014: Tis Better to Give than to Receive

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 22:56:26 GMT

When I was a kid, I always hated the expression that cropped up for about a month every year. Is that so? Great, then give me my presents, you can thank me later. Wise Men come bearing gifts, and children get fewer and fewer every Christmas until their output matches their input and we start to wonder why we didn’t just buy all this garbage for ourselves.

I’ll admit, once you get the whole prefrontal cortex thing figured out, the concept seems to pass the sniff test, but I was always at a loss to explain why without just falling back on circular parent-logic—because it’s the right thing to do and I said so. It’s only taken me a little over three decades, but I think I may have found a less-lame perspective. A cold, calculated explanation in terms of systems theory and an ecology of mind that even the most selfish, sniveling snotdripper would have a hard time denying without just “saying so.”
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009: The Structural Dynamics of Flow

Thu, 06 May 2021 04:47:53 GMT

Among all of the useful metaphors for thinking about systems and the world we live in, few get as much mileage as flow. It’s a simple concept, easily observed in nature, and essential to life. We can go on living thanks to flows of air, water, and food (energy) into our bodies, and the same is true of any living thing. Many inorganic systems require flows to function as well. My truck needs a flow of gasoline in order to avoid an accumulation of street sweeping tickets. But what exactly is a flow, and can it illuminate less obvious things in unsuspected ways?( Read more... )

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The Map Collector

014: Tis Better to Give than to Receive

009: The Structural Dynamics of Flow