{"id":156,"date":"2009-10-02T23:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T23:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2009\/10\/02\/156\/"},"modified":"2010-05-03T20:07:05","modified_gmt":"2010-05-04T01:07:05","slug":"156","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=156","title":{"rendered":"Fractal Consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was thinking about fractals and life the other day. Fractals<\/a> are an interesting part of the trend in mathematics and science over the past 20 years or so to better explain large scale, complex phenomenon like \u2013 well, like life itself. A key insight behind the concept of fractals is that some patterns repeat themselves at varying levels of size and organization. It’s sort of like Russian dolls<\/a> \u2013 you look inside the doll and you see a smaller doll, looking just like the big doll. Then inside that smaller doll, there’s a smaller doll still, that looks like the bigger dolls. And on and on, until the dolls are microscopic in size, but still resembling the biggest doll and all others in-between.<\/p>\n

Fractals have helped mathematicians come up with solutions to some problems for which math did NOT previously have anything useful to say, e.g. analysis of a rugged sea coast-line. Faster computers have made possible the application of fractals to a wide range of problems. You’ve probably watched a movie with a realistic-looking scene generated by a computer using fractal math; and you didn’t even know it. That’s the power of fractals.<\/p>\n

My question is, just how powerful is the fractal concept in helping us to understand our own lives, our own sense of being? On that level, where computers aren’t of much help, \u201cfractalism\u201d may or may not say anything relevant. But let’s see. One implication is that the true nature of life is endless repetition. The more things change, the more they stay the same. There’s nothing new under the sun. Our lives really are like the movie \u201cGroundhog Day\u201d<\/a>; whatever novelty we perceive is just a bit of randomness on the fringe, while the bigger themes continue their endless cycle. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the Buddhists are right; most of us are destined to cycle back and forth in a series of re-incarnated lives, lives of suffering and pain and ultimate meaninglessness. Very few will escape this fate, to achieve enlightenment and Nirvana, i.e. Buddhahood (or at least get to Feb. 3, as Bill Murray eventually did). It’s close to what the ancient Greeks envisioned in the mythological story of Sisyphus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As such, our own personalities in any one life are just a collection of incidental features, mostly accidents of fate. They aren’t much different from the personality of a dog or a bug; in fact, we may have been dogs or bugs (or both) in past lives. As humans, we have the chance to attain the Buddha-wisdom that can break the cycle; but few do. So the fractal pattern repeats itself despite the evolutionary ascent of mind and self, from automon-like flies and mosquitoes to complex human beings. <\/p>\n

But there’s another way that fractals can be used to look at our selves. Perhaps the fractal is reflected in something essential about us; in contrast to the Buddhist view that self is mostly without true essence, at least until Buddha-wisdom is somehow attained (also contra the Christian view that life is subject to damnation unless salvation through Christ is achieved). Perhaps there is something that repeats itself throughout our lives, throughout the cycle of growth and changes spanning infancy through childhood, from the teen years to productive adulthood and into old age. <\/p>\n

It’s kind of hard to figure out just what that would be. We humans, especially we modern humans subject to so many different life experiences over time, change so much. It’s hard sometimes to say just what our crazy teen years would have to do with our faltering fifties; our interests, perspectives, beliefs and desires can change so much. And what would we know in the innocence of youth that would still be a part of our not-so-innocent adulthood? Just how could our stages of life (remember \u201cPassages\u201d<\/a> by Gail Sheehy?) be seen as Russian dolls, each new stage building around the earlier stage with an essential resemblance to it? <\/p>\n

Certainly not in an immediate, physical sense. Humans change physically over the course of their lives almost as much as caterpillars \/ butterflies do. And thus do their psychologies and social adaptations, including their goals and beliefs. A little girl who wanted to be a pianist may turn out to be a successful stock broker. The Buddha might say there is nothing essentially common throughout a human life \u2013 except pain and suffering. <\/p>\n

But wait; perhaps that provides a clue. Pain<\/span> is a key example used in many philosophical discussions regarding the nature of human consciousness. Our consciousness of the world around us, and the feelings inside of us, are indeed quite constant throughout life (assuming a fairly normal brain and a body strong enough to support its functioning). <\/p>\n

Consciousness<\/span> is more than a set of signals from the environment along with our inner cogitations on how to best respond so as to protect our body and achieve our reproductive goals. Consciousness somehow sends us off into tangents of art and beauty and expressions of our awareness of being, of its existential significance. Consciousness encompasses good and bad, fear and love, rage and brotherhood, despair and hope. But the common thread, even in the contradictory act of suicide, is that being, and the conscious awareness of that being, is important (suicide might well be interpreted as a protest against the frustrating impairment of consciousness because of excruciating pain, hopeless suffering, cruel humiliation, etc.). <\/p>\n

So, is consciousness the \u201cfractal pattern\u201d that makes our lives and our identities something special in the world? Or is there really not any sort of \u201contological fractal\u201d as I envision here \u2013 are we really just another manifestation of the processes already mostly known to our science? Should fractals be reserved for things like leaves and blood circulation systems and strange forms of computer-generated artwork? It’s a question that people disagree on, quite legitimately. For now, I live in hope, hope that human consciousness and thus my own consciousness truly is a fractal response to a bigger reality, a reality that we don’t see in the usual sense, and don’t see at all other than through our awareness of being (and hopefully the reverent appreciation thereof).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thinking about fractals and life the other day. Fractals are an interesting part of the trend in mathematics and science over the past 20 years or so to better explain large scale, complex phenomenon like \u2013 well, like life itself. A key insight behind the concept of fractals is that some patterns repeat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1466,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/1466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}