Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more
i continually return to a belief that the fundamental structures for humans' success & happiness are so simple:
* homeostasis (including: clean air, fresh water, nutritious food, adequate sleep, proper clothing, sturdy shelter, & moderate exercise)
* duty & discipline (which, if performed correctly, will produce: safety, recreation, love, esteem, self-actualization, & transcendence)
as long as duty & discipline can also be understood to include such things as... tools, toys, instruments, books, games, & art!
in my continuing search for ways to do more with less, as i was downscaling for a more nomadic life, i discovered:
The Laws of Simplicity... looks like i could use a refresher course... all of this *stuff* has a way of sneaking back up on us, doesn't it?
as i am packing for that thing out in the woods, i can't help but think about
the story of stuff
(you have probably all seen that by now, but if you haven't, then take 20 mintues to check it out & you won't regret it!)
i have been looking back @ Bruce Sterling's final Viridian note... particularly this elegant outline:
"Now to confront the possessions you already have. This will require serious design work, and this will be painful. It is a good idea to get a friend or several friends to help you.
You will need to divide your current possessions into four major categories.
1. Beautiful things.
2. Emotionally important things.
3. Tools, devices, and appliances that efficiently perform a useful function.
4. Everything else.
'Everything else' will be by far the largest category. Anything you have not touched, or seen, or thought about in a year - this very likely belongs in 'everything else.'"
as i was contemplating this process of flensing & reclaiming stuff, i couldn't remember the term that PKD used, so I looked around on google & remembered the word:
as Erik Davis points out in this wired article The Metaphysics of Philip K. Dick (from The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick), Entropy was one of the handful of fundamental themes in PKD's works...
"One thing you learn from drug addiction, five marriages, and a visionary imagination is how easily your world can fall apart. Perhaps this was why Dick was obsessed with how things decay. He even invented a word for one of entropy's most ordinary manifestations: 'kipple,' which he defined as all the useless crap that creeps into our daily lives, like junk mail and gum wrappers and old newspapers. Don't bother fighting it - Dick's First Law of Kipple states that 'Kipple drives out nonkipple.'"
Kipple @ Technovelgy.com
"Kipple seems to be a combination of entropy and capitalism. I don't think past civilizations had the resources to produce so much packaging to hold our stuff until we buy it or consume it."
It is the great plague on Civilization, and in many ways it defines our lives through multiple phases that all exist simultaneously: 1) acquisition of kipple; 2) management of kipple; 3) purging of kipple. Only death can free us from kipple; unfortunately, then loved ones inherit our kipple, and the cycle continues. All we can do to counteract the force of kipple is to make an effort to consume less, recycle more, throw more away, and love and laugh as much as possible. The New Yorker cartoon, below, gets right to the crux of the kipple problem.
https://www.zinzin.com/observations/2012/kipple-drives-out-nonkipple/
Have You Ever Kippled?
The Kipple Culture
Jay Jurisich - Painting, Drawing, Words
Study Notes for Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968; New York: Del Rey, 1996).
"Simplicity and complexity: pondering literature, science, and painting," by Floyd Merrell
Entropy, Chaos, and Kipple Strike Again!
"Kipple was described as the bit of mess or chaos that starts in the corner of a room and gradually makes its way across the room."
Here's an example of the entropy theme explored in another of PKD's novels:
An Alien God and a Jungian Allegory (RE: PKD's _The Galactic Pot Healer_), by Robert Bee
"Heldscalla rests at the bottom of the Mare Nostrom, in the Aquatic Sub-World, a place of entropy and death where everything turns to rubbish, a concept similar to kipple in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Kipple is the useless trash that everything is reduced to by entropy. Negentropy, life, rebuilding, and order stand against entropy. Joe is a pothealer, a force of negentropy, healing, and rebuilding. If Glimmung and his followers can raise Heldscalla from the ocean, then the positive forces of rebuilding can counteract the slow decay into nothingness that the cathedral is subject to."
Another Law of Kipple
Help Support a Groundbreaking Investigation of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Spot.Us needs help funding a reporting trip to the eye of the trash storm.
