Playing with the NHA Logo: The Tri-Trendao

Okay... let me tell you a few things about this strange symbol I call the Tri-Trendao, that I could designate as "what my mind pictures when I stare at the NHA logo".

As all other three-legged symbol, it symbolizes what has been said in 'Intelligence Archetypes', with the following presentations:

• Blue: Good Input (accurate and up-to-date knowledge)
• Dark Red: Power (inspiration, motivation)

• Green: Safe Space (in which to grow)

In this aspect, I'd like to convey the fact that neurohackers are emerging within a continuity of spirits, an ancestral spiritual lineage that we reckon as beneficial to entelechy. However, as we are among the first generations of human beings entering the XXIst Century, therefore the 3rd Millenary, I felt like adding some bricks to the construct...

A New Semantics for a Perspective Shift

First of all, I named those presentations "trends" and decided to give them new names, with a kind of semantics that you will undoubtedly recognize (and it's a bit of a gas), the true value of this semantical approach being to allow us to take what I think is an original point of view upon the universe and the place where we - humans - are standing within it, and also - individually speaking - upon our personal life and how we interact with it.

• The Blue (Good Input) is called: Cosmus
• The Dark Red (Power) is called: Salvagius

• The Green (Safe Space) is called: Domesticus

As said above, the combination of Cosmus, Salvagius and Domesticus is forming a matrix, and the "whole" which is more than the sum of its parts here is what human beings use to call "the universe" or "reality"; and I wanted to find a way to convey the fact that this "whole" is a mental construct each of us uses in order to interact with "what is actually happening" out there. It's an interface between our brain and the phenomenal level of reality that we cannot access directly through our senses. This interface is the substrate on which the famous Illusion - Maya symbolizes in the vedas - is built. In order to do that, I somehow added the "Crown", that is the ring in which the 3 trends are embedded.

Who We Are and Where We've Come From

Relatively to the way we generally use to consider the universe (general relativity, Big Bang, et al.), I'd say those 3 trends can be found everywhere in the universe. So, in this context:

• The Cosmus trend : I could describe it as what we call "the laws of physics", but Cosmus should rather be considered as "the actual laws of the universe", whatever they might be. Physics science is in fact - and originally - about trying to align "the laws of physics" with the observed laws of the universe, and the evaluation of the adequation between the "observed" and the "actual" (or phenomenal) is at the core of any major current study in that field. Cosmus is also related to the fact that everything in the universe is made of the same elements: atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, and what they are made of: quarks. So, as was saying Ambassador Delenn to Captain Sheridan in a moment of doubt, in the Zen garden, on the Babylon 5 station...:

"We are star stuff! We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.

And as we both have learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective."*

• The Salvagius trend : I'd say it's somehow the keystone of the actual laws of the universe and its evolution; it's the factor which makes it so diverse in the shapes its elements are taking, namely "accident". I mean... in the universe, accident is the "Design"; and design is - most probably - accidental. Without accident, every galaxy would have the same shape, all stars would be of the same kind, etc... (and most probably they wouldn't have even appeared). Besides, accidents make the universe, and all sufficiently complex systems within it, rather unpredictable, aside - maybe - on a very short-term basis. I see it as both the foundation of diversity and of what we call "wilderness".
• The Domesticus trend : It's maybe the one which is the most difficult to describe properly. Somehow, Domesticus is related to things like: "In the universe nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed" or "In the universe, you cannot clean something without getting something else dirty". It is the process (called the "dance of Siva" in the vedas) through which things evolve and change form (and the temporary form they're taking, hence, always being an illusion), it requires both creation (getting things together, complexity increasing, entelechy), destruction (getting things apart, complexity decreasing, entropy) and preservation (maintaining things through time by a permanent flow between entelechy and entropy, the dance in itself). At each given time, what we can observe as human beings with our eyes is only the temporary form this process has given to anything we see around us, things which then belong to our "domesticated" view of the world (our imagination though, can go beyond that). It is both what might trigger the fact of being deluded - when we forget it is an illusion and take it for granted reality, and what is unavoidably required for any being in order to interact with the phenomenal level of reality we cannot access directly. In this latter aspect, it is our main map for our journey into the unknown, and we got no other one available (unless we manage to change it). And here are maybe the only things to remember about it, that it's just a map (therefore, not the territory) and that you are - ultimately - the only one who draws yours.

Expression of the 3 Trends in Human Beings

Relatively to the way each individual considers their personal life and how one can interact with it, once again I'd say that the 3 trends can allow us to take a fresh point of view. So, in this context:

