Hi everybody, here is a conceptual example of spherical education that you can perform easily and then get my drift if you are a little fuzzy on it.

The point of this exercise is to notice how many ideas are attached to each individual idea, and that ideas cannot simply be compared on a binary scale.  Ideas have connections to other ideas on millions of binary scales, that, put together, make a dense conceptual/contextual sphere.  My argument is that this is how our brains can  really “see” ideas, but not necessarily how we are taught.

So, here goes:

PART ONE: DANDELION

1.  Hold up your index fingers several inches or a foot apart.  This is your binary scale. ((Binary-has two termini/end points…one thing VERSUS another).

2. Assign opposite terms to each finger.  Let’s go with WAR and PEACE.*

3. *Already you may have made another binary assessment of GOOD or BAD (whichever one you choose for which is personal/cultural)…but another binary scale does not fit on the binary scale you have! You only have TWO points of reference on the binary scale.

4. Go back to WAR and PEACE.  Look at the WAR finger.  Think of several topics related to your idea of WAR.  Imagine the topics floating around the WAR finger.

5. Still looking at the WAR finger, imagine, across from each of the floating topics, the “opposite” of that topic.  Imagine that the floating topics and their opposites are forming a spherical shell, like a fluffy dandelion head, around the WAR finger.

6. You can do the same for the PEACE finger, or for ANYTHING else.  Look around. Now, when you compare WAR and PEACE, do you just see the words?  Or do you see the spheres of linked ideas surrounding them?  How do you now compare the two?  It is impossible to “weigh out” the concepts…why?  Because it’s more complex than that!  (Let’s just say for calming purposes that peoples worldwide at any place in time have never been totally at peace, or totally at war.)

PART II: DENSITY

1. Go back to the WAR and PEACE fingers with their fluffy dandelion spheres of ideas, like many tiny binary scales with opposites across the sphere from one another.

2. In the space between your fingers, imagine a few concepts between the extremes of WAR and PEACE.  Perhaps struggle, diplomacy, gunfire.  Build a sphere around each of these concepts as well.

3. Looking at your once-binary scale, you now have WAR and PEACE and several more ideas, all with other ideas in spheres around them, like a whole row of fluffy dandelions.

4. Imagine a pair of opposites floating in the fluffy dandelion sphere around WAR.  Do the same “middle ground” exercise in step 2 (imagine a few concepts between the extremes), “filling in” the space on the scale.

5. Do this for EVERY pair of opposites in the fluffy dandelion head, “filling in” your sphere around WAR.  Now for PEACE, and the other concepts on the once-binary scale.  “Filling in” the scale shows that the concept is not just a shell of binary scale opposites, (the fluffy dandelion head) but a true sphere with a density of ideas.

PART III: GOING IN ANOTHER DIRECTION

1. Still with the WAR and PEACE fingers, and other concepts in between, all with spheres dense with ideas clouded around each idea, STOP thinking about WAR and PEACE as the basic concept.  Put your fingers down and stop thinking about them.

2. Okay, imagine the sphere of ideas around WAR.  Now just imagine a sphere, empty of ideas, a dense cloud.

3. Look at the spherical cloud, waiting for an idea to be inserted.  This is just a cloud, no ideas, no central point.

4. Now, imagine WAR and PEACE on opposite sides of this spherical cloud.  The middle ground on the scale between them fills up with concepts, each concept has its own spherical idea cloud surrounding it.  The large cloud becomes denser with the new weight of all of the ideas surrounding other ideas.

5. In your mind, ZOOM OUT.  Bring your index fingers back, now with the concepts FAIRNESS and EQUALITY.  Apply the cloud from the previous step to the FAIRNESS finger.  Now WAR and PEACE are just tiny parts of the sphere surrounding FAIRNESS (or EQUALITY for that matter :) ).

Pretty cool, huh?

Why complicate things?  Because things are complicated.  By looking at ideas on binary scales, we are not only denying ourselves the understanding of the true nature of things, we are denying our BRAINS the ability to create the neural pathways necessary for understanding.  In essence, by comparing ideas on binary scales, we are teaching our brains to only think of things in a binary scale, hence missing out on all of the connections that are actually going on.

IT’S YOUR BRAIN, USE IT.  Plus, the world needs you.  Start checking things out in a “spherical” way.  Your brain will begin to adjust and to create new pathways that allow you to see beyond the binary.  Resist frustration, it takes