Elements for a possible new Scifi story

Reading “Halo – The fall of Reach” by Eric Nylund, I was a bit disappointed. I read Nylunds “Signal to noise” and “A signal shattered” afew years ago which contained some daring concepts which are part of the new wave of Science Fiction that arised at the end of the 1990’s in which the singularity has already happened and the limitations we knew as society are dropping away fast.

“Halo” misses all the fun parts I would have loved and expected to read form this “new generation writer”.

As the June deadline for the Dutch award for SF & Fantasy short stories approaches (in Dutch and never mind the lack of graphic design and the ghastly photo of the deceased holy saint of all Dutch SF & Fantasy Jean Paul Smit AKA Paul Harland or Paul Holland when you bastardize the pseudonym) it might be fun to turn this into a story.

In Halo, the Covenant destroys Earth colonies one by one to wipe the human race of the face of the universe. The slow down is caused by the fact that the covenant does not have the coordinates of earth and that their first wave is apparently not too intelligent. Special kids have been trained before that moment to become super soldiers in augmented bodies, wearing exoskelatons to kill any resistance in the Earth governance. They become handy in the war against the covenant.

The plot shortcut in “Halo” is that the space faring enemy has approximately the same tech level as we have. (It does make the story easier to write. No brain-cracking effords to match what can not be matched.)

What I would have liked to see:

1. True augmentation: supercomputers on quantumlevel based in the bone structure using the softer tissues and salt water based bodily environment for sub-processing and supporting and extending the fairly limited processing capacities of our human brain.
2. Solar system spanning intelligent systems / ubiquous computers (as used before by Stross and others)
3. The application of open source principles as described in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” to increase the speed of development of new resources to beat this new invader / enemy.
4. the use of a more intelligent system of grasping and projecting current and future processes (Game theory being my personal favorite)
5. Using the suns themselves as a huge processor / AI by using and manipulating the incredible capacity of plasma-streams (as we are speaking about post-singularity society)
6. Aliens far more superior and capable of destroying anything with a blink of an eye.

As I was pondering, I came across these additional concepts:

1. Use any lump of material as huge sub-processors. When you are able to work on quantum levels, it might become possible to re-program matter on deeper levels to form clusters of processing power.
2. Re-program reality itself using the same process. One of the practical applications is to duplicate stuff. Start with a bunch of atoms, reprogram them into assamblers that create greater structures based on patterns “wrapped around them”. Teleportation by duplication is possible in the story-reality then. (Nylund kind of used these concepts in “A signal scattered”.)
3. Using the seas as huge quantum processors. (As the consistancy of fluids in the human body apparently reflects the sea, it is not far fetched in the story-world to discover ways to utulize the consistancy and processes in the sea. And it is far fetched enough to use just for that reason).
4. Anything can be simulated: possible strategies, projections of current events. Using game theory (win/win, win/loose, loose/loose and zero/zero) ongoing projections and filters like “The prisoner dilemma” and “The Salesman dilemma” the most optimal path can be construed.

In this story-world, the old school Space Opera Invaders with large spaceships and impressive cannons simply stand no chance against these new technologies:

1. Enter a cloud of matter-reprogramming units in a real time quantum mesh network with close to zero latency and your body and hardware will be simply ripped apart, reprogrammed, re-used, used against itself. (Re: “Blame!“)
2. The processing power of even one single individual human is large enough to predict any strategy of the enemy within a blink of the eye by running several simulations and find the weak spots, the convergence points of lines you can cut to create chaos and sabotage any action

As I decided that I will use an invasion and any story becomes more interesting with dilemma, we can not have this. The enemy must be at least equal ore more advanced, but not TOO advanced as humanity itself will be squashed in an instant. UNLESS that is not the goals of the other species it will become part of a larger group. Then a superior species becomes interesting again. (Enter the stories where the war is battled on another level.)

Genre/structure: pulp

The story will follow the rules of pace opera and pulp literature. Basic structure:

1. Clear first layer: clear problem, concrete and clear examples, tangible elements (sentinel, very human characters).
2. Cliffhangers: every chapter ends with a new problem and starts resolving the old one.
3. A new element every 700 to 900 words (Re: A.E. van Voght)

Zooming out?

Perhaps the way the Anime: “Akira” was done: “zooming out”, starting small and enlarging the picture in every next step of the story.

Survival / erasure

As I am triggered by the “Halo” book, the invader just wants to erase us. Kill all humans. Wipe them out. So cancel all the alternative scenarios. It is life or death.

Current concepts

It will represent concepts used for Roomware.

Trigger: sea turns supercomputer

Any story has a trigger point for the action to begin. Not afraid to use something done before: “it will be some or another artifact” (Yay! Artifacts!). The trigger is where the sea turns into a super computer. (The sun is not done yet then, although the first experimental models are there). Using another cliche: “Easter Island!” and “the artifact is a sentinel!”

Bending the cliche’s

A cliche becomes boring when nothing new is added. So this needs some attention later.

Discovering the enemy

We need some time to build up time before hell breaks lose. So the enemy is well discovered before it appears. The Time of Arrival can be predicted. the alternative scenario is: “The same moment the ocean was turened into a quantum supercomputer we were eradicated form the face of the universe. Blam! Without any warning and everything went black. The end.”

No hope, still time

Although for story reasons the enemy takes some time to arrive, they are far superior to us in the story world. As humans are already close to teleportation and reprogramming reality itself there is a contradiction. I need a good excuse to make the enemy both more stupid and more superior.

Motivation

It is pretty stupid to blow away another society for whatever stupid reason. So is that the motivation of the enemy? For “The covenant” in “Halo” and the more classic similar “Star ship troopers” it is. (Due to some stupid “god wants..” thing). I have some options to choose from. Let’s explore:

1. Advanced tech is rediscovered by a “level 0 society”: morally stupid, thinking in terms of “we win/you must lose” scenarios. “So we come with our space ships and blow you away”
2. The purge of the human race might be merely a side effect: like the fungus currently killing toads, frogs and bees. (I like this one. There is a time element involved and it is more current. Still: not an invasion).
3. A rogue species simply wants to eradicate human species.

Recognizing the enemy

Anything is connected. So when the sentinel is triggered, a chain reaction of events ripples through the fabric of reality. Where a small Earth team (only touched sideways in the story) traces these ripples, the shadows of the invasion fleet / whatever the fuck is unveiled is thoroughly analyzed. At that point the motivation of the other party is still unknown. [Damn: hard to stick to the concept as the enemy might be based on 1950 limited type "slow travelling" aliens - being kind of outdated. Solution: (Sunday  april 26, 19:42) maybe to use Van Voght / Keith Laumer approach - make it exiting and don't tell. Or maybe Ph. Dick approach - make it weird. Just make use of  some base and make it plausible enough so that people do not burst bubble].

To travel space is actually kind of silly unless you can cut some corners or believe in Start Trek. To cut corners, you need high tech. When millennia in advantage, super-human species very likely have evolved technologies that make solar system spanning supercomputers acting on quantum level seem like child toys, looking at the speed of possible development here on earth. To think that any invasion would match our tech levels is naive. They very likely have reached the singularity point of singularity.

“Hitchikers guid to the galaxy” solves this dilemma by making the destruction of earth a side effect.

