Feeding My Ignorance

Although the entries in this blog are sporadic and are not following any particular pattern there are a few themes that run through them and which recur in different posts.  I'm just thinking that it might be as well to provide a bit of a summary and a few links to enable easier browsing between related posts.

...

The recurring themes are very much a result of me exploring my ignorance in line with the overall theme of the blog.  They represent topics that intrigue me; that make me think (easy to do); that are - to some extent at least - unexplainable within the limits of my current knowledge; and are - not surprisingly - interlinked one with the other!

The latter is, as can be determined from the post that was perhaps the predecessor to this one - Mein Weltanschaaung - very much the fundamental aspect pervading everything else - the inter-connectedness of things - especially people (although that inter-connectedness is itself spread through events and so the person to person link is not direct).

As an aside here, the fact that in my work I am often dealing with how things inter-relate does mean that this could be seen simply as a predisposition towards this sort of structure.  I would (and possibly will in a future post) argue against that since the 'typical' data definition/structure that I have observed lacks two - I think crucial - attributes.  The first is that in the work environment there is a tendency to think of everything as "hierarchical" - my view is that (almost) all hierarchies are subjective and the result of some sort of arbitrary (and often unnecessary) grouping.  The second is that invariably data structures are portrayed as "static" - whereas my 'structures' are necessarily fluid and dynamic.

So - what are these recurring topics?

The fact that the relationships between people are so interesting for me meant that it was almost inevitable that my first significant post was On Friends.  That particular theme was soon enhanced with some musings around that topic - developing some of the ideas a little.  It spawned Know Your Enemy, More "on Friends" and was followed by a couple of posts World 2.1 - Part 1 and Part 2 that explored the topic within the context of the changing communications methods.

I am endlessly fascinated with the way that relationships such as these develop - and, as is clear from some of the posts - although I concentrate on 'friends' the fascination is equally applicable to 'anti-friends' as well (When Friends Go Bad).  The theme running through this topic is why are some people 'closer' to you than others - and that is when measuring the 'strength' of the relationship - not whether it is a "pro-" or an "anti-" relationship.  Our worst enemies can be as close as our best friends.

The closeness aspect spawned, I guess, the series of posts that are all in some way related to the "Red Thread of Fate" of eastern folklore (The Red Thread, Pulling Those Threads Tight and Someone is Pulling The Strings Again).  At the time that I was going down that particular track there was a series on TV called "Touch" which was exploring the same sort of subject matter - albeit in a way that was tailored for 'entertainment' rather than any great scholarship.  It is perhaps telling that the series was not extended!!  Clearly not a mainstream subject/idea.

I don't know what the real nature of the "Red Thread" actually is - it is clearly not a physical thread - at least not in the sense that we currently understand 'physical'.  I am drawn to many aspects of "Morphic Resonance" (not an easy read!) as a way of explaining this.  It is something that really is on the edge of my ignorance and it is in that area of the void that is most difficult to explore simply because it necessitates dismissing things that are 'accepted' as fact.  For that reason I cannot embrace it fully - but, then again, its not that long ago that the accepted fact was that the earth was the centre of the universe.  How wrong we can be.

That brings me nicely to the next recurring topic - which can be summarised in the phrase "how do we know what is real"!!  Whether that is in terms of how we relate to the world around us (Perspective) or whether it is our 'understanding' of what has happened in the past (History is What We Make It) matters little - in both cases - although perhaps for different reasons - we each have trouble separating "fact" from "fiction".  There is plenty of research that shows the limitations of our brain/mind in this area - from poor witness recall through 'alternative' views of historical events to an inability to notice what we do not expect to see.   There are a number of posts related to Memories

We therefore live in a 'bubble' that has been created by ourselves (our Weltanschaaung) that we can be sure doesn't correspond precisely to "reality" but that we cannot determine how closely it matches.

Living in Parallel Worlds addressed another facet of the 'connectedness' subject - looking at the way in which our friendships cluster and how we can belong to several different - although intersecting - groups - sometimes the intersection is ONLY ourself and so we are the link that holds those particular "red threads" together.

One thing that permeates a lot of my thinking is the (I think profound) idea that we should never have regrets about what we see as past misdirections in our lives.  Everything that has ever happened to us (and everything that hasn't!!) contributes to where we are now.  Sure, we could want to go back and change something - but we could never be sure what unexpected consequences (An Unlikely Chain of Events) would result - although we could be sure that we would not succeed in changing just one thing.

Someone much wiser than me pointed out that for every single "more positive" effect there are thousands of possible "less positive" effects - why should we gamble with those sort of odds (see Understanding Backwards, If Only and Only If). 

OK - so this summary doesn't cover all the previous 64 posts, but it does give a little bit of a route map to anyone who might stumble upon these pages and wonder where to start - starting at "the beginning" is always an option - but some shotcuts can be appreciated.