The Tardation Study: The Fruit Company

Twisting Fate...
what is about to begin happening,
one way or another.

Author’s Note:

This post is a continuation of an ongoing series:

Concerning Tardation; The Tardation Matrix; The Tardation Matrix: Dimensions; The Tardation Matrix: Human(x,y,n)

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Tardation: a manufactured and artificially installed psychological malady emulating an addicted state of life where irrational political beliefs are deliberately sublimated into a life as the working counterbalance for the equally deliberate creation of a dysfunctional individual psychology within the victim.

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So far these thoughts have been focused almost exclusively on the matrix of questions to be used. Why? Because questions must precede answers of course.  But now it’s time to think a bit on the remainder of the beast.

Questions beget answers, many of which will be partial answers, incorrect and incomplete answers. How these intermediates are handled while they’re evaluated, promoted or discarded makes quite a difference in how efficiently they can be processed.  I’m of a mind to think the work deck for these intermediates should echo the matrix from which they originated, a three dimensional array of the same dimensions as the first, five by five by n deep where each “n” is one set of intermediates.  That’s twenty five responses where by soft convention nine of them have a pre-defined emphasis, with fourteen wide open.

The chances any thought dropped through the machine is going to only generate one  possible answer are vanishing thin.  The world is simply more complex than that. The flow of the intermediates generated is a data source in and of itself, the more and more diverse a group of people contributing to the study the more accurate they become.

There needs to be a protocol in the answer matrix for tracking the exact progression of thought, all the lines of reasoning originating from some initial input.  Since the answer matrix is going to be strings, text,  I’m thinking a dedicated header section would be appropriate, some convention to indicate flow and direction.

So let each entry in the answer matrix begin with a header enclosed in the [square brackets] where the convention is [ date:time stamp; contributor code;  #(x,y,n) to indicate the entry point (beginning of thread) and |(x,y,n) to indicate the immediate predecessor or referring point. If one answer leads to another question, as so often they will, then an in text citation in similar format pointing to where the new question enters. A bit of fideltity to convention and it becomes possible for fairly simple macro code to reconstruct a line of thought.

That should make a decent system to begin from.  An idea goes in the top, bounces around rote question to rote question, the results are stored in a matching structure where they can be retrieved.  Ok, enough to start from as soon as the final major component is built.

The final, and in a very real sense the most critical, component is some sort of risk assessment… a key, a rosetta stone to translate what comes out of the machine into as realistic an estimation of consequences as possible.  This is where the rubber meets the road, where the academic elements of contemplation cross it up with the deeds of reality. The entire point of a study like this is to determine, if possible, which threat vectors need addressing first, and how to address them.

I want you to do me a favor now. I want you to recall to mind that magnificent man Forest Gump. Yes, one and the same that Tom Hanks did such a masterful job of portraying in the movie. ( You haven’t seen Forest Gump? Find a copy and watch it, please, because the character is going to show up fairly often from here on out. He’s as genuine and gentle a creature of God as I can imagine, he’s fictional and well known… Forest and company are going to be my “every man” example.) Got him back? Ok.

Do you recall how Lieutenant Dan finally said thank you to Forest for saving his life by putting part of Forest’s money he made shrimpin’ like Bubba told him about into some kind of fruit company? Made him so much money he didn’t have to go out shrimpin’ no more and he could cut that grass for free while raising little Forest? Yes *wink* that company.  Where they might not be as guilty as some they’re most definitely players in our reality who work in these realms. So “the fruit company” is going to serve as my example of those social institutions and endeavors whose competitions for survival become such massive power players on the human stage.

The focus of the moment is trying to create some realistic risk assessment tool to address whatever might be discerned concerning the unnatural anger and polarization of modern society that I’ve been calling “tardation.” So… deep breath at the stand up to it writing desk, run the check list: fresh pot of coffee, new pack of smokes, the big stereo talking to two hundred albums worth of good music on full random play… yea. As ready as I can get.

The function of the tool proposed sets the consequences of a thought run through the machine. Some of these thoughts will be from imagination, but the majority of them will have a bit of history to them, they’ll have been sparked by some observation of reality.  Working from the dangerous assumption (because I really have no other choice) that what history can show us falls between the ones on the good old bell curve (the middle of the hump where over half of things end up) the next step is to define the extremes.

