Wednesday, 16 February 2022

Zodiac



 His head was shaved, accentuating the skull-like appearance of the deep-set eyes, the skin drawn taut over bone. A living machine of flesh and bone and blood, all capacity for emotion eradicated by training and an operation performed during his youth, his only pleasure that of mental achievement..

One day he would be part of it. His body would weaken, his senses grow dull, but his mind would remain active. Then he would be taken, his brain removed from his skull, immersed in a nutrient vat, hooked in series to the countless others which formed Central Intelligence. (page 37, 40)

The corporate Cyclan describes accurately the future of Musk and Bezos, with the exception that they both have girl friends! On that score, Grimes made the implaussable comment that Earth-time is relative, while sidereal-time is cosmic. The way I see it Zodiac time is earth-time since it relies on the spin of the Earth at time of birth facing the sign of the Zodiac on the horizon.

This is absolute time and is not atall Relative! One could almost suppose Relative time is the product of increasingly accurate measurement. Atomic clocks measure time accurately, but why should the universe spin like an atom when it is composed of galaxies and stars?

Is it that the hyper-accuracy of measurement creates inaccuracy? These inaccuracies are what we are told necessitates Relative time. In other words, Relative time is based on incorrect measurement of cosmic time!

Can accuracy itself be inaccurate? Sure, if the thing being measured is wrong. The athlete's body is lithe and dainty as it whirls at fight or play.

Without the sequence of expressive and impressionistic acts of the physical body, there could be no motion-capture, no large-scale similarities (of balance and proportion). 

Large-scale similarities are seen in the mechanical plane of the Zodiac. Physical reality is mechanically active. However, quantum mechanics is itself a product of machine-measurement (see "The Airtight Garage", prev.)

The Wool-Pack frontispiece
The athletics of physical pursuits around the Arcadian plane imbue a calmness of psyche that matches the grandeur of the cosmos. 

In short, life without the physical pursuits of hunting, gaming, singing is inward-turning and psychologically dark. The profane serpent of distorted rhythm in place of the gnarled branches of the old English oak. 
Dr Strange #3 1974(Lee/Ditko reprint)

Arcadia

 Well, the modern order is heading directly away from Arcadian pursuits, away from body and towards head. It's a parallel universe that convinces the ego the further inside the mirror of illusions one gets. The mirror of illusions that is tantamount to a cyborgian world, one where relative time exists in a parallel universe of hyper-accuracy that distorts natural rhythms.

Einstein has some good quotes, but this has to rank as the dumbest.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish

Somewhat reminiscent of Henry Ford's History is bunk, this places everything in the land of thought, whereas the body acts thoughtlessly and instinctively - see Bruce Lee, prev. Modern engineers are convinced by their machines - be it Twitter or Tesla - whereas it's the physical environment that imbues the psyche with power or weakness.

Sending text-messages on world-affairs while riding a driverless Tesla is physically to be in a state of continual weakness.

Going back to Einstein's quote, the physical state of hardship of the ancient Israelites resulted in strength of psyche in terms of survival. If the Israelites hadn't survived he himself might not have been born!

In other words, physical strength is a good in and of itself, regardless of 'facts' (that can be weakening), or that can enter a parallel reality of sameness.

The physical reality is fertile, strong and fairly filthy, surviving by continual revival. The physical reality imbues the psyche, whereas Western technology sows discord.

This was seen in the war in Afghanistan which was won in technological terms, but lost in terms of the psyche of the populace (see Maçaês, prev.) America technology entered a parallel reality of privilege that won a material reality, but lost a psychic dimension of the communes and regional warlords.

It's a Pyrrhic victory of matter over matter. Modernity is in a confused state owing to the ego seeing itself in the mirror, as opposed to the harmonious body. As far as Ukraine goes, any victory of Western technology will also be Pyrrhic as the psyche of 'Rus' isn't going away. Putin's aims are also confused, so the war is the most confused battle of modern times.

This psychic dimension to battle and daring is glaringly obvious in Japanese anime. Attack on Titan (prev) has a neat trick of matching the primitive threat of instinctively predatory titans to the primitive fears and desires of the protagonists.

Much anime has a metaphorically primitive side that relates behaviour and instinct to the gigantic threat of mechas, or in this case titans (Evangelion being the ne plus ultra.)

Apart from the psychic component to communal acts, there are the large-scale similarities of a physical reality that are outside the parallel reality of relative (or variable) time - see P200.

As Apocalypse says in the X-Men animated series (prev),

Who controls time controls reality.

The machine-reality of GPS navigation. This world is psychologically dark, inward-turning and an effective program.of sameness (Musk may call Twitter a force for democracy, but it is much more a force for the sameness of technology on the head.)

The epic formula is the physical assessment of threats, and the physical action against them that impacts on the psychic dimension (of strength.) There are two states of affairs: one is acting from physically feuding (low-level fights), or thinking and operating solely from the head.

The long-running Dumarest series (prev) has as the nemesis those who aim.to symbiotically run the human leaders, the demonic Cyclan or corporate mind.

