Teams

OK everyone, do you wanna WIN?!?!  

YEA!!!!!  

Are you starving for a victory?!?!

YEA!!!!!!  

Do you know what to do?!?!?!

YEA?!?!?!...

...I sensed some doubt in your last "YEA", and I understand why so don't worry.  I have expected this and I have come prepared with a game plan.  But we have one problem.  Our team is powerful, but it is clear that we can't beat the other teams as we are.  They all have an Ace that is just too powerful for us.

I mean look!!!  Last year we went up against team WOLF and what happened?  Do you remember Ear?  Their Ear could hear you coming a mile away.

I hope for your sake Tongue, we never repeat what happened with team SNAKE.  Their Tongue could taste your fear.

Please, please, PLEASE tell me Nose you understand what went wrong when we fought team DOG.  Their Nose sniffed you right out of that hole you were hiding in.

2 years ago we faced team MOLE.  We don't need to recount the embarrassment you felt Skin when you battled it out with theirs.  AND THEY WERE OUT AN EYE!!!  

And Eye!!!  Did you already forget about yesterday?!?!  Team HAWK's Eye could see right through you!!! 


It is evident that we also need an Ace.  Otherwise we will never take the championship.  But what or Who could be our Ace?  He has to be unique enough to be unexpected, to take our competition by surprise,  but conform to our basic characteristics to maintain solidarity.  Who COULD that be?!?!?

We don't have to go about this randomly without some direction.  If we could come to an understanding about what characteristics you all share, then we could see who we have that is more powerful than anyone they have and also shares these characteristics.

Hmmmmm, for starters you all are good at one thing.  Eye, you see great.  Ear, you hear the best.  Skin, you feel all right.  Nose, you smell perfect.  Tongue, you taste unbelievably.  so I guess our Ace must specialize at something. 

That was easy, but that can't be it right?  there must be more.  OH!!! remember Team MOLE?  Remember how they won even though their Eye was gone.  YEA!!!  Think about it ... last week it was very cold you missed practice Nose, but we performed all right.  We weren't our best, but we functioned correctly as a team.  So I guess another thing is we must be able to function as a team without our Ace.

That makes 2.  I think with one more we might have a strict enough criteria to filter out our Ace.  And it so happens the last one should be the easiest to judge.  Just like team DOG's nose is the best, our Ace must be better then you all at the game.

We see the importance of this when we look at how the other teams play.  All the other players help out their Ace.  They all play around, and focus on supporting the Ace to score.  And the Ace almost always scores.  Sometimes circumstances are that one of the lesser players gets a lucky point or two, but the game winner is always, without fail, the Ace.

So with complete reliance on our Ace, we should expect our team to pick up and take its place in the competition.  Maybe even become #1.

number 1 coach?!?!?!  don't you think that is setting our sights a little high?  don't you think we should shoot for #700, and work up from there?

I do not!!!  and it saddens me that I have to explain to you why.  If you haven't noticed, we are at a special position here.  We are at point in the game where if we play our cards right and find that Ace quick, we won't even have time to see spot #700 we will be flying up so fast.  We might have a day or two to enjoy #3 and 2, but #1 is a guarantee!!!  And not only that, it is a guarantee with an indefinite expiration.  Do you see why?

.......um, I can't really see coach, I'm just Tongue.

Percisely!!!  You are Tongue!!!  You only taste.  And you only hear, and you only touch, and you only smell, and YOU see!!!!  All the other teams have their version of you all too.  Just one of them is their Ace.  That makes 4 supporting players and 1 Ace.  5 players.  We have 5 players too, but no Ace.  Do you see where I am going now?

Yea!!! Once we find our Ace, we will have 6 players!!!!

Exactally Nose!! though I don't know how you were able to see that.  Just the fact of having one more player makes us more powerful than any other team, but on top of that, he will be our Ace!!!!  We will be unstoppable!!!  HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

We just have to find him, and I think it should be easy now that we know who we are looking for.   So......who could he be?  What do we have that the other teams don't?

Coach...

Wait Skin, I am thinking.  We gotta find our Ace...

Coach.....

I said wait Nose,  don't distract me while I try to find our Ace...

Coach......

Please tongue!!! The championship is eminent, this is too important!!!

COACH BRAIN!!!!!!!!    WE HAVE YOU!!!!!!!

What are you talking about Ear?

Maybe you are the Ace?

