His philosophy was one of multiple model agnosticism - not just simply about the existence of God but agnosticism about everything. With MMA, there is no point getting hung up on the models themselves because that’s all they are – models.—John Higgs, KLF. pg. 258.
Multi Model Agnostic Geometry.
by Steve FlyTo make a joint between the open feeling of awe, with a little melancholy doubt, seems to me a healthy mixture for getting by in 2014 without totally loosing your wig. As the author ages, he develops a critical doubting faculty too, equally.
I sit here ready to write something about sacred geometry, confronted with the wallpaper of doubt all over my room, can the author clearly express whatever is on his mind to share now? Now doubts double, doubts about the internal logic and consistency of the writing and the ideas, doubts on the scientific interpretation of the signs and symbols invoked, the rational logic interplay, or frigid lack of it, the question of how on earth to deal with contradictions, both grammatical and personal? I do not wish to tell you what to think, or to collapse your state vector regarding whichever bunch of signs and symbols you use to employ. Bill Drummond said: 'embrace the contradictions' best advice when you think about it.
However, the crux of my investigation into agnostic geometry, remember, revolves around having a higher and broader skepticism for blind truth. Truth in the singular, single sight and Newtons sleep and all that, with a particular eye/nose/ear for pulling buzz words like 'divinity', 'holy' and 'Gods' into a reasonable framework of logic. I will argue, on the one mitten that as soon as God or the divine, or the holy turn up, some but not all rationality departs. Where does it go, i don't know, maybe into the null void of the meaningless and indeterminate. On the other mitten, perhaps the Gods never left us, if we want them they are right here now, everywhere in potential spacetime, awaiting some creative mind to make contact?
Sacred geometry, at least on the surface, appears to me to use arbitrarily assigned holiness to differentiate sacred geometry from a godless, non-sacred geometry. After all, it follows that sacred geometry would be the most precise, correct and self consistent geometry, the bleeding edge of geometry. The edge, if anywhere seems to me to be where we might find sacred geometry, closer to the cutting edge of Gods garage.?
While recently combing the inter webs for ideas, novel innovations in technology and the language used to describe such innovations, I do not often come across the use of terms such as sacred, spiritual and holy, or if I do they often display what I perceive to be lacking in basic scientific method. A handful dare to cross academic boundaries, while they retain a methodological integrity and sense, often due to a relatively simple linguistic hygiene practice, so floss your stinky Aristotelian tongue. A reminder: what you are reading is the product of a singular human being amongst billions, and any truth hauled in by your meat puppet will shortly be cast back out to the depths again. Please go dig on RAW, Dr Timothy Leary, Dr John Lilly, Bucky Fuller and Aleister Crowley for some wicked examples, great fishing spots and techniques.
This process, to me, reflects both the realm of Quantum Mechanics and the process of Taoism, and has to do with the forces of Yin-Yang, each containing the seed of its opposite. When looking into order chaos emerges, and when studying chaos, order emerges, as if the principle around the concept of the resolution of opposites gets at the unknowable and thoroughly unpredictable nature of things, like the light particle/light wave duality, and the damn missing plane. RAW brilliantly synthesized a collection of historical characters who were all touched by this principle in different ways, from the early great Hermeticists Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico, to James Joyce, Carl Jung, Claude Shannon and Marshall McLuhan, in the 20th century. This resolution of opposites, inherent in the principles of these innovators maybe a clue to RAWs question concerning what the above people and their innovations have in common with Internet?
The nature of life, not least a process important to any search for the answer to the age old question about meaning and life. As Alfred Korzybski said: “everything you say it is, it isnt”I feel swept over to the point where I try to distinguish between good agnostic geometry and good sacred geometry, and demonstrate how non-sacred geometry can be equally, if not a tad more holy that its sacred sibling. If you can take my holyometer, or proposed measurement of the divine without laughing out loud?
As far as I can see Buckminster Fuller was a agnostic geometry innovator, and perhaps his quote ‘God is a verb’ can stand as testament, next to the thousands of Geodesic domes across the planet. He sided with the scientific community, yet also managed to allow space in his methods for consciousness, and for intuitive mind to find solutions to specific problems when they arise, that's what mind does, it solves problems using the whole of human experience and technology together, if it can override the animal instinct to fight and shop at Tesco supermarket. And so often requires a boot in the arse - a war or a global crisis, an excuse to implement the solutions, or perhaps more urgently find a new way of thinking about the problems.