Something self induced problems is the most simple solution. But I want to kick “Halo”

We introduce Neon Genesis/Godzilla: aliens appear on earth using teleportation of some kind and wreak havoc?

Note to myself: I can always pretend I am not smart enough to take eveolution of species into account.

Why invade: old school?

1. Human race poses a possible threat
2. Resources / planet / rare life containing biospheres
3. Overlapping area’s, expansion
4. Bridgehead for something else. (War, parallelling stationing soldiers — sentinels — in underdeveloped areas to prevent enemy marching up.)

Why use triggers in stories?

1. More plausible when we triggered something than cooincidence that aliens just now pass by.

Plausible enemy agenda’s that do not involve “Hey? What? Ah! Enemy! Blam! You are now all dead”
- Option 2: side effect

Options:

1. Rogue Quantum super computers could be “forbidden tech”. The very old sentinel (let’s keep that one to keep the story line simple) measures changes on quantum level and starts the process of neutralization. As we need the tech not to be wiped away by earth (Yeah! stuck between rock and hard place) we fight this process. This starts level 2: elimination of secondary elements: humans.
2. To stop immediate destruction of solar system there has to be a secondary interest that requires preservation. Looking at “Neon Genesis” we might “borrow” something there. It could be the sentinel itself is the primary item of interest. One of the early “mothers” being lost and found again as the Sea Computer started up. Might introduce some semi gore/horror there as well
3. The sentinel is to be lifted from it’s place. As it is partially organic, it is to be done delicately.
4. The side effects that eradicate human kind could be like this:
   1. The “mother” taking over Sea Computer introduces shit
   2. Maybe it introduces new types of monsters slowly. Dreaming itself awake with nightmares of destruction. However: This eliminates the “outside threat”. So skip this.
   3. A “footstep” of the aliens introduces new elements of destruction. Never intended but did happen.
   4. Constructing something to salvage sentinal out sinks half a continent
   5. While we are obstructing the process (winning time) leading to liberation of sentinel and destruction of human kind.

Defensive plan A to D

As we simulate possible scenario’s, 4 main strategies are simultaneously developed and executed:

1. Fight back
2. Backing up humanity into the space around us (Re: Stross)
3. Spreading the circle of influence by shooting seeds into space. (Hacking the fabric of space is one of the strategies, but time is running out. Launching tiny specks of pre-programmed matter and quantum links to quantum computers in the asteroid belts is the first one to be developed.)
4. Diplomacy: Hacking the point of origin: call back / cancel the invasion

The basis underneath these plans is this:

1. Anything and everyone will be connected
2. All matter available in the solar system will be turned into quantum processors and reprogrammable matter. (Re: Stross)
3. Reprogramming matter is one of the keys to survival. So it is one of the main priorities.

Deeper layers / fabric of the world

1. Human interactions: clearly based on different rules and different values. Still recognizable by using and acknowledging primary human needs and preferences:
   1. Emotions on any scale are still encountered and cherished. The way of -dealing with- is different but still very human.
   2. People still prefer to meet on personal level. Just because it is fun and soothing needs on more primal levels. Meetings do take place in simulated environments.
2. Some basic rules used in the intersocial world
   1. Intamicy = binding on social and human level
   2. Mutual sharing = mutual growth
   3. Sex = fun + intimicy + sharing
   4. Win/win is most ideal outcome of any encounter and can be reached in most cases when you know where what you have in abundance will help the other greatly
   5. Helping = collecting karma points. Although this is not official the term nor a system, it is how people will refer to this system of sharing and adding value.
   6. It is not utopia, as utopia is boring to write about.
3. Environment: We and the earth killed many species. Our part as “level 0″ “scorched Earth” society (parasitic is another one) is being corrected at the time the story starts, by genetic engeneering / reconstruction / creation of new diversity and eco systems.
4. Population: there are bit more than 10 billion people as wealth slowed down the population growth and no real disasters have taken place.
5. Rebuilding society: with game-theory / longer term “win/win” simulations as the new driving force behind steps, society is slowly moved to the next phase using a clever mix of capitalist and socialist systems.
6. Morale/truth: there is no need to be moralistic and second guess. Simulations show the possible outcome of anything. Nor is there one single truth. Any society on Earth has it’s own path to go to reach the next stage out of the destructive “we can only win/when you loose” and “we have to win at any price” mentality.
7. Gaining stability and reducing stress using a very concrete and proven concept is the key.
8. Working together to solve a problem is a very organic process. Based on needs and matching qualities the right people are found to get the job done.

Global picture

1. Australia, South America, parts of Asia and Africa have turned into deserts (re: Bruce Sterling)
2. Storms and extreme weather have beaten earth like hammers (re: Bruce Sterling)
3. Methane gas from the Russian Tundra’s have accelerated the global warming process.
4. Many species have died both in sea and on earth. Mankind is responsible.
5. Many parts of society are still “level 0″ and “level 1″, where “level 2″ is a new step emerged from India, China, Europe and USA, but still only 30% of society due to the paradigm shifts they bring on social and personal levels and there is no pressure or policing what so ever, until the invasion that is.

“Eight pilars”

These are the eight “pilars” of the “level 2″ society I will use:

1. You are responsible for the outcome of your own deeds.
2. Learning is key.
3. Freedom of will is sacred.
4. Everything is fluid.
5. There is no single truth.
6. We are all connected. (What hurts one, hurts us all in some way)
7. No one is left behind.
8. Anything has a possible solution. (there are many pathways to reach any possible goal)
9. The best outcome is a win/win solution. (second best is neutral, worst is where one or both parties lose).

Put together, societies are not forced to move up the ladder of social evolution, but are given any oppertunity to do so when ready. Where possible, any exchange of value will benefit both parties, as that is the most logical way to move forward in an connected society.

Parasitic: “I win/you lose” and destructive: “I sacrifice myself to damage you so we both lose” behavior lashes back on the user of that strategy. There is no logic to it, so mostly people with a mental disorder will use them. (Excuse me for the short turn I take here.) As anything has a possible solution there are several possible ways to work around this, if the destructive person is willing to cooperate.

These rules can lead to any type of society, including a fascist one, dictated by rigid rules. “Everything is fluid” discribes the part where rigid systems can be avoided. Education is key.

“God”

Last friday I had a friend over for dinner and somehow we got to God and judgment. Religion has some retarded, primitive, coockoo weird ideas about who and what God might be. A god that has created the universe, is omnipotent and ever present and has infinite wisdom is very likely not the fucked up creature as described in the old testament or any other book written by long dead people from societies with understandings of “reality” even more limited than ours.

Here is a quick summary of what was discussed later that evening:

1. Presumably we “have been granted the gift of free will”. This means that anything we do and any decision we make is completely our own. Consequently, with any mistake or action I take, there is no-one else to blame but me.
2. If there is a god, is it everywhere and anywhere and anything is enveloped by it, is part of god, is god itself. So “searching god” is to open your consciousness and search within yourself. It helps when you get rid of your own bullshit belief systems — and that of others — in the process, since they are all fault anyway.
3. If there is a god in this model, it spans the universe. The universe itself might be a complex system of processes and “godly” thoughts and is so enormous and vast that we will never understand the full grasp of god’s plan, nor “our role” in that, if there is any.
4. If god would a loving creature, acceptance and understanding would very likely the first two drivers of it’s being.
5. Anything we do and anything that happens is part of the process. As this is all part of god in the model described above, there is no “good” or “bad”. Things just happen and that’s it. In that sense god very likely does not care about you or me.
6. Some people sense an incredible flood of love when they enter their inner world and meditate on god. If there is anything I would like to believe in and connect to, it is that.
7. There is not other “meaning” to our life than that what is and that what happens. The “plan” in our own lives is constantly happening and can be changed any moment.

