen en bacteriën simpele chemische structuren in complexe biomassa (chemische energie). Bacteriën en schimmels breken deze structuren weer af waardoor de cyclus wordt gesloten.
Biomassa wordt door de rest van de organismen op aarde direct of soms veel later (olie/gas/steenkool) geconsumeerd. Het consumeren van de primaire zonne-energie vindt plaats in voedselketens waarin de organismen ook zelf weer worden geconsumeerd.
Een VoedselKeten is een Chemische ReactieKeten waardoor Energie stroomt van Chaos naar Orde
Vanuit ons menselijk perspectief interpreteren wij het consumeren van de participanten in een voedselketen als een competitie (“survival of the fittest”) maar we kunnen het ook zien als een uiterst flexibele keten van chemische reacties die worden uitgevoerd in bewegende zichzelf reproducerende chemische fabrieken.
Energie is de mogelijkheid om iets in beweging te krijgen of te houden. De opgeslagen (potentiële) energie in de aarde wordt soms in meerdere stappen omgezet in beweging (kinetische energie). Tijdens deze omzetting gaat er altijd warmte verloren (dissipatie, wrijving, weerstand, erosie).
De Energie van de Zon Voedt de Stroom-Systemen op Aarde
De energiestroom van de zon wekt door de rotatie van de aarde stroom-systemen (flow-systems) op. Stroom-systemen hebben een boom-structuur als de stroom van een punt naar een oppervlak of een volume gaat. Een voorbeeld zijn het weersysteem en een meanderende rivier-delta. De longen en de bloedvaten in ons lichaam hebben precies dezelfde opbouw omdat hetzelfde proces ook in ons lichaam optreedt.
Volgens de Constructal Theory van Adrian Bejan verbeteren de stroomsystemen zich steeds opnieuw en dat doen ze door gebruik te maken van de permanente slijtage (dissipatie, wrijving, weerstand, erosie) die de stroombeweging veroorzaakt. Uiteindelijk vindt er altijd weer ergens een doorbraak plaats in de meander.
Constructal Law
Adrian Bejan heeft de Constructal Theory volledig analytisch afgeleid uit de wetten van de Thermodynamica. Hij beschouwt het principe van de verbeterende stroomsystemen (“construction”) als een Hoofdwet van de Thermodynamica. Volgens hem is ontwerpen niet een intelligente actie maar een volstrekt logisch gevolg van de werking van ons Universum.
De stroom van onmogelijkheid naar uniformiteit, van hoge onwaarschijnlijkheid naar hoge waarschijnlijkheid gaat gepaard met allerlei tussenstadia waarin de bestaande structuren de nieuwe structuren de weg wijzen.
Oude Paden Slijten Uit
De doorbraken in de meanderende stroompatronen maken beter gebruik van de huidige mogelijkheden maar de oude paden behouden lange tijd hun functie. Hierdoor is een stroomsysteem niet afhankelijk van één pad en is daardoor ook bestand tegen calamiteiten (bijv. een sterk verhoogde regenval in het stroomgebied van de rivier).
Het systeem waar de stroomsystemen onderdeel van uitmaken bestaat uit Machines (Constructal Engines) en Barrières (Brakes).
De machines en de barrieres zorgen ervoor dat de aarde niet te warm of te koud wordt.
De Weg van de Minste Weerstand
De machines zoeken de weg van de minste weerstand, optimaliseren de stroom, bouwen structuren op, slopen de barrieres, produceren kinetische energie en minimaliseren de slijtage. De machines slechten het pad naar de Big Freeze waarin alles gelijk zal zijn en alles stil zal staan.
De barrières bevatten potentiële energie, leveren de weerstand om de minste weerstand te vinden, slopen de machines, optimaliseren daardoor de dissipatie en produceren een maximale hoeveelheid straling met een hogere golflengte als de binnenkomende zonnestraling die de aarde weer verlaat.
Produceren en Consumeren houden elkaar in Evenwicht
Produceren (Machines) en Consumeren (Vernietigen, Slijten) houden het wankele evenwicht van Moeder Aarde in stand.
De evolutie van ecologieën, steden, organismen (wet van Kleiber), talen (wet van Zipf), organen (de longen, bloedvaten), sporten en technologieclusters voldoen aan de Constructal Theory.
Eco-Systemen zijn ook Stroom-systemen
In 2002 hebben Holling en Gunderson het boek Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems gepubliceerd.
De vier fasen van een Ecologie.
Panarchy bevat een integrale visie op de evolutie en de adaptieve cyclus van de constructal engines die men ecosystemen noemt.
Panarchy : Een Ecologie doorloopt altijd Vier Fasen
Panarchy is ontstaan door het combineren van ogenschijnlijk conflicterende theorieën. Die theorieën leken conflicterend omdat ze betrekking hadden op de verschillende fasen (Zie Plaatje Phase Space hieronder) van de adaptieve cyclus die een ecologie doorloopt.
De combinatie van de vier mogelijke fasenruimten levert een op-en neergaande cyclus op waarin op een zeker moment een sprong (bifurcatie) wordt gemaakt naar een compleet nieuwe ruimte. Nadat deze sprong heeft plaatsvonden stopt de dynamiek van de oude ecologie.
Exploitatie: Orde en Overschotten
De meest herkenbare fase is de Exploitatie-fase (B). Dit is de opgaande lijn waarin de ecologie een hoge mate van orde bereikt en overschotten (Potential) produceert.
Veroudering: Het rekken van het Einde
Aan het eind van deze fase neemt de potentie af en wordt er van alles gedaan om de levensduur van de ecologie zo lang mogelijk te rekken (C -Conservation). In deze fase zijn de structuren verouderd geraakt en zijn er op allerlei plaatsen reeds alternatieven (bypass) ontstaan die beter passen op de huidige vraag naar beweging.
De ecologie is in de conservatie-fase vrijwel tot stilstand gekomen en besteed al zijn energie aan het onderhouden van zijn eigen structuur.
Tijdens de langzaam opgaande lijn van de Exploitatie-fase neemt de verbondenheid en vooral de afhankelijkheid (Connectedness) tussen de participanten onderling enorm toe waardoor de ecologie steeds kwetsbaarder wordt voor verstoringen.
Dood en Wedergeboorte
De constructal engines in de ecologie gaan steeds efficienter samenwerken wat ten koste gaat van de diversiteit en de variatie in de ecologie.
De ecologie kan verstoringen opvangen totdat de verschillende paden nog niet zijn dichtgeslibd maar een verstoring die alle paden tegelijkertijd raakt is dodelijk.
Op het laatst wordt de Veerkracht (Resilience) enorm op de proef gesteld en kan het gebeuren dat de Ecologie volledig ten onder gaat (Release) of na een grondige Reorganisatie weer aan een nieuwe levensloop kan beginnen.
Veerkracht
De resilience van een ecologie wordt gemeten door de snelheid te meten waarmee een ecologie zich weer herstelt van een verstoring.
Volgens Panarchy beweegt een Ecologie zich op verschillende schalen en plaatsen en kan op die plaatsen in verschillende fasen verkeren waardoor er allerlei soorten van interactie mogelijk zijn.
Hoe hoger de schaal hoe langzamer de cyclus verloopt.
Hoge schalen dempen de fluctuaties van de lagere schalen.
Een snelle lokale reorganisatie kan zich plotseling heel snel verspreiden (een Lopend Vuur (Revolt)) terwijl een langzame geleidelijke ontwikkeling (een organisatie) een snelle ontwikkeling weer kan dempen of tot stilstand kan brengen (de organisatie van de Brandweer (Remember)).
Schalen en Zelfreferentie
Panarchy is een Zelf-Refererend Cyclus-Model dat bestaat uit Vier Fasen en (minstens) drie Schaalniveaus.
De panarchische golfbeweging bestaat uit twee stappen n.l. de positieve weg Omhoog naar de Top (exploitation, conservation) en de negatieve weg Omlaag naar het Dal (depressie, reorganization).
