Each of the three sections is itself a theory relating to consciousness in their own ways, which together culminates in a system / model for the perception, experience, understanding, and expression of reality, in the form of internal symbolic structures and how they change.
The Universal Recursive Grammar of Being
Is a system / model that aims to express how and why people, maybe all cognizant animals, create internal symbolic structures as models of relative meaning that act as an unconscious to semi-conscious map of the internal / external world as an adaptation that recursively allows further adaptation to the conditions of their environment. I feel all systems of thought, language, expression and tool making are an extension of this process and follow the grammar set out in this text.
The generation of an internal symbolic structure, which grows in scope and scale as cognitive ability increases, is an innate adaptive process rooted in the instinctual need for sustenance, safety and survival, that eventually leads to the creation of rituals, rites, culture, mythology, religion, a-religious worldviews and systems of thought in general as collectively shared internal symbolic structures that orient people in the world as to make it navigable.
How the internal symbolic structures operate and adapt appears to match fractal, recursive, and ordering chaos behavior found in the natural, physical world. Because of this, I think consciousness as a process of orienting ourselves in the world may be our inheritance from nature, but even without the word consciousness, this system / model articulates the process of how we experience reality which correlates with natural processes.
Internal symbolic structures shape how people perceive, experience, understand and express reality and their relation to it. That is why I relate this as a possible model of how consciousness is experienced, expressed and changes over time.
Humans understand reality in symbols and narratives, as symbolic narratives, this is true at different scales, myth/religion, areligious worldviews and systems of thought. Modelling the psyche as an internal symbolic structure that acts as a world model which shapes how the individual or group perceives, experiences, understands, and expresses reality allows you to see how the same operations and changes occur at different scales, systems of thought and creation of physical media.
An internal symbolic structure is an arrangement of relative meaning that acts as an unconscious map which was developed as a psychological adaptation to the internal and external world. When made semi-conscious it becomes a constellation of symbols that act both as a symbolic narrative and a symbolic structure which orients people in the world to make it navigable by organizing perception, experience, understanding and expression. As stated above when they are shared, they become world models expressed as cultures, myths/religions, rites, rituals and worldviews, which operate and change in similar ways.
SECTIONS
- Section 1 - Internal Symbolic Structures
- Section 2 – Will, Word, World
- Section 3 - ICOC -In Context of Consciousness
- Section 4 – Boundary Condition, Pattern System
- Section 5 – How It Came to Be
SECTION 1 - INTERNAL SYMBOLIC STRUCTURES
HOW THE INTERNAL SYMBOLIC STRUCTURE FORMED
This I feel is how internal symbolic structures emerged as process of adaptation that correlates with increased cognition, though this part was conceptualized after the rest. The concept of the internal symbolic structure, will, word world, boundary condition / pattern system and their systemic correlation to processes of nature were derived from my understanding of the four subjects, this was thought of after.
THE SENSATION - that early organisms were first reactive to their environment, but as cognition grew, they formed unconscious proto-maps of their environment based on safety, danger, and sustenance.
SENTIENCE – when cognitive ability increases, the animal develops the ability to visualized what is not right in front of them. This leads to the creation of symbols, as visualizations are representations of safety, sustenance and danger / predators, which are born relative to one another. This allows the unconscious map to be made semi-conscious as an internal symbolic structure as a nascent world model.
When the animal gets greater memory, the symbols gain more resonance, and more symbols can be added to the internal symbolic structure, allowing for greater complexity. Creating an understanding of correct actions, and causality.
When language increases, the internal symbolic structure becomes more complex. The animal can articulate the resonance and relationships between the symbols. Refining the unconscious map, making it semi-conscious by thought instead of just repeated experience, leading to a greater understanding of their circumstances, environment, reality and their place in it.