.........HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!  You're kidding right?  HAHAHAHA!!!!   No wonder we have been sucking so bad!!!!!  With that kind of logic, we might as well be playing different game, like religion!!!!  HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  Maybe I am the Ace!!!!  HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  HOW could I be the Ace?!?!?  I am Brain!!!! Every other team has one of me because I AM THE COACH!!!  I don't play the game, I just help you play it!!!!!  I don't even conform to all the characteristics we just barely named!!!!!  Sure back in the day I was probably better than you all, and yea I am pretty good at thinking, BUT can you function as a team without me?

...

...

ANSWER!!!! CAN YOU?!?!?!

............no......

OF COURSE YOU CAN'T!!!!  AND YOU ALL KNOW IT!!!!!  Remember that time I took a trip to Wonderland?  You were all a mess!!!!!  I was gone for only a couple of hours and you all barely survived.  It took me 3 days to bring you all back from your paralytic states.  Tongue, you couldn't stop eating!!!  Eye, you stared at a flower for 5 hours.  5 HOURS!!!!  your thought it was a UFO!!!!  Nose, you kept smelling my hair saying it reminded you of sputum.  Ear, you...you....you.....I won't let those noises you heard ever be understood again.  Skin, you were the only one I could somewhat understand.  You just loved everything.  I see nothing wrong with that.  If it wasn't for Cre...........THATS IT!!!!! She is OUR ACE!!!!!!!  Where is she?  WHERE IS SHE?!?!  Can you see her Eye?

Yea, she is standing right next to you.  She has been there since I could see.

OH MY!!!!!!!!!  Our Ace has been here next to me the whole time!!!!!

This is it.  Our time has come.  We will take the game by storm.  And all the other teams will be left in the our dust trying to catch up!!!!!...
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I think.

Patterns - the beginning.

This is the first post of many on the interesting phenomenon of patterns in nature.  I have discovered a lot of them, but each one is so interesting and merits its own creative context that I have allotted each its own post.

I'm certain the reasons these patterns are important extend beyond the one I choose to illustrate, nevertheless this one is incredibly pertinent to a certain argument I have ensued between me and my mirror, AND any unlucky passerby who is caught in between.

Realizing patterns is a product of the original, purest form of art: making relevant connections between seemingly unrelevat concepts.

more about this form of art has been explained here:
http://curiousityandscience.blogspot.com/2012/03/chill-your-art-out.html


First let me begin with this diagram:














                 Nature                                                                                  Human



elements           -    emotion < method....................................old             -     emotion < method

(plants)              -                (?)..............................................(?)              -          (?)

animals              -     emotion = method..............................middle-aged    -     emotion = method 

homo sapiens     -     emotion > method................................young           -     emotion > method


As the diagram illustrates, there is pattern with how each organism balances its emotion/method ratio, emotion being unbridled, uncontrolled acts and method being the mechanical process it maintains to continue life.  I also admit they are in direct correlation with time.

This can be easily seen with the oldest of nature-the elements: water/earth/fire/wind etc.  The seasons changing methodically like clockwork.  The fall of rain and snow. A stream's flow.  How the mountains are raised and canyons hallowed.  How all this can be predicted even by a swallow.

All these methodical processes must have at one point been unpredictable, but over the millenia, the chronological success of how they work today could mean the emotion of it seemed to have all but disappeared into the mechanical contraptions of time.....all but the fact that it is still unpredictable.  An earthquake here, a tornado there.  A typhoon ravaging a coastal city, an unexpected snowstorm making you late for your daughters piano recital.  These are all emotional outbursts of nature.  These are all expressions from nature to its inhabitants that it is still alive, as alive as the baby in your baby momma's tummy that is unpredictably not yours because she unpredictably lied to you to take advantage of your unexpected wealth that your garnered from your investment in the unpredictable success of google.

Every characteristic's pattern from above can be found in any OLD person within our race of human.  To directly lure an emotional response out of your typical Oldie is as hopeless as expecting rain after dancing for it.  Why?  because Old people have seen it all.  Done it all.  Felt it all.  They have developed their methods which have worked for them their whole life, and they stick to them so obstinately they appear to have been sucked dry of any emotion.  But like the calm before the storm, any Old Fogie's heart is constantly in tremor, a precursor to the emotional earth shaker he/she was and still is capable of.  Why do you think the highest demographic that frequents the local burlesque house in any town on this planet is your one and only OLD.

I could just let you deduce the remaining patterns between animal and the middle-aged,  homo sapiens and the young, but that wouldn't be any fun for me.