THE TRIUMPH OF KIPPLE IN ALEJANDRO ALMANZA PEREDA SCULPTURES
wondering what the standards are for including neologisms in Wiktionary, i found this standard for including words from fictional universes: *three* citations which are independent of reference to that universe are necessary
i found *one* online:
The Octopus Monkey - Episode 2: “morning snow” - By Pinball X
--
PS while researching kipple & entropy in general, i also stumbled across a fascinating Arabic word for a particular sort of apocalyptic chaos: fitna... well, to use the vernacular... i guess i'm fitna' schism ;~})>
--
but all kidding & kippling aside...
"Biologists as well as philosophers have suggested that the universe, and the living forms it contains, are based on chance, but not on accident. To put it another way, forces of chance and of antichance coexist in a complementary relationship. The random element is called entropy, the agent of chaos, which tends to mix up the unmixed, to destroy meaning. The nonrandom element is information, which exploits the uncertainty inherent in the entropy principle to generate new structures, to inform the world in novel ways.
Information theory shows that there are good reasons why the forces of antichance are as universal as the forces of chance, even though entropy has been presented as the overwhelmingly more powerful principle. The proper metaphor for the life process may not be a pair of rolling dice or a spinning roulette wheel, but the sentences of a language, conveying information that is partly predictable and partly unpredictable. These sentences are generated by rules which make much out of little, producing a boundless wealth of meaning from a finite store of words; they enable language to be familiar yet surprising, constrained yet unpredictable within its constraints.
Sense and order, the theory says, can prevail against nonsense and chaos. The world need not regress toward the simple, the uniform, and the banal, but may advance in the direction of richer and more complex structures, physical and mental. Life, like language, remains 'grammatical.' The classical view of entropy implied that structure is the exception and confusion the rule. The theory of information suggests instead that order is entirely natural: grammatical man inhabits a grammatical universe."
- from the Mission Statement from "Grammatical Man," by Jeremy Campbell
--
So, while we keep up The Great Work... let's enjoy playing The Cosmic Game!
--
other randomly related links:
friendly neighborhood reminder from jacques demolay
laughing like mad, all the way to the grave
lately, a number of people have asked me, "what exactly is a living system?"
pleasure production & harm reduction...
transforming vandalism into volunteerism
* homeostasis (including: clean air, fresh water, nutritious food, adequate sleep, proper clothing, sturdy shelter, & moderate exercise)
* duty & discipline (which, if performed correctly, will produce: safety, recreation, love, esteem, self-actualization, & transcendence)
as long as duty & discipline can also be understood to include such things as... tools, toys, instruments, books, games, & art!
in my continuing search for ways to do more with less, as i was downscaling for a more nomadic life, i discovered:
The Laws of Simplicity... looks like i could use a refresher course... all of this *stuff* has a way of sneaking back up on us, doesn't it?
as i am packing for that thing out in the woods, i can't help but think about
the story of stuff
(you have probably all seen that by now, but if you haven't, then take 20 mintues to check it out & you won't regret it!)
i have been looking back @ Bruce Sterling's final Viridian note... particularly this elegant outline:
"Now to confront the possessions you already have. This will require serious design work, and this will be painful. It is a good idea to get a friend or several friends to help you.
You will need to divide your current possessions into four major categories.
1. Beautiful things.
2. Emotionally important things.
3. Tools, devices, and appliances that efficiently perform a useful function.
4. Everything else.
'Everything else' will be by far the largest category. Anything you have not touched, or seen, or thought about in a year - this very likely belongs in 'everything else.'"
as i was contemplating this process of flensing & reclaiming stuff, i couldn't remember the term that PKD used, so I looked around on google & remembered the word:
as Erik Davis points out in this wired article The Metaphysics of Philip K. Dick (from The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick), Entropy was one of the handful of fundamental themes in PKD's works...
"One thing you learn from drug addiction, five marriages, and a visionary imagination is how easily your world can fall apart. Perhaps this was why Dick was obsessed with how things decay. He even invented a word for one of entropy's most ordinary manifestations: 'kipple,' which he defined as all the useless crap that creeps into our daily lives, like junk mail and gum wrappers and old newspapers. Don't bother fighting it - Dick's First Law of Kipple states that 'Kipple drives out nonkipple.'"