Buck exemplified techno-optimism at its most comprehensive, and demonstrated through design science innovation what religiously inclined people might refer to as miracles, or magic. Bucky crafted poetry too and developed into a distinguished linguist, creating a rag bag of new terms and often compound words, such a Dymaxion [Dynamic Maximum Tension] which presents evidence to show that he did not refuse to acknowledge that language and words are equally charged technologies that may bring about positive change both in the user of the language and within the environment. As Benjamin Lee Whorf once exclaimed: ‘a transformation in language, can lead to a transformation in the cosmos’.
Together with his writing and equations and theory, Bucky performed by example, making the solutions real tangible things, houses, cars, maps. Personally speaking, if any religious leader also happened to have made numerous useful, practical contributions to science I would be quick to listen and learn. Not to deny that Dzogchen Buddhism, for example, behaves as a practical psychological system on a par with the scientific method, featuring rigorous experimental conditions, attention to the instruments used (the mind) taking careful notes, and staying awake to the possible hidden variables. (also for more on this see Carl Jung, James Joyce, Giambattista Vico, Wolfgang Pauli, founding principles of Taoism and founding principles of Quantum Mechanics)
Although many people find satisfaction, enjoyment and a kind of enlightenment through adopting rather bizarre ideas about specific kinds of geometry, usually what is more appealing to the eye, you do not find many joining the church of special relativity and building an alternative spiritual movement on the principles of Einstein. But why not? How can any Scientology disciple sleep at night knowing the they worship L. Ron Hubbard and his ideas, when characters like Einstein and Bucky Fuller demonstrate a much more solid kind of scientific knowledge system, and in Bucky’s case with dozens of practical innovations that obviously help individuals, communities and planetary systems co-evolve together. Not just a psychological strategy for self-discovery combined with the usual trappings and flights of fantasy associated with institutionalized religious doctrine.
In the some sense then, the sacred scripture, or symbol system of science is mathematics. A meta programming tool-kit, that maybe allow for an infinite variety of problem solving equations, based on a decentralized system where anybody who can calculate, holds the keys to understanding. Organized religion, and Scientology, and a lot of sacred geometry schools, on the other hand use scripture as scripture. I mean to say, the system is centralized and controlled due to the fact that there is a symbol system deemed to be the only true symbol system, and very very special, or Sacred due to it coming from a very special or Holy individual. See Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard.
Mathematics is open source friendly and loves new data, and updating, like good science. On the contrary, organized religion and Divinely guided individuals want you to only concentrate on a controlled slice of scripture, and develop a new centralized control system. A new father figure, a new boss, usually accompanied by a congregation of invisible beings, often, interestingly reflecting the culture that manufactured them: angels, demons, space aliens, fairies, critters.
On the bright side, like Alan Moore states ‘the gods exists in our minds where they are real beyond refute’ but the major difference here is that Alan, unlike the Pope, may contact hundreds of Gods and Goddesses, perhaps thousands in all forms, a great pantheon of Gods of all sorts. The Catholic Pope, however, along with most other religious leaders, seems stuck worshiping just one God, usually with a big dick, one scripture, and often just one way. At least any serious occultist or magician will have at some point encountered the warnings and advice on believing anything they encounter or contact, a lifelong motif throughout the works of RAW. ‘you are the master who makes grass green’
The one place that Gods unarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity.—Alan Moore as William Gull, From Hell.
I find the idea that before the constraints and/or expansive opportunities emerged in human culture due to the lack of a universal symbol system adequately developed, humans lived in a totally different universe, a world without words. Can you imagine that? Like the principle that you cannot find or have the condition of dyslexia in a non-alphabetical culture! the symbol system you use can modify your entire cosmos for better or worse, dependent on which side of the fence you may graze.
On one side the traps and untruths forwarded by Aristotelian --dualistic systems--lead to disharmony in the human physiological system, and currently, amplified by the military-industrial-corporate-media complex, billions humans are at unnecessarily high risks of contracting disease, starting in the mind and manifesting within the body. Take note of the excessive use of dualistic, closed-minded religious terminology in pop culture and politics. This idea is somewhat along the lines of the psycho-physiological ideas put forward by Wilhelm Reich in ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’ and Alfred Korzybski in ‘Science and Sanity’, both brought to my attention once again, by our man Robert Anton Wilson, Read him. RAW wrote about all this much better than the present author, and more than 50 years ago. Get digging.
