This is http://www.essayz.com/a9401222.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %MANDELBROUGHT SET CHAOS UNCERTAINTY INDETERMINE+940122 %DICHOTOMY RIGHT WRONG GOOD EVIL GODLY DIMENSION+940122 %TWO FIVE CULTURES COMPLEX CAUSE EFFECT PREDICT+940122 %SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY CONTROL ADDICT ALIENATION 940122 See the previous essay for some background perceptions. Picture the fractal image of the Mandelbrought Set depicted as a three dimensional surface with a flat and high plateau on top, a low and flat valley at the bottom, with the two connected by an infinity of paths along an infinity of valleys along which water might flow from the top plateau to the bottom valley. The intricate color patterns of the two dimensional depiction of the Mandelbrought Set are parts of an infinite map which depicts through colors the various elevations (contour strips of the surface) between the high flat plateau and the bottom flat valley. The closer the patterns of color in the Mandelbrought Set are examined the more intricate and complex they are found to be --- even at the many places where the boundary is apparently sharp and clean cut. The apparently clean-cut boundaries between right & wrong, proper & improper, personally acceptable & personally un-acceptable, scientific & un-scientific, Godly & un-Godly, Holy & un-Holy, and the other dichotomous splits between apparently unreconcilable opposites in our many conflicts---are boundaries which are much like the boundaries of the Mandelbrought Set. Imagine that a person seeks to find a creative and integrative middle ground between some dichotomous extremes suggested above. Is there any one correct, proper, acceptable, and Godly way to locate the middle ground? It is possible to plan a course, path, way, procedure or trajectory by which to get smoothly from the top plateau to a particular place/goal half way down the complex surface from top to bottom? At what point on the top flat surface is one to beginning the decent? How is one to know which valley to start down; and on the way down, how is one to decide where to turn right and where to turn left? How is one to predict where each decision will lead? In the Mandelbrought Set the mathematics which defines the set is a completely objective reality which is defined in advance by the mathematical definition of the set. There is nothing reflexive about the nature of the Mandelbrought Set. It is the same to each person who considers it, and to all moments in time of each person's consideration of it---no matter how each person's consideration of it affects the person. A person who seeks to behave as a mathematical point seeking to find a continuous and smooth path in three dimensions from the top plateau to a particular pre-chosen mathematical point in the x-y plane of the Mandelbrought Set which corresponds to half way from the top to the bottom---will find that the nature of the Mandelbrought Set makes it impossible to find such a path. The more carefully the surface is examined the more complex it becomes, and the more impossible it becomes to decide at each turn in the path in which direction to turn to get to the intended destination. It is impossible to define even one clear path from the top plane to a single chosen mathematical point halfway between the top plane and the bottom valley---in the instance of the totally objective Mandelbrought Set. How could it ever be possible to do something in real life which is similar on a hypothetical changing Mandelbrought like Set---but with the added complexity that the mathematics which defines the set is altered slightly in a reflexive way each time the descending infinitesimal point makes a choice in following a path from the top flat plateau to a target point half way down to the flat valley below. This would be impossible even if the choices changed the surface in such a way that the traveling point found itself at the same elevation on the surface at its same x-y position after the change, as it was before the change in the definition of the set. The complexity would be much greater if each choice by the mathematical point resulted in an unlimited range of possible elevations at the particular x-y position after the change. If we seek a more realistic representation of the complexity of real life we must admit that it is not possible to represent the choices in real life as describable in terms of only two numbers "x" and "y" with an associated elevation defined for each "x" and "y" position by something like the mathematics of the Mandelbrought Set. Two numbers is not enough. We need thousands of numbers to come anywhere near describing the current state of existence and past history of each person in each community of people. The interactions within and among the individuals of each community and within and among the communities of the planet --- all tend to redefine the state of the whole in changing ways which are nowhere near as simple and static as is the mathematical definition of the Mandelbrought Set. In the light of the above considerations it will be clear to anyone honestly seeking the truth that any program which seeks to control human processes is ultimately dishonest; and will lead to the disintegration of both persons and their communities---because the program will work in ways which will undermine whatever levels of personal and communal integrity there may have been before the implementation of the efforts of the program of control. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================