Animals are emotional and anyone who disagrees has been killed by PETA a long time ago.  But the curious thing about them is that they don't express their emotions so openly like we humans do.  As if they aren't as aware of them as we are.  This emotion distinction between us and animals has been easily ticked off as an evolutionary gap between us, but the assumption has always been humans being the more advanced beings in the evolution race.  My stream of logic is counter-intuitive in that possibly animals were at one point as emotional as humans, but like the weather, over the millenia, much of what they did emotionally became hidden behind the success of the methodical.

Let me expound on this counter-intuition for a bit because I view counter-intuitive thoughts as a sign that you are onto something exceptional.

According to this article, evolutionary success could be seen as finding that peak emotion/method balance.  This isn't too difficult to imagine.  Look how effective less visibly emotional creatures at doing the basics for evolutionary success: sexual reproduction from living in balance with the environment.  All the destruction caused by humans is almost exclusively a result of unbridled emotion.

From this pointy of view, compared to animals, we are little babies in evolutionary life, and microscopic spermies in the shadow of the elements.  An animal still has emotional outbursts far more often the elements, but nowhere near as often as a human.  An animal has found a manageable balance with the methodology of its life and the emotional reactions within, but as a middle aged human, there is still room for improvement.  Just as a father will lead his family to righteousness, but occasionally pass out on the street  in a drunken slumber, or a CEO will make millions for his company, but always be the first in line to see his favorite titties shake. 

Now the species homo sapiens.  As aforementioned, in the Natural world humans are no different then a baby in our collectively conceived societies.  We run around the planet staring at this new animal and poking that new fungus, just like a baby stares at its mothers face, and pokes at the house cat.  We find a new land and try to claim it humanville, just as a little kid claims ownership of his daddy's house with the phrase "This is my house".  We go to war over a simple emotional difference as when should the national tea time be, just as a kid's arms go flailing when his friend gets more candy than him.

For some reason by discovering flint and fire, establishing governments and religions, and devising strategy and logic, our brains have convinced us that we are of a superior existence then anything else in this world.  What if Nature is just laughing at us as we ignorantly run around thinking we aren't ignorant.  Like a Grandfather amused as he watches his grandson try to use a can-opener. Aren't there traces similar to what we call governments and devices and logic in every facet of animal and natural life?  The collective and cooperative nature of a wolf pack.  The use of a tree to escape a predator.  The fact that animals know where they should and shouldn't hunt/roam/sleep.  It is as if everything but us humans has already understood the importance of emotional control, and the systematic success of the adherence to a methodology and we are ignorantly trying to catch up.

What if nature is just an organism that was once emotional like us, but learned the right balance after millions of years of mistakes.

What if our unavoidable fate will force us to find a balance with our emotions and methodology of life's sustenance, and over the millions of years it will take us to do so we find ourselves looking more and more like the animals we so barbarously try to control, and then the trees we so swiftly chop down, and then the elements we so pompously try to predict.

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Just think, this new idea was created by seeing a pattern, in other words, seeing a connection between two seemingly distinct objects, in other words Art.   This new idea is an original artistic creation.  equivalent to anything created by Weezer, Michelangelo, or George Lucas.  YES!!!!


-Side note-

I gave plants a sort of intermediary category to illustrate exactly that.  They are a kind of emotion/method ratio stepping stone between that of animals and the elements.  They show from a more stretched point of view, a path we are all on in this endeavor to find the best emotion/method ratio.  Plants seem to be the closet "living" organism, a KEY if you will, to the door upon which access would allow us passage be as one with the elements themselves.  What could this intermediary be for the us humans?


The scarring of a wound on their bark gives us a tactile demonstration of an emotional existence, but it is so detached from our personal depth of reality that we still feel better cutting a tree down than killing an animal.  This doesn't really matter in the terms of it's prolonged existence, it is quite pompous of us to even think we humans can halt the very existence of something as resilient as a tree.  If the species homo sapiens were to ever go extinct, I suspect the first sign of life to sprout forth from our ancient relics would be the green of a tree sapling. 


-food for thought-


within this pattern, I have also seen other patterns.  We all accept Old people have emotions, though they are very controlled now because of experience.  could we literally say the same thing about the elements.  not just metaphorically, but literally.  could the elements be an actual organism that was once as emotionally unstable as a child, but over time gained control of itself as our elderly do?  with this pattern being clearly evident, what else can we deduce from it about our own species, and nature itself?