The best case scenario is humanity heals, becomes a collection of unique cultures respectfully tolerant and understanding of the other, the competitions are in works of wholesome imagination constructed into a reality where humanity lives in sustainable balance with the planet that supports it. In other words, the things that leave Gaia to smile at the fact that Jesus is finally, finally free of the pain he accepted to save the race. There’s little to worry about on that end. It’s the other end of that curve where things get scary.

What is the absolute worst case scenario imaginable? (lol… and the stereo quite unbidden serves up Pink Floyd’s “Money”… is random play really so very random?) The other end is thermonuclear Armageddon of course, a dead world a full million years of healing away from supporting any life at all on the surface of the globe. That’s the worst potential, from the macroscopic perspective. Of course there are several scenarios not quite so bad, not quite, that would generate an immensely larger degree of human suffering, but go figure. The dead do not suffer, at least not in any mortal sense of the word. For our purposes those “not quite so bad” nightmares made reality become the worst case scenarios we might experience. In a truly worst case scenario we’ll die very quickly, or if luck isn’t with us we’ll suffer for a couple of years and then be dead too. In that case it really won’t matter anymore.

All other possibilities close on the center from these extremes. It might be a good thing to know just where we as a species, a society of societies, really are on that scale. Knowing where we are now, and knowing (kinda sorta) where we were back then, some compilation of points from history, and it becomes possible to perceive some unit to fit a standard distribution of the well being of humanity. Now, with that said it becomes quite a question from the ethical standpoint where to declare the median and mean, but that’s a debate for a different day.

I say might be because if we actually knew for sure it might be so damn scary as to cause a panic, truth be told. But that’s where this ramble has come to, and that’s where it’s gonna get parked for tonight.

Enjoy life while you can and like the truckers used to say “we’ll catch you on the flip flop.”

The Tardation Matrix: Human(x,y,n)

Lot's Despair.
Is it worth trying to find
ten righteous men in this
degenerate day and age?

Author’s Note:

This post is a continuation of an ongoing series, it will make a lot more sense once you’ve read the ones which precede it in the series…

Concerning Tardation; The Tardation Matrix; The Tardation Matrix: Dimensions

Tardation: a manufactured and artificially installed psychological malady emulating an addicted state of life where irrational political beliefs are deliberately sublimated into a life as the working counterbalance for the equally deliberate creation of a dysfunctional individual psychology within the victim.

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This post is a bit of a shakedown, a trial run. The structure of this study is far from finalized, but to improve from this point requires a bit of experience with the tool being built. So in my head I’m going to drop a thought into the machine and see what’s left of it when it comes out the other end. I’m really not expecting much, not yet.

Just for a working example consider Human(2,2,n)… in other words, or rather in English words, the test subject is a thought that resolves as involving Sustenance which also cross the concepts involved with an individual’s Self Acceptance.   Certainly a broad enough range for today’s purposes.

Sustenance is, of course, a much wider subject than simply food, of course it is. The subject includes all things that sustain  us across the mortal run. The physical is important, but of even greater importance to this study are the things that sustain heart and soul, the matters of the spirit and the will to put forth the effort to live free. When considering tardation it is easily seen matters of motive carry at the least equal if not greater weight than the relatively simple issues involved in the physical.

The importance of self acceptance to the functionality of an individual simply cannot be overstated. In any mechanism of manipulation, regardless if it is an effort of considered malice or some confluence of a defective social psychology’s subconscious,  in either case self acceptance will be a standing target, continuously under attack.

To accept to yourself the self you are is truly the deepest foundation of mental health, genuine mental health the antithesis of tardation. With that said it of course must follow the preceding statement has for an underlying assumption an individual actually knows what is self, and what is not… but more on that a bit later.

The deepest difficulty of this study is that the human being is in the deepest essence a social creature. This shouldn’t really be much of a surprise because in the wild the human is also a prey animal. Only a very few humans are able to mount a viable defense against any of the natural predators using only what nature gave them. Only an intelligent and proactive imagination expressed in what social arrangements enable allows the human race to survive, much less thrive.

Observation gives this fact is integrated into the cumulative human psyche to the point it is often enough assigned a form of mental illness when is not  a key and dominant factor in someone’s thought processes. This fact, which is in fact a critical spin point between all three of the first dimension parameters  is obviously, and heavily, exploited by the mechanisms of tardation.

It might be argued the need for social inclusion should be considered a primal. The problem with setting it a primal is that it bridges between the species, the society, and the individual. It is no more a primal need of one than it is the other. From the faith of a heretic I will assert to you it is always an error to treat with any single concept as if it were the same concept when viewed from the differing perspectives of the society and the individual. I have found the confusions generated from this error are often the headwaters of a great many miseries and evils ranging far beyond tardation!