An increase in language capacity also leads to collectively shared internal symbolic structures that act as collectively shared world models. The collectively shared world models develop into proper actions, rites, and rituals, which are the appropriate way to interact with reality in an attempt to get a desired outcome. Rites and rituals are, in my view, a calibration of the internal symbolic structure, the world model, with the causal nature of the external world.
This is proto-culture, proper and improper actions in relation to safety, sustenance and danger. This is adapting to their environment by developing and using structures and narrative symbols as psychological tools in a similar way to how we develop tools using available resources to adapt to our environment.
SAPIENCE – comes when greater cognitive ability, memory, and language allow for greater self-reflection, the ability to reflect on past experiences, express those experiences and use them to compare them to present circumstances. This allows for larger more complex internal symbolic structures, world models, that incorporate more of the world as it is experienced and be conveyed as stories made to articulate that reflection cooperatively, meaning cultures, folktales, fairytales, myths, religions, a-religious worldviews, and systems of thought and expression in general.
These world models perform the same function as the unconscious world map of the creatures that only experienced the world through sensation, but with growth in cognition, the internal symbolic structures, world models become conscious, more complex and able to be shared collectively, leading to ritual, culture, myths, religions and areligious worldviews.
INTERNAL SYMBOLIC STRUCTURES AS ARTICULATED WORLD MODELS
CULTURE – is defined as a system of beliefs and patterns of behavior. Culture is fractal. Culture could mean the culture of your parents together, creating a home environment, of the family, of this house, the next house, of this street, of the next street, of the neighborhood, of the town, of the city, of the state, of the country, of the continent, of the world. Though cultures have their heroes and subjective stories that form and are expressions of communal identity, they are generally more historical and lack an addition of the divine, though myths/religions and worldviews can also be considered culture, they differ in that they operate across cultures.
MYTH – an outdated or not practiced world model. Is collectively internal symbolic structure that is at the same time a symbolic structure that shapes and is shaped by how we perceive, experience, understand and express reality. It differs from religion in that it no longer is considered sacred or profane, meaning the world model no longer matches the external circumstances to it falls from being a religion, to being considered a myth. Also, other people’s religions are considered myths to those that do not adhere to it.
RELIGION – is a myth that is still living, that is functioning a collectively shared internal symbolic structure, world model, in that it still matches the internal / external environment in a way that its mode of perception, experiencing, understanding, and expression of reality are still believed to morally and causally match present circumstances.
INDIVIDUAL INTERNAL SYMBOLIC STRUCTURE
For an individual the internal symbolic structure is formed by three key things, the unique qualities of an individual, the culture, and personal life experiences.
Individual internal symbolic structure operates at every given moment, though is only triggered to create new symbols by projecting known symbols to approximate as an adaptation to a disruption or interaction with what is unknown to the internal symbolic structure. It is not only related to the creation of symbolic structures. The internal symbolic structure, world model is a perceptual lens that is active in every moment of everyday life by acting as a framework that projects or compares existing information to new experiences as a way to understand the circumstances they are in.
Relationship – you meet someone, that interaction sets the precedent for further interactions. Your internal symbolic structures meet, interact, and that interaction sets, usually unconsciously, what the next interaction will be like, that is a shared internal symbolic structure on a person-to-person level.
Group dynamics – a group has a culture, as an environment a shared system of beliefs and shared patterns of behavior, which change as the group experiences new things, splits, new people join etc.
Culture – as stated earlier culture is fractal, as it could be applied to each of these listed, but is itself subject to the same rules of operation and change in this context, which is that when the circumstances or environment changes, so too does the culture to adapt to the new circumstances or environment.
myth / religion – I put them together because as stated earlier, I think they are the same, but one is considered to still be divine while another is not, and one still matches the environment enough as to make it understandable and orient the individual or group in the world as to make it navigable.