We all have our personal systems of beliefs and perception. As humans we experience and interpret reality on very individual scales. We create our personal stories about that reality and if they work for us, adapt stories of others to fortify our belief systems and create “The Truth” to deny the parts of reality we do not want to see.

When “God” does not govern us, what is?

I think that our main governance is the personal avoidance of pain and grief. First on a personal level, but if the pain and grief is something that hits the collective: avoidance and grief on a collective scale. This is one of the reasons I think especially the last part of the following statement described by Thomas Hobbes in “Leviathan”–

life without government is the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This inevitably leads to conflict, a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes), and thus lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

– is a load of crap (still cherished by too many people I meet). It is also why I like simulation systems like game theory more than this kind of rigid and flawed dogmatic thinking.

To close: here are some thought-experiment I did when I was about 18.

1: “God is the universe and the universe is god“
“If God created the universe, it is very likely that God envelops the universe itself.” In this system, every star system, every atom and every building block of this universe is enveloped by God. If this is true, anything and everything is part of God and a manifestation of God.

This means that we do not have to look for any god outside of ourselves.

Reading “Simulacrum 3” and other similar stories (see also) another thought experiment followed:

2: “If this universum is a simulation, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ do not exist”
“If you look at the universe as a simulacrum, the game changes. Our individual actions and the result of that are part of that simulation and neither ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but just an outcome.” as a “god” of this simulacrum you can restart the simulation, reset parameters, re-run scenario’s and so on. (In the Matrix this concept is touched when Neo meets the Builder in the second part of “The Matrix”, he discovers that the Matrix has been reset several times and he is not the first of his kind.) In this scenario “God” does not care about the individual. The simulation as a whole could be like a playground, game or experiment.

3: The gift of free will
“If god is a loving entity, incredible more evolved / intelligent / whatever than we are anything we do is part of the ‘divine plan’ “.
If I were god, I would be entirely happy with the way things go. Whichever way, as it is part of my plan anyway. For us humans to even think being able to grasp what that “divine plan” is, is in my eyes rather arrogant.

4: Creation, the Bible and the large scale “blasphemy” done by religious people
Following some of the discussions regarding Darwinism and Creationism, my more cynical side has lead me to conclude that Christians do not believe in god at all, nor that they are searching to find god or get closer to god. Christians believe in the Bible. A book with stories. And it is quite simple: When our reality is created by god, if everywhere around you scientific research is presenting you growing evidence about the age of Earth, the development of species and what so have you: to deny that reality is to deny god, is to commit “blasphemy”.

5: “The universe”
When time itself can be multidimensional (many assume time to be 2-dimensional – a single line with one single history and future); past, present and future can be happening at exactly the same moment in infinite variations, in an infinite and ever changing “Now”; universes can be infinitely folded upon themselves in higher dimensions until it hardly has any volume; when the amount of entire universes and possible worlds and realities can be theoretically unlimited and everything and anything can be theoretically connected to each other in an infinite mesh up there is no way we will ever be able to understand or “surpass” a God, if there is any. Unless we some day become a multidimensional universe ourselves.

The true short story about the Dutch barrel organs

[This one is for Robert Gaal]. There is nothing so loud as a Dutch barrel organ. When you walk the streets of Amsterdam, you will find yourself overwhelmed with the joyful sound of pipes, drums and flutes jolly spouting one or another tune.

Where most barrel organs are quite small and modest, the dutch (also check these images) can be huge and are loud enough to be heard in a radius of kilometers.

An impression of a small Dutch barrel organ in action

This is not strange as it origins from a war machine. This is the remarkable story mostly known only inside the group Dutch barrel organ players, as hardly anybody else really cares:

Origin of the modern Dutch barrel organ

At the end of the Eighty years war, the Dutch resistance got short on resources and money. It was only a matter of time before the war for Dutch Independence would end in defeat and we would remain just one of the other province of the Hispano Portugese empire.

Based on known technologies a new instrument of terror came from an unforseen corner: the Portable Pipe Organ developed by Guido Warnies of Gent. Originally designed to enable churches to move their assets to a save haven quickly when a new battle would take place an unknown soldier opted the plan to use these musical instruments as an instrument of terror.

Naturally these organs did not have the complex “pianola” like mechanics to play music. They were manually operated by organ players.

Instruments of terror

Using not only  dissonant or discord music through pipe flutes, also mechanically driven drums were added to increase the level of intimidation. Moving five to ten Portable Pipe War Organs at the same time, the dissonant music would be so loud and intimidating that it became unbearable.

Naturally the War Organ players were chosen from the brave Dutch who where deaf from birth or due to hearing impairment from the sounds of gun and cannon firing at close range. The Dutch warriors would wear hearing protection in the shape of clay or wax props.

Playing the War Organs day and night the Dutch exhausted the Spanish conquerers and drove them close to madness: to the levels of breakdown after which they were easy pray for cleverly laid ambushes.

While the peace negotiations were progressing at a snail’s pace, with the Portable Pipe War Organs, Frederick Henry managed a last few military successes: in 1644 he captured Sas van Gent and Hulst in what was to become States Flanders. In 1646, however, Holland, sick of the feet-dragging in the peace negotiations, refused to approve the annual war budget, unless progress was made in the negotiations.

Where history forgets

As sometimes happens, in the course of history, the role of Portable Pipe Organs as a whole moved into obscurity. As none of the Spanish soldiers were able to tell and the Dutch simply closed the book due to Frederick Henry’s impopularity as a troublemaker in the peace process, mostly all records of this clever strategic use of Portable Pipe War Organs simply vanished.

Rediscovery of the concept

Only about 1850 the italian Ludovico Gavioli re-invented the concept of Portable Pipe Organs and created a new branch of barrel organs, but qua size and loudness they were not half as impressive as the original Belgian / Dutch Portable Pipe War Organs.

Seeing that the market was ripe, in 1875 the  Belgian Leon Warnies started his own production of barrel organs. As he needed something more powerful than the French Italian barrel organ he based his designs on the remnant Portable Pipe War Organ sketches by Guido Warnies of Gent inherited from his family lineage. His organs thus became much more impressive than the ones developed in Paris by Gavioli due to the loudness and use of drums and bells and adapted soon in the Dutch culture. And so an old Belgian Dutch war machine was revived again in an completely different form.

Nowadays Dutch organ players hold an almost religious belief that playing the Dutch barrel organ is a cultural service to community as where even an single instrument is actually too massive and loud to please a person even momentarely and the element of terror is still present even though the concept of the original Portable Pipe War Organ has been scaled down to the size of the current instruments.

Is the credit crisis accidentily a great piece of (subversive) art?

Being fed up with the boring pieces of art in musea, opera and classic music (and the righteousness explanations why it is “better” than pop cult) and grown up with wonderful expressions of color and animation on MTV, comic books, pop and underground music, computer games and in street art I started wondering what “type of art” was relevant for me. So I made a list of what I personally consider to be “art”.

