Dancing With Complexity

The third tenet of Distilled Harmony is Distill Complexity. I tend not to write about it as often as Foster Harmony on Enable Beauty, because, well, because it is complicated. Then something happens out there in the “real world” that forces you to consider complexity more closely. This time we get to blame Google - with a little help with their buddies at Harvard - for something other than losing an order. Seems that they have managed to capture the most accurate 3D image of the brain to date. To be specific, according to Singularity Hub.com, they:

“published an intricate map of every cell and connection in a cubic millimeter of the human brain. . . to make the map, the teams sliced donated tissue into 5,300 sections, each 30 nanometers thick, and imaged them with a scanning electron microscope at a resolution of 4 nanometers. The resulting 225 million images were computationally aligned and stitched into a 3D digital representation of the region.”

Wow, that is waaay more pictures than I have on my computer, maybe even more pictures of my grand-daughters that my daughters have posted on Facebook. A simple Google search will take you to all the information about this accomplishment necessary to either warm the cockles of your techie heart, or put you to sleep.  I come down somewhere in between: Speechless at the complexity that we carry around between our ears. But while the grace and beauty of the science is truly awesome, for me it pales almost to insignificance in comparison to what those physical structures, revealed by the science, allow us to participate in. Everything we create, experience, believe, feel, realize, everything we are, springs to life only as electrical and chemical impulses flash across those billions and billions of pathways at incompressible speeds. If that isn’t complexity, it will have to do until something better comes along.

So I imagine myself able to sort of amble around in my brain, wandering among those billions and billions of connections (perhaps aka b&bcs? ) of my lives lived, experienced, or perhaps passed by, but still somehow stashed as the “what might have, could have, should have beens up there in the ‘billions and billions of connections’ of brain land.” They stretch out before me, images, poems, writings, people, places waiting for my presence to animate them. Or, if we let the quantum theory notion of "many worlds" sneak in, what happens/happened to those entities/realities I chose not to pursue? Or those for which I have insufficient time?

Whew. I’m not sure when you first begin to question your own immortality. It is an awkward consideration, since, in truth, we have always experienced ourselves as immortal beings. I wake up and there I am. Never been anywhere else - unless you want to count a few confused moments in the 60s. I am fascinated by the literature on near-death experiences, but never having had one - just a couple of minsdiagnosises a couple of decades ago - near death experiences remain just literature to me.

More common and more comfortable, we often tend to create labels for those moments that our lives have in common with those experienced with or by others; angst, love, etc. For example - the notion of a midlife crisis springs to mind.  Nice, pat, and probably inaccurate and insufficient. It seems more likely that the time-honored “midlife crisis” occurs when a newly encountered awareness of one’s mortality (something we tend to ignore) intersects with the time necessary to actually consider the slipping of sand through the hour glass. And “so are  the Days of Our Lives.” Just kidding, but it is interesting that the time-worn hokey opening of one of television’s longest running daytime soap operas points to a very complex set of issues that most of us will experience, have experienced, or are experiencing.

It is not that we never actually consider the awesome complexity of our lives and the staggering array of possibilities embedded in that complexity. We do. Two iterations come to mind:  one time is a fairly accurate “everything is possible” moment, the other is a transient illusion. Strangely we often get them backwards.  First the illusion, for which we can usually blame our parents, but unfortunately in doing so, those of us who have children, must usually fess up to handing off the same illusion to our progeny. It’s the old “You can be anything you want to be fallacy!”  In pursuit of the Distill Complexity tenet, I’d suggest the acronym YCBAYWTB to sort of simplify.

