SYNERGETICS:
Desk-top here. Two volumes of Synergetics by
R. Buckminster Fuller, my American Heritage dictionary, my typewriter,
and my Sony Walkman blaring radio programs into my brain. The
FM radio programs are octaphase unzippings of narrative lines
which I am able to appreciate when I can differentiate the operative
polarities that make the local equatorial peregrinations a systematic
unfoldment teaching about what, in pure principle, is the outcome
when principled oppositions give rise to human consciousness getting
"all out of order" event beads stringing in for brain
processing. "We have a story to tell you" the event
beads whisper. "We come from far far away, from a galaxy
matrix of long ago happenings." I either settle back for
a satisfying and principled Star Wars scenario, or I change channels.
Dr. Fuller would wonder about his readership. He
worried about disconnection. Kids won't read the stuff because,
sure, it is thick with principled accountings of "what's
next" given opposing line-ups like you wouldn't believe.
But kids are more interested in sports. Wavilinear corkscrewing
of forward moving "pigskin" (an octahedron with a precessed
internal member launched for between-systems energy quantum transfer),
spherics with yin/yang stitching profiles, touching bases, things
like that. A baseball seen from the side looks like a Chinese
yin/yang circle. What happens when all American gamesmanship encounters
ancient Chinese language games? Synergy, of course.
Separately islanded systems in a tensive medium precess
one another. A spinning system does not have to yield ground at
90 degrees by simply "falling in" as when meteors give
up the ghost and crash into the Earth's atmosphere, heating to
umpteen degrees, evaporating to become atmosphere. Large spinning
axials, when tugged at, tend to yield in some sideways direction.
A gyroscope tilts in a plane perpendicular to the line of force. This sidewise
yielding is what humans need to learn about when they set out to operationally
produce wealth in their local energy harvesting units. Simple tugging does not
necessarily yield simple results. All systems are interprecessing. No straight
lines. Everything is affected by everything else. Things are normally
in motion, accelerating, always.
People want to know: what's it like to "fall
in" to Synergetics? What's it like in here, looking out through
a matrix of criss-crossings, how does it affect my outlook? What
do you gain by such a religious, even fanatic, devotion to polyhedrons,
glass marbles in closest packing, models of paper, wood, thread?
You. I. We relate with systems between us. Yours. Mine. You at
your desk. Me at mine. Passing notes. Scribbles. Jungle up front.
Sees us from her desk. Loves us both. Strict though. Wouldn't
you say? Jungle boy to Jungle girl. A telegraph. African drums.
What does it all mean?
Heartless icosahedrons are lonely islanded stones
shedding dragon tears like clock-work. Pure systems thinking has
trapped lovable animals inside to create a sorry sad zoo. Cages.
In between, the outside of all the insides. Does a liberator walk
there, freeing one and then another? Or is the whole scene a silent
one, with most creatures not even aware of the prisons, content
as they are to exercise their reflexes omni-engaged by reflecting
reflections on the 20 in-facing mirrors. These are electronic
brains separated by a medium that may actually resist their
presence. The zoo creatures were delivered to the wrong planet
by mistake. Could happen. No one wants you here. But no escape
either. No "outside" to this particular classroom that
is a cold and heartless and strangely sinister planet.
In Synergetics, our caged animals are allowed to
kiss. The icosa jumps (irrational leap) through VE nothing and
lands maybe twisted some other way. That touch was all we needed.
The others receive. The medium does not resist. Not really
cages after all. Protective skins animated from within but all
originally from a sameness in between. At the very heart of the
electronics, a sudden flash of outside. It sends a thrill through
all the wires. Walt Whitman sings: the Body Electric.
And so the drum beats may convey glad tidings. Not:
the religious fanatics are here to imprison us in their dogmatic
systems (after which, most of us will be shipped to America and
sold into slavery) but: the drums tell stories that set us free
inside. The great science teachers (Pythagoras, Heisenberg) were
animal lovers too. They spoke to our condition. And their love
comes through, loud and clear, when we empty ourselves to become
like the isotropic vector matrix. "Become like the VE, grasshopper"
counsels the Chinese sage. "Do this, and you will capture
butterflies." Grasshopper gamely sticks the captured system
with a pin after gassing it to death in a special chamber. A butterfly
collection. Master is appalled. Grasshopper, you see, is from
America. Apparently, Americans skewer creatures who might actually
be dreaming philosophers. Good thing Grasshopper here was saved
in time. But thanks for the inadvertently transmitted intelligence,
kid. We'll have to prepare ourselves for America. Any American
tries to stick me with a pin, I'll kung-fu him to death.
Electronic reflexing. Dragon style. Thick descriptions in Synergetics
are like thick descriptions in Anthropology, sometimes. Hello,
Clifford Geertz.
© 1984, 1988 1997 Global Data Addendum |