Therefore I propose to let it play as a named free agent index in these deliberations. Social inclusion, an all but ubiquitous factor in the thoughts of the human. Let it become a unit to measure the motivation of a thing. If the SI index is integer one the total motivation for the act in focus was to maintain or enhance an individual’s acceptability or importance, their stature, face as the orientals would call it, within their society. On the other hand if the SI index is negative the conventions and opinions of the social structure associated were of some degree less than unimportant, a negative one indicates a motive, an emotion, that would translate as “may the thermonuclear camel they rode up on take obscene liberties with their colon.” Anyway, diseased and debauched camels set aside, moving onwards.

Reality presents some thought, the thought becomes a question: is this part of what is tearing up my world? Am I seeing what I’m looking at?  The essence of the question is  “In some manner might this be a driving force of tardation? If so how? From which primal need is it leveraged? Which of the three facets of personality is it’s prime point of access?” 

The first question resolves to a yes or a no, but the means of resolving the remaining questions are anything but binary. It is becoming ever more obvious the first real challenge to the effectiveness of this study is deciding what questions should be put into the machine, and by which of the nine possible paths?

The modern world is a complex and convoluted place, many things are evolving and not all of those things, for as strange as they might appear, are harmful or bad. Sorting out the good from the bad from the simply ugly is going to be a challenge.  I’m going to think about the problem for a bit and leave that for a closing thought before this post gets totally out of hand.

Catch you later.

Fashion Explained

When we are young our parents take us to church.

To go to church our parents dress us up in special clothes.

Wearing special clothes at church is when God loves us.

We grow up and decide God must hate us because church is crap.

But we still wear our special clothes when looking for love.

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Eye candy just for fun...tripping in the badlands.

The Tardation Matrix: Dimensions

Ok, bringing it back up to speed. We left off asking what kind of things play deep enough in a human life to leverage the diminished state of Tardation?  

Tardation: a manufactured and artificially installed psychological malady emulating an addicted state of life where irrational political beliefs are deliberately sublimated into a life as the working counterbalance for the equally deliberate creation of a dysfunctional individual psychology within the victim.

The first categories established were those things common to all things both alive, and mortal: (1)sustenance; (2)security; and (3)procreation. To provide a place for these, and a couple of more should something truly primal present itself in the investigation, in the matrix mentioned in the title?

ReDim Human = Array(5)

Today’s effort is to set the remaining dimensions on that matrix, attempt to discern which elements of the individual  become the targets of the mechanisms of tardation.

To do what’s being done these things will have to be deep things, first order things of the inner self. What parameters of personality might play at such a level? What sets the key and critical difference between people that leave some but not others vulnerable to the condition of tardation?

For a first thought I’m going to start with another three concepts I’ve found to be as critical to the individual as the first trio are to the species: the traits of self confidence, self discipline, and self acceptance (thank you Ms. Alex… you showed me the true power of these).  From long and personal experience I know if any of these three are compromised the life is compromised in equal measure. A life compromised is a life vulnerable to being manipulated, and tardation is most definitely a manipulation. Of course these are categories, container thoughts, working  dynamics of a personality rather than some talisman or totem that once possessed goes on a shelf for display.  

Since these are dynamic qualities it then follows there must be some range of functionality, some range of values one relative to the other ranging from perfect to acceptable to quite counterproductive for the life to function smoothly.  To install Tardation as a functioning component of a life will almost certainly involve tampering with one or more of these.

In light of this I’m going to set the second dimension of the array to reflect these three, and as before I’m going to tag on a couple of more slots to hold what might be found that should play at the same level within any individual life. In the computerese this becomes ReDim Human  = Array(5,5).  Set the elements as (2) self acceptance, (3) self confidence, and (4) self discipline, with (1) and (5) as before left open/null until and unless later defined.  The nature of the language in play sets this as the top plane of the Tardation matrix, the one that is fixed and cannot be modified later: a five by five grid where the center three by three are  defined.

I say tampering, and swallow hard. To deliberately tamper with such low level concepts Is dicey enough if you’re only talking about one individual, but to attempt to tamper with them in any significant percentage of your population as a whole runs from audacious right on over to total idiocy.  The scope of tardation is so large it’s a viable question to ask if it is even possible  for it to be the result of a  deliberate effort on someone’s part. 