The problem is this, the YCBAYWTB fallacy neglects the hard reality of prerequisites, something with which my half century in various roles in various classrooms has made me very familiar.  So let me use the academic iteration for a quick and dirty example. Say in response to the YCBAYWTB the “7th grade you” decides you want to be the next Elon Musk.  OK. If we just want to do the money side the three richest folks in the world are - in a shifting kind of order, Elon Musk (Tesla motors, Space X, PayPal, Solar City,  Neuralink, etc.) Jeff Bezos, (who may be slipping given the divorce-  Amazon, Blue Origin, Whole Foods, etc.  ) and Bernard Arnault (No, I didn’t recognize him either.  Google says he is the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world's largest luxury goods company.) They are each worth about 200  billion. OK, none of those guys just started printing money. They had to deal with the prerequisites. They had to somehow get their first job in order to buy their first company to make their first million, or billion or whatever, and in order to do that they probably had to pass algebra, or calculus, or French, or Latin, or etc., etc., etc.  Do you see where I am going here? The grand assertion that YCBAYWTB tends to leave out considerations of the prerequisites, all those things you have to do BEFORE YCBAYWTB! So, before we tell our children, or our students YCBAYWTB, in good conscience, we need to tell them about the prerequisites necessary to reach that goal.

And then there is the whole "luck" thing. I used to give a class assignment specifically designed to combat the YCBAYWTB fallacy prevalent among my students, as evidenced by the fact that they had a tendency to change majors every other semester.  In the assignment, they had to define exactly what it was that they wanted to be - and then list the prerequisites that they needed to complete to reach that goal. But I specifically forbade "stardom" either in athletics or the arts as their chosen goal. Strange for the guy who seriously considered "God's gift to the musical theater" as a legitimate life goal? Not really. I had come to realize that the pastry of stardom was heavily leavened with the yeast of good fortune.  So the next star in any of those performance fields had to use their "fall back option" for this exercise. MVP of the Super Bowl your first choice? Then use a legitimate route to coaching for this exercise. Though, in retrospect, I guess I should have made an exception for Russell Wilson. But how often does that happen? The point is that when advocating for the YCBAYWTB fallacy, it is only fair that one point out the prerequisites that pave the path to that "anything," the hurdles that turn the fallacy into a reality.

So what about the time when YCBAYWTB isn’t an illusion? It is still a bit of an illusion, but at least it is an informed illusion, and it lies at the other end of one’s professional life -  retirement.  Now let me admit right up front that I  know that I have lived, to date anyhow, a pretty charmed life. Born as a white male in a middle class family that believed, and provided for, an education that was not seen as complete until one had a doctorate degree. And also having reached the plateau of 3 score and 12 years with only a few health hiccups, accompanied along the way by folks who cared about me perhaps more than I deserved. Yeah, it has been a pretty nice ride so far, a fortuitous clambering past the prerequisites necessary to reach this iteration of YCBAYWTB.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that there are some things I might want to be that are no longer on the table. Broadway has yet to come calling. But I really don't see that as a bad thing, as that would be a "job." And no "job" really fits in my current YCBAYWTB perspective.  As a matter of fact, anything that requires me to march to the beat of someone else's drum is not going to make the cut. Even though the life of a tenured college professor was a pretty "self-controlled" ride, I can't imagine having to be somewhere I didn't want to be - AKA, meetings, classes, etc. Same can be said of playing point guard in the NBA. I never could go to my left, and the highlight reels rarely feature exhausting hours in the weight room, and let’s not even think about the whispered commentary accompanying the gruesome injuries. So what does fit in my personal view of YCBAYWTB as seen from this side of retirement?

Fortunately, the parameters are pretty "me friendly," and not surprisingly, in close step with the tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. And that really is the key to turning this "senior YCBAYWTB" from an illusion into a reality: Determine what you have come to believe and engage in behaviors that manifest those beliefs.

So let’s start with Foster Harmony. Yeah, yeah, it should be pretty simple - just chill, be mellow. However, this one is often a challenge for me and hence I draw a great deal of pleasure and comfort from those times when I actually pull it off. You see the challenge of behaving in a way that Fosters Harmony comes from the fact that in much of the world, and certainly in America, we are taught the oppose. We live in an incredibly competitive world. To quote that famous gentle soul Vince Lombardi - “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!” - a phrase he apparently stole from UCLA football coach Red Sanders.

