Valentine's Day Special!

[martin]

And crossed posts Chris!
I didn't see your last two posts when I wrote mine. I will read them when I'm back home again.

 

[martin]

And back again, sooner than I expected.
About being 'stuck' between fight and flight - I think that that is more like water (010) than like mountain. It is what may come after mountain (interpreted as 'freeze') in a hexagram when one reads it as a succession of trigrams (bottom up). The alternative - after water - is wood and that could represent hiding.
If you look at it in this way fear relates to mountain as well as the two possible successors, wood and water, and it's perhaps better to link it with chunks of 4 lines (or even more) instead of 3 (trigrams).

But I will first read what Chris wrote now ..

 

[martin]

Hi Chris,

Unconditional fear, I'm not sure, is 'anxiety' the English word for it? Anyway, I understand what you mean, it is different from fear for something. However, I don't associate it with the earth trigram. I see earth as 'pure' and in itself emotionally neutral merging, as I explained in my other post. And in my view it doesn't necessarily use "the context for protection".
Devotion? That also seems to be a possible further development of earth, not earth itself.
Our mileages vary!

Moving to hexagrams, 64 core emotions, yes, I already mentioned the need for bigger 'chunks' in my last post. But because, in the way I look at it, an emotion like fear seems to 'spill over' into several trigrams I begin to wonder if there really is a correlation between trigrams and basic emotions.
And what are the basic emotions? You use the scheme of Plutchik, but there is no general agreement about this.
Many questions ...

 

[martin]

Correction ..
"The alternative - after water - is wood and that could represent hiding"

Should be: - after mountain -

 

[lightofdarkness]

Martin,

I dont use the scheme of Plutchik as core, I find that his material overlays the more generic IDM patterns of blending, bonding, bounding, and binding - where they stem from communicating context issues with wholes, parts, statics, and dynamics.

IOW recursion of fight/flight will map onto the IDM patterns and Plutchik's specialist terms map onto them.

The hard-coding of fight/flight, and the strong supporting evidence for the categories given (see http://www.austarmetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/emote.html) favour the overall perspective - and it is enhanced when you go through, as I suggested, the hexagrams using the XOR operator to extract parts.

This process reflects what your brain does when it tries to acquire a parts list of 'something'...See the IDM material ;-)

I do not see any argument re 27 XOR 52 = 36 where it is VERY clear in that mapping how the generic form of 52, derived by XORing 27, where 27 focuses upon generic structure, the skeleton, in need of 'meat', is about issues with the outer light being in some way 'extinguished' and held 'within' (36).

If you go through XOR-ing all of the other hexagrams with 52 you will get the 'full spectrum' of grief/sadness/discernment -- all related to mountaim.

As I have said before re all of this, I dont think you understand the magnitude of what we are dealing with here. The XOR/AND dynamics apply to recursion in general, not just IC, and so reflect a major finding re how we categorise in general. The IC is a perfect metaphor for decoding/encoding all of this in that it is well developed, most other systems are not (but can be through the IDM focus).

Chris.

 

[RindaR]

Chris-

I see we are using words differently. When I think of fight/flight dichotomy, I see both as motivated by fear. What you are calling anger, I think, is what I call aggression. Perhaps that helps?

Rinda

(My apologies, Julie, for hijacking this thread... - and my warmest congratulations to you!)

 

[RindaR]

Chris,

You write: "IMHO you need to perhaps read a bit more on the relation of emotions and IC. See some of the refs given ;-) "

For some reason I find this comment offensive...

Perhaps my challenge earlier came off as rude to you, or disrespectful. The spoken/written word carries such a limited amount of information, and the non-verbals carry so much more. My attitude when writing was conversational, though I know that I didn't take the trouble to make that clear - and I was thinking that what you wrote did not make sense when placed against my own experience and learning - and I do have a measure of that with regard to emotions, mental health issues, etc. etc.