1. It can be any creative outing from music, to (digital) imagery to (computer) code to plastering
2. It display an above-avarage to brilliant skill or insight in a specific field
3. It moves me emotionally and/or intellectually
4. It shifts and broadens my perception on people and / or things

More personally:

1. It is appealing to me

Regarding relevance:

1. It marks or created a clear turning point in perception / thinking / experience in a certain time frame

Some pieces of art I like. Others I do not, some I loathe but still consider to be art as they show high skill and/or relevance.

Wikipedia on Controversial and Subversive Art:

5. Art for social inquiry, subversion and/or anarchy. While similar to art for political change, subversive or deconstructivist art may seek to question aspects of society without any specific political goal. In this case, the function of art may be simply to criticize some aspect of society.

The collapse of banks has led to a credit crisis. It’s tipping point was reached by massively loaning money to American people who had low income and — in most cases — would only get further in debt. The unsafe mortgages were sold to other parties and were theoretically covered by statistics showing that “a crash would only happen once every 10.000 year“. It has unveiled a long trail of financial trickery and power games that lead back to the early 1900’s. (“Als de dollar valt” puts it all neatly together. The page I link to has referrals to sources used in the book) It is built on a framework of stupidity and greed.

Currently people state that we should rethink our economic models. “They do not work”. Well, they have certainly been bent to the breaking point by people who have become very rich and gained a lot of power, or tried to and got burned. Apparently some people who have made this crisis possible have been appointed to solve this crisis as well.

I personally believe it is one of the biggest scams in history.

And I believe it is a great piece of art. It is not pleasant art, but High Art need not to be pleasant to be art. Here are the parameters:

1. It is a genius scam going on for decades, building new empty promises above old empty promises and displayed an above avarage skill and insight into (the greed and fear part of) human nature
2. It required a lot of creativity (and manipulation)
3. Nobody dared to unveil the scam although it was clear and present (except for some eccentrics who apparently did not give enough about their own  career to play the game and instead stated what anyone with a right mind would have seen for a long while: “LOOK! The emperor has no clothes“)
4. It has shifted the awareness of people on a global scale regarding the scale empty promises can take
5. It has caused
6. It certainly is controversial and might be even subversive
7. It is very relevant and might very well mark – or be the cause of – a turning point in our mutual history

To blame the con artists is also to deny our own collective stupidity. You only get away with a scam like this when you get us to deny the obvious that lies right in front of us, like the tailor almost did in “The emperor’s new clothes”. Killing the tailor still does not wash away our own naivity/stupidity.

Fun with Flash and Flickr Interestingness

A photographic mosaic is a picture, divided into rectangular (or square) sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph of appropriate average color. (Wikipedia)

When I saw the first one (a portrait of a woman with many other portraits inside) somewhere in the 90’s I was blown away by the concept. Only recently I picked up the longing to create something like that myself inspired by the “Endless Interestingness” project made by Mark Barcinski.

Example of a mosaic generated by the Beta 0.1 version of the Flash client

Demo Flash Photographic Mosaic

Click this link to see the demo.

You can zoom into the presented image using either the mouse or the <up> and <down> keys on your keyboard. When you click on one of the photo’s in the mosaic, that photo is presented as a new mosaic. To prevent (memory) overload I only load 255 image at first. You can then decide when you want to load more images to refine the presentation and increase the variety of the images.

Limiting stuff

As even a simple palet of 16 x 16 x 16 colors requires 4096 images to crunch to their representative base color I decided to stick to a grey scale conversion. Each image I load from Flickr I convert to a grey scale image of which I define the mediate grey value. Thus I only need a base-set of 255 images or “tiles” (covering for the gaps by getting the “closest by” image) to create the base-image in grey.

I then overlay each tile in the created mosaic with a copy of each pixel the Mosaic is built out of. Each of these “pixels” has an alpha of 70% showing both the underlying tile and a color close enough to the original pixel the tile represents. The examples below show some of the results.

Examples

Below you will find six examples generated out of random Flickr images. Doing your own exploration no doubt you will find some nice ones of your own.

Maximum zoom: increasing abstractness

Mouse trail showing images in their true colors

Black cat

Jelly fish

Harbor view

Car

Portrait of a woman

Back of a woman

Kids are crappy programmers – fun with behavior patterns

Embracing yourself, embracing your inner child, be at peace with yourself, deal with your fucking “pain body”. It has not worked for me yet. I read the stuff and simply do not “click” with it, nor do I allow myself the time to decipher the fluff and get to the practical side of it. So let’s get to business.

Intro

My main goal for years is to get “unstuck”. I know I have much more potential than I show now (and fuck the Tony Robbins-es of this world milking this by claiming “OK is not enough” and that I should be “on the Edge” That as well does not work for me). I see myself holding back on issues where there is no risk except for maybe to get hurt.

So what is keeping me back?

One thing I use to get unstuck is the assumption that my brain heavily leans on pattern recognition to interpret my “reality”. It is a handy and very clever shortcut my brain applies by using already interpreted stuff from my memory instead of re-interpreting what I just experienced. In programming we would put this under the label “optimization”.

Illustration 1: Matching situations with patterns via pegs and hooks

Simplified it looks like the above image: a “square” situation is matched with a (memory) pattern already available and when our brain finds a matching “square” in our memory we can assume it is similar to something we already know.

But what if this pattern has some gnarly emotions attached to it: fears, anger, desperation, sadness, you name it. A new (possible) situation will recall and trigger these emotions we might have experienced and attached to this pattern. So every time I  move into a new social environment I might experience the same anxiety I experienced once as a toddler or teenager since the situation of old times might repeat itself again.

Why do we do the irrational things we do? – Kids are not the best people to write complex software

A 1,5- or three year kid is not the best person to write the often complex software of responsive patterns. It simply misses the experience and broader view you (hopefully) develop when growing up. Looking back at your own creations from when you were that age, there is certainly a significant difference in style and quality. And some simply do not make any sense any more and may even seem irrational to us from where we stand now.

Still: as a kid we are actively programming all kinds of patterns to be able to respond to new and old situations in the best way possible at that moment. And all this programming grows and is tweaked and adapted as we learn and grow. But still old remnants remain active. Jumbled up code. Weird response patterns that make no sense anymore now that we have become more experienced teenagers and grown to be adults.

Enter the world of broadly defined filters and new connections

People who state: “it’s how I am” or “this is what I am” are talking bullshit when you take the following into consideration: We “are” not our response patterns. We merely created them as a response to our environment.

Our mind already starts programming response patterns and pegs and hooks to be able to respond faster to new situations which resembles situations we already have stored in our memory. Let’s say one of these pegs is our “square” in the image. Now suppose we forgot to be very specific of the matching criteria of this square. So instead of only squares, any form small enough to fit will be accepted as a match.

Let’s assume I have been repeatedly publicly humiliated by the class bully. Since there was no other options shown to choose from, at these moment I went through the emotional states of shame, angst anger and sadness. Most of the fights I started I lost. So on top of the first humiliation the second of physical defeat was added, combined with a deeper hurt. And repeated.

A new pattern takes form. The main message is: when you show yourself in public, you take a risk to be humiliated.

But how specific is the filter I use for this pattern?