The point is we are taught that winning is what is important in life - beating the others, being the best, thrusting your fist into the air! Me, me, me! But no, no, no. To truly Foster Harmony you have realize that winning just isn’t that important. Mind you, I am not advocating losing here. Rather you just need to shift the objective. Winning isn’t the goal. Rather, doing whatever you choose to do to the best of your ability - that is the goal. And you reach that goal best by listening, not talking. And when you feel compelled to talk, practice phrases like: “That’s a neat idea!” “What would you like to do?” “I hadn’t thought of that” and "I think you're right!" And even more important, try not to get the last word, even if you are tempted to mutter it as you leave the room.  I know - I think of it as "tough harmony."

Sounds kind of wimpish. But one thing I learned in half a century of teaching is that truth and certainty have a way of swiftly changing in the face of more evidence, better research, greater wisdom. So crow, and my own words spoken in haste, are two things I am working on keeping off my dinner plate as I work my way to fostering Harmony.

Enabling Beauty is the tenet that is by far the most fun, because it is the one that implores us to facilitate making the world a more beautiful place. Basically it breaks into two closely related sets of endeavors: doing and supporting. “Doing” is just that. Mess around in any medium, draw, paint, sing, compose, dance, write. But keep two things in mind. First remember that in a Distilled Harmony view of the world, the objective is to create beauty. As I have said and written often before; I don't do horror, I don't do dark. Sorry Guernica, you get no space on my wall. In 1937 maybe it was the primarily role of the artist to draw attention to the horrors of the wars that would soon engulf the world. Today with the mandate of “if it bleeds, it leads,” media. We need merely to glance at the nearest screen, or art exhibit. Ugliness? The advocates of certainty from both left and right seem to have that that covered. Time to take a stand for Beauty.

The supporting part is also great fun. Go to local concerts, community theater. Go to art shows. Buy something, even if your walls are full. Gift it forward.

Also, don’t compare your own work to genius. Just take your best shot at creating Beauty. Lombardi and Sanders were both wrong. The reality is that winning is sometimes a minor by-product of doing your best at what is truly meaningful and important. And while watching sports is enjoyable - guilty here - and incredibly profitable to a small handful of folks, it isn’t really meaningful or important. So perhaps better to increase our focus elsewhere. Maybe by focusing on simply enabling beauty, you may surprised how and when that illusive thing we call genius might emerge. 

Perhaps the illusive third tenet - Distill Complexity - may simply be manifested by clarifying your own beliefs and attitudes and then exploring how you can bring those beliefs and attitudes into the more dominant two initial tenets: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.

So for my particular senior "YCBAYWTB,"  I read, draw, write and listen to music - all the time. To be truly content, and, yes, happy, I have to have a Wall post or two, or three, percolating here on my screen, a drawing evolving between my photos, graphics app, and my drawing tablet, and a book - often a mystery - following me on iPad and iPhone, all to the tune of whatever I choose to be listening to a the moment. And, equally important, when any of those three activities seem to generate something worth sharing - I do so. Like now.

Hmm, Maybe not really all that complex after all.

Wondering

Sometimes nodding turns to dozing,

And then dozing turns to dreams

Of lives not really lived at all.

Yet in those dreams it seems

Mystic moments wink an eye,

Of the lessons partly learned

On the paths we might have taken

If our lives had that way turned.

So waking finds one wondering

Of the lives you left behind,

And we poke the coals of memory

Not knowing what we’ll find.

There are ripples and tsunamis,

To startle and surprise

With promises and questions

From long forgotten eyes.

Did we really miss the turning

That led some other way?

To lives with different endings?

To new dawns of other days?

Could the casts of other dramas

Lure me down that shady stream,

Where tranquil waters call me,

Back to sleep, perchance to dream.

