It’s elementary, my dear Watson.
NOT Sherlock Holmes
Come Together — The Beatles
Because you’ve got to be free.
I want to talk a little bit about conceptual frameworks and how they work. It’s a very large subject with a lot of moving parts so I’m going to do my best to break it down. It starts with Objectivity and Subjectivity and the concept of Context. There is a significant difference between things that exist outside of and regardless of context, and there are things that can only exist within and because of context. When you start to conflate these ideas you wind up going in conceptual circles with arguments that make no sense. Fallacies are tricky and difficult to beat, but once you’ve spotted them you can easily rectify your position and correct your course. At the end of the day it is the facts that are important. With these pieces you can construct a basic intellectual framework for mapping and plotting.
What is the Matrix?
Neo, The Matrix
Goody Two Shoes — Adam Ant
What do you do?
The first thing you need to think about when constructing the framework is the scope. A framework should only ever be exactly as big as it needs to be, and it should contain only exactly as much data as it needs to properly serve its purpose. Adding in extra details that have no bearing on the scope creates irrelevance which lends a person to subscribe to a fallacious idea and come to an improper conclusion. (Rule: Useless Redundancies Get Eliminated (#URGE)). — It also means ignore irrelevant data. ) One efficient way to cover this is by keeping it simple. (Rule: KISS -Keep It Simple, Studmuffin (#KISS))
I want to Rock and Roll all night. And party every day.
Kiss, Rock and Roll All Night
Free Your Mind — En Vogue
Free your mind. The rest will follow.
The easiest and most simple scope to describe when detailing reality, so far as my practice is concerned, is the Universal Set {U}. The Universal Set contains everything that can, could, would, should, does exist, has existed, will exist, could-have-should-have-might-have-existed-period. Everything. There is nothing outside {U}. I repeat: There is Nothing outside {U}. If it exists, it exists within {U}. There is only one {U} and it’s the same {U} for everyone. Period. Understand that for a second. It’s important. {{{Pet peeve: People misuse the word Universe way too often. But there’s a reason for it. We’ll cover that in the future.}}}1
{U} spin me right round, baby right round.
Dead or Alive, You Spin Me Round
Written in the Stars — Tinie Tempah
It’s all there from the beginning.
Now that we’ve established the Universal Set, we can talk about Objectivity. Objects are things that exist within a scope outside the bounds of any context, and to be objective is to view situations without context. This is important because it allows a person to distill facts and find a deeper truth lurking just beneath the surface. The problem is that reality and perception both exist within a context and the context is so drastically huge and complex that True Objectivity becomes impossible.2 Think about that for a moment.
Space is big.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Real — Miyavi
FYI: One of the greatest guitarists on the planet.
If True Objectivity is impossible, what does that mean about our frameworks? It means that even if we try our best to include every variable and take every single little detail into account it is still technically impossible to fix every conceivable error. This means that things like Inequality of Outcome become inevitable and concepts like Equity become irrational. There is simply no way to address Everything in the broadest of scopes and enact constructive change in the world. This is because some concepts are congruent with reality and some are not. This difference is accounted for Subjectively.
All the King’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Nursery Rhyme
Kick the Dust Up — Luke Bryan
That riff, though. Sexy.
Subjective concepts are dependent upon a narrative framework to remain viable. A good example of this can be found in fiction. The story opens, it contains everything within the story, and then it ends. The details of that story can be internally consistent and still have no bearing or use outside the contextt of the story. Subjective concepts exist relative to each other and can compete for preeminence. The problem with subjectivity is that it requires a very narrow scope to be used effectively and cannot be applied without taking context into account. Where Objectivism largely ties itself into facts, Subjectivism tends to give easier to feelings. The problem with Subjectivism is that it can be used as a tool to simply dismiss inconvenient truths. (Everything is subjective, after all.)
2+2=5
1984, George Orwell
Fantasy — Aldo Nova
Can you live a fantasy life?
That’s all for now.
Until Next Time,
Thank you;
1 The Universal Set is actually way to large and complex to describe in any detail, but the abstract is absolutely important. It allows us to derive tools that are critically important for our work. Concepts we’ll delve into later include, but are not limited to: Real / Imagined; True / False; All / Nothing; One / Many; Yin / Yang. All of these are dependent on {U}.
2 Except for The Unseen Observer. That is a Philosophical Concept for another time.