Societal – societies have a shared culture, that is based on certain needs, and works toward certain goals, they operate as groups with different cultures integrated, but like the group, in this case a group of cultures, but when the needs for that society collapse. An example would be the need for tin to make bronze during the bronze age, when the trade routes die out, the economy collapses which leads to a re-configuring of the local economy around or an innovation that allows for the making of bronze without tin. When that occurs people go hungry, they die, they migrate and that society suffers.
Civilizational – the easiest examples of this are when we went from nomadic, semi-nomadic to pastoralism, where we can see the adaptation via the myths, religions, rites, rituals, civics and tool creation growing more complex in similar ways throughout the globe. This happens again with each industrial revolution, where society reconfigured according to the new environment created by the environment changing due to tool creation.
SECTION 2 - WILL, WORD, WORLD
Will - as innate intent, drive or orientation. Inertia of existing of a given thing. This is present in all things that do anything. Essentially the base state of being. Meaning that if you exist you exist as will regardless of choice, as you, and all things are born into something that already exists. Any action or thought is an expression of will. This works on the personal/ social / civilizational / existential levels. This acts as the ground for an individual person or group, while the field acts as ground for all things expressed into the field.
Word – is an expression, any expression, from word to grunt to gesture, a look, or any form of communication. Is any form of communication that is an expression of the will. This is any figure made from the ground, expressed into a field.
World – is both a ground and a field which is expressed into and the ground of those expressions, which feedback into the ground to be used for further expression. That is the world, in whatever reference, such as language, field of expression, media as an environment. The world is any environment that is composed of expressions, and as a ground / field of expressions both influences and is influenced by those expressions.
This section shows how the systems we create follow the same pattern of creation, growth and change, which is the same as the pattern of psychological growth
The chair example
There is an idea of a chair. Someone thinks of a chair to build. As they build it is not yet a chair, but through that process at some point it becomes recognizable to themselves and others as a chair. There is an ideal of a chair, the conception of a chair, the articulation of that chair into a field of existing chairs, the recognition that there is in fact a chair, and that chair becomes part of the field of chairs becomes the ground or basis of further possible chairs.
This example is applicable to any form of thought, expression, experience, articulation both in thought and physical expression of a person or of an object as they are all contextualized by the existing system which they are born into and composed from.
In my understanding, the person’s will manifests as a desire to create a chair, the Word would be both the conceptualization of a thing in relation to other things of its nature, and the expression of that thing into form into the system world / field of all existing chairs, where it would influence the creation of other chairs, just how its creation / expression was influenced by the existence of other chairs. The lineage and collection of all chairs would be akin to the language of chairs. The ground / field of expression for chairs.
A good analogy would be, when you hear a sound in the bushes, what happens.
Perceive, you hear a sound in the bushes at night. Experience, you feel fear and pause. Symbol projection, your mind races for what the sound could be.
Understanding is matching a symbol to an external event to understand your circumstance. Expression is then the correct action based on the perception, experience, understanding. We do this every moment of our lives, though in a less pronounced way.
Interaction – a field would a group of people that you, will, are or are not a part of, you as of that group is an expression of that group, you as continually existing in that group are formed by the group, and you participating in that group changes the group over time. There is also the collective will of the group, and the collective expression of the group, which is its own fractal cycle of growth or decay.
In story – a character, or will of the story, as the driving force for change, is in lack or need, so ventures out into the unknown, when in the unknown they apply what they know to the new circumstances they are in, which usually fails, the adapt to the unknown by incorporating what they have learned into their world model and apply them to newer circumstances to overcome them. Not all media follow this as strictly, as there are flat characters, but they usually change the world around them or are in closed loops of repeated actions. but it is the structure of a narrative. This is also the structure in which people understand and apply new information and engage with the world.
Mass media, by which I mean all forms of electric and paper communications is itself an environment composed of different fields which interact. These fields collectively share the same recursive structure of change that the will, word, world system expresses.