The Voynich Manuscript

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I watched an intriguing video last night on my iPad's Curiosity Stream app - which I am sad to report is not available on Dish. It was about a strange manuscript called the Voynich Manuscript. I had seen other reports about it, but this one seemed more current and in-depth. Briefly Wikipedia tells us this:

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an otherwise unknown writing system, referred to as 'Voynichese'.^[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and stylistic analysis indicates it may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.^[1][2] The origins, authorship and purpose of the manuscript are debated. Various hypotheses have been suggested for the text, including: an otherwise unrecorded script for a natural language or constructed language; an unread code, cypher or other cryptography; or simply a meaningless hoax.

Last night's episode, entertaining as it was, added nothing of significance to that Wikipedia entry, except perhaps to report how throughly the manuscript has been studied. It concluded by saying, in essence, this is a fascinating document, but we have no idea what it means. That put me in mind of the Holmesian fallacy, attributed to Sherlock Holmes, but, of course, penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his famous detective:

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

It strikes me that this may well be the case with the Voynich manuscript, and the remaining improbable truth is that the manuscript has no meaning - at least not it the traditional "these characters translate to these letters, which make words that create sentences in this language that have this meaning." It strikes me as far more probable that the document is a fantasy construction, literally a fanciful construction of - given the cost of the various elements at the time of its construction - a wealthy member of the gentry who became enchanted with the way the various media could come together to create "something like" the idea of these new things called "codexes."

We tend to guess at the meanings in mysteries by looking at them through the eyes of our own experiences. My guesses about the Voynich manuscript are no exception. There was a time when I lived in Vienna, Austria. 1959- 1961. I attended school at The American International School.  I’m not sure how early the grades started. I, the youngest in our family, attended 5th and 6th grades. My brother, the eldest, graduated from high school, so perhaps 1st through high school?  Classes were held in English, and there were students and faculty from perhaps a dozen countries. The families were drawn from mostly the diplomatic corp or the military.

It was here that I invented my "fantasy script." I’m not sure why I invented it. Perhaps to make me appear somehow unique in this very varied cluster of kids, some of whom wrote in languages using symbols that were, well, Greek to me.   I say “script” as opposed to alphabet or language because the my symbols were completely random, although I would construct them on a page as though I were taking notes. I used no consciously English symbols and any resemblance to other scripts was purely accidental. Now when I encounter other fictional linguistic constructions, Elvish, Klingon, etc., I am reminded of my youthful gibberish. Yet I realize that those literary “languages” had/have real, complex structure and meaning. Mine did not, I simply liked the way it looked and the feel of writing it. The symbols seemed to glide over the pages. It was really fun. As both my sister and I are "mid-moves" I am relatively certain that no examples of my secret language exist in boxes in attics anywhere. I sort of see it in my "minds-eye," but that is far from 20-20.

So my curiosity remains. Perhaps the very serious and erudite scholars, linguists, code breakers and technologists seeking to reveal the meaning hidden in the mysterious Voynich manuscript have eliminated the impossible, and the improbable truth that remains is that there is no conscious meaning, no "real message" there.

Now, just why someone would go to the time, effort, and expense to create such an elaborate artifact does raise interesting questions - but the answers to those questions may be more amenable to examination by art scholars, philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists.

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The Consistency of Harmony

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(An observation.  Before I retired there was a bit of a kerfluffle going on at the University about “trigger warnings.” These were proposed additions to course materials to “warn” students that they might encounter content that could - well, I was never sure what we were supposed to warn them about. Maybe new information? Big words? Anyhow, this a “lengthy warning.” That means go pop some corn or grab some chips or other munchies and a beverage of your choice, ‘cause this one gets a bit wordy. Can you imagine?)

Just a quick refresher; Distilled Harmony is a lifestyle philosophy driven by four basic tenets. They are, in order of primacy: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty; Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. The belief is that behaving in accordance with these four tenets we come ever closer to sharing the central Harmony that organizes existence.

I was doing a little time-traveling on my walk this morning, courtesy of the Pandora Hits of the Sixties channel. That put me back at the end of high school, and the beginning of my college career. It was, in some ways, a visit with parts of my life that had been "out of sight, out of mind" for more than half a century. Images of faces and places presented themselves with sufficient clarity to elicit chuckles, sighs and groans as I followed my younger self through the triumphs and disasters of those musically enabled moments.

