Jan Cox Talk 0295

The Efficiency of Binary Contrasts

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Summary by TK

#295 ** Nov 16, 1987 ** - 1:51

[Kyroot to :08.]
["A one-act play in four acts" reading to :18 (Internal vs. external reality). Recruits are "RA" (Real Army), not draftees. Selling the source of extraordinary new data vs. selling the data itself. Which would be best for taking This Thing public? Taken on another level (internally) can you visualize yourself as a new person altogether or the old person having absorbed new data?]
[There always seems to be 3 possibilities (not 2 or 4):
1. Look what I'm doing.
2. Look what I'm saying.
3. Look what I am.
Why only 3? The Few should find this topographically curious. Also: in the performer/audience exchange where Yellow Circuit modus is primary performance (i.e., some form of talk), again only 3 possible areas exist:
1. what I've done.
2. What somebody else has done.
3. Facts. ]
[ You're not a Real Revolutionary unless your daydreams are more outlandish than ordinary peoples' night dreams. ]
[Efficiency approach seems to be based on the belief that it is the right way to do something in the ordinary mind. There must be a distinct parallel between talk-of-action and actual action for the Real Revolutionist to be efficient. There are never any individual problems--only problem in reality is not knowing what to do --ambiguity; indecision. When the Real Revolutionist uses the irrelevant to trigger a decision he eliminates ambiguity. But he has to be absolutely committed; has got to know what he is doing. After all --how much worse off are you to decide in such fashion? Actually better off!! Thus for the Real Revolutionist's efficiency it doesn't matter what he actually does as long as his talk-of-action fits with it and vice versa. Efficiency is being able to make a maximum of moves toward the goal with minimum use of resources. ]
[Imagination should not be dismissed because it always furnishes the greatest contrast of "I want"; it is always available. The classic contrast: personal feeling of existence/reality vs. an external/other reality --is made possible by daydreams. Binary consciousness is not flawed; it is the most efficient use of resources by Life to make man conscious; it cannot be improved upon in the 3-D world. In 4-D view, a third sample itself has an absolute irrelevancy since two samples is all that is necessary for consciousness. The more extreme is a contrast, the more it tends to consume the participants. Consider: war, sex, murder etc. Religious retreat is the attempt to reduce/avoid all contrast. Also, extreme stereotype of personality makes more acceptance of the reality of types among people possible; it evinces a laughter of appreciation of the appropriateness of the contrast. Contrast is a kind of shorthand --efficiency of grasp and use of shortened, abbreviated forms. ]
[Life's masterstroke: division into "mine and thine"--private ownership. ]
[There is no incompleteness in 3-D world reality. Binary consciousness can only see relationships --all experience is of relationship of process. ]
[Contrast produces friction energy only when such contrast is taken to be important; taken seriously. ]
[1:49 Epilog

Transcript

THE EFFICIENCY OF BINARY CONTRASTS

In my continuing allegorical picturization of this Revolutionary activity, I've used the term "recruit," implying people of your general ilk. I am not being as precise as I could be, because a recruit in the military sense is someone who was drafted. What I should be saying is "enlistee" instead of "recruits." You enlisted. You volunteered. So you are not recruits; you are R.A.'s. You are regular army.

If I were to tell you to begin to sell This Thing, to do This publicly, would it be easier to market it as new data or information, or to market the source of the data, i.e., the person behind it? You could drop the idea of an important person behind This and say: "This is not a cult. The person who relayed this information is not trying to have his picture on the cover of People Magazine or Field and Stream. It's the information that's important." Or you could market This on the basis that I am somebody who has this wonderful new information, secrets. Pitch it on the basis that I'm such a great guy: charming, persuasive, a great speaker.

Picture the "you" that you are now as being something that you purchased or acquired; you saw something advertised, you were marketed, and you bought it. Do you picture yourself as having acquired a new person or as having absorbed new information? A marketing or selling process is occurring in you. You want to change and some part of you is attempting to sell some other part of you. Are you buying a new Alphonso or new Brunhilda? "I see me as being twenty pounds lighter, three inches taller, more talented, looking at least 15 years younger." Is that what you would find to be an acceptable change?

You were marketed and you bought the new person. Or can you picture you as the same person, and you bought the information, the new data? Which of these would be the easiest to picture; the most useful, the most efficient? What have you taken This to be? What did I intend it to be? Or can you almost take it either way?