The answer is, of course, it really doesn’t matter. Regardless if the degree of tardation afflicting the modern world is the result of some dastardly plot by mercenary necromancers operating out of the deepest bowels of academia’s psychosocial poli-sci studies or totally a consequence of social evolution being overdriven by technology the net results are the same.  Regardless of the source the situation remains unchanged, and there equally remains the need for mitigating action in the cause of allowing the survival of modern society.

For the purposes of this study I’m going to proceed from the assumption the current situation is the result of a socio-evolutionary potential opened by the exponential advances in technology quickly recognized and exploited by the existing necromancers of their respective vintages.  There is a history here to be discerned and recorded at some point, but such history is not the focus of now, it will be included in the ongoing “History ala Mode” series of essays under the title “What the Dishwasher Saw.”

At this point what is defined for the matrix is two dimensional, flat, a chessboard reduced by three rows and three ranks.  It is taking shape, but hardly big enough to handle what is coming at it.  Fortunately there is a third dimension available, and yes indeed, it is going to be used. The third dimension is where the questions live, each as relates to the square above it. What happens when there is to much of a given thing? What happens when there isn’t enough? How does it effect a persons’ perspective on things under those circumstances? What changes when those imbalances are compensated by the politically motivated mechanisms of tardation? Earlier I compared such questions as the engine of this study. I’m a bit of a country boy gearhead in my essence, such analogies are comfortable for me so I’m going to hold with that analogy.

From that perspective the nature and exact wording (as exact as possible, to compare to the precision of the wording used in juris prudence) of these questions, each of which must be applied to every facet of any thought put into the engine, become the cam and carb, the exhaust system and ignition advance curves in service when the beast is put in the field to go to work for real. The wording becomes the tune parameters that make all the difference in how the beast is going to run under load.

The nature of the array defined is such that only the final dimension can be changed on the fly. The last defined dimension is open to being expanded, or contracted. So from where we are now the three dimensional Array Human is five by five by some number N deep where N represents all the possible combinations and permutations of questions that have, or might seem to have, some bearing on the subject of Tardation. 

Just for a grab and go example before I sign off this chapter? Consider the matrix element Human(3,3,n). In other words, where security crosses with self confidence. The number N becomes how many possible ways  might some convergence of forces generated from the primal need of all living things for an acceptable degree of security, as it is seen manifested in some manner related to self confidence, how many different points that meet those two criterion  might be playing in these considerations? If tardation is a accidental thing how did the accident happen? If tardation is a deliberate act of malicious manipulation how was the manipulation implemented? Give this half a moments thought and it is readily apparent there may well be fifteen, fifty, maybe a hundred possibilities within the parameters established.

In point of fact the number of possibilities grows so quickly that each of the nine defined possibilities deserves an exploratory essay in its’ own right just to begin defining, testing and examining, retaining or discarding the possibilities. So that’s where this series will continue: The Tardation Matrix: Human (x,y,n) where the position gives the subject under consideration. A wide open field of  considerations indeed. Methinks a good compass and sextant and clock might be a good thing to have handy, a kid could get lost in the possibilities without them.

Later gang.

Recovery Time...

A Surrealistic Sun

I hadn't realized just how draining it is to spend time in a place where you know every word uttered (well, posted) is to the intent of corrupting someone's judgment, perverting their vision, compromising their soul. It's been a while since I kept the company of those called right wing conservative. They are still such repulsive creatures, toxic and tainted. Nowhere nowhen nohow have I ever met anything to compare to the Ugly American Conservative for draining away all joy in life, all inspiration and creative energy. Six months playing tag with Agent Smith on Farcebook and then two months dealing with the contard assholes Farcebook's personality profiler's finally concluded was me (faked them right out!) and the reserves are running a bit low. I be a weary boy, soul deep weary.

So... I bought me a brand new Missouri Meerschaum (lol... aka, classic corncob) pipe, the best Cavendish tobacco to be had in a factory sealed bag, some new charcoal pencils and a super cool and groovy new easel box to carry all the drawing stuff down to the park or the coffee shop or the pub... and I be plotting a bit of a vacation. There's picture's to be painted and music to be found and the old VW is still a job underway (good lord there's a LOT of tin to scrub and paint on one of those engines!) and... yea, it's summertime.

My final words for the contards of Intellectual Takeout? Better Dead than Red, and I'm damn sure not talking about communism... I'm talking about being a Republican. No more elephants in the office. End of subject.

Enjoy life while you can, catch you later.