Op een bepaald moment kan de golfbeweging zich splitsen waardoor een nieuw (ander) niveau van organisatie optreedt. Deze sprongen doen zich volgens een vaste regelmaat voor.
Een Mens is een Bewegende Ecologie
Als we kijken naar terminologie en inhoud valt het op dat er een groot verband bestaat tussen Ecologische-, Economische- en Persoonlijkheidstheorien. De natuur, de economie en de mens lijken onderhevig te zijn aan dezelfde wetten.
De theorie over de Menselijke Natuur heeft erg veel weg van de Theorie die wij over de Natuur zelf hebben ontwikkeld. De mens is een zelfstandig bewegende ecologie, een stromend stroomsysteem waaraan een groot aantal participanten deelnemen.
Bacteria wisselen DNA uit
Die participanten hebben zich in de loop der tijd verenigd omdat een samenwerkingsverband veel efficienter bleek te zijn dan een solitaire ontwikkeling.
Samenwerken
In het begin bestond het samenwerkingsverband uitsluitend uit simpele chemische fabriekjes, bacteriën, die genetische ontwerpinformatie (DNA) van hun fabriekjes uitwisselenden. De eerste fundamentele stap in de samenwerking van de bacterien was de statische spons. De mens heeft erg veel ontwerp-informatie gemeen met de spons.
Spons
Later gingen de organismen bewegen en waarnemen. Hierdoor gingen ze als individuen samenwerken met andere organismen die genetisch op hen leken (zie Genetic Similarity Theory). Het uitwisselen en combineren van ontwerp-informatie ging gewoon door (sex).
In volgende fasen ontstonden er hogere ordeningen, zoals lichamen die lichamen konden bevatten (huizen, steden, vliegtuigen, onderzeeboten en auto’s).
Een Stad en een Land is een Ecologie
Op dit moment is de (grote) stad het hoogste niveau van koppeling maar niets houdt de “Constructal Law” (of de Entropie) tegen om een ordening te gaan scheppen op het niveau land of aarde.
Dat betekent dat er nieuwe slagaderen moeten komen om de ontwerp-informatie en de energie die tussen de grote steden gaat stromen te faciliteren. Overduidelijk is dat het Internet de basis vormt van het zenuwstelsel van de aardse informatievoorziening.
Entropie
De thermodynamica is een statistische theorie. De kansverdeling van een Systeem wordt de Entropie van het Systeem genoemd.
Om een kans te kunnen berekenen moet je de kansruimte (de Phase Space) bepalen. Die bestaat uit alle mogelijkheden.
Het aardige is dat je niet hoeft te beschikken over kennis van alle combinaties van alle componenten van een specifiek systeem om erg veel te weten te komen over een kansruimte.
Driehoek van Pascal
Je kunt gaan spelen met willekeurige componenten (a,b,c,d,e,….), de combinaties in een matrix stoppen, gaan tellen en patronen zoeken in de getallen die er dan worden gevonden. Je bent dan bezig met de statistiek van de statistiek of beter de waarschijnlijkheid van de waarschijnlijkheid. De mogelijke patronen worden beschreven in de Driehoek van Pascal.
Wat dan blijkt is dat er achter het patroon van Pascal weer een patroon zit (zie plaatje). Dat patroon bevat wederom driehoeken en het is zeer waarschjinlijk dat er achter de driehoeken weer driehoeken zitten. Driehoeken in driehoeken in driehoeken in…. noemt men een fractal, een zelf-herhaling.
De (on)waarschijnlijkheid is eigenlijk heel mooi en vooral ook simpel geordend en komt voort uit een zichzelf herhalend patroon, de Drie-Eenheid, dat in iedere godsdienst op aarde voorkomt.
Wetenschap en Godsdienst gaan uiteindelijk over hetzelfde.
We have lost the relationship between Number and Form or Number and Magnitude as the Ancient Greeks called their Forms.
A few years ago a Revolution in Mathematics and Physics has started. This revolution is caused by Geometric Algebra.
In Geometric Algebra the Ancient Theories of Euclid and Pythagoras are reevaluated.
Numbers are Scalar (Quantum) Movements of Geometric Patterns and not Static Symbols of Abstractions that have nothing to do with our Reality.
Movements and not Forces are the Essence of Physics.
The basic rule Movement = Space/Time (v=s/t) shows that Time and Space are two Reciprocal 3D-Spaces. Our Senses Experience Space and not Time.
The Simple Rule N/N=1/1=1 balances the Duals of Space and Time. One Unit Step in Space is always Compensated by One Unit Step in Time.
Geometric Algebra has a strange relationship with Pascals Triangle. This Triangle, also called the Binomial Expansion, contains all the Possible Combinations of two Independent Variables. Our Universe is a Combination of Combinations exploring Every Possibility.
The last and perhaps most important Discovery in Mathematics called Bott Periodicity shows itself in Pascals Triangle.
Bott Periodicity proves that we live in a Cyclic Fractal Universe, the Wheel of Fortune, that is Rotating around the Void, the Empty Set. The Empty Set contains Every Thing that is Impossible in our Universe.
This blog is not a Scientific Article. I have tried to connect the Old Sciences and the New Sciences in my own Way.
It contains many links to Scientific Articles and even Courses in Geometric Algebra.
So if you want to Dig Deeper Nothing will Stop You.
About the One and the Dirac Delta Function
Every Thing was created out of No Thing, the Empty Set, ɸ, the Void, the Tao. The Empty Set contains 0 objects.
The Empty Set is not Empty. It contains Infinite (∞) Possibilities that are Impossible.
Every impossibility has a probability of 0 but the sum of all possibilities (1/∞=0) is always 1. In the beginning ∞/∞ =1 or ∞x0=1.
This relationship is represented by the Dirac Delta Function. It is used to simulate a Point Source of Energy (a Spike, an Explosion) in Physics.
The Delta is reprented by the Symbol Δ, a Triangle. The Delta is called Dalet in the Phoenican and Hebrew Alphabet. Daleth is the number 4 and means Door.
The original symbol of the Delta/Daleth contains two lines with a 90 Degree Angle. Two orthogonal lines create a Square or Plane.
The Dirac Delta Function is defined as a Square with an Area of 1, a Width of 1/n and a Height of n where n->∞.
The Dirac Delta Function is a Line with an Area of 1.
The Dirac Delta Function δ (x) has interesting properties: δ (x) = δ (-x), δ (x) = δ (1/x). It has two Symmetries related to the Negative Numbers and the Rational Numbers.
When we move from 2D to 1D, the Number Line, the Delta Function becomes the Set of the Numbers N/N =1.
The Monad (1) of the Tetraktys of Pythagoras, the Top of the Triangle, was created by Dividing the One (1) by Itself without Diminishing itself. The Monad (1/1=1) is part of the 1D Delta Function.
Creation is an Expansion of the 1/1 into the N/N, adding 1/1 all the time, until ∞/∞ is reached. At that moment every Impossibility has been realized.
To move Back to the Void and restore the Eternal Balance of the One, Dividing (Compression) has to be compensated by Multiplication (Expansion).
At the End of Time N/M and M/N have to find Balance in the N/N, move Back to 1/1, Unite in the 0 and become The Void (ɸ) again.
About the Strange Behavior of Numbers
The big problem of the Numbers is that they sometimes behave very differently from what we Expect them to do.
This Strange Behavior happens when we try to Reverse what we are doing.
It looks like the Expansion of the Universe of Numbers is Easy but the Contraction creates many Obstacles.
It all starts with the Natural Numbers (1,2,3,).
When we Reverse an Addition (Subtract) and move over the Line of the Void Negative Numbers appear. Together with the Natural Numbers they are called the Integers.
The same happens when we Reverse a Division and the Fractions (the Rational Numbers) (1/3, 7/9) suddenly pop up.
An Integer N is a Rational Number divided by 1 (N/1).