What I'm about to bring up should sound topographically curious. Why is it that there's a way to measure and cut everything in Life; and if you have the count right, you have it all. If you say there are only five ways to do something, someone else will say, "I never thought about it but now that you mention it, there are five and not four. If I cut one way out I'd see the hole. But then again, I can't add another one." Someday I may try to make this even clearer to you, but not tonight. I'm just going to press on.

Another curiosity is that there seems to be only these three possible parts to describe humanity: Uno is what I'm doing; dos is what I'm saying; and tres is what I am. There are no other possibilities. Why are there only those three possibilities? That covers it all the way from garbage collectors to internal revenue collectors, priests, rabbis, scientists. "Look at what I'm saying. Look what I am doing. Look what I am."

I have a corollary. A performer is going to present something which requires the active use of the Yellow Circuit, and is not going to dance, pantomime, stand on his head, or tumble. He's going to be involved with a form of lecture, singing of original songs, poems or jokes. There are only three things he can talk about; three areas and that's it. Number one is, "What I've done." Number two is, "What somebody else has done." Number three is "facts." There are only three areas an entertainer can talk about from the stage. Anybody who is really R.A. will find this curious, or will find it curious he doesn't see this as curious when I keep insisting that such things are curious.

Something else: You are not really R.A., regular army, until your daydreams are better, more extraordinary, more outlandish than everybody else's night ones, including your own. Think about that one now.

Sometime back I brought up a one word description of a Real Revolutionist: someone who is efficient. Efficient. In the City an efficiency approach is based upon the belief that there is one right way of doing something. In the bushes there's the one best way of doing something, but the opposite is also the most efficient way. In the City there is a systematic, defined, codified approach which is the most efficient way to perform a task. If you can perceive of that which would be the absolute, .paunconditional opposite of that, it would likewise be as efficient.

Even with you there is one right way to do any particular thing, which seems the most efficient. One aspect of this assumption is that to be efficient, to be satisfied, any action you take must in some way correspond to what seems to be your thinking of action. You may have an active imagination; thought processes which define what you should do in a particular situation. But no absolute parallel exists between any action you take and the decision you make while thinking of action.

If there were a corollary, I could say to you that there is no such thing as incorrect action. If you know how to do it, you can take energy, possibilities, information from the E-pool -- from areas apparently irrelevant to whatever you are trying to decide to do -- and utilize this energy to carry out the appropriate action. For instance, say you're having trouble with your mate. You can flip a coin to decide whether or not you'll leave them.

If you absolutely had enough of anything, you'd have no problem. Everything would be very clear to you. For example, picture this: A store advertises, "We make keys," and you go in. As soon as you're inside, they take a blackjack and hit you over the head. Let's assume that Red Circuit wise you're fairly sane. You wouldn't stand there and think, "Maybe they mistook me for someone else. Maybe it's a joke. Maybe I'm on Candid Camera. Should I go or stay? Where else will I go to get keys? Is this my fault? Was I asking for it? Does this person have psychological problems? Do they think they know me? DO they know me? Do I know them? Am I paying off some bad karma? I wonder what sign they are?" You just leave.

From a Revolutionary viewpoint, there is no such thing as an individual problem; there is no such thing as a personal problem. You just don't know what to do. That's the only problem. The problem doesn't involve you and the other people, you and the circumstances, you and the relationship. The problem is always, "I don't know what to do!" In my fictitious tale of going in to have keys made, getting hit wasn't the problem. The problem was getting out! And that was no problem, because if you were sane enough, you did not stand there and debate or wonder what to do.

An apparent problem is always binary; there is no such thing as a trinary problem: "Should I do this or that? Should I go or stay? Should I tell them yes or no?" And you can literally use what is apparently irrelevant to solve the problem. A person says, "I have to know if you actually love me enough. Are we going to stick together forever? You've been acting funny lately. I want to know how you feel." You can say, "You're right. We need to decide something. I have to go to the bathroom for a minute." You go in the bathroom, and flip a coin. You have to know what you're doing and be FULLY committed to it. You decide, "If it's heads I stay with him; tails, I tell him it's over." You have to decide while understanding that, "I cannot decide. That's the problem. And I can't go on debating it. My internal people act like they're in a madhouse, a deranged Parliament. Half of the people in me say to stay and the rest scream to have a trial separation, to leave him." You flip a coin and decide. You have solved the problem because the problem was that you couldn't decide. Look at it this way: how much worse off are you? The absolute truth is you're better off, except in the City.

