You Said Patterns? Let's Play a Game!

meowzician said:

For example, one of my favorite metaphors for the way I study all the different religions is that it's like holding an apple--I turn the apple all around and look at it from all different directions, because only then do I have a full understanding of what an apple looks like. I can't tell you how many times I've used that metaphor over the decades. So then, this morning when I came to that verse in the Pirkei Avot, I was like, "Whoop. There it is!"

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Lao Tzunami said:

For example, I grew up next to a mountain. I always saw it from one angle. Then when I was older, I remember driving up in the mountains with my family and seeing it from the side and the back for the first time. It was unnerving, like your dad coming home with a shaved beard when you are a kid. I do dataviz for a living, and I can tell you, people get attached to certain map projections and do not like when they are changed. Most people like the US Albers projection with a curved top, not the projections with a flat top, and don't even think about turning the map so east is up, like we did when orienting East by where the sun rose above the horizon each morning.

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This reminds me of the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant:


It also reminds me of Plato's parable of the shadows flickering in a cave.

I guess one of the funniest I've come across is 'Why is an ogre like an onion?' from Shrek. It wouldn't have been anything like so funny if it wasn't sort of a valid metaphor

meowzician said:

I illustrate my religion posts with this story so frequently that I sometimes worry that I'm boring my friends with the repetition. LOL

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Never give up on it because it bears a lot of repetition, quite honestly - we all act as one of the blind men in so many situations. It's easy to see the elephant when we have eyes, but there's lots of situations, aren't there, where 'eyes' is just a metaphor for insight that sees beyond our own four walls, our blind spots, our assumptions and prejudices?

meowzician said:

How fun! Yes! You really do have to post a link when it's done. I want chapters 1 and 25.

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@meowzician I just finished and posted a thread:
https://infjs.com/threads/interactive-daodejing-audiobook-with-seal-script-translation.40167/

Also to get back to the pattern game,

meowzician said:

And that is what is so amazing about experiencing life through patterns rather than linear thinking. ...

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a pattern I notice is sequential vs parallel. For example, algebra is sequential and linear, but geometry is everything at once. That's why I love mandalas so much. If you can become aware of multiple things at a time, you can see what is at their center.

I used to work in the information systems department of an international pharmaceutical company. I remember seeing that the people designing the information systems infrastructure for the whole business were like the people who build national railway systems. Metaphorically, the trains all ran on set tracks between fixed stations.

But I was supporting research scientists. Conceptually, at the meta-system level, these guys needed the computer system equivalent of off-road vehicles and boats. A railway network approach was never going to work for them and didn’t. In more specific terms, they needed a generalised computer strategy equivalent to a set of machine shops with tools and pathways that could be adapted to many different purposes, seen and unforeseen.

But folks who form such strategies are taught such things within a world view that, by analogy, is like their native language. It’s not just their chosen view but the very vocabulary with which they relate the world to themselves. It’s implicit rather than articulated so it’s hard to break free because it’s hard-wired into their way of perception.

I only got funny looks trying to use such analogies. I don’t think many people appreciate figurative analogies, particularly those that shake the foundations of their paradigms.