1. Any situation?
2. Any situation in public?
3. Any situation in public where I think people are watching me?
4. Any situation in public where people are actually watching me?
5. Any situation in public where males or females are actually watching me?
6. Any situation where I might wear the wrong combination of clothes?

And who is marked to be hostile in my mind?

1. Anyone?
2. Only males?
3. Only females?
4. Within a specific age?
5. Any age?

When the filters are to wide, any seemingly similar situation can be linked to this one specific pattern.

In the worst case: anyone could be hostile and out there to humiliate me.

Illustration 2: Mismatching judgmental pegs and hooks

Brief: “Five and six sided situations are the same as square ones”. The result is that I will be limiting my own options more than I really need to because I assume that “Square is the same as five- and six sided” where they are not. It is the result of bad programming.

But hey: I was 1, 2, 3, 4 years old at that point.

Narrowing the filters, re-evaluating and re-matching patterns

First: any pattern I created had it’s value in the past. It helped me to cope with the situations I was in at that moment the best I could.

Step 1 is to disconnect the situations that actually are different from the situation related to the pattern.

Instead of assuming that my judgment is right, I become inquisitive. “Is this situation really what I assume it to be?” It might not. I might be totally wrong when I take a better look at things. And yes: it takes courage to look beyond my assumptions. I suddenly have to open my mind, take a look at things I have learned to avoid because they might inflict pain or hurt. I have to re-learn that not all things I am trying to avoid or attack are a possible threat to me.

Step 2 is to define new judgmental pegs and hooks and to create openings for new patterns to evolve.

The question is: “if it is NOT-A, what COULD it be otherwise?” The only way to find out is to stay open, broaden my vision, observe and discard my assumptions as best as I can. Reality proves 99.99999999% of all my fantasy futurama assumption escapes into “WHAT COULD HAPPEN WHEN..” wrong anyway when I am brutally honest, so there is hardly any loss into neglecting them and try something new instead.

Step 3 is to reconnect situations to new matching hooks.

It simply makes it easier to re-evaluate a situation every time I do so. The school bully is not around any more to humiliate me. The people around me are no representatives of this bully: “out to get me… even now”. And if they are I can respond in many more ways than I could image when I was that kid because I learned some new tricks. Responses I previously perceived as attacks might even be positive critiques outed from a loving place to help me grow beyond my current state. I can stop repeating specific behavioral patterns.

Any situation is different and with different actors.

Why I think “positive thinking” does not work…

There is a lot of old hooks and pegs and response patterns in our brain. They produce all kind of responses to our day to day situations. In my case it sometimes seems like I have an entire crowd of people with sometimes contradicting agendas in my mind all talking at the same time without getting to a productive result.

To override these patters with “positive” thinking is like adding a new person to the crowd. It is really hard work to make this new “thought” loud enough to get the others to stop. And what if this “positive guy” fails? Some of the others are constantly ready for the kill. And they will make sure I understand that I have failed in yet another attempt to make a change.

..and I think opening your mind and aiming for a neutral state does

You first need to clean up.

Instead of working hard, try for a change to do nothing. Sit back and let the crowd speak their mind in your mind until they get bored from getting no response from you at all. It is already such an advantage to get a loud and noisy mind to calm down. It is like moving from a busy street to a calm meadow. Suddenly you can hear your own thoughts again, relax. Be you instead of an internal response machine repeating over and over again all the fears and doubts you already know for so long.

Like stated before, to develop new pegs and hooks for new response patterns, you first need to understand what the situation is. In my experience the best position to do this from is where I am calm and relaxed. In an argument, or when receiving critique, it is good to actually hear what is being said without immediately responding to it. To let things sink in without immediately connecting it to yourself or to your possible failure.

A neutral state is simply “observing situations without the need to have any opinion at all about it”.

“And the price winning solution is?”

I have no clue. (Fuck me if I knew. I could make millions.) My best guess for now:

1. To challenge yourself to assume that your current judgmental system is flawed. Non-stop.
2. To start with observing and learning to see things from multiple angles.
3. To re-evaluate any current judgemental system and build new ones where you feel it will help you

Signing off.

Until next time.

Peter

Flash AS3: Garbage collection and the importance of recycling

Today I am optimizing my portfolio site. It combines both dynamically generated- and static items. Now the static items pose no problem. The dynamically generated do.

Garbage collection

First of all: the garbage collector of Flash 9 sucks. Objects/movieclips with either/ or

1. Events
2. External references to-

Will sustain in memory. Apparently the next release of Flash will deal with this issue with some kind of “Kill” or “Die” or “Dispose” function. For now, we have to be creative.

The problem of Flash’s lazy/sloppy garbage collection is not the only thing that bugged me.

“Memory leaks”

In my portfolio site I create tiles with an image inside the tile. The tile itself is a button. Each time I switched to another Panel to present other data, the memory use of that Flash movie increased with 20MB to 24MB. First I blamed the images I loaded inside the MovieClips. But when I did NOT load the images into the movieclips, the increase/leakage stayed the same.

The culprits: 4 tiny tiles x 5MB each

The tiles are the only variable element in the site. As 4 new tiles are created with every new page loaded and are hard to dispose of, the increase in memory use will be at least 20MB with each new page view, since old pages are not stored but (should be) disposed of. Since the garbage collection of Flash is crap anyway I decided to drop Plan A (write a garbage cleaner) and go for plan B.

Plan B: The short term solution for Memory Leaks: Recycling

When the garbage truck does not come along and rubbish piles up around your house what can you do? Recycling the old crap to avoid more rubbish to come into your house is one of the easiest ways.

Once I create my objects on stage, I keep tabs on them via an Array. When I “destroy” them, I simply remove them from stage and make them available for re-use. Instead of creating new instances of my interactive objects I run through the array with already created ones, clear their settings and call them back on stage. Only when more movieclips are required I create them.

My current solution is rather straight forward since the array is per  Content Pane (3 in total) and there is only one stip of tiles.

The memory leakage is now “only” 1 MB per new view.

Next step

The next step to take is to create a solid pattern for recycling assets (including images and SWFs). When time allows I will improve my current solution and release it as open source.

Shoutcasting, event models and AS3 – basics

Today I am redesigning the event structure of my new portfolio site. Instead of sketching things out on paper and have things ending up in some stack of paper I decided to put it in a blog post. This is part 1, explaining the basics ot two principles I use:

1. Shoutcasting – “I do not know where you are or who you are so I simply shout your name and when you hear me you will respond”
2. Pointcasting – “I do not know nor care where you are, but I know your name and you are in my list, so I call you directly”

Starting points

ORIGINS

In the past year I have done several projects where flash-content was created by others. In contrast to code-driven sites (where all assets are placed on stage- and are stitched together via code) these sites were design driven (where all assets are placed on stage and have to be stitched together via code).

SHOUTCASTING

Let’s look at the possible strategies to find and address someone within a venue:

1. Address the person directly. You do need to know what this person looks like and where he or she is, or cal him or her via their cellphone (which is easier). See “pointcasting” for the implementation of that scenario.
2. Ask around. You only need to know the persons name, but you are dependent of a chain of people and connections. If your strategy is fuzzy, it might take a lot of asking around. If it is focused it will take less time. You are dependent of a chain of people though. When the chain is broken, you will not reach the person you are looking for.
3. Shoutcasting via an centralized announcement system. It is a bit crude, but you are not dependent of a chain of people nor do you need to know where the person is within the venue.