Most people would find this whole idea to be insane. In the City, flipping a coin is not the way to decide the major problems of your life. But, it's a self-protection mechanism until you can find a way to make your thinking of action match your action. Line-level consciousness can't perceive that if you can't decide, it doesn't matter what the outcome is. It seems to matter. It's supposed to seem to matter. If you truly couldn't live without him, the case would be closed. If he says, "Shave your head and lose thirty pounds and grow two inches," you'd say, "Done. Give me a week." But otherwise, it doesn't matter. The situation is not pressing or important. If it was, it would not be a problem. The problem is not whether to do this or that. The problem is you can't decide what to do.

You must be able to formulate a plan -- think of action -- and act on it. If you Understand that, it doesn't matter what you do. You may say, "I can't decide. I need more time and information." All you need is the ability to make your action fit your thinking of action; or to make your thinking of action fit your action. When they fit, there is no question whatsoever of whether or not you did the right thing. It is the cleanest and keenest of scalpels; you cut something, make a decision and walk away.

A Revolutionist out in the bush can be full of sleep, even full of bull, but never full of memories. NEVER. People who are full of memories are those people who can't make a decision. They constitute well over 99% of the world's population. If everybody made decisions, the world would cease to function as it needs to. The problem is you're human, laboring under the weight of citified consciousness. The Revolutionist has to look out for himself -- look after number one. To look after number one is to have your actions fit your ability to plan actions, or have your ability to plan and think about your actions fit whatever actions you seem capable of taking. If you can do that, you're looking after yourself and hurting no one else.

Efficiency is being able to make the maximum moves toward purpose with a minimum expenditure of all resources. The general expenditure of resources and energy in Life is indecision. You call it other things, like "problems." But the problem is you can't decide what to do. You think you have a vocational problem, a problem at work, and a problem with your family life or mate, with your children, with your financial relationships, with your mortgage company, with your mother and father. The problem is not what your wife or mother says, or what your boss expects of you. The problem is you can't decide what to do. So, if you could make your action fit into any kind of thinking of action that you can do, or vice versa, then whatever you did would be correct. And in this light, all actions are the same; it doesn't matter what you do. You have to know how to do it, and that's the end of all problems.

I'm going to pick up on a story I began about creatures who lived at another time and place, but most everything was almost like it is here and now. The creatures could picture things and had the ability to operate as though there were two realities, an "in here" and "out there." I'm going to describe this place in the same terms that we use here: imagination, daydreams, etc., and these should not be dismissed or down played. Imagination and daydreams furnished a most efficient reflection of the ultimate contrast between the person and what they want. They're always available, never fail and are always an at hand, personal contrast.

"Imagination" usually submits itself to badmouthing, especially from those who are mystically inclined. It seems that you can't differentiate between actual reality and the things that you imagine. But, were it not for imagination, there would be no manifestation of the classic contrast of a reality out there and an individual's perceptions (the one with a little bias, small amount of prejudice, flawed perception built in). This is the classic contrast; and all other contrasts can fit into it.

Man's binary view is based on the belief in an inner and outer reality. It sounds as though I've been describing this binary view as a flaw; that is, the cyclopic view where people can only be aware of two samples and believe that one is preferable. The binary condition of human consciousness is not a flaw. It is the most efficient, minimal expenditure of energy needed to produce consciousness. Life is acting with the very least expense, by using only two samples. That is the minimum number that it takes to be conscious. To have a sense of smell requires that you only smell two aromas.

Binary contrast cannot be improved upon in the 3-D world. You don't have to be religious to believe that there is a right way to do something, a good way and then the wrong, evil way. That's it. All things classified as scientific fact are seen to be either true or false. For Revolutionary purposes that view is grossly inadequate. But you realize that the operations of the City aren't flawed. The binary view is not a mistake, nor something that humanity has to outgrow. It is not a faux pas along the steps of evolution. It is an example of the height of efficiency. Life is expending the minimal amount of energy by basing consciousness on only two samples. The binary view, binary consciousness, is not a flaw, a false step or a shortcoming. It is efficiency personified; efficiency in motion.

Now these creatures of another place do not perceive a third sample, or the E possibility, the E pool or E force. They will never perceive the third force because it is irrelevant. It's not simply irrelevant to the subject at hand. The third force is irrelevant to the real matter at hand: to the energy producing, consciousness creating situation of binary contrast. The majority of the population won't suddenly say, "Oh my. There's a whole pool of information, possibilities, forces in action, circumstances that we have not taken into consideration." This information isn't supposed to be taken into consideration; it isn't necessary to the functioning of Line-level consciousness. It's irrelevant to the situation, and it doesn't matter what the situation is.