Some examples of will, word, world as a system ground figure field new ground operates in different contexts. A system of generational change
The sopranos changed television, primarily by making the psychology of the character the focus of the narrative. The will would be the show creators desire to make a show, which would be expressed as a show, a psychological crime drama, into the field of existing shows, where they did not yet exist, thus changing the field of existing shows by giving an example of how to make a show in a new way, which in turn creates a new ground of what kinds of shows are possible, or resonates with the audience. This is true of all forms of narrative media.
A ritual in this context is an action that rebinds and recalibrates the internal symbolic structure with the externally shared internal symbolic structure as the actor of the ritual is performing a meaningful act that is matching the inner world map with the outer world map by bridge between them. By acting out the belief they are becoming the symbol through word, that is the expression of the will, from the ground, which would be the internal symbolic structure that renews the externally shared internal symbolics structure. A liturgy is a communal ritual. In a modern sense rituals could be things like routine, or things you do before and after you do other things, but this too functions in the same way as what would be considered a religious ritual, in that is aligns you with the reality that you are in, but with less divine resonance, and more calibration.
The ground is the internal symbolic structure, the will is usually to effect on the causality of the external world for things like favor or rain, expressed, as a ritual act which to them is proper to affect a result, into the field that is the external world. If the ritual works it continues, when it starts to falter, like if in the case of rain, the area becomes barren over generations, the ritual is abandoned or changed to match the conditions. A ritual is a synecdochic symbolic act in which part of the whole is acted out to renew, recalibrate, or reaffirm the whole world model.
The eucharist in this framework is an example of a ritual that is literally the renewal of the world model, that christ / god is the logos, the ordering principle of the internal map, by eating a symbol of his flesh, drinking a symbol of his blood of a deified human. This action is a reaffirmation that the internal symbolic structure matches the perceived external world.
From Eliade – religions as a language that changes over time.
Morphology - the study of the structure of a language.
Morphosis - the study of how that language changes over time.
You can track the differences modern English, English a hundred years ago, and so on to old English, and further, this is true of all languages. Applying the rules of morphology and morphosis to mythology / religion, you can track the shape of a religions, which is its symbolic language and structure, and it undergoes as it grows from what it is to what it does. Each are symbolic systems, though language is unstructured as a whole, where the symbols are smaller bits of representation, while in religion / myth/ worldview, the system is not only a means of expression but a perceptual / experiential model.
SECTION 3 – IN CONTEXT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
In Context of Consciousness, or immanent convergence of consciousness, conveys the permutations of consciousness through the creation and changes of religion/myth/worldview.
Throughout history, and the beginning of all religions, if you trace them far enough they began with anthropomorphizing their immediate phenomenological environment. In this way they used what they knew, themselves, their emotions, their understanding of cause and effect, to articulate and understand the world, environment / circumstances they were in.
Attributing human traits to volcanoes, the sky, as calm, content, or angry, or performing rituals for an effect from the environment that would benefit them. People from a desert would articulate the world around them differently than people from a forest. If the people from the desert never seen a waterfall, it would likely strike greater resonance in them because of what water represents to them in the desert. If they’ve never seen a tree, they will use their understanding of the types of foliage they normally encounter to articulate an understanding of the tree. If people from the forests were to see a desert, they would articulate the sand using their own symbols. Similarly, a person from one tribe, village or town would understand the customs of another’s by contrasting them with their own.
All around the world a child says there is a monster under their bed, but we know it is only shadows. The unknown frightens them. There is no monster, but the child projects a monster, either as just a word or the image of something that already frightens them, like something from tv show, film, or previous experience. This process of projecting the known onto the unknown is innate, and instinctual to humans, which is both innate, not taught, and instinctual, activated in times of fear, and awe. When people encounter something out of their understanding they project onto it what they know to better understand.
The birth of consciousness, as told by shapes of consciousness, articulating itself, through symbolic narratives.
Cosmogenesis: chaoskampf lineage, is actually the story of our own consciousness coming into being, told in the symbolic language of that culture which is heavily influenced by their external environment, lineage of symbolic structures, and use of tools.