Setup

1. There is a Central Handler (named CENTRAL in my code)
2. This Central Handler is a singleton and provides the shoutcast eventlistener model using “subscribe” and “broadcast” to subscribe to and broadcast the occurrence of an event
3. There is a Smart MovieClip (Flash / actionscript). This “smart movieclip” carries a toolset of handy things I can use for 96% of all smart objects in my proejcts, including: loading and mappng XML data to elements in a Page/Panel/Button, event handlers and shared objects.
4. There are Panels/Pages and Buttons
5. Panels/Pages and Buttons use the Smart MovieClip as their basis via inheritance / extension
6. The Smart MovieClip imports and instantiates the Central Handler
7. Via the Central Handler, Smart MovieClips have direct access to the eventlistener

Implementation

1. Each panel/page is given an unique name.
2. Each panel/page/button subscribes to one or more events using the following setup:
   CENTRAL.subscribe(“eventtype_”+myPagePanelName , myOnEventDoAction). myPagePanelName will personalize the “eventtype_” event to a specific page/panel or button.
3. Via XML definitions, the objects recieve “targets” to shoutcast to. “sources” are passed to child objects (like buttons) via code. For instance:
   <XML><button action=”open_panel3″ src=”mySource.xml”></XML> can be shoutcasted as CENTRAL.broadcast(“open_panel3″)

When the user presses the button, only objects named: “panel3″ with the subscription “open_” (“open_panel3″) will respond. The code can look like this:

CENTRAL.subscribe(“open_”+this.name, onOpenEvent)
// When whatever component fires a “broadcast” with “open_”+ myPagePanelName the onOpenEvent function will be called.

CENTRAL.subscribe(“hideallpanels”, onHideEvent)
// Since it is not named to a specific panel, all panels will respond and hide when this event occurs.

function onHideEvent(evt)
{
this.visible=false;
// Hide this panel (and all other panels: on the general “hideallpanels” event)
}

function onOpenEvent(evt)
{
CENTRAL.broadcast(“hideallpanels”) // All panels – including this one – listens to this event and will be set to invisible
this.visible=true; // After every panel is hdden:  show this panel
}

Advantages

Since there is no need for objects to be aware of each other, the event model stays resonably simple. With only 6 lines of code you hide all panels and show only the panel whose name was “shoutcasted” with an instruction.

POINTCASTING

With pointcasting, you only address very specific items. In some cases, when loading data into another object, pointcasting might be preferrable above shoutcasting. Again I used a shortcut, by registering every object of relevance into a list, like a phone directory named: CENTRAL.objects.

When using the example of people, again I want to avoid too many dependencies. I do NOT WANT or NEED to know WHERE this person is or what he or she LOOKS like. Like with my mobile phone: when I dial the number I simply want a response, regardless if this person is at home or on the road somewhere.

To get there I use three steps:

Registering a page/panel
CENTRAL.objects[this.name]=this; // Using the name of the (visual) object to register the object reference to it.

Using XML to tie things together
<button action=”loaddata” target=”myTarget” src=”myXML.xml”>

Calling the target object using the settings in XML
myTarget=CENTRAL.objects[button.@target]
myTarget.loadData(button.@src)

How it works:

1. Each panel/page registers itself in the objects list, using their unique name.
2. Via XML I tell objects like my buttons where to pointcast their actions to.
3. Within the Button-class I simply use the objects list in CENTRAL with the XML definitions bound to the button to perform a specific action
4. When the target object is there, the XML file will be loaded within that object

LIMITATIONS AND DISADVANTAGES

Using a loosely based structure like this also carries its risks. “What if there is no panel with the name I called?”. In the sample given above all panels are closed and none will be opened. Also, when multiple elements carry the same name there will be conflicts of references will be overwritten by other references.

SUMMERY

Shoutcast and Pointcast as described here are two simple methods to address objects within my Flash projects.

Snow! AS3 filters and performance tests

Inspired by the falling snow in the third epsode of Mushishi: “Tender horns” I decided that a snow generator might be a nice benchmarker for several items:

1. Using filters
2. Addressing a LOT of particles
3. Exploring the boundries of AS3 performance and looping through arrays

Why snow?

Snow is reasonably limited in its behaviour and nice to look at. It falls down. It can be moved by wind. It can flutter when there is hardly no wind. It is white and has this semi-transparency to it.

Screenshots:

Source of inspration: Mushishi – episode 3 – snow fall

Snow using Blendmode

Snow using Blur filter

I only loosely based my snowfall on the Mushishi thing. (Mainly the sheer amount.) The snow created with Blur (the third image) is somehow less convincing to me than using the “add” Blendmode as they lack transparency. Beautiful snow has its price however. With only 1000 particles the Blendmode snow already make Flash consume 100% processor power on my MackBook Pro.

My assumptions

I assumed that the Blending filters (“add” and “screen”) would have a better performance than the Blur filter and Alpha. In theory the Blend-filters are binary manipulations like “add” “OR” “XOR” “bit shift left” and “bit shift right”. These are instructions the processor (old school types) only needs one or two clock cycles to perform. Blur and transparency require “snapshots” of the underlying layers on which the blur and transparency effects are placed. Many more clock cycles to do that, you would think.

My goal

I strive to keep my flash sites below 20% processor usage when the user is doing nothing. When you add something extra like snow, 50% constant processor usage to run an effect like snow is already a lot.

What I did

I tried single and multiple “snow flakes” per  particle, compared different settings in my particle count, and tried different approaces to animate the particles via code. For performance with the flash-render engine there is hardly no difference in 1000 individual snowflakes of a 1000 snowflakes in 250 particles. Both approaches make the render engine bog down.

The setup of the showflake engine:

1. Each particle is pushed into an array
2. There are four arrays for four layers of snow (more distant layers move slower and contain smaller particles)
3. Updating particles is done by cycling through the arrays and adding values to the current X/Y coordinates

What I found

Processor usage ADD / BLUR – 3000 particles

1. ADD: processor to 130%
2. BLUR: processor to 75%

Checking X/Y position of each particle

To see whether the particles are out of sight I simply check if the Y-coordinate is larger than a specific number. In my case: 500. Then I subtract 700 to place the flakes “in the sky” again. A simple “perpetual fall” scenario.

1. If/then: every cycle: Processor to 70%. Snow seems to fall less smooth. More “hiccups” in the animation
2. If/then: only every 20th cycle: Processor to 75%. Snow seems to fall a bit smoother

Calling a function in the object versus updating via references in the “for” loop

When the snow falls, the X/Y coordinates of each particle is updated by adding a value to the current X/Y coordinates. When doing this in the “for/next” loop I choose stick my test to two things:

1. Assign the reference of the object to a variable. Update the settings of the object via the object reference in the variable. The assumption is that this is cheaper than constantly referring to the object via pointers in the array.
2. Call an “update” function in each particle. I assumed that calling a function would be more expensive than assigning the object reference from the Array to a variable. It turned out that calling the function and let the particle take care of itself is a bit cheaper.

Again: snow seems to be falling smoother when the second scenario is followed.