If your feathers are ruffled, perhaps you will now relax, (or not) and if I've given you something to think about (?) think about it and see if there's something there that might be worth something.

I don't need your opinion about what I need to learn, any more than you need mine. If I'm interested, I'll work on it. If I have other priorities, I'll move on to them. I get to choose, as do you. [shrug] I think this forum is set up for both give and take, not just give, not just take.

Rinda

 

[gene]

Fight or flight refers to a valentines day special. Ha ha, I am not being sarcastic, it really does in a way. How many of us are afraid to show our true feelings?

Well, anyway
Gene

 

[martin]

Hi Chris,

You wrote "I don't think you understand the magnitude of what we are dealing with here".

No problem, I'm sure I understand the magnitude of what you are trying to achieve and that's why I am interested. And now that I am used to your somewhat dense poetry (why call it prose?

) I find that it is all not particularly difficult to 'get'. At least not for me, well, we have a similar background, I guess.

So far mostly yin but now comes the yang. Hey, we differ! Perhaps I have a tendency to exaggerate the yang, i.e. the differences, and that could give the impression that I completely disagree with you or simply don't 'get' you at all. My writing style has a lot to do with that, especially when I write in English. English is not my first language and I often don't know how to express myself in a subtle way in that language. So I go for RAM BAM and drive my point or whatever it is home with a sledgehammer, clang yang!

If you could only meet me in person - I'm in reality a very easy going yinny kind of man, with soft eyes and all that ...

 

[lightofdarkness]

Hi Rinda,

you got offended!?

Oops...Not intended to be (I would have not used "IMHO" nore offered references etc ;-) .. I would probably (a) ignored you or (b) made my comments 'firmer' ;-)). My assessment, based on my experiences, of your comments was that they were made out of a lack of understanding re generic, universal, dynamics of human emotions - something I have investigated, and continue to do so in the context of my IDM work re derivation of, communications of, meaning. simple. No emotional highs/lows, just 'facts' to me ;-) (and I know of psychiatrists, psychologists etc who find the material of value so I am not talking without foundation)

I supplied references for you to consider and am happy/willing to go through the material in detail - if you need to do that or want to do that then I suggest we do that on my IDMeaning list... unless you want to focus such discussion through the use of the I Ching metaphor and so keep it all on this list (and we can move it to a thread 'dedicated' to emotions and IC etc)

My prose is rarely 'conversational', this is all serious stuff to me and so a focus on 'precision' as we focus on looking 'in here' and try to understand our selves and our species. IOW if you want to be 'chatty', dont expect me to be so in return (I can miss it due to my 'always on' focus on meaning derivation).

If I say you are 'missing' something I say it out of 'fact' not out of 'fight'. If you wish to dispute the 'fact' thats fine - we can play references at 10 paces if you like; thats what Science is about - repeatability that aids to establish universals rather than some local dynamic.

The IDM work has come up with a universal format re information processing, transmission etc sourced in the unconscious, species-nature, realm. This universal is than localised through its application to particular contexts re categorisation etc and on into symbol and metaphor creation. The traditional IC is shown to be a particular expression, a metaphor traditionally rooted in 10th century BC China. Thorough IDM we have brought out the properties and methods of the universal 'behind' the traditional I Ching (and so my reference to the 21st century AD format of the IC - labelled on my websites as ICPlus).

so... I can be seen as driving with high beam on a lot! ;-)

Chris.

 

[lightofdarkness]

Hi Martin,

I suppose the focus is on the fact of the interdigitation of the fight/flight dichotomy across the amygdala - invasive research as discovered this. VARIATIONS will occur, local 'anomolies' derived from universals in context with local context - aka nurture.