• The Cosmus trend : I'll take it as the drive to be aligned with the universe's and biology's intent. It is about what Led Zeppelin was referring to in "Stairway to Heaven", in the line "And if you listen very hard, the Tune will come to you at last, when all is one and one is all...". It is also about allowing the 3 trends to freely express themselves through you (also called "Surrendering" in Buddhism). It is about aligning morality with biology's intent in an enlightened mutual interest, it is about what we are doing here, neurohacking.
• The Salvagius trend : I see it - here as above - as the keystone of the evolution of our lives. It is what makes us wanting to learn new things, what makes us being curious and eager to find out the truth about things, it is about exploration of the unknown and discovery of new territories (both within and abroad), "to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before..."**, it is also about this singular energy that we deploy when we're in the state of play. So I wanted, for this particular trend, to pay tribute and deeply honor the hunter-gatherers' spirit, whether they were those who lived before the invention of agriculture, or those who - today - are striving to maintain this way of life in spite of the incursions of our own "occidental" way into their environment. And by using the old terminology the first occidental explorers used to describe the tribal cultures they encountered (from their typical arrogant position and with the required amount of condescendence), I thought that, for once, I would be actively participating in life's famous sense of irony...
• The Domesticus trend : Once again, tricky... Tricky to interpret in the context of its expression in human beings. One could easily take it for the will to keep traditions being respected or simply put: conservatism. I wouldn't say so. If you cannot create anything without destroying something else in the universe, then the "secret" lies somewhere in the selection process. What do you keep, what do you re-form, what do you throw away. And here, I'd tend to think that necessity should rule and dictate what are the tools needed. No sentiment should get in the way. More generally speaking, I'd relate it to questions like: "what world do you 'domesticate' around you?", "what things do you choose to populate your world with?", keeping the second golden rule in mind: "you become more like what you're surrounded by". And it is not that much about the things themselves (remember it is their temporary form), it is about how you choose them, how you transform them to fit into your vision of the world, and how, once integrated, they can enrich this vision (or not).

Technically, I could say that the secret of a truly rich, full and exciting life consists in finding, both within and abroad - the subtle equilibrium between these 3 trends. And, if you know a little about physics, you know that a pendulum (mounted on a rigid stick), for example, has 2 different spots where it can reach a state of equilibrium: at the bottom-most position, and at the top-most position. However, the former one is called: "stable equilibrium", the latter one is called: "unstable equilibrium". What differentiates them is the fact that from the position of the former one, if some effort is exercised on the pendulum, it will tend to get back to equilibrium; on the contrary, from the position of the latter one, the slightest effort applied to the pendulum and it will tend to lose its equilibrium.

And, considering a "tri-trendao point of view" upon life, the kind of equilibrium one might find between them will most likely be unstable at first (a bit like when you learned to walk), so you will "fall" sometimes (seems like a sensible prediction), and so, being ready to get back on the horse sounds almost mandatory. Now, if you are genuinely committed in a process of intelligence augmentation, you might one day discover that you've reached some kind of "stable" equilibrium. Although, it might be a bit different than with the pendulum. In fact, the pendulum is an analogy which cannot really apply to our lives, because it's too simple a system.

On the other hand, walking is the perfect analogy. Because, the walk is exactly the kind of equilibrium you want to reach concerning the way you may let the 3 trends expressing themselves through you: it is a dynamic succession of unbalanced states. And so, it means that - as in the case of walking - the equilibrium ought to be found at a "higher" level than the one of each individual unbalanced state.

If I'd apply this to what we're doing here, I could say: practicing neurohacking with informed consent is an healthy practice, although I think it's important to understand that it's not about going against your deepest drives and trying to change things that make you who you are; it's more - once you get a clearer idea of who you are ('know yourself' being the fifth golden rule...), about letting your nature express itself and seeing to handle, manage, play with, and improve what is emerging from this expression. Somehow, I'd tend to relate this to the proper use of Network 6, but I'm digressing...

In the tri-trendao, this "dynamic succession of unbalanced states" aspect is conveyed by a slight rotation counter-clockwise of the orthogonal version of the structure on which is built the inner spiral (that would be the equilateral triangle's summit aligned with the top of the circle), which gives an impression of movement (well, I hope so...).

Fractality and the Laws of Emergence

Ever since they came to "general public knowledge" (and to my mind it's a major breakthrough of mathematics in the XXth Century, maybe the greatest one), I've always been fascinated by fractals and the apparent fractal nature of the universe . In common terms, that means that the same patterns are being found everywhere in the universe, at all its scales (from the infinitely small to the infinitely big), as for example, the intertwining of your brain's networks that looks like the one built by galaxies in the universe:

Neurons' networks

 Mass repartition in the universe (networks of galaxies)

This "inherent fractal nature of things in the universe" is symbolized in the tri-trendao by the main pattern (the biggest spiral and trends' borders) being reproduced fractally inside each colored area. In one direction (bigger to smaller), the idea is that in each trend you can find the 3 trends again; and in the other direction (smaller to bigger), the idea is that the 3 trends combine into a matrix from which emerges a "whole" being more than the sum of its parts, and the proposition I'd make would be that this "whole" emerges as one of the 3 trends of a greater, wider trends' spiral (or matrix). And so on, and so forth...

(If you want to know more about these "networks of galaxies" above, I highly recommend this video on TED: George Smoot on the Design of the Universe)

And here's another one, with more detailed information about one of the surveys in question.

MaxTegmark - Precision Cosmology

This one is from the MIT Tech Days, the "precision cosmology" bit begins at about 35 minutes on a 1h35' long video. The beginning is Tech Days presentation and things about the MIT.

Yeah, when I see things like these, dudes, you know... "it makes me wonder..."***

References

*: "A Distant Star" - Babylon 5 - J.M Straczinsky - Warner Bros

**: Star Trek Credits - Gene Rodenberry - Paramount (mostly)

***: "Stairway to Heaven" - Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV - Atlantic