However, as M Harold Page says in Blackgate, the Cyclan are contradictorily weak owing to their arrogance of mind. Dumarest is not only smart but has the athletic coordination of eye/hand/brain to instantly act on a practical impulse.

This happens at the dénouement of Eye of the Zodiac when he shows the Cyclan the two 'affinity twins' (artificial symbiote) he has in his possession, and then deftly knifes the acolyte and plunges the recessive needle into the Cyber, rendering his brain inoperative.

The physical act of putting into effect acrobatic proportionate balance in the instant pursuit of aims wins over pure mental ability. 

Not only that, the pure mental cyber enters a parallel dimension of logic that convinces the ego and there is in effect a tautology of electromagnetism. Where the physical plane is distorted, psychic weakness is bound to follow.

The profane serpent of distorted rhythm replaces the fertility that can border on debauchery. The primitive and the serpentine cannot be denied; they will either be naturally available on a fertile plane of existence, or unnaturally available on a sterile plane of existence.

Arcadia (2)

 The only way to tie this section on time together is to assume there are two types of time. Otherwise, things get vastly too confused. After all, Stephen Hawking's book has to be assumed to be a legitimate reference for a certain type of time..

Either the universe is engineered or it is a product of psyche, so the assumption is that an engineered universe has one type of time. This harks back to The Airtight Garage, where the highest level of the garage is constructed of machines ().

However, engineering is solar since electromagnetism is the solar force that harbingers the age of technology. This age ineluctably is drawn into the ego (head) via the electromagnetic algorithm (ones and zeros.)

This is what I've been calling the vanishing-point of technique, akin to the dual-note from "Jirel Meets Magic' (prev.) In other words, an engineered universe is a universe without psyche that continually approaches the vanishing-point (a perspective illusion.)

If this universe is a creation of the head (ego), theoretically it could replicate the body cybernetically. We live in confused times (see HB209) since we continually confuse two different things: head/calculation and body/proportionate rhythm.

Machines can replicate things, so one could imagine a reality of motion-capture and expressive algorithms that was very convincing and difficult to out as illusory. 

However, motion-capture (as used in CG and a sometime technique in animation) ultimately depends on the body's rhythms and balances, the acrobatic and animal area. One could still imagine a situation where motion was 'captured', and the reality itself was fake, or algorithmic.


I happened to pick this '65 book up (#149 of the title) which features the first part of the Tubb story. In it, he has what may be his first exploration of an 'affinity pair'; a piece of technology that allows one person mentally to control another mind's emotions and thereby their behaviour.

Tubb developed this in Kalin (book 4 of Dumarest) to an 'affinity twin' of dominant and recessive codes (gene sequences) that attach to the brain. Dumarest carries the sequence in his memory and for the rest of the series is continually pursued by the Cyclan who want it to rule the universe (by proxy.)

The Cyclan are what you could call a corporate lifeforce, and lack what we would call the strength of independent psyche. Psyche if expanded infinitely becomes what you could call God, so the Cyclan are essentially godless.

Now, Einstein's quote seems to dismiss God as 'primitive' (superstition?) but the origin or psychic spark of things has got to be primitive (primal). The psychic reality is dismissed as primitive clearly because it does not conform to the dictates of engineering. Primitive instinct is a reflection of the proportionate body (balance, rhythm, motion, action, fighting, hunting..)

In other words, the psyche and the physical are joined by a sense of the primitive. Animal proportion is itself primitive, it doesn't evolve so much as it just already is (the domain of 'primitive' myths.) Darwinian evolution could be vastly overplayed by the engineering faculty, or neo-Darwinists (the DNA Dragon). Arcadia resembles a wilderness where there is very little engineering (see HB2 on Rome )

The primitive side of things is a staple of Japanese anime (see prev) and, in Attack on Titan, grotesque red death stalks the scene; melancholy permeates the universe; it's bestial and tough, but the revivalist goal invokes the psyche with overwhelming force ("fight, fight, fight!")

The psyche is outward-going (conquering), whereas the ego is inward-turning and psychologically dark. Attack on Titan is in some ways re lated to ancient Rome as well as medieval Saxony, and engineering (of walls) plays a key part in the plot. However, the fantasy universe is not built on engineering, it's built on psyche (trust, fear, courage, loyalty).

It's a sort of nostalgia for the times of heroism of past ages, dark and primal though they were. But psyche is the reality of a universe where time is invariable. That has to be so because psyche is attached to the proportionate body, the acrobatic athletic reality.. the spinning-top of the Earth..the milky way (see P200).

Yes, Biblical events have a "childish" physicality, running round in chariots, invoking refrains. Words are meaningful; words nowadays have lost their meaning in dark psychology and the neutralizing dragon of news. The compulsions and distortions of the ego (calculating head) versus the acrobat of the fertile field ("Yaar!") Dionysian urges over the perfection of Apollo (sun) that enters a parallel reality of sterile words and illusions.


The Holy Land circa 10,000 BC (deliberate mistake)