All that's relevant is having the minimal two samples which create a binary contrast and produce consciousness. Consciousness doesn't need any more samples in order to function. It would be an inefficient use of energy for Life to make Line-level consciousness become aware of a third possibility. "You either agree with me or you don't. You either like me or you don't." That is all that is pertinent. E is E-relevant.

The system is constructed to want to grab onto this idea and everything else, and apply it to specifics, look for an exception. But if you look for more than two samples, you're trying to put a quart's worth of information and energy into a pint bottle. You can go ahead and pour, but once the pint is full, that's it. The pint bottle doesn't know there's an excess that's being wasted. No matter the situation, as long as two will produce a contrast, a third is absolutely always irrelevant.

Let me point out some other things about contrast. Contrast can be seen as one of the facilities which produces energy. You need contrast, positive and negative current, apparently operating in contrast or people wouldn't do anything. You have to have truth and falsity, or science wouldn't move. The progress and march of knowledge would not take place without the friction, the struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, up and down, this and that, positive and negative, weak force and strong force. I'll give you some examples.

Murder and war are pretty offensive to most people. Looking at it in terms of the movement of energy: the greater the energy production, the greater the energy transfer, the greater the contrast, the more the situation is inclined to consume the participants and at times even bystanders. The intensity of the contrast consumes them -- drains them. The participants become devoid of the energy to move for hours, days or even years. They may even lose the will to live.

Let me point out something else along these lines. Throughout history so-called holy men have attempted to avoid contrast, at least extreme contrast, through various methods. They attribute the avoidance to the worshipping of gods, or they believe that some spirits told them to get out of the City. But by attempting to live a life of contemplation, abandoning civilization, getting out of the rat race, living in silence, living by themselves in little groups or as hermits, refusing to engage in work or sex, they're attempting to avoid all contrast. These "holy men" are attempting to smooth out Life, to turn it into a kind of white bread, cottage cheese existence.

It's almost impossible to avoid any contrast because you have to give up breathing in and out. Still, many of you have little would-be holy men in you. You may have dreams of someday running away and joining a monastery or some commune somewhere where everyone holds hands in the morning and sings songs, hugs, speaks without harshness or not at all. That is the dream of being in a place where all of the harsh, extreme contrasts are smoothed out. Instead of things being black and white, everything becomes gray: instead of being real NOISY or frighteningly silent, there's be a steady pink noise background hum. People who are wired up to play out the roles of holy people are dreaming of the eradication of all contrast. And what is that? Death. Or, from their viewpoint, paradise. This is their dream of heaven: no conflict, no arguments, no difference between men and women, between races or nationalities. These holy men are striving for a place where all is one, without contrast.

Let me point out something else that will come as a surprise to you. The more dramatic and extreme the binary contrast, the easier it is to see and accept the reality of the two types described. As an example, picture the very unphysical, clumsy, inept intellectual, in contrast with the almost non-intellectually functioning athlete. You ask him his name and he has to look in his coat. It seems so stereotypical it should be condemned.

You may think that this stereotyping is condemnable, but down in your nervous system you can feel the personification. You see a movie about a doctor who won the Nobel Prize, but almost every week he breaks a finger or a toe, and is always falling down. You will laugh because you recognize and appreciate what you see in this dramatic contrast. You see the great dichotomy or division between the mind and body. This division is believed in the City -- that the more you're devoted to developing the brain, the clumsier you are. This view is not a completely groundless, prejudicial, mechanical stereotype. It is efficiency in action because people correctly see the contrast and accept it as being meaningful.

Somebody may say, "Have you heard about doctor so and so? The first day I had class with him he walked in, said 'Hello,' tripped and broke his nose." To the person in the City, that tells more about how intellectual that man is than hearing that he won three Nobel prizes. Or you hear that they interviewed a new guy who was drafted into the university football team, and find out that he needs help writing his name. That's all you have to hear and you immediately assume that he's murder on the field. You just know he is. It seems to be an ill-founded exaggeration, and it's not. It's just an extreme contrast. And the more extreme it is, the easier people in the City can see and accept it. It improves mechanical perception.

Part of the purpose of this extreme contrast is that it keeps people from having to stop, plan, plot and analyze everything that happens. It's not condemnable stereotyping or a shorthand, prejudicial comment; it's shorthand and is not ill-founded. Contrasts are contrasts. People in the City are in a hurry and don't have time to stop and examine every little thing. You can glance around, take it in and you've got it. Contrast. Without it the City would fall apart; come to such a grinding halt that it couldn't operate.