On the other side, symbol systems used to express multi valued logic, of anything more than two change the game, introduce new ways to connect and co-operate. To not have access to these important and helpful symbol systems would throw any culture into a new paradigm shift, literally unimaginable. The invention of programmable computer software code, and advancements in A.I. systems relate to multi-valued probabilities, decentralized field approaches, reasoning, and at the same time they generally avoid religious jargon. Although, ‘spiritual machine’ is a term sometimes used to get a conversation going about A.I. A more meaningful term, in the current context is consciousness, the final frontier? I’ll leave that for another post.
To conclude, perhaps at this point it is wise to take a kind of pan-psychist approach and say that yes, everything is sacred, sentient and conscious, in a tiny tiny degree, in part due to it being under our light of consciousness. But I think that to isolate one particular model, no matter how true it seems to you, leads to trouble down the road, and many charlatans out there are looking for that trouble specifically, ways to shine light on some things and eclipse others, without letting anybody know about all that other stuff in potential, or what is not yet tuned in. Any word used to denote extra special qualities in a thing, that are typically unquantifiable, such as ‘Sacred’ ‘Holy’ ‘Divine’ ‘Royal’ ‘Righteous’ work as a distraction and aversion from the noble goal of balancing the language, or symbol systems used…with the equation of life, the calculations and division turned into knowledge.
Art and Magick seem interchangeable terms to me too, as they do to Alan Moore if I can be so bold as to point at him and simply and say: what he do. And furthermore, what he has demonstrated without a shadow of a bats wing of a doubt, he has understood and mastered both realms with a rare and equal balance. Not dogmatic science and not dogmatic religion, but willing to investigate both, and giving examples of multi-model agnosticism. deployed successfully with the aid of advanced art and magick. Yes mate.
I bring up Moore here as an important individual, and atruly great Englishman, who practices a delicate blend of art-magick-geometry, in some sense, in the best sense reaching back to the Hermetic scientists and mystics of the Renaissance period. He presents living evidence that--based on the above theory somewhat aimed at debunking the use of terms like sacred, divine, holy, as distinguished from the probabilistic language used in good scientific method—a middle way exists, a magickal way, that preserves the wonder and mystery of consciousness and creative imagination and the manifestation of symbols signs and scripture, yet, at the same time can apply disciplined scientific method. For example taking strict notes while utilizing the 'operationalist language' of defining the instruments used, the conditions of the experiments, and the important practice of strengthening contradicting criticism and arguments, keeping change constant with a healthy flexible process of updating based on the latest information.
In the case of exciting new Geometry the amplituhedron fits that description for me, another exciting new development in geometry that can be viewed as being an extension of Buckminster Fuller innovations. such as synergetics together with the continued growth of Fullerenes, of which I think Carbon 60 takes the crown of creation and deserves very special attention and study.
The magical thinking of the mind fails, more often than not, when it tries to move beyond the immaterial and affect the material world. Likewise, objective materialism has proved to be a fat lot of good at explaining or predicting the mental worlds we inhabit. Once we are aware of those limits, the idea that these two models are incompatible falls away. Using multi-model agnosticism, we no longer have to take sides and nail our colours to one or the other.”—John Higgs, The KLF, Chaos, Magic, and the band who burned a million pounds.
--Steve Fly
Amsterdam 5/4/14.
Sacred means revered due to association with holiness. Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy (perceived by religious individuals as associated with divinity) or sacred (considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspiring awe or reverence among believers)-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred
“Geometry (Ancient Greek: γεωμετρία; geo- "earth", -metron "measurement") is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space.-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometry
For more maybe try these writings by fly:
1. ETTT: Icosahedron by Steve Fly
2. Alan Moore on RAW
3. John Higgs on RAW
4. Robert Anton Wilson & The Tale of the Tribe
5. Hermetic structure of Pounds Cantos
6. Toward a RAW A.I.
p.s Please support the Cosmic Trigger Stage Production, pull the trigger, get into trouble with us.
Alan Moore unlocking safety latch and taking a clean head shot.
John Higgs: paying tribute to Robert Anton Wilson at the Horse Hospital.