This 'interdigitation' of elements of dichotomies is across the brain and reflects recursion as its source. As such the newly born is a universal, a product of genetics that is then introduced into context and THAT will then 'influence' the interdigitations, customise, localise, the newborn. For example, we get born with a 'nature' pattern of:

101010101010101010 - where the 1s and 0s reflect fight/flight or lefthemi/righthemi (a pattern we find in the frontal lobes) or left-field-of-vision/right-field-of-vision ( a pattern we find in the occipital lobes - visual cortext etc)

But nurture will shift that - our neurons will recruit/take-over those that are not active enough, to give unique 'banding' patterns such as:

100011101010101110 for the above.

This dynamic of differentiating and then reintegrating will give 'local differences' all sourced from the universal of 10101010101010 etc

(the differentiating/re-integrating dynamic is observed through studies on sensory systems and synesthesia - see http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond/synth.html)

IOW the banding in our brains is like our fingerprints - unique. BUT that is at the level of the PARTICULAR and so we can ALL create our own I Ching and it will be unique for each of us - BUT analysis of each will bring out the qualities sourced in the universal.

The IDM perspective is NOT on the specialisations, but on the generalisation - the universal that feeds the IC expressions. Understanding that universal then aids in understanding how the IC 'works' etc.

Chris.

 

[martin]

Hi Chris,

You wrote in an earlier post: "recursion of fight/flight will map onto the IDM patterns and Plutchik's specialist terms map onto them"

I take this to mean that you start with fight/flight and then derive (through recursion) all the basic emotions according to Plutchik, or rather the less specialist binding-bonding-etcetera.
Is that correct or are there emotions in the Plutchik scheme that you don't get in this way?

The thing is, fight/flight is more yang than yin. So if you indeed base everything (the whole spectrum of emotions) on the fight/flight dichotomy - and that is what I understand from what you write - then your system will be biased towards the yang.
I haven't concluded yet that IDM has indeed definitely a yang-bias (my laboratory is working on it

), but there are indications that point in that direction IMO. One of them is your interpretation of the trigrams and especially the earth trigram. It is quite clear to me that what you get there is not 'pure' yin. There is already a yang element in it.

Now you say, well, it's all grounded in scientific research. Yes, okay, but let's not forget that our science generally also leans over to the yang. If you build on the ground of science there is no guarantee that you will not end up with a tower of Pisa.
Evolution theory overestimates the role of competition and underestimates the role of cooperativeness. And there are many other examples, as you know.
Scientists tend to be blind for this bias. They will nod when someone tries to point it out to them and say 'of course, cooperativeness is important, we know that' or 'of course it's not all fight/flight, we also have a parasympathetic system you know, and why don't you calm down a bit?' (!) but then it's business as usual.
Scientific life must go on and 'philosophy' doesn't bake bread ...

 

[martin]

 

[lightofdarkness]

Hi Martin,

>
> I take this to mean that you start with fight/flight and
> then derive (through recursion) all the basic emotions
> according to Plutchik, or rather the less specialist
> binding-bonding-etcetera.
> Is that correct or are there emotions in the Plutchik scheme
> that you don't get in this way?
>

I start with recursion of any dichotomy based on the symmetric or asymmetric form. The core 'template' used in the brain is of differentiating/integrating (WHAT/WHERE) and so asymmetric. It will give you a spectrum, a power law pattern, that reflects the biases in the brain. A such it will order from 'vague' (yin) to 'crisp' (yang) - and as such from extracting PARTS, ACTUALS from the pool of POTENTIALS in the implicit whole.

ANY asymmetric dichotomy will reflect this extraction, using trigram representations, from 000 to 111, where our species-nature, our organic state is 000 and our consciousness is 111.

The 'intent' overall is to learn good habits/instincts to slot into the realm of 'yin' where context pushes instincts. What has happened is that the success of this mediation dynamic has led to the perpetuation of 'yang' states - our consciousness develops 'laterally' to the 'traditional' focus on differentiate/re-integrate. That lateralisation still has a goal - 000! ;-) Our current 'yang' oriented natures are learning new skills to become 'autonomous' - to fit into any context quickly through understanding the universals - but our consciousness likes its time in the sun and so if it cannot find things to mediate, it will create them.

