But all the rest is Rorschach. The way it appears as synchronous is because the act of focusing on a problem increases susceptibility. Most people go over problems repetitively in their minds and generally coming to the same conclusions each time. Like a skier in fresh snow, the first skier usually defines the path for the following skiers.
Problems usually require lateral thinking - 'coming at it from a new angle'. The I-Ching interpretation provides that. The I-Ching, done seriously, is a mind exercise. You can't be me, I'm taken
a brand new luxy hotel had opened, and everything was pluperfect, except for one fly in the brilliantine: the lift -elevator for you yankeedoodles - was t.o.o.o. s.l.o.w.
refitting it was an expensively unthinkable nightmare, so after a lot of headscratching to stimulate the parietal lobes, a genius came up with the solution, at very little cost....
install mirrors in the foyer!
proving old ecclesiastes' point... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
It may be apochryphal, but one can find a million real examples. You can't be me, I'm taken
But don't get me wrong about my scepticism of all spoonbending, levitating, synchronizing, sawing the woman in half type 'phenomena'. They illustrate not a miraculous physical world, but a miraculous mental world, in which the conscious search for logic meets the inherent evolutionary distortions of a strangely-wired mind, combined with neural biochemical metaprogramming.
It's what art is about. You can't be me, I'm taken
Spoonbending etc. I see as charlatan nonsense as it involves capturing the audience and controlling the scene. Which can be fun, I think, the willing suspension of disbelief. They do say, though, that once you see the stage filled with e.g. wires for the levitation trick, it puts most people off magic for life, like those Penn and Teller (?) programs where they debunk magic tricks. I prefer sleight of hand, though it takes years of juggling cards between your fingers...I do know a good card trick, just the one, but it usually works. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
An example of the former is endorphins, an example of the latter is GABA. GABA is biochemical used by inhibitory neurons to control active neurons. Gaba runs our after a circadian shift of work and needs to be replenished (cue protein factories) This is done as we sleep.
If you don't get enough sleep, you don't get enough GABA, and the inhibitory function is weak. You will eventually start to hallucinate, as anyone who has been up for 30 hours can attest. You can't be me, I'm taken
Go watch some ducks for a while. Ducks have four active programs - random waddle, mate (but only in spring), find food, fight. (And there's also sleep as a rest mode.)
Ducks switch between programs very obviously, because they have very short attention spans. It's fun to look at.
Humans work the same way. We have a slightly wider range of responses, a longer attention span, and the self-referential ability to model actions before performing them. But the principle is the same.
People who lack self-awareness and have no idea about metaprogramming will switch between responses in the same way that a duck does. All it takes to switch modes is the right kind of stimulus. This makes them very predictable, very boring, and very easy to manipulate.
A lot of politics and economics is based on the practical application of this principle.
It should be at the root of any discussion of what democracy actually is. You can't be me, I'm taken
I agree. I'd add one thing, though, and that is that the exercise the mind is involved in is one with definite effects in the world beyond the mind--out into the connective tissue...
Confused myself already and it's only half past breakfast!
It may just be me, but I've not found the bible at all helpful as an oracle. It's a facts-based tribal myth book and full of lists...
Perhaps the I Ching equivalent is its emphasis on noble rulers, superiour men (and the Tao Te Ching's talk of the sage, though I'd say the Tao Te Ching's use of sage means "the person the you'd like to be--is better than you are--and yet the "wise" person (aka the sage) does...mystical nonsense variety Q, such as be calm, considerate, etc.
I don't think the I-Ching works as a casual exercise. You might as well open it up and read a commentary or two and get some sense of who thought what. I think it's more elegant than the Rorschach, though, because there it has an internal logic, the lines have their significance, there's a pattern, a chohesion to its thoughts...I think of it as old wise men (no women) talking over the aeons about so-far perennial human situations.
And when you need it to work, it works. (Well, it has for me. For all the reasons you suggest. But also that extra something...which is probably the creation of ritual, set and setting and all that.) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