The Greek chaoskampf, but there are chaoskampfs all over the world, which all convey the same thing, not the world coming into being but human consciousness itself coming into being and articulating itself though symbols and narratives, with collected compose internal symbolic structures perceptual, experiential models which orient the individual or group that hold it in the world / circumstances they are in. That is why many cultures share a similar chaoskampf myth but are told in the language of their culture at the time of the telling. Each of these is an internal symbolic structure that has changed over time according to circumstances.
The lineage of Void (nothing) > Chaos (unstructured potential) > Eros (attraction) > Gaia (form > Chronos (time /movement with direction) > Uranus (libido / fecundity) > Zues (libido with direction, and logos, ordering principle, embodied in a human figure).
This is the same process but of a different strain. Enlil (sky god)> Marduk (storm god, wind, net, and lightning)> Yahweh (storm god, word)> Logos (ordering principle)> Christ (logos in the flesh, a human)> Lutheranism (individual relationship to the divine)
This conveys the process that also occurred in Greek religion, though with the process continuing into complete personification in the form of Christ, which over time became psychologized in the form of Lutheranism, which is a personal relationship with the divine as the logos, the ordering principle of the internal symbolic structure, experiential / perceptual model.
There is another correlation made by Joseph Campbell, that of Odin, Christ, Quetzalcoatl, and Buddha, who all carry the same symbolism of bird / spirit, Tree / world and serpent / chthonic, symbolism as a way to articulate the human experience, of existing in this world between the spiritual and the hellish, between life and death.
All four of them sacrificed themselves to themselves, though in different ways, which itself is the process of understanding, as when you understand something, or experience something new, the old understanding dies, but you live on renewed.
This is all one long process of self-deification, self-understanding, via the continuous personification of the internal and external environment by defining the world while creating internal mental models of the external world, and together as internal and external they create a shape that perceptually contextualizes reality.
THE SHAMANIC TO THE PRESENT
The shamanic to the present, it’s the same process over and over again. The process of going out into the wild, usually around troubled times, ex puberty, taking a substance to alter perception, as part of a journey. The journey into the wild is actually a journey into the world of spirits, which are psycho-experiential interactions, in that the spirits are projections of the individuals internal.
This is the Christ myth stripped of its cultural clothing, meaning Christ undergoes the same exact journey, but in the cultural / religious language of its age.
This shows that there is an underlying process operating below the surface, and that the internal symbolic structure, religions/myth/worldview are changing in arrangement, structure, but all are accumulated.
Because that process is the process of understanding mythologized onto ontological, symbolic narratives, which themselves grow and change but the creation of internal symbolic structures accrued by that process remain, regardless of cultural / religious clothing, and the process continues.
The process operates on multiple scales.
Civilizational – This process operates on the civilizational level in the way the religions / myths/ worldviews of the age come about and fade away, which occurs when internal symbolic structure no longer matches their environment.
Societal – in the form of each society having their own collective internal symbolic structure that we call culture.
If we use the analogy of the wave, where the civilizational is the largest, single wave. The societal as a collection of large waves, the social a smaller collection of waves, the interpersonal as small waves, and individual waves as a little wave each. A sea or field of waves that all behave the same way, in the Macro and micro systems, each wave operates in the framework of the preceding wave.
SECTION 4 - BC PS – BOUNDARY CONDITION / PATTERN SYSTEM SECTION
Which is superior, Wisdom or Logos?
Wisdom is the sum of collected knowledge which reasoning is drawn from. Logos, reason is applying what we know to what we do not know, in a way that makes what we don’t know understandable to us.
Someone with good Wisdom would have good reasoning, but someone with good reasoning would have greater wisdom. The answer is not that one is superior to the other but that they are recursive, and part of one system of understanding, which is universal and fractal.