The Integers are the Multiples of 1, the Fractions are its Parts.
Numbers behave even stranger when we want to Reverse a Repeating Repeating Addition (Irrational Numbers) and want to calculate a Rational Power (2**1/2).
The Complex Numbers (or Imaginary Numbers), based on the Square Root of -1 called i, are a combination of the Negative Numbers and the Irrational Numbers.
Irrational Numbers ( the Pythagorean Theorem), Fractions (a Piece of the Cake) and Negative Numbers (a Debt) are part of our Reality but the Strange Number i represents something we cannot Imagine.
About the Duality and the Expansion of Space
In the beginning the only One who was in existence was the 1.
When the One divide itself again the number -1, the Complement of 1, came into existence.
1 and -1 are voided in the No Thing, the Empty Set, 0: -1 + 1 = 0.
The Two, the Duality, both started to Expand in Two Opposite Directions (<– and +->) both meeting in the ∞/∞. This expansion is what we call Space.
Space is a Combination of the Strings S(1,1,1,1,1,…) and -S = (-1,-,1,-,1,-1,…) where S+S=(0,0,0,0,0,0,…).
The Expansion pattern of Space is a Recursive Function S: S(N)=S(N-1)+1 in which + means concatenate (or add) the String “,1”.
An Addition X + Y is a concatenation of S(X) and S(Y). A Substraction X-Y is a concatenation of S(X) and -S(Y). In the last case all the corresponding combinations of 1 and -1 are voided. (1,1,1,1)-(1,1,1)=(0,0,0,1)=(1).
Multiplication XxY is Adding String S(Y) every time a “1” of S(X ) is encountered: 111 x 11 = 11 11 11. Dividing X/Y is Subtracting S(X) every time a “1” of S(Y) is encountered:.111 111 1/111=11 1/111. In the last example a Fraction 1/111 appears.
About the Trinity and the Compression of Space called Time
The Strange Behavior of Numbers is caused by the Limitations of our Memory System. We are unable to remember long strings that contain the same Number.
To make things easy for us we Divide Space into small Parts so we were able to Re-Member (Re-Combine the Parts).
When we want to Re-member, Move Back in Time, we have to Compress Expanding Space.
Compressed Space is Time.
Time and Space have a Reciprocal Relationship called Movement (Velocity = Space/Time).
There are many ways ( (1,1,1), (1,1,1),..) or ((1,1),(1,1))) to Compress a String in Repeating Sub-Patterns.
In the blog About the Trinity I showed that the most Efficient Way to group the One’s is to make use of a Fractal Pattern (a Self Reference) and Groups of Three Ones.
The Trinity applied to the Trinity ( A Fractal) is a Rotating Binary Tree. Binary Trees represent the Choices we make in Life.
The rotating Expanding Binary Trees generate the Platonic Solids (see linked video!) when the (number)-parts of the Binary Tree Connect.
When we connect Three Ones (1,1,1) by Three Lines (1-1,1-1,1-1) a 2 Dimensional Triangle Δ is Created.
If we take the Δ as a new Unity we are able to rewrite the patterns of 1’s and -1’s into a much Shorter Pattern of Δ’s and 1’s: (1,1,1),(1,1,1),(1,1,1), 1,1 becomes Δ,Δ,Δ,1,1.
We can repeat this approach when there is still a Trinity left: Δ,Δ,Δ,1,1 becomes ΔxΔ,1,1.
According to Euclid “A Ratio is a sort of relation in respect of size between two magnitudes of the same kind“.
A Magnitude is a Size: a property by which it can be compared as Larger or Smaller than other objects of the Same Kind. A Line has a Length, a Plane has an Area (Length x Width), a Solid a Volume (Length xWitdth x Height).
For the Greeks, the Numbers (Arithmoi) were the Positive Integers. The objects of Geometry: Points, Lines, Planes , were referred to as “Magnitudes” (Forms). They were not numbers, and had no numbers attached.
Ratio, was a Relationship between Forms and a Proportion was a relationship between the Part and the Whole (the Monad) of a Form.
Newton turned the Greek conception of Number completely on its head: “By Number we understand, not so much a Multitude of Unities, as the abstracted Ratio of any Quantity, to another Quantity of the same Kind, which we take for Unity”.
We now think of a Ratio as a Number obtained from other numbers by Division. A Proportion, for us, is a statement of equality between two “Ratio‐Numbers”.
This was not the thought pattern of the ancient Greeks. When Euclid states that the ratio of A to B is the same as the ratio of C to D, the letters A, B, C and D do not refer to numbers at all, but to segments or polygonal regions or some such magnitudes.
The Ratio of two geometric structures was determinated by fitting the Unit Parts of the first geometric Stucture into the Other.
An Example: The Tetraktys is a Triangle (A Monad) and contains 9 Triangles (a Monad). The 1x1x1-Triangle Δ, a Part of the Tetraktys, is Proportional to the Whole of the Tetraktys (T) and has a Ratio T/Δ = 3= Δ -> T = Δ (3) x Δ (3) = 9.
The Mathematics of Euclid is not a Mathematics of Numbers, but a Mathematics of Forms.
The symbols, relationships and manipulations have Physical or Geometric Objects as their referents.
You cannot work on this Mathematics without Knowing (and Seeing) the Objects that you are Working with.
About Hermann Grassman, David Hestenes and the Moving Line called Vector
Hermann Grasmann lived between 1809 and and 1877 in Stettin (Germany). Grassmann was a genius and invented Geometric Algebra a 100 years before it was invented.
In his time the most important mathematicians did not understand what he was talking about although many of them copied parts of his ideas and created their own restricted version. None of them saw the whole Grassmann was seeing.
When he was convinced nobody would believe him he became a linguist. He wrote books on German grammar, collected folk songs, and learned Sanskrit. His dictionary and his translation of the Rigveda were recognized among philologists.
Grassmann took over the heritage of Euclid and added, Motion, something Euclid was aware of but could not handle properly.
Grassmann became aware of the fact your hand is moving when you draw a 2D Geometric Structure. He called the Moving Lines, that connect the Points, Displacements (“Strecke”).
In our current terminology we would call the Displacements “Vectors”.
Vector algebra is simpler, but specific to Euclidean 3-space, while Geometric Algebra works in all dimensions. In this case Vectors become Bi/Tri or Multi-Vectors (Blades).
The Trick of Grassmann was that he could transform every transformation on any geometrical structure into a very simple Algebra. Multi-Dimensional Geometric Structures could be Added, Multiplied and Divided.
The Greek Theory of Ratio and Proportion is now incorporated in the properties of Scalar and Vector multiplication.
About a 100 years later David Hestenes improved the Theory of Grassmann by incorporating the Imaginary Numbers. In this way he united many until now highly disconnected fields of Mathematics that were created by the many mathematicians who copied parts of Grassmanns Heritage.
About Complex Numbers, Octions, Quaternions, Clifford Algebra and Rotations in Infinite Space
Grassmann did not pay much attention to the Complex Numbers until he heard of a young mathematician called William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879).
Complex numbers are ,just like the Rationals (a/b), 2D-Numbers. A Complex number Z = a + ib where i**2=-1. Complex Numbers can be represented in Polar Coordinates: Z = R (cos(x) + i sin(x)) where R = SQRT(a**2 + b**2). R is the Radius, the Distance to the Center (0,0).
When you have defined a 2D-complex Number it is easy to define a 4-D-Complex Number called a Quaternion: Z = a + ib + jc + kd or a 8-D Complex Number called an Octonion.
William Rowan Hamilton, the inventor of the Quaternions, had big problems to find an interpretation of all the combinations i, j and k until he realized that i**2 =j**2 = k**2 = ijk=-1.
What Hamilton did not realize at that time was that he just like Grassmann had invented Vector Algebra and Geometric Algebra.
This all changed when William Kingdon Clifford united everything in his new Algebra. Clifford’s algebra is composed of elements which are Combinations of Grassman’s Multivectors.