OK, we are talking about a significant span of years, but how could I have been so many different people during those times? Sometimes a total jerk, at other times a relatively insightful young man, often somewhere in between. A span of identities with different hopes, different dreams, different plans, different certainties, different doubts. Different everything it seemed. Until I stopped walking, took off my headphones, and sat down and realized that in each of my different selves there was a least a kernel of the older guy who eventually came to cherish harmony. And recognizing that kernel, sometimes just a fragment of an identity that cherished harmony, started me thinking about the many faces of harmony.

Harmony is a pretty broad brush with which to paint a life.  Distilled Harmony presumes to contain all four tenets, and does in many ways, but I find it a good idea to remind myself that all four tenets point to creating, finding, and maintaining harmony. This is particularly important when we realize that the path to harmony rarely runs straight, rarely manifests itself in a consistent guise. Rather we wrap various shifting realities around the relatively constant core of our harmonic self.

So through much of the 60s I was this confident youngster who knew the world would soon recognize that he was God's gift to American musical theater and he would live out life as a modest celebrity with a compliant and supportive woman at this side. So, OK, sometimes each of our various identities gets it a little wrong.

But that kid - aka myself at that age - also got some of it right.  Musical theater in the 60s was a pretty joyful place: The Sound of Music, Bye Bye Birdie [full disclosure - I played Birdie in High School :-)], Hello Dolly, Man of La Mancha. Bright lights, happy dancers, romance, applause, curtain calls - aka Harmony. The fact that the world failed to recognize his/my integral place in that world wasn't really our fault. For a while, in my more grandiose moments I would believe myself to have been the most talented performer to graduate from Springfield North High School. And then John Legend came along, sigh. So first there's John and then me, and, truth be told, probably a host of equally, if not more talented, kids between the two of us.

But looking back on my recent musically induced magical mystery tour, I think that even then I was beginning to recognize that the path to harmony was shaped by two insights; first, that harmony and love are synonymous concepts; and second, they both can find reciprocity in different places and people.

This might be a good place to remind us, and for some of you disclose for the first time, that The Schrag Wall came into being back in 2008. I had just published, The God Chord, String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart.  I had managed the construction of that work by posting notecards of “to be included” items on the wall behind my computer desk. Well, the book was completed but related ideas kept coming. That reality, and the fact that my wall was completely obscured by notecards, gave birth to this online blog.

It is in a way comforting that the intervening 13 years of Schrag Wall retain many of the central notions of The God Chord. (If you would like a copy of that work, drop me a note at robert.schrag@gmail.com) and I’ll shoot a digital copy out to you.) Perhaps most significant is the idea that our most central “self” can be thought of as our personal chord - an evolving compilation of thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, values and experiences that are, ideally, moving us closer and closer to the constantly observable and knowable Harmony that underlies the universe. Hence - Distilled Harmony.

Again, perhaps inspired by Pandora’s Hits of the Sixties, I have been visited, during naps, nights, and dozing, by reflections, visual flashes and recollections of moments, people and experiences - individual “notes” if you will -  that struck particularly close to, and have remained tightly entwined with, what I believe are the central notes of my own chord.

First there is Jimmy.  During the summers of 1966 and 1967, I worked as a volunteer/counselor at Clearwater Ranch in Philo, California. The ranch was a permanent treatment center for “emotional disturbed” children. I’m sure those descriptors have been changed over the past 50 years, but essentially the ranch was where the sent kids in “the system” that no one else wanted. I worked - basically babysat - a group of the youngest. A group I came to think of my “itsy-bitsy-skitsies.” Jimmy was one of those kids. He was a little tow-haired five-year-old with huge blue eyes that would just melt your heart. He sort of became my shadow.  Nights were chilly in Northern California, and on particularly cool nights Jimmy would say, “Bob, I’m cold!” which was our private speak for “Give me your sweater.”  And I would hand over my yellow sweater.