Kipple @ Technovelgy.com
"Kipple seems to be a combination of entropy and capitalism. I don't think past civilizations had the resources to produce so much packaging to hold our stuff until we buy it or consume it."
It is the great plague on Civilization, and in many ways it defines our lives through multiple phases that all exist simultaneously: 1) acquisition of kipple; 2) management of kipple; 3) purging of kipple. Only death can free us from kipple; unfortunately, then loved ones inherit our kipple, and the cycle continues. All we can do to counteract the force of kipple is to make an effort to consume less, recycle more, throw more away, and love and laugh as much as possible. The New Yorker cartoon, below, gets right to the crux of the kipple problem.
https://www.zinzin.com/observations/2012/kipple-drives-out-nonkipple/
Have You Ever Kippled?
The Kipple Culture
Jay Jurisich - Painting, Drawing, Words
Study Notes for Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968; New York: Del Rey, 1996).
"Simplicity and complexity: pondering literature, science, and painting," by Floyd Merrell
Entropy, Chaos, and Kipple Strike Again!
"Kipple was described as the bit of mess or chaos that starts in the corner of a room and gradually makes its way across the room."
Here's an example of the entropy theme explored in another of PKD's novels:
An Alien God and a Jungian Allegory (RE: PKD's _The Galactic Pot Healer_), by Robert Bee
"Heldscalla rests at the bottom of the Mare Nostrom, in the Aquatic Sub-World, a place of entropy and death where everything turns to rubbish, a concept similar to kipple in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Kipple is the useless trash that everything is reduced to by entropy. Negentropy, life, rebuilding, and order stand against entropy. Joe is a pothealer, a force of negentropy, healing, and rebuilding. If Glimmung and his followers can raise Heldscalla from the ocean, then the positive forces of rebuilding can counteract the slow decay into nothingness that the cathedral is subject to."
Another Law of Kipple
Help Support a Groundbreaking Investigation of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Spot.Us needs help funding a reporting trip to the eye of the trash storm.
THE TRIUMPH OF KIPPLE IN ALEJANDRO ALMANZA PEREDA SCULPTURES
wondering what the standards are for including neologisms in Wiktionary, i found this standard for including words from fictional universes: *three* citations which are independent of reference to that universe are necessary
i found *one* online:
The Octopus Monkey - Episode 2: “morning snow” - By Pinball X
--
PS while researching kipple & entropy in general, i also stumbled across a fascinating Arabic word for a particular sort of apocalyptic chaos: fitna... well, to use the vernacular... i guess i'm fitna' schism ;~})>
--
but all kidding & kippling aside...
"Biologists as well as philosophers have suggested that the universe, and the living forms it contains, are based on chance, but not on accident. To put it another way, forces of chance and of antichance coexist in a complementary relationship. The random element is called entropy, the agent of chaos, which tends to mix up the unmixed, to destroy meaning. The nonrandom element is information, which exploits the uncertainty inherent in the entropy principle to generate new structures, to inform the world in novel ways.
Information theory shows that there are good reasons why the forces of antichance are as universal as the forces of chance, even though entropy has been presented as the overwhelmingly more powerful principle. The proper metaphor for the life process may not be a pair of rolling dice or a spinning roulette wheel, but the sentences of a language, conveying information that is partly predictable and partly unpredictable. These sentences are generated by rules which make much out of little, producing a boundless wealth of meaning from a finite store of words; they enable language to be familiar yet surprising, constrained yet unpredictable within its constraints.
Sense and order, the theory says, can prevail against nonsense and chaos. The world need not regress toward the simple, the uniform, and the banal, but may advance in the direction of richer and more complex structures, physical and mental. Life, like language, remains 'grammatical.' The classical view of entropy implied that structure is the exception and confusion the rule. The theory of information suggests instead that order is entirely natural: grammatical man inhabits a grammatical universe."
- from the Mission Statement from "Grammatical Man," by Jeremy Campbell
--
So, while we keep up The Great Work... let's enjoy playing The Cosmic Game!
--
other randomly related links:
friendly neighborhood reminder from jacques demolay
laughing like mad, all the way to the grave
lately, a number of people have asked me, "what exactly is a living system?"
pleasure production & harm reduction...
transforming vandalism into volunteerism