Fight/flight is an asymmetric dichotomy and its roots are in the interactions with context, and the communication of that interaction. Replacement of context is fight, coexist with context is flight. IOW the fight/flight dichotomy is a specialist perspective of the universal differentiate/integrate dichotomy.

Plutchik's core set of emotions map to that focus, simply because brain categorisation will do that. Plutchik goes further into compound forms etc but there is no need to follow that specialist path given the 'fit' to trigrams/hexagrams etc. - we can in fact get more information about emotion characteristics from recursion etc that current research on emotions does!

That said, his layers are - with the focus of IDM on the middle thread, the other two cover extremes (low of aprehension, high of terror, middle of fear etc):

terror, grief, loathing, vigilance, amazement, admiration, ecstacy, rage
fear, sadness, disgust[rejection], anticipation, surprise, acceptance, joy, anger
aprehension, pensiveness, boredom, interest, distraction, trust, serenity, annoyance

The IC in fact does a better job, for example the ordering shows us issues of trust in others vs trust in self etc etc. he does not cover the ability to derive devotion to others through fear etc where the devotion comes from the integrating with the context to deal with fear etc.

(Plutchik's most recent publication is a 'text book' format on emotions and it is 'ok' when compared to what we can do here. IOW he has not moved on since 1987, just tried to 'refine' the perspective - see:

Plutchik, R.,(2003)"Emotions and Life : Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution" APA)


> The thing is, fight/flight is more yang than yin. So if you
> indeed base everything (the whole spectrum of emotions) on
> the fight/flight dichotomy - and that is with I understand
> from what you write - then your system will be biased
> towards the yang.

Not the full system - just the focus on STRUCTURE where the focus is on derivation of PARTS. As such there IS an XOR bias to that approach but then that is how 'in here' gets its parts - the elements of a SET.

IOW we are CATEGORISING, differentiating, emotions, the full spectrum is guaranteed by the method. So dont confuse AND dynamics with XOR statics. AND gets us into SEQUENCES etc.

The FULL system is XOR/AND explicit, IOR implicit - but to flesh things out I focus on XOR first, get all of the Wholes/parts and THEN will look at the sequence focus, the AND. The expression of XOR/AND as a WHOLE is implicit, the product of oscillation across XOR/AND and that means IOR.

Our consciousness is an agent of mediation, related to our frontal lobes dynamics, and as such is 'rational' in approach but also too parts oriented and so mechanistic etc. BUT to flesh out all of the parts etc it is the best system to focus upon to start with - and it is what the brain does re asymmetric dichotomies where the hierarchy is from vague to crisp and so:

AND-XOR-AND-XOR-AND-XOR etc in sequence up/down the hierarchy.

YOUR focus, that chart you showed us is AND oriented but to an extreme where there is no 'fixed' natures, all is 'flow', and that is fine but it needs more analysis from the 'full spectrum' point of view where there is flow 'out there' but as conscious beings we also have a sense of the 'eternal', of no flow, and any full spectrum mapping has to cover all of that.

The AND nature in the brain comes in two forms (a) as a complex pattern (BETWEEN focus, see the page on paradox processing where the 'external' AND is our species-nature - http://www.austarmetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/paradox.html) and (b) as a sense of rigid sequence WITHIN what has been XORED - IOW the path DOWN the recursion is XOR, the path across each level is AND (sequence of hexagrams). This is all embedded such that we are dealing with a duality, PAIRS.

The AND-ing of a hexagram given the line position material needs to be looked at re its 'location', WITHIN or BETWEEN.

> I haven't concluded yet that IDM has indeed definitely a
> yang-bias (my laboratory is working on it [ happy ]), but
> there are indications that point in that direction IMO.