There was a female counselor about my age who also had a special relationship with Jimmy. She and I were friends, but had no special feelings for one and other. Yet we seriously, well as seriously as two 17-year-olds could manage, discussed getting married so we could adopt Jimmy and take him away from the ranch. Remember this was California in the 60’s when everything seemed possible! Still, after many long discussions with each other, and two sets of nonplussed parents, we realized that without jobs, education, incomes, etc., we would be doing Jimmy no favor by essentially kidnapping him from the State of California. So at the end of the summer I had to say goodbye to Jimmy as I stepped into the van to take me down to San Francisco to begin my trip back to my new life at Kalamazoo College. It can also be hot in Northern California, and this was a scorcher. I hugged Jimmy goodbye.

He looked up at me. “Bob, I’m cold.” I dug into my knapsack and surrendered the sweater. Jimmy struggled into it, using the floppy sleeves to wipe his eyes.

So the chord “love can break your heart, but that is better than turning your back on love” got filed away in my “central Harmony chord.” Still there, still functioning.

And then there as the night at the outdoor stage at NCMA - North Carolina Museum of Art. We were listening to an excellent Beatles cover band, either Fabfest or Beatlesque, I forget, it was a long time ago, probably a dozen years. Anyhow, the weather was perfect, humidity under 30%, a rarity for Raleigh, temperature maybe 75. No clouds, lots of stars. Perhaps a dozen local breweries had set up stalls around the upper perimeter of the seating area and we had sampled their wares. As the band swung into “All You Need is Love,” I resisted the possibly beverage induced urge to jump up and holler “Tell it like it is, brother!” Instead I reflected on the fact that the wonderful chords that unite to define our central Harmony can pop up in a variety of venues - you need not travel far nor spend a fortune. This was one such moment. If the asteroid had taken that moment to plop down on Raleigh, I would have gone out with a smile. The trick is not so much to seek these unique moments out, but rather to recognize and acknowledge them when you are lucky enough to find yourself in their presence.

And then, of course, most importantly, there are the people who share your life, and the notes and chords they contribute.  One of the songs Pandora sprung on me was Gale Garnett’s “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine.” Not actually a one-hit wonder, but pretty close. Back in the mid 1960s, when the tune was enjoying its brief burst of popularity, and I was a junior or senior in high school falling in and out of love with stunning regularity, I had always found this lyric weird:

“I will never love you,

The cost of love’s too dear.

But though I’ll never love you,

I’ll stay with you one year.

And we can sing in the sunshine.”

"How strange," thought my 1960-ish self, who had been raised on adventure/romance novels from the early 1900s, top 40 tunes, and Broadway musicals, all of which touted the “now and forever” brand of love. What place does the lyric “I will never love you” have in a love song? And even more so, an expiration date, “I’ll stay with you one year.”  Really? Thanks so much!

My 21st century self, not surprisingly, has a rather different take on the whole question of loving the people in your life.

Love/Harmony is always a condition of the moment. It cannot be delayed, and rarely resuscitated. Hence, we must always seek to behave according to the dictates of each version or variation of the central Harmonic chord. Yet, we are all prone to error. We sometimes behave in ways that are dissonant to that central chord, as sometimes do the people that we love. So Harmony also favors forgiveness, of others and of ourselves. But forgiveness should not translate to self-deception. Forgiving constant deviations from the central chord, both in ourselves and in those we love, is destructive. Sometimes, as Ms. Garnett perhaps overstates, “The cost of love’s too dear." The tricky part - in the long run - is reconciling the insights shot from the hip of our youthful selves with our current, more thoughtful and evolving understanding of manifesting loving harmony in our relationships with the vital others in our lives.

The most helpful insight perhaps is the one contained in the previous paragraph. Our central chord is of the moment, and is based in self-aware, forgiving, openness.  When interacting with the loved ones in our life, we should try to meet each moment of each day, each interaction - or lack thereof - in the hope of finding new, or confirming, evidence of our enduring coherence with the universal Harmony of existence.

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