Many particles with one flake versus few particles with many flakes

For the Flash render engine, the number or size (I did not check that yet) of elements is one of the determing elements for performance.

I found no niticable performance difference by creating less particles with more flakes per particle.

No (blur) filter

Surprisingly, when I let the engine animate snowflakes without any filter, the processor use leaps to 100% compared to the 75% it takes when Blur is applied. Apparently Flash alreay performs some optimization on blurred objects. Very likely by rendering them as bitmaps.

Only when “Cache as bitmap” is switched on the “unfiltered” flakes are in the same usage-range as blurred flakes.

Cache as bitmap on/off

There is no measurabel difference between Chace as bitmap on/off.

Blur applied to all flakes via parent clip

When the blur is applied via the parent clip on all flakes, no gain is gotten. Apart from that the snow becomes one unclear blob.

Conclusions on blur and add-blendmode

Based on the above tests and finding and with no warrenties (as these tests were limited in their range)

1. Blur and Alpha are way more cheap than Blendmode filters (for snowflakes)
2. There is no significant loss when particles are asked to take care of their own state (by calling the “update” function of the particle)
3. There is no significant loss when each particle has its own blur
4. If/Then statements are costly. Although the processor usage seems to remain stable, the animation seems to be more sluggish
5. Caching as bitmaps makes no difference for snow particles

Me and my old patterns, my subconcious and the desintegration of old shit

After 3 years I still wake up every morning around 4:00 or 6:00 AM with fear in my body. The fear is related to “unfinished business” and basically a literal wake-up call to close things. Based on some new reading and exploring I encountered the technique to conciously relive specific moments over and over again instead of avoiding them. The idea behind reliving is to reduce the emotional charge connected to this moment in the past. One way is by changing the “movie” every time you replay it in your mind and replacing the threatening elements by something more neutral. When done well, the complex of memories, physical reactions and emotions can be even turned around into something empowering. I entered my session today with the question if this approach could be useful.

I found that it could and that the standard methods are too elaborate and indirect to keep my interest going. My mind has been very creative in finding evasive movements via distractions and spontanious loss of focus and recollection of my planned actions: “what was I doing again?”. The “replacement” method requires focus in constant replay of the movie. So I basically need a shortcut, a way to get down to the core of things.

We discussed the technique of “you sitting in a cinema and watching the movie of your memories, replaying specific scenes and revaluaing your emotional responses”. Here is a brief transcript of my deconstruction of that approach into some core elements I think will be valuable to me.

The main assumptions

The main assumptions are that:

1. Many of my emotional, physical and mental reactions on a situation are based on old patterns triggered by assumptions
2. These patterns were once successful and helped me to get through the situations they were designed for
3. To get from a negative to a neutral state is the easiest way. I will get back on that later.

1. By desintegrating old patterns, room for new patterns will be created automatically
2. My brain can let go of old triggers of old patterns when it no longer needs to solve the “why’s” regarding the surrounding issues
3. Desintegration is faster and more long-lasting than “re-training / reprogramming the brain” methods (like positive affirmations)

I go through my findings of today step by step.

Emotional triggers

When I am in certain social situations, old patterns are triggered. My basic response is to withdraw, to avoid contact. In other situations other triggers and other patterns related to these triggers have me ending up feeling frustrated, angry, fearful, drained of energy, depressed or waking up in fear at 4:00 or 6:00 AM. They create tensions around issues and possible actions which bear relatively no danger except from looking stupid to other people (when it regards people who tend to judge in that way).

The first step today, based on the technique of the cinema was to define the following model:

1. Recognition of the event in the past
2. Recognition of me in that past period, with the knowledge and experience I had then.
3. Seperation of me NOW from myself THEN, with my new experiences, new insights and new knowledge
4. Taking action from that new perspective / building a new model / building new assumptions

If I look at the event in the past through the eyes of my old me, there are a lot of unanswered questions: “why did I choose ‘A’ instead of ‘B’?” “Why did I not call for help?” “Why did I let it happen even though I knew what was coming?” and so on. Since there is no time machine available for me now, I can only look forward and try to grow into new states of working that will make these old blocking patterns obsolete.

In my attempt to deconstruct the given methods of replaying and replacing aspects of memories I defined the following. The orginal notes fit on one A4 page, but would be totally cryptic and meaningless for anyone except me.

Problem solving:

I think that a major part of our brain is very focused on problem solving (using pattern recognition as one of the tools). It strives very hard to find answers on any question with enough relevance (by matching old patterns with new situations). I compared it in a older post with an “addiction to problem solving”. Unsolved issues (like cliffhaners in movies) are hard to accept for the problem-solving patterns in our brain and can create feelings of unease and/or ‘wants to solve’. I believe that this is one of the reasons why we like mysteries and puzzles and why some things from the past keep hunting us. Only when the problem has a clear resolvement status, the mind can release the question. My experience is that for my mind these resolvement states are the following: “the problem is irrelevant”, “the problem is solved” and “the problem can not be solved now / will be picked up later”.

Avoidance of pain:

In almost all assumptions below, the premis is taken that one of the reasons to create reactive patterns is to avoid pain I have experienced in the past.

Five primary responses to a (possible) situation:

1. Assumptions of pattern repetition: “that what is happening now / what will happen now / what I am going to do now is very similar to something I have done / seen / experienced in the past and will most likely lead to a similar result”
2. Event recollection: “what situations from my past look like the current one?”
3. Emotional and physical recollection: emotional and physical reactions connected to those recollected events
4. Avoidance of possible pain: when the recollected patterns are experiences as “negative”
5. Problem solving reflex: “What did I do wrong then?” “Why did it happen?” “How could it have happened?” “What could I have done differently?” “Why did I (not) do it?” “How will that repeat itself now?”

When out of control, the Problem Solving reflex can create what I used to call “upside down mind pyramids” representing the thought-constructs of assumptions and inner conversations that start with one topic and ends with an bulkous towering “thing”. Little side-note: To stop that process: I looked at the inner conversation and the original question. In most cases they had no connection any more. So I started to treat everything not related to the original question as being irrelevant (without fighting the thought process! that was what I tried before). At a certain moment, the process slowed down and eventually stopped. Only seldomly I create upside down mind-pyramids now.

Boosting the process of problem solving

The problem solving reflex is handy to create new strategies to avoid pain. A workable approach is the three step approach on the triggered recollections:

1. Problem definiton: How did it happen? / Why did it happen? / When did it happen / Why did I let it happen?
2. Classification in relevance: What can I solve now? / What can I only solve later? / Can I solve it? / Is the solutions in my hands?
3. Exploration of possible solutions and alternative paths: What can I do different this time? / What should I avoid? / What can I avoid? / What actions are absolutely required in which situations? / What is Plan “B”? / What is Plan “C”?

Questions that do not help are like: “Why is it always me?”

Approach 0: Neutral state – I am, this is now, what are my options?:

To get from a negative to a positive state, you pass a neutral state. To get to a neutral state is easier than trying to jump from a negative to a positive directly. For instance, when I think: “I am stupid” my emotional state at that moment is not ‘happy’. It takes me a lot of effort to get “happy” or “joyous” when I feel down and when I fail I am even more stupid. Instead of forcing myself to turn the emotion around I can simply move to a neutral state. These are the steps I recalled this morning (after saving this post last night):

1. I am: I am neither good or bad. I simply am.
2. This is now: this is not the past and the future has not happened yet. I can not predict what will happen next. So no need for overly speculation.
3. What are my options?:  in every moment there are multiple options to choose from. When I look around me I will find many possible roads to go. Which will be the best one in my situation, based on my observations of this present?