I already know it is when viewed from the asymmetric perspective - it is PULSE oriented in this format. IDM covers all perspectives but at the moment MY current focus is on differentiating I Ching 'parts' of hexagrams etc.

> One
> of them is your interpretation of the trigrams and
> especially the earth trigram. It is quite clear to me that
> what you get there is not 'pure' yin. There is already a
> yang element in it.
>

You cannot express 'pure' yin in that it contains all actuals as potentials; it is what cannot be talked about, only indicated at best. Its roots as such are in darkness where not even light shone into it will reflect back. FROM that position so 'yang' starts to appear, hierarchy develops, where we find we can be PROACTIVE and so make the darkness 'useful' - as in nurturing, a place to hide etc - IOW a 'life form' perspective that transcends the root darkness.

It is this hierarchy that you are sensing as we derive parts ;-)

This interpretation allows us to see the 'yin' as the realm of instincts/habits, unconscious etc and the hierarchy allows for refinements of categories.

Thus the chinese map is of a hierarchy from general to particular:

Yi Chi Now you say, well, it's all grounded in scientific research.
> Yes, okay, but let's not forget that our science generally
> also leans over to the yang. If you build on the ground of
> science there is no guarantee that you will not end up with
> a tower of Pisa.

Not here. Why? because IDM maps the methods of Science itself a la XOR/AND dynamics. 'primitive' collectives are entangled with their context and cannot express 'universals' - it needs precision to do that and our brain is reflecting the dynamics of this. THEN we have to re-integrate, and IDM covers that, as well as the issues that come about if we dont (e.g. see http://www.austarmetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/species.html also refer to the issues developing re cause-effect in the history section of my draft http://www.austarmetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/Vague.pdf)

IOW the IDM perspective has used Science to uncover the UNIVERSAL from which the LOCAL IC, the traditional material, has developed. That LOCAL context perspective will be AND oriented when compared to the universal since the local context is 'vague' when compared to the realm, the object precision, XOR-ness, of the universal. Its benefits are in its dialectical nature, it accepts time and as a integrated element of the AND state (see my page on issues of analytical vs dialectical logic and how full spectrum Logic is both). The Science focus is on algorithms and formulas 'forever' - IOW universals and so the ability to predict etc (without having to learn the local context lingo etc)

> Evolution theory overestimates the role of competition and
> underestimates the role of cooperativeness.

This is covered in IDM through the dichotomy of competitive/cooperative where that dichotomy is a specialist expression of differentiating/integrating (and so the dichotomy of Darwin/Lamarck). (note that competitive/cooperative is an ASYMMETRIC dichotomy and so, in your terms, XOR biased as well! - but then the whole of consciousness is XOR biased! ;-))

> And there are
> many other examples, as you know.
> Scientists tend to be blind for this bias.

'they' may be - IDM isnt ;-) - which is, has been, a problem when dealing with hard-core, dogma trained, scientists ;-)

Chris.

BTW - Science has allowed us to 'save' the Tower - for a little while more anyway ;-)

 

[lightofdarkness]

Just to add some more to biases - our brains are biased to precision, and so handedness is UNIVERSAL not context-sensitive where the hemisphere most oriented to precision, and so universals, dominates all handedness, legness, eyeness etc etc!

Our consciousness is XOR oriented - we get off on the 'buzz' of individuality etc.

That said, genetic diversity allows for 'differences' - e.g. I am 'pure' left handed etc.

Chris.

 

[martin]

Thanks Chris, that clears it up. Very transparant!

 

[julie]

Again, in the interests of learning, I'll update this thread. Our engagement lasted, oh, a couple weeks. It collapsed, and although we stayed together for a few more months, it was pretty much over.

In retrospect, he was clearly not the right person for me, and I'm terribly grateful it didn't go any further than it did. I also think that there's no way, in the context of the relationship and who I was at the time, that I could have done other than propose to him. Proposing certainly helped to bring clarity.

Julie