The Clifford Algebra that represents 3D Euclidean Geometry has 8 = 2**3 components instead of 3: 1 number (Point), 3 vectors (Length), 3 bivectors (Area) and 1 trivector (Volume).
It turns out if you use combinations of these elements to describe your geometric objects you can do the same things you did before (you still have 3 vector components).
In addition, you can have additional data in those other components that let you find distances and intersections (and a lot of other useful information) using simple and (computationally) cheap numerical operations.
The most important Insight of William Kingdom Clifford was that the Complex Numbers are not Numbers all.
They are Rotations in higher Dimensional Spaces.
About Pascal’s Triangle and Mount Meru
The String 1,3,3,1 of Clifford’s 3D Geometry is related to the 4th Level of Pascal’s Triangle. Level N of Pascal’s Triangle represents N-1-Dimensional Geometries.
The Sum of every level N of the Triangle is 2**N. This Number expresses the Number of Directions of the Geometric Structure of a Space with Dimension N.
A Point has 0 Direction, while a Line has 2 Directions, relative to its Center point, a Plane has 4 Directions, relative to its Center Point, and a Cube has 8 directions, relative to its Center point.
Pascal’s Triangle is also called the Binomial Expansion. This Expansion shows all the Combinations of two letters A and B in the function (A+B)**N. Level 1 of the Triangle is (A+B)**0 = 1 and level 2 is A x A + 2 A x B + B x B -> 1,2,1.
The Binomial Expansion converges to the Bell-Shaped Normal Distribution when N-> ∞.
The Diagonals of Pascal’s Triangle contain the Geometric Number Systems (Triangular Numbers, Pyramid Numbers, Pentatonal Numbers, ..) and the Golden Spiral of the Fibonacci Numbers.
Pascal’s Triangle is a Repository of all the Possible Magnitudes and their Components.
The Normal Distribution shows that the first level of the Triangle (the Tetraktys) is much more probable than the last levels.
The first four Levels of the Triangle of Pascal contain the Tetraktys of Pythagoras.
The Tetraktys is an Ancient Vedic Mathematical Structure called the Sri Yantra, Meru Prastara or Mount Meru.
About Numbers, Operations and the Klein Bottle
The Complex Numbers are not “Numbers” (Scalars) at all.
They are “Operations” (Movements) that can be applied to Magnitudes (Geometries) and Magnitudes are Combinations of the Simple Building Blocks of the Tetraktys, Points and Lines.
The Tao of Ancient China was not for nothing represented by a Flow of Water. According to the Ancient Chinese Mathematicians Every Thing Moves. In the Beginning there was only Movement.
In the Beginning only the One was Moved but when the Duality was created the Two moved around each other never getting into contact to Avoid the Void.
When we look at the Numbers we now can see that they are the result of the Movements of the first Diagonal of Pascals Triangle, the 1’s (Points) or better the Powers of the One: 1 **N (where N is a Dimension).
Even in the most simple Number System, the Unary Number System, Concatenation is an Operation, An Algorithm.
The Mathematician John Conway recently invented a new Number System called the Surreal Numbers that contains Every Number you can Imagine.
The Surreal Numbers are created out of the Void (ɸ) by a simple Algorithm (Conway calls an Algorithm a Game) that describes Movements (Choices of Direction: Up, Down, Left, Right, ..) that help you to Navigate in the N-Dimensional Number Space.
The Ancient Chinese Mathematicians played the same Game with the Numbers.
Algorithms were already known for a very long time by the Ancient Vedic Mathematicians. They called them Yantra’s.
Geometry is concerned with the Static Forms of Lines and Points but there are many other more “Curved” forms that are the result of Rotating Expansion and Compression. These forms are researched by the modern version of Geometry called Topology.
The most interesting 4D Topological Structure is the Klein Bottle. The Klein Bottle is a combination of two Moebius Rings. It represents a Structure that is Closed in Itself.
It can be constructed by gluing both pairs of opposite edges of a Rectangle together giving one pair a Half-Twist. The Klein Bottle is highly related to the Ancient Art of Alchemy.
The movement of the Duality around the Void can be represented by a Moebius Ring the Symbol of Infinity ∞.
Later in this Blog we will see why the Number 8 is a Rotation of ∞ and the symbol of Number 8 is a combination of the symbol of the number 3 and its mirror.
First we will have a look at the Reciprocal Relation between Space and Time.
Larson believed that the failure to recognize that Motion is the most basic physical constituent of the universe has handicapped the progress of the traditional study of physics, which focuses on Forces.
The definition of Motion stems from the Equation of Velocity, v = ds/dt.
Instead of depending upon the change of the location of an object to define an arbitrary “quantum” of space per “quantum” of time, such as miles per hour, or meters per second, the RST assumes that the observed universal passage, or progression, of time is one aspect of a universal motion that necessarily must be accompanied by a universal “passage,” or progression, of space.
The Units of Time fill up the Units of Space. Space and Time are Duals.
Space is not-Time and Time is not-Space. Time is Non-Local, Cyclic and represented by the Rotating Imaginary Numbers. Space is Local, Linear and Represented by the Scalar Numbers. Space is the Vacuum and the Nothing and Time is the non-vacuum, the Every Thing, the Solids represented by the Cube of Space.
The Cube of Space is the structure behind the Tetraktys but also behind the Book of Genesis.
Our Reality contains two Reciprocal 3D-structures related to Space and Time. Space and Time are related by the Simple Formula N/N=1/1=1, the Formula of Diracs Delta Function.
We are able to perceive the Real 3D-Structure of Space. The 3D-Structure of Time is Imaginary. It is situated in the Imaginary Number Space of i.
Larson, a Self Thought Genius like Grassmann, developed Geometric Algebra without knowing anything about Geometric Algebra but he also invented String Theory long before String Theory was invented. The Mathematics of Larson is also the Mathematics of the Tetraktys of Pythagoras without even knowing anything about it.
Larson was able to Calculate all the important Physical Numbers without any problem and was also able to Calculate Chemical Structures and Reactions.
About the Bott Periodicity
The fourth line of Pascals Triangle and the Tetraktys contains 8 Directions in the Four Geometric Dimensions: 0, 1, 2, and 3.
Mathematicians are intrigued with this number 8, because they find it popping up unexpectedly in advanced mathematics.
In fact, expanding the Binomial Expansion to 8 dimensions just creates an inverse copy of these first Four Dimensions, and then the pattern just repeats itself with a half-twist and back from there, ad infinitum.
The mathematician John Baez wrote an article in which he relates this 8-fold Periodicity to the Scalars (1), the Complex Numbers (2), the Quaternions (2×2), and the Octonions (2x2x2 = 2**3).
The Universe of Numbers and Magnitudes is Cyclic and Fractal.
Our own Reality, symbolized by the Tetraktys, repeats itself in Higher Dimensions until Infinity.
The Tetrad, represents Completion, because it contains all its Previous Numbers, the 1, 2, 3, and itself, 4, in One Number, 10 = (The One) + 9 (= 3 (Trinity)x 3 (Trinity) = Tetraktys).
As you can see in the Picture above the Fractal Pattern of 8 contains two kinds of Trinities/Triangles, an Upside and a Downside (Rotated by 180 Degrees) Triangle. When you Rotate by 180 Degrees the 1 becomes -1 and 1 + -1 =0 is the Void.
The Multi Dimensional Rotations of the Octonions always Come Back to Square 1/1=1, the One and keep Rotating around the Center, the Nothing, Until Infinity.
The first part of this Blog is about the Triangular numbers, related to the Number 3, the Holy Trinity.
The second part shows that Pascal’s Triangle (called Meru’s Mountain in Mystics), the Binomial Expansion, contains every Possible Mystical Number Pattern (including the Triangular Numbers) you can Imagine.
Pascal Triangle also shows that our Universe is a combinatorial miracle. It explores every possibility, is always in balance, expands and moves back to the beginning which is and was the Void, the Empty Set, the merge of Every Paradox, that is Possible.