In the same way that the process of religions rising and falling into myth, or worldviews change with the times, each is based in what is, which is used to understand and orient, until it no longer matches the individuals or groups experience.
BOUNDARY CONDITION – PATTERN SYSTEM
The Boundary Condition – wisdom - is both the ground and the field. It is the ground, it is the sum and shape of the internal structure, and the field in that it is what the pattern system draws from. Collected and arranged symbols accumulated through experience. This is akin to wisdom, the sum of collected knowledge, and in the context of wisdom / logos, acts as the ground drawn upon.
It is a field in that it is not static, the ground changes over time, it changes as more symbols are integrated into it, to act as both ground and field. It is called the boundary system. It contains all that is known, and outside of it is all that is unknown, which the boundary condition being the point where the known interacts with the unknown, where the pattern system then operates. Once the unknown is made partially known via known symbol projection onto the unknown it begins the process of integration.
ACTUAL SEQUENCE
- There is a field of the known symbols, the boundary condition, where the pattern system is operating as the framework for perceptual / experiential reality.
- There is a disruption to the field of known, in the form of the old thoughts not applying or a new experience which is not yet known.
- The pattern system activates to project what symbols in the known that match the unknown as a way to approximate it. The projected symbol is relative to the known symbols, if a single symbol does not match it will generate a composite, that is not fully known but gives face to the unknown.
- The new symbol, what it represents, clashes, according to meaning, purpose, etc. with the existing symbols. In this way it becomes more refined.
- The new symbol is then constellated, that is the symbol’s meaning becomes integrated with the existing symbols to become part of the ground / field, wisdom / boundary condition.
- As part of ground / field, it becomes part of what the pattern system that could then be used for further interactions with the unknown. In this way the boundary condition, ground / field of knowledge, grows.
STAGES OF THE PROCESS
Apoca-syncretism – the decay, destruction, disruption or loss of the existing internal symbolic structure do to an unknown, a series of unknowns, or a disruption, where after destruction, the internal symbolic structure tires to renew itself by developing new symbols, revitalizing existing symbols in a way that account for the new environment / circumstances, in a phase of chaos, that is worked through via boundary condition / pattern system / projection / clash integration process, until it is renewed.
Entelechial emergence – the stage of the process when the new internal symbolic structure, experiential perceptual model, shape of consciousness after the dissolution / destruction, and beginnings the symbolic structures reformation / renewal, when the rise of a new coherent structure / form of consciousness that act as ground for perception / Experience.
When you were a child, your parents told you don't go past the end of the block. But one day on a bicycle you ride past your block, out into the open world, where you see new things, and you instantly compare them to things you already know. That tree looks like the tree on my block, that house is yellow like a house on my block. This is the process in action, of using what you know to orient yourself in the new, the unknown.
SECTION 5 – HOW IT CAME TO BE
How I devised almost all of my fictional worlds, and stories, was through daydreaming and laying with eyes closed, watching my mind and seeing what came out of it, then as they grew and correlated with other ideas, they would culminate in what allegorical story worlds, narrative symbolic structures, though which I later came to understand. I composed them, then through learning I was able to articulate the process of them coming to be in the form of three distinct ideas, Will, Word, World, In Context of Consciousness, and Boundary Condition / Pattern System. They as three would later be realized as a recursive system / model of consciousness, perception, experience, understanding, expression and the feedback of expression to continue the cycle.
We understand the world and ourselves, our experiences, reality, in the form of narratives and symbols. Humans understand and express themselves in narratives and symbols. We create systems of symbols to interpret and orient our reality that match external reality, through a process that matches observable natural processes that govern the physical reality.
I think that this adaptive process is innate and instinctual in humans, possibly all sentience, that both mirrors and embodies the processes of fractal recursion and ordering chaos that is present in nature, observable in evolutionary biology, and all natural systems from the quantum level to the cosmological scale. I think that is our inheritance from the natural world, and we call it consciousness.
Written and developed by Eric M. Erbe