Approach 1: Dissection of questions in three categories:

1. Solvable: you can answer this question now, find an actual solution for the problem now based on your current experience.
2. Irrelevant: the question is actually impossible to answer and therefor irrelevant. For instance: “why did God not help me?”
3. Unknown if it can be solved now: there might be an answer or solution for the problem, but you currently lack the knowledge.

The irrelevant questions (ones that can not be answered) can be dropped. The unknown require more investigation, reading and learning and the solvable can be used to work out new strategies. I am not sure if you can trick the mind for a long time by telling it that a relevant “why” is irrelevant.

Approach 2: Identification of the present and the past

1. Past: The emotional trigger / emotional response is connected to a painful event in the past
2. Fear: I am afraid to experience that “same” pain again in my current situation
3. Present: The actual situation which may have no relationship to my past experiences at all and might lead to totally different outcomes
4. Response: The choice I make in order to deal with the actual or imagined situation

Approach 3: Learning more about my patterns by dissecting my assumptions

If I start taking my assumptions apart, I might be able to understand what might have been the causes to the build up of these assumptions. For instance: if groups of people trigger fear or unease in me: IS THERE REALLY SOMETHING I SHOULD BE SCARED OF? What situations caused the pain that led to these reactive patterns? We take that there was a real and present fear of danger to develop any pattern like this. We do not question IF the response was once relevant, but WHY it was relevant. Then we move it to the current time and give it a new place.

1. Definition of the assumption: What do I assume is going on? What do I assume will happen?
2. Localization: When did a situation like that occur? Where did I see it? Was I involved myself? What physical and emotional responses are connected to that situation? What did I feel? How did I respond?
3. Relevance and value then: Why was it relevant to respond like that then? What added value was there? What other options did I have not?
4. Relevance and value now: Does it work for me now? If not: what are the prices I pay due to this behaviors?
5. Re-valuation of the reactive patterns: Where and in what form could these reactive patterns be valuable again? Where in what form am I already using them in a constructive way?

Approach 4: Re-valuation of the core reactive patterns:

With re-valuation I mean: “to give an old pattern a new relevance based on what is valuable in my current life”. For instance: If I withdraw from groups because as a young child I experienced these groups as “hostile” I can redefine “hostile” by asking myself “what would be the hostile situations I can encounter in my current life? Where and how will this pattern be useful now?” Anger is another thing. Anger can be destructive when aimed at people and situations who pose no threat at all. However, when directed at someone who poses a very possible threat or will likely cause harm, anger or even rage can be very useful. The three basic questions are:

1. Why, where and when was it relevant to trigger these emotions and responses in the past?
2. What is the relevance of that reactive pattern in my current life?
3. How can I re-valuate these reactive patterns with things that ARE relevant in my current life? Where can I use these patterns now? Where can I let them go / where are they no longer needed?

Approach 5: Recognizing the patterns

1. Trigger: Based on a current situation one or more old emotional patterns are triggered
2. Assumption: These patterns are triggered due to the (unconcious) assumption that one or more painful events from the past will reoccur in the present
3. Recollection: Based on the assumptions certain emotional states and old strategies are recollected (like fear or tiredness)
4. Response: Partly based on this old information I respond to my environment

Filters, focus, expecations, assumptions and emotional responses

In the models I discussed today, flters, focus, expectations and assumptions cam forward in the following way:

1. Focus and filters: are neutral. Filters take out irrelevant information from observations. Focus is aiming the attention to one specific item. Focus and filters interact ans support each others process.
2. Expectations and assumptions: are connected to emotional states. Expectations are my projected fantasies of a possible outcome regarding a specific situation. Assumptions are stories or patterns I created some time before and which I can use to quickly evaluate a situation.

I use Focus and filters and expectations and assumptions as handy tools to quickly judge the possible outcome of a situation before I have all the facts. However when my emotional response take over, I risk to forget to take the important next step of fact-finding.

Approach 6: Stop, experience, re-evaluate, reconsider, take action

To avoid moving on assumptions, I have learned to use something like above: based on what A.E. van Voght quoted in “The world of Nul-A” which was heavily inspired by the work of Anton Korzybski called: Science and sanity (which has offered many of the things used as a basis for NLP). Korzibsky was one of the first to assume that our responses to our environment flowed in a specific direction related to the evolutionary development stages of our brain. The order of responses he defined was:

1. Observation
2. Physical response: contration of muscles, release or withdraw of specific signal chemicals, fight/freeze/flight action
3. Emotional response: anger, fear, frustration, joy ..
4. Verbal respons: exclemation of sound
5. Mental response: thoughts
6. (re) Actions

Based on this model something like the following action plan was introduced by Korzibsky. The original helped me greatly. This is how I formulate it today:

1. Stop: do not take action. The information regarding the situation I want to respond to is very likely false
2. Experience: what is currently going on? What emotions do I experience? What is my physical reaction? What are my thoughts? What do I want to express? What are my assumptions?
3. Look around / investigate / re-evaluate: what is going on around me? What do I see? What are the facts? What is the basis? Do I have time for re-evaluation or must I act now?
4. Reconsider: Based on this new information and my personal (creative) values: what would be the best response in this situation? What is really good to be my physical and emotional state?
5. Act: Take the best action you can imagine at that moment based on your new information.

Approach 7: using my body and imagination

Whe I fear, my body tends to close and my energy goes down. I have found a very simple way to counter emotional states that cost me energy.

1. I straighten my back and push my chest open/forward. This opens the body and the heart
2. I focus on my solar plexus-area when breathing and imagine my breath goes “through” this area. It induces deep-breathing which releases tensions in this area. The solar-plexus area is one of the first areas to “tighten” and block when I am in an emotional state related to fear. Releasing this part releases my body-state of fear
3. I focus on my heartbeat. By just doing that (and just accepting it is beating fast and heavy) it starts to calm down. No intervention is needed. It simply is and will calm down eventually without me having to do anything.
4. I observe my assumtopns and fears without having to do anything but observing them to get to know them: no intervention or what so ever is required. They simply are and will pass.
5. I imagine rings of golden light flowing down and pushing open my energy body

Manifestation via the curious subconcious

I close this long post wit the following: The last part of the session I had today brought a funny thing about manifestation via the subconcious. “The things you fear will happen” or “be careful what you wish for..” are two statements related to that. And Aristotle (if I remembered properly) stated that the subconcious are like horsed you need to tame.

I found – based on the train of thought above that there might be a more relaxing approach to the manifatation powers of the subconcious. I came to it via my own past vertigo.

When I experienced vertigo I had the feeling that “something is sucking me to the edge to fall down” With items (like my glasses) on my body I sensed “something pulling these items down”. Fear somehow seems to feed this mechanism.

What if it is not blind manifestation, but sheer curiousity of a playful “subconcious” mind, leading to response patterns that satisfy the curiousity (like the imagined suction towards the edge). “What if?” is one of the big questions the subconcious tries to solve.

I guess to un-learn stuff like vertigo one of the solutions could be to aim the curious subconcious to something else.