About Mystical Number-Patterns
The Sēpher Yəṣîrâh (Book of Formation or Book of Creation, ספר יצירה) is the oldest book on Jewish Mysticism. The Sefer Yetzirah describes how the universe was created by the “God of Israel” through 32 Wondrous Ways of Wisdom.
The Number 32 is the Sum of the 10 Sephirot and the 22 Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet.
The Sephirot is related to the Tetraktys of Pythagoras. The Tetraktys embodies the Four main Greek Cyclical (Platonic) Musical Harmonies: the Fourth (4:3), the Ffth (3:2), the Octave (2:1) and the Double Octave (1:4).
1+2+3+4 = 10. 10 is the 4th Triangular Number. The Nth triangular number is the Sum of the numbers 1 -> N. This Sum is equal to 1/2N(N+1).
Between the 10 Sephirot run 22 Channels or Paths which connect them.
The Sephirot are the Points of the Tetraktys. The Hebrew Letters are the Lines between the Points. The Lines of the Sephirot and the Tetraktys create a Cube (6) at the Top and a Tetrahedron (4) at the Bottom.
The Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are divided in the 3 Mother Letters (אמש, the Trinity), the Seven Doubles (The Planets) and the Twelve Simples (the Zodiac).
The 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are a combination of the Trinity, the 7 Planets and 12 Signs of the Zodiac.
When you analyse the Sepher Yeshirah the Cube of Space (the Kaaba) appears out of the Hebrew Alphabet. The Kaaba is related to the Seventh Planet, Saturn.
The 3 Axis of the Cube of Space are the Trinity, the 6 (2×3) Faces of the Cube stand for the Planets with the 7th Saturn, the Son of the Central Sun (3+1 (Center)+3) in the Center and the 12 (4×3) Boundary Lines of the Cube represent the 12 Signs of the Zodiac.
As you can see the Number Three, the Triangle, plays an important role. It is the First Structure that is Closed in Itself and is therefore Topological related to the Circle. The Circle (and the Triangle) is able to rotate With and Against the Clock. This property is called Spin in Physics.
It is very important to realize that Everything Rotates in our Universe around a Central Object that rotates around another Central Object. The Central Object Gives Time, determinates the Rythm or Harmonics, of the Rotation Structure.
The Trinity rotates around the Void. The 7 Chakra’s of the Human rotate around the 4th Chakra, the Heart Chakra, ((3+(1)+3)=7).
The Planets rotate around the Sun and the Sun rotates around the Central Black Hole. The arrow of Sagitarius points to this Black Hole.
On a Six Sided Dice the Sum of all the Numbers is Seven (1+6,2+5,3+4). The Sum of the Six Numbers is 3 X 7 = 21. If we add the Center (Saturn) the Number 22 appears.
22/7 is a good approximation of the number π. π relates the Square (and the Cube) to the Circle.
The Cube of Space symbolizes the Playing Board of the Game of Life. On the Playing Board we have a Free Choice to move into the many Paths that are available. Every Path has its own Probability and this Probability can be calculated. If we don’t know what to do we could throw a Dice.
The Cube of Space contains the same six lines that exist in the I Ching. Four of the lines are of equal length, the other two, the diagonals, are longer. For this reason symmetry cannot be statically produced and the Dance (of Shiva) results.
The Circle represents the Cycles of Time of the Matrix of the Demiurg. Behind all the Probabilities of all the Possible Paths lies a Hidden Order.
A Hexagram, represented by the Star of David, is a Two-Dimensional (Orthographic) projection of a Cube. A Symmetric Projection of the Cube creates a Cross.
A Hexagram is a Two Dimensional Cube
One of the many meanings of the first word in the Bible “Bereshit“, is “They (Elohim) created Six” which means that in Six Stages of the Time Cycle the Cube of Space (or the Hexagram) was populated. On the Seventh Day the Center was filled.
The book of Genesis does not describe the creation of the Trinity (They, Elohim, 1+2+3, 1x2x3) itself. This stage was later covered in the Zohar.
In my blog “About the Sum of Things” it is shown that Six Stages are part of an Expansion Pattern governed by the Powers of Two. After 2**6 (64) Expansions (or Compressions) the Same Fractal Pattern repeats itself on a higher level.
64 is the Number of the I Tjing and the Game of Chess. The number 32 of the Sepher Yeshirah is 64/2 and is a Contraction of the I Tjing.
The I Tjing is a contraction of the oldest Divination System in the Word called FA. FA is still used all over the world by the followers of the oldest wisdom-system created by the YOrubA in Africa. The Yoruba lived at the place where the ancient Paradise was situated.
The Fourth Day (Sun (4), Moon (5))
About the Triangular Numbers
The Tetraktys contains the Numbers 1, 3, 6 and 10. These numbers are called Triangular Numbers.
The number 21 is also a Triangular Number because it is the Sum of the Sixth Level of the Tetraktys, the Numbers 1 to 6.
The Fifth Level of the Tetractys is related to the Number 15 (1+2+3+4+5). This number connects the Tetractys and the Sephirot to the 3×3 Lo Shu Magic Square also called the Seal of Saturn.
The nth Triangle number T(n) is the number of dots in a triangle with n dots on a side; it is the sum of the n natural numbers from 1 to n. T(n)=n(n+1)/2.
The Triangular Numbers contain the Perfect Numbers. A perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper positive divisors, that is, the sum of its positive divisors excluding the number itself. Six (1+2+3=1x2x3) is the first Perfect Number and 28 (1+2+4+7+14) is the next.
The Sum of two Triangular Numbers is a Square
The Sum of two adjacent Triangular Numbers T(n) + T(n+1) is a Square Number because Two Triangels can be combined in a Square. 1+3=2**2 and 3+6=3**2.
There are many relationships between the Triangular Numbers. These relationships were the focus of the research of the Mystical Group of the Mathematikoi of Pythagoras.
6 (Bereshit, the Cube, the Hexagram) + the 22 Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet = 28, the Next Perfect Number (1+2+3+4+5+6+7).
28 is like the numbers 6 and 15 also a Hexagonal Number. As you can see in the picture below 28 is the fourth Hexagonal Number. As we have seen before a Hexagon is a Projection of a Cube so 28 represents a Cube in a Cube in a Cube. A Cube in a Cube is called a Tessarect or a HyperCube.
The Number 15 is a Cube in a Cube called a Tessarect or a HyperCube
The first sentence in Genesis (“In the beginning Elohim created Heaven and Eearth“) contains 7 words and 28 letters. This indicates that the Creation Process was already in the 7th stage of the Tetraktys and in its 2nd Fractal Expansion, the Birth of the Material Universe.
The sum of the entire verse is the 73rd Triangular Number. The prime Numbers 37 and 73 are geometrically related. They form the third and the fourth term in the sequence of Star Numbers (1, 13, 37, 73, 121).
Hexagon/Star pairs are closely related to Triangular numbers. Their product is always a Triangle, and they can be symmetrically generated from a Pair of Triangles.
Star Numbers are a Combination of Two Triangular Numbers
The Symbol of the Heart Chakra contains Two Triangles.
About Pascal’s Triangle
When a number represents a Geometric Structure it is called a Figurative Number.
Every possible figurative number is generated by the Triangle of Pascal.
The Triangle of Pascal was known long before Pascal (re)discovered it.
It was known in Ancient India as the Meru Prastara and in China as the Yang Hui. Meru Prastara relates the triangel to a Mystical Mountain called Mount Meru. Mount Meru is also implemented in the Sri Yantra.
The Triangle shows the Coefficients of the Function F(X,Y))= (X+Y)**n. If n=0 F(X,Y)=1 and if n=1 F(X,Y)=X+Y so the Coeffcients are (1,1).
