Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Meandering Reveries and the Fractal Nature of Nations
Most people have some kind of template that they funnel their speculates through. For myself, I’ve pretty much found three or four perspectives that feed my appraisals. I wouldn’t call myself a Taoist but I appreciate the Yin/Yang concept of a dance of opposites — harmony and dissonance, order and chaos, entropy and maintenance (incidentally, key factors in great music). I also find useful insight in Hegel’s concept of a dialectic leap-frogging history forward (though I emphatically don’t like its use by Marx as an excuse to enslave millions to a cult of vengeance). I appreciate Carl Jung’s perceptions on the psychological significance of archetypes, myth, and symbolism. Finally, I find contemporary understandings of physics and fractal geometry to offer an insightful lens into the way nature seems to function in both material terms as well as the evolution of social constructs. Analogy is more than a poetic device.
In appraising human circumstance one can micro-analyze and focus on the trees with little regard for the forest. My own bias is to value the insights afforded by analogy and generalization — the “forest.” Of course it would be foolish to overlook the significance of objective observation but intuition and generalization is often critically discounted. Making an accurate point does not always require a simple list of facts. Even facts require broader speculations to afford genuine insight.
Specific disagreements people have over the issues of the day ultimately come down to some basic differences. Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson has an online test that quite accurately places people on some polarities that often skew one toward a more conservative or liberal perspective. Those of us who are more “conscientious” and allied with “orderliness” are inevitably more likely to be conservative. “Law and order” has been the rallying cry of conservatism for a long time. While the left won’t tout the “virtues” of anarchy and chaos, their alliance with entropy often moves in that direction. Peterson’s more favorable label to this is, “openness.” I would interpret his categories in the simple terms of stability vs. novelty. Obviously neither is transcendently “right” or “wrong” and there are benefits to be had from either depending on circumstance and time. Yin and Yang are in a perpetual interaction of harmony and dissonance. Understand the construction of a symphony (again, an analogy) and you’ll have a pretty good idea how relations evolve between partners and nation-states.
No doubt offensive to some, Jordan Peterson notes a tendency for males and females to — generally — favor particular stances on his scales. Not really a surprise. Of course the people most offended by such conclusions are those who can’t grasp the idea of two unique and different sexes. For such people, the universe is whatever they will (wish) it to be.
It may not be a coincidence that, in these times of turmoil, the natural polarity between the sexes becomes muddled and a host of deviations from long-held standards occur, as sexual dimorphism itself becomes fragmented and wrought with chaotic dissonance.
The same way that structures in nature bifurcate into repeating patterns of advancing scales (eg. rivers, neural networks, blood vessels, etc.), similar patterns can be seen in the evolution of musical genres, languages, and “memes” (in their original definition).
It’s extremely incorrect politically to note the differences between cultures or the races that sometimes adhere to certain cultural attributes…unless of course one is whining about “cultural appropriation” or describing negative caricatures of Europeans.
Cultures are like fractals. The people’s of the Earth have branched off into regions. The land and climate directs the subtle refinements of language, clothing, and ideals. Weather and geography prods people to adopt certain culinary standards and cultural expressions. Inevitably, these groups continually split off to varying degrees into diverse patterns of behavior. Asians have general attributes that distinguish them from Europeans but Japanese are only similar to Chinese to the degree that Germans are similar to French. Within these cultures, unique variations spin off almost infinitely until one arrives at the individual — the ultimate minority. It’s common to describe the people of certain areas as uniquely “friendly” or “hard-working” or creative, all aspects of variety. True diversity acknowledges potentially unique creativity, not the bitter jealousies of the less-creative. In the 1960s and 70s there were several notable innovative bands from the Anglo world (the U.S., Britain, Canada, et al.) During that same period, one generally didn’t find international hits coming from places like Korea or India. That doesn’t mean that Korean or Indian music was necessarily bad but it does indicate that there are standards of refinement that can be universally appreciated. There’s a time and a place for everything. The Italian Renaissance was in — surprise — Italy, from which it later spread and fragmented into unique local expressions of what had begun as an Italian creative paradigm. For at least a century, a mastery of complex music was dominated by German speaking countries. Even the best Russian composers were at their prime when they followed the examples set by a German tradition exemplified by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner.