Pascals Triangle is a 2-Dimensional System based on the Polynomal (X+Y)**N. It is always possible to generalize this structure to Higher Dimensional Levels. 3 Variables ((X+Y+X)**N) generate The Pascal Pyramid and n variables (X+Y+Z+….)**N generate The Pascal Simplex.
The rows of the Pascal’s Triangle add up to the power of 2 of the row. So the sum of row 0 is 2**0 and the sum of row 1 is 2**1 =2.
The Sum of the rows of the higher n-dimensional versions of the Triangle is n**N where n is the Amount of Variables and N the level of expansion. So the Sum of Pascal’s Pyramid (3 variables X,Y,Z) is 3**N.
The most interesting property of the Triangle is visible in the Diagonals.
The First Diagonal contains only 1’s. The Ones represent Unique Objects. They are the Points in the Tetraktys.
The Second Diagonal contains the natural numbers. These Numbers are used to Count Objects that are The Same. The Natural Numbers are the Lines that connect the Points. The Natural Numbers are the Sum of the previous Ones.
The Third Diagonal contains the triangular numbers. The Triangular Numbers are the Sum of the previous Natural Numbers.
Fermat stated that Every Positive Integer is a Sum of at most three Triangular numbers, four Square numbers, five Pentagonal numbers, and n n-polygonal numbers.
The Tetrahedron with basic length 4 (summing up to 20) can be looked at as the 3-Dimensional analogue of the Tetraktys.
The Diagonals of the Triangle of Pascal contain every Possible 2-Dimensional Figurative Number (and Structure).
These Numbers are Projections of Higher Dimensional Numbers and Higher Dimensional Structures.
The Higher Dimensional Versions of the Triangle (the Pascal Pyramid, The Pascal Simplex) contain these structures.
The Rows of the Triangle Sum to the Powers of Two (2 Dimensions). These Powers control the Levels of Expansion.
Every 7th step the Fractal Pattern of the Triangle repeats itself on a higher Level.
The Figurative Numbers are the Geometric Shapes that are created by the Lines of the Natural Numbers that are connecting the Points of the One.
The StarTetrahedron, shows the Pattern behind the Sequence of Fibonacci.
Every Figurative Number N is the Sum of the Figurative Numbers N-1. Every Geometric Shape is a combination of all the Previous Geometric Shapes.
This means that Every Geometric Shape is in the end The Sum of the Sum of the Sum of …. Triangels, Trinities (Elohim) or Triangular Numbers and therefore an Extension of the Tetractys of Pythagoras.
The rows of the Triangle of Pascal also shows the Bell Shaped Pattern of the Normal Distribution.
The Probability Distribution of the Triangle of Pascal converges to the Normal Distribution because of the Central Limit Theorem. Every Row has a Mean of N/2 and a Variance of (N**1/2)/2 which means that with every new row the Mean and the Variance become Bigger and Bigger.
The Triangle of Pascal and therefore the Figurative Numbers describe Everything that is Possiblebut every Expansion of the Triangle is less Likely to Occur.
The Triangle of Pascal Mod 3 represents the Tetraktys in the Tetraktys in the …..
Because of the Fractal Expansion/Contraction Pattern The Cube of Space, related to the Element Earth, explains Everything there is to Know on Our Level of Existence, Mother Earth.
The interesting part of the Figurative Numbers is that they representent Visual Patterns with which we can Reason.
We don’t need complex formulas because we can See what is Possible.
The interesting part of the Triangle of Pascal is that we can See that the Complex Figurative Structures are created out of a very Simple Structure, the Triangle.
If we want to understand our Reality we have to begin with looking at the Beginning and not start somewhere in the Middle.
If we look at the Fractal Expansion Pattern of the Triangle we See that Every new Stage is an Expansion Out of the Middle.
The Expansion of the Human, the Next Step in our Evolution, is therefore an Expansion Out of the Heart, the Balance of Father Sky and Mother Earth.
Life is not only about Me and the Other.
Life is also about the Relationship between Me and the Other.
If we don’t Collaborate the Next stage in our Evolution will never happen.
Early astronomical traditions identify the “Primeval Sun” as the planet Saturn.
Saturn was identified with Osiris in Egypt and Shiva in India. The Babylonians, the founders of Astronomy, called Saturn the “Light of Heaven, the Sun-God Shamash (or Šamaš).
Tacitus records the Jews as worshipping the planet Saturn, Shabbatai, as their god. In Plato’s Timaeus, the word for the planet Saturn is Helios, the “Sun” god. Popular Greek traditions identified Saturn as Kronos (Father Time). At that time Saturn ruled “over the Pole“.
The Pole was seen as the Entrance to the Other World. The Shaman using his Light Body had to Climb Jacobs Ladder to get there.
In Sankrit, Suryaputrah, “Son of the Sun” is the name for the planet Saturn. The Medieval Alchemists called Saturn the “Best Sun”.
The Kabbalah divides the Universe into Ten Spheres, or Sephiroth, which have Planetary and other Correspondences. The Sphere of Saturn is known as Binah (“Understanding“) and the terrestrial sphere, known as Malkuth, is said to have its foundation in Binah.
Long ago Saturn exercised the supreme power on Earth, his reign being remembered as the Golden Age, his time revered, a time which Man longed to return to. At this moment the Cycle is ruled by Kali. The Mother Goddess Kali represents the Moon in Saturn.
Semitic civilizations referred to the god Saturn as “El”. El was the source of the Great Flood. El was represented by a Black Cube. The Kaaba (“the Cube of Space”) is a cube-shaped building in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and is the most sacred site in Islam. The building predates Islam, and, according to Islamic tradition, the first building at the site was built by Abraham.
In Ancient History the World was ruled by the Female and the Mother Goddess. The Vulva or the Yoni (Circle), of the Ancient Mother Goddess was always combined with a Black Stone (with a Point), the Symbol of the Phallus (Lingham) of the Male Creator. The God and the Godddess created the Universe in a short moment of Extreme Extacy.
The Pelgrims have to encircle the Black Stone of El Seven Times just like the Rings of Saturn encircle the Center.
About the Number Seven
The Blog “About the Sum of Things” is about the so called Seal of Saturn and the related 3×3 Magic Square of Saturn also called the Lo Shu in China.
Saturn is the Seventh Planet and Saturday (Sabbath) the Seventh Day of the Week.
In the Blog it is shown that the 3×3 Magic Square generates Two Cyclic Systems. One System, the Wheel of Karma is a Fractal Torus and is related to the Expansion and Compression of the Universe and the number 2. The Fractal Torus contains Seven Levels associated with the Chakra’s, the Seven Heavens, The Seven Tones and the Seven Colors. The Tower of Bable and the Egyptian Pyramids are a Simulator of the Torus.
The other is a Cyclic Vortex System, the Cycle of Death, related to the number 3 and the Triangel.
The Number Seven is the Repeating Factor of the Torus System. After Seven Steps a new Fractal Level of the Expansion/Compression-Cycle is reached. On the Seventh Day a new Stage in the Creation Process of our Universe is started.
The Torus looks like a Yoni and as you can see the Lingham of Shiva is Inside the Torus. This is the reason why Saturn is associated with Binah and Shakti, the Female Part of Shiva. It also explains why Saturn is related to Fertility.
The Sequence of the Trinity (A-U-M) controls the Creation/Destruction-Cycle of our Universe. This is the Cycle of Shiva, the Creator and Destructor.
Shiva and Shakti are the Circle (Torus, Yoni) and the Lingham (the Point, Singularity, Lingham). They are the 0 (or the 9) and the 1.
The only thing you need to Create our Universe is de Tao (0), the One, the Two and the Three and they will Generate Everything.
Why is Saturn the Son of the Sun?
There are two explanations. The first one is a Physical Explanation related to Plasma Physics. In the stage of the Golden Age our Solar System contained only Three Planets and Saturn was the Best Sun. Plasma Physics is able to explain many ancient Symbols.
The Second explanation goes back to the Numbers. The Magic Square of Saturn is the First Magic Square that can be constructed. 2×2 is not existent and 1×1 is a Point. The Magic Square of the Sun is the 6×6 Magic Square with Sum 666! and Constant 111. The 3×3 Square can be extracted (is a Son) out of the 6×6 Square.
The Demiurg with the Torus and the Zodiac
About Kronos, Father Time
The Greek called Saturn Kronos, Father Time.
Most of the Souls are not aware of Cycling Cycle of the Fractal Torus of the Number Two of Duality, the Wheel of Karma. They stay in the same Place and Their reincarnations are a Merry Go Round.
Some Souls move around the Torus and experience many experiences in the Seven Universus.
All of them are Kept in de Rotating Matrix of the Demiurg.
If you really want to be Free you have move out of Duality into the Cycle of the Divine Trinity (Shiva).
When you want to leave the Rotating Cycle (Torus) of everyday Life and move into a higher dimension (more possibilities, more perspectives), you have toTwist Yourself and Merge with Yourself.
You Twist when you Cross the Cycle of Life and Enter the Cycle of Death of the Trinity. When you join this Cycle you leave the Seven Heavens and move to the Void in the Middle of the Death Cycle.
The Void, the Kingdom, Cleans every thing and makes every thing New.
You Merge with Yourself when you integrate the Inside and the Outside, the Up and the Down, the Male and the Female.
“If we then become children, would we thus enter the kingdom?” Jesus said unto them, “When ye make the two one, and when you make the inside like unto the outside and the outside like unto the inside, and that which is above like unto that which is below, and when ye make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male no longer be male nor the female female; and when ye fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will ye enter into the kingdom.” (Gospel of Thomas, Logion 22).
The Lo Shu is a Chinese Model for Time and was used to design Cities, Temples, Cycles and Calendars.
The Lo Shu is a 3×3 Magic Square created by Fu Xi, the Founder of Chinese Civilization. Fu Xi lived around the time of the Great Flood.
The Magic Square was carried by a Turtle. The Turtle is the symbol of the Constellation Orion. Many Ancient Cultures claim that our Ancestors came from this constellation. The Square of Lo Shu is also referred to as the Magic Square of Saturn or Chronos (Time).
According to Chinese Creation Myth the world started with 無極(wuji: nothingness), the Tao. Out of the Tao, the Egg of the Zero (0) and the Supreme Pure One (1) emerged. In the next step the Trinity (3), the Three Pure Ones, was created.
The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things (Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 42).
The Trinity is represented by a Triangle. A combination of Two Triangels is a Square. The combination of Two (2) Triangels is also the Symbol of the Heart Chakra, the merge of Heaven, the Upper Triangel and Earth, the Lower Triangel.
The most complex Yantra (“machine”), the Sri Yantra, contains 43 Triangels. The Sri Yantra is determinated by the Bronze Mean. The Bronze Mean is a generalization of the Sequence of Fibonacci based on the Trinity. The Bronze Mean generates Quasi-Crystals and Penrose Tilings.
The Lo Shu Magic Square not only shows the Connection between the Four Forces that came out of the Two Forces, Expansion and Compression, it also shows the connection between Heaven and Earth.
In the Magic Square of Lu Shu the Even Numbers (2,4,6,8 = 2 x (1,2,3,4 = 2×2)) are Black(Yang, Male). The Odd Numbers (1,3,5,7,9 = 3×3) are White (Yin, Female). The Sum of all the Numbers is 15 (3×5).
The Even Numbers are situated at the Corners of the Square.
When the numbers of each row are multiplied (8x1x6; 3x5x7; 4x9x2) they together total to 225 ((3×5)x(3×5)) — as do those of the columns (8x3x4; 1x5x9; 6x7x2).
The Magic Square is dominated by two numbers (2**1, 2**2, 2**3) and (3, 2×3, 3**2), It contains four Prime Numbers (1,3,5,7). It also contains the first Perfect Number 6 (1+2+3 =1x2x3). 6 is also a Harmonic Divisor Number and has a Harmonic Divisor 2. The Sixth Day in the week is the day of Saturn, the God of Time.
The sequence 1,2,4,8, 1, 3,6,9, 27 is called theTetrad of the Pythagorians and was, according to Plato, used by the Demiurg, the Creator of our Universe, to create the Soul. The Soul is a mixture of the Same (1), the Different (2), and Existence (3). The Tetrad was used to define the Harmony of the Spheres.
When you connect the numbers of the Lo Shu a pattern appears that is called the Seal of Saturn or the Dance of Yu.
The Seal of Saturn or the Dance of Yu
The Sum of Magic Squares is a Magic Square and the product of a Magic Square M with a number a is again a Magic Square aM. Both Rules can be used to construct a Magic Square out of simple Binary Squares called Magic Carpets. One of these Magic Carpets is the Identity Matrix with One on the Diagonal.
Every Magic Square is related by Rotation and Mirroring to Eight other Magic Squares. This means that the central Lo Shu Magic Square with the Five in the Middle is related to Eight other Magic Squares with the other Numbers in the Middle. One of them contains the Nine and is called the Well.
The Lo Shu and the Well
The Sum of numbers of the Well is 18 (2×9) and the sum of all opposites across the 8 Spoke Wheel = 9 (9+0, 8+1, 7+2, 6+3, 5+4). 2×9 means that there are Two Complementary Magic Squares. One Magic Square is Rotating with the Clock and the other Against the Clock.
The Well is an Expansion and Contraction Cycle based on Powers of 2.
The Nine is the most important Number in the Magic Square. The Nine comes back in many ancient mythologies like the Egyptian Pesedjet and the Greek Ennead.
When you add the separate numbers of a number (54 = 5+ 4 = 9) the result is the Remainder when you divide the number by 9. This number is called the Modulo 9 number.
The Powers of 2 (= Expansion) Mod 9 creates a pattern (1,2,4,8,(16)7,(32)5,(64)1,(128)2,…). This pattern is reversed when we divide by 2 (=Compression) (1/2 (0,5 =5), 1/4 (0,25 = 7), 1/8 (0,125 =8), 1/16 (0,625 = 4), 2,1).
The Expansion and Compression Pattern shows that the same pattern repeats itself when the Magic Square is expanded or compressed Six (6) Times. The 7th Step is the Same as the First Step.
After 2**6=64 (8×8) divisons of the cell a Specialized Cell is created, the stem cell. The same happens in Music. The Game of Chess (Chiu King in China) with its 8×8 = 64 = 2**6 Playing Board contains every possible situation of the Game of Life.
The Two-Pattern does not contain the numbers 3,6 and 9. The number 9 is repeated every time when the pattern is expanded and compressed which means that Nine is the same as the Identity, the One (1+9 = 1). 3 and 6 Oscillate (1x2x3=6 and 1+2+3 =6) and therefore represent the Duality (3+6 = 9, = the One).
If we combine the Expansion and Compression patterns a Torus (a Rotating Circle, The Wheel of Time) appears. The Zero (the Void) is in the Center and Contains the Vortex. The Vortex represents another Cycle (Black/White Hole, 3,6,9, the Wheel of Order) in which every structure/pattern is destroyed to start All Over Again.
If we subtract the numbers in the Square by the number of the Center, 5, a highly Symmetric Pattern emerges. This pattern shows that there are Two Mirror Universes both containing four Forces.
When we transform this pattern from Modulus 9 to Modulus 3 (the Trinity) we see that the number 4 equals 1 and represents a new beginning of the Cycle.
4
9
2
-5
-1
4
-3
3
5
7
-5
-2
0
2
8
1
6
-5
3
-4
1
The Magic Square with the Zero in the Middle is surrounded by two Sequences of 123(4) with different Signs. The Signs are arranged in a Cyclic Pattern (- -, + -, + +, – +) that contains the Four Permutations of – and +. The Sum of the ++ and the — is -3 and +3, the Trinity. The Sum of +- en -+ is the One.
The Cyclic Pattern of + and – represents the Prisoners Dilemma that is solved by the Strategy of Tit for Tat. This strategy is applied by the Trickster, the God of Paradox, a concept of God in which God creates games that create games.
When you use the basic Addition and Multiplcation Rules of the Magic Square many important numbers and patterns appear that are related to Ancient Calenders, Symbols and Cycles.
About the Sum of Things
The Lo Shu Magic Square appeared a few years ago when I wanted to know more about Acupuncture. Acupuncture is related to the Sheng Cycle and the Sheng Cycle is related to the Lo Shu. A Magic Square is the perfect way to visualize the Constraints that control the Four Forces in our Universe.
Soon after this discovery, I found out the Lo Shu is related to the Trinity and the Bronze Mean which is an abstraction of the Fibonacci Sequence. The Bronze Mean generates the Sri Yantra and so-called Quasi Crystals. Quasi Crystals explain Acupuncture.
Ancient Alphabets are related to Numbers and Tones so Ancient Texts also represent Numerical Patterns and Music. You want be surprised to read that the Lo Shu showed itself in every Text Kim Veltman has analysed.
His document started a new inquiry into the pattern of the Lo Shu. During this research, I detected the book “the Sum of Things” by Paul Martyn-Smith. Paul Martin-Smith worked together with Lee Burton.
This blog contains just a little bit of the tremendous amount of information Paul Martin-Smith & Lee Burton have found about the essence of the I Tjing which is contained in just one simple 3×3 Magic Square.
If you want to know more the only thing you can do is to buy this book and start reading.
In 2008 the point was reached where more than 50% of the world population lives in cities. That percentage is growing. By 2030, over 60% of the world’s population – nearly five billion people – will be living in urban area.
The System of Life is generating Super Organisms and the City is one of them.
Urbanization is only a relatively recent phenomenon. As far as we now know urbanization started in Mesopotamia around 4000 – 3500 BC.
For the Ancient Mesopotamians, the cities were the centers of life. Their beginning of time was not a Garden of Eden, but rather an ancient site called Eridu, which they believed was the first city ever to be created. The creator of Eridu was Enki, the God who came out of the Deep Waters of the Ocean (the Abzu). The city of Eridu was destroyed by the Great Flood in 3117 BC.
Every time one of the Rulers of a City took control over many Cities and a State was created with a new Center, the Capital. In the Center of the Capital the Palace of the Ruler was situated. What we see is an Expanding Pattern in which the same Structure repeats itself all the Time.
Initially the two life-essential resources for cities were Water and Food.
As Cities grew and as technology evolved, the supply of these resources became dependent on energy for processing, for pumps and for transportation. In the process, cities and their resources evolved into a system of life energized by the individuals that populate cities, and fuel its dynamics.
About the Law of Kleiber
The Law of Kleiber shows that Bottum-Up Structures are more efficient than Top-Down Structures.
It also shows that Big Structures are more efficient than Small Structures. The Law is applicable from the level of the Bacteria to the Level of the City and higher.
These two statements are a contradiction until we realize that there are two ways of looking at the same structure. One view is the Top-Down View. The other is the Bottom Up View. When we look Down we see a huge Hierarchy and start to believe that Big is Beautiful.
When we look Up we see that all the work is done by Small Cooperative Components starting at the Bottom with the Bacteria.
The Law of Kleiber is explained by the fact that all the organisms (including the Cities) contain the Same Fractal Structure.
About DNA
In the Beginning the Chemical Soup generated Self-Reproducing Chemical Factories. These Factories combined into bigger Factories by exchanging and combining their Factory-Designs (DNA-parts).
Every time when the Factories fused they became more Efficient, Bigger, Stronger, Older and therefore more Competitive. When the Factories became more Competitive they started to Protect themselves against the other Factories.
To Protect themselves the Multi-Cellular Systems began to Sense in Many Directions and became better and better in Predicting the Future.
One of our Ancient Ancestors is the Sponge which is a static Cluster of Bacteria. Scientist have detected that the DNA of the Sponge has a lot in common with the Human DNA. The Sponge contains the Basic Fractal Structure, the Tube.
In a later stage our Ancestors developed something we call a Brain. The Brain is used to Sense the Now and Predict the Future.
The Human is a Moving Sponge who is able to Imagine. With his Imagination the Human is capable to Change the Future (and the Past).
About Innovation
The Law of Kleiber can be explained by the principle of Self-Reference (Similarity, Fractals).
The Small Structures at the Bottum combine into comparable structures on a higher level.
What we don’t see is that the structures on every level can be decomposed in the Same (DNA-)Components with a different Scale and a different Name.
Innovation is nothing but a Combination of the Components in many different ways until all the combinations are made.
At that moment One of the Combinations becomes the new DNA and a new Level is explored.
Life explores every possible path.
About Cities
A City is a Combination of Houses.
A City protects a Cluster of Houses. A House protects a Cluster of Humans and a Human protects a Cluster of Organs.
All the way down to the Bacteria, Cooperative Clusters are formed that give the participants a more Secure Way to Live.
A House is a Body. It supports the Body but it also contains all the Bodily Functions.
If we provide the House with these Bodily Functions the House becomes more Sustainable. It is possible to regenerate the Waste that the Humans produce into Energy just as the Liver is doing in our Body.
If we Cluster the Bodily Houses into a City and we provide the City with the same functions of the Body we are able to create structures that are independent of the input of external Top-Down Sources of Energy and Food.
If we are able to detect the DNA of the House and the DNA of the City we are able to Compose new Types of Houses and Cities that are Adaptable, Scalable, highly Sustainable and are also in Balance with Nature.
It will also be much more easy to Destroy or Move buildings and cities to another Place without the production of Waste.
About Synchronization
In the Miedeval City the Major Cycle was the Cycle of the Seasons. In the Modern City we have become almost independent of the Cycles. We import Food and Energy out of every place in the World.
It takes a Lot of Energy to transport the Food and Energy and Many Places on Earth are dependent on a small amount of other Places that contain the Sources of our always increasing Need to Survive the Effects of our Environment.
When a lot of People (The Slaves) are dependent on a small amount of people (The Masters), the Masters start to dominate the others and increase their Power until Eternity. Power is the most important Addiction of the Humans.
The problem becomes bigger when we realize that many people are producing Food and Energy but are themselves not able to use the Food and the Energy they are producing.
The independence of the Cycles has created a huge unbalance. This unbalance is not only visible in the City but in every place on Earth that is providing Energy and Food to sustain the Modern City.
The only solution to this problem is to create self-sustaining (autarkic) Cities that are able to supply their own food, water and energy.
When we want to restore Balance we have to Synchronize the Cycles in the City. This can be done with the help of Smart Technology (Sensors, Actuators, Analytics) but we can also make use of very old fashioned techniques that were used in the Middle Ages.
When Humans communicate from the Heart and focus on the same subject, the Humans start to Synchronize. They become a Group.
The most important structure in the Miedeval City to Synchronize its inhabitants was the Building of the Heart, the Church. The Church was always situated in the Center and was visible from a long distance. The Church was also the only place where people were always Protected.
The Human Heart is doing the same thing as the Church is doing in the City. It connects the Mind with the Organs of the Body and the Pericardium provides one of the major Rythms of the Human Body.
If we want to Synchronize the City we have to create a Center where People are able to Commun(e)nicate about the Shared Goals of the City. The most important way to share can be found in the Human Culture. The Centres have to contain all the ways Human Culture is performed.
About the Memory Palace
Art, Music and Singing were United in the Medieval Cathedrals. The Medieval Cathedrals also contained all the Knowledge (The Memory Palace) that was needed to understand the Universe.
If we want to Synchronize the Modern City we have to build Modern Cathedrals in the Center of the Center and use them as Places to Commune, to Educate, to Make Music, to Dance and to Sing.
We have to design them as Modern Memory Palaces (Simulators) to teach the Masses about the Fractal Universe and give them Feedback about the State of their own Environment.