Much is now made of “cultural appropriation” as a sort of aesthetic imperialism — typically trite cosmetic effects (e.g. hooped ear rings). Yet the entire globe has, in a sense, culturally appropriated two-thousand years of western culture’s rational innovations in government, art, and science. Ironically the West’s success in these fields stemmed from the good sense to recognize the most innovative attributes of other cultures and incorporate them into a new form — imitation is “the sincerest form of flattery.” Jazz is a unique art form that resulted from a dynamic interaction of Western and African musical structures. “Blue notes” were mostly absent from western music and saxophones were not from Africa. Progress often occurs from the dynamic interaction of harmony and dissonance. Today, many on the left side of the political spectrum would tell us to renounce every human achievement merely because it emerged from paradigms that were too successful for their taste. The skin color of a people in a particular geographic region is irrelevant. In the end, racism is simply an expression of “guilt by association” — Europeans brought deadly diseases to the Aztecs. Europeans had lighter skin, therefore….light skin bad. It may not be fair (“just”) to walk on the other side of the street at night when one sees a group of poorly dressed and loud youth but, sometimes “generalization” can save your life and even most animals recognize the value of generalization and prejudice to survival.
If you pour cream into a cup of coffee you’ll see a spiraling interaction of contrast not unlike satellite images of hurricanes or the cloud bands on Jupiter. Some tendrils will mingle, some will collide, and some separated by distance will appear indifferent to each other. This is a wonderful analogy for the many interactions that occur among sounds, flavors, personality types, and cultures. To some degree it is also an analogy to human conflict and cooperation. I can’t help but roll my eyes up when someone laments the horrors of human conflict as if it’s some unique attribute of humans only. We’re certainly fortunate to have enough intelligence to try to avoid conflict but in a fractal universe, over time, it’s inevitable that levels of cooperation and conflict will occur. An eye-roll is equally warranted when the cultural left points their finger at “hate.” Certainly it’s in humans’ best interest to not hate but those among the most vocal in their accusations of hate are typically rather hateful themselves. The value humans place upon others exists in a wide spectrum, at either end, love and hate. To avoid the potentially dangerous power of projection, indifference is probably the safest avenue toward avoidance of “hate.”
Ultimately everything is related on some level to everything else. Even being extremely unrelated is a type of relation. Everything in the universe from the atomic level to galaxies interacts harmoniously or in conflict. In the collective human realm, dissonant conflict in the extreme manifests as war. Nations over time interact on a spectrum of harmony and dissonance. We don’t have to accept it as fate but we should at least be aware of it as a natural tendency.
A realistic consideration of the nation state and its behavior can be gleaned by simply noting the attributes of individuals. Among humanity there are people who are aggressive and untrustworthy and docile and upstanding. Collectively, as groups, there are cultures whose historical background renders them dangerous, unpredictable, and uncompromising. To perceive humanity this way of course conjures the criticisms of “generalization,” “prejudice,” and even racism. But, would we say it’s not nice to note the attributes of an individual bully or swindler, or to (accurately) note that the world would be a better and safer place if more countries were like Switzerland than North Korea. Objective awareness of facts and generalization both offer insight into the behavior of individuals and the larger constructs that emerge from groups of individuals.
One of my college professors told a story from history where a banquet was being held for European heads of state in the period before WWI. Supposedly the last Kaiser — who was rather mentally unstable — dumped a bowl of soup on his own head. The response among others present was telling. Apparently, the French representative thought the behavior was “very rude.” The Brit saw it as “unfortunate.” The Russian quietly scribbled a note. And the American, of course, slapped his knee, pointed and laughed. There’s another anecdote that notes the stereotypes of some cultures. I don’t remember the exact details but it’s something like the following; “In heaven the British are the police, the Germans are the engineers, and the Italians are the cooks.” In hell, the Italians are the engineers, the British are the cooks, and the Germans are the police.” While it may not be a fair or even fully accurate appraisal of cultures, it’s somewhat funny precisely because it does contain an element of honest insight.
Those of us who can’t stand the leftist worldview are particularly annoyed by the insincerity of it all. The phony inability to acknowledge reality. Rather than seek solutions within the context of known proclivities, they simply deride those who acknowledge those proclivities.
Human beings as a whole are not uniquely evil. Our beliefs and actions are as varied as the elements and compounds that make up the physical world. As we hope to safely traverse our evolution through time a dose of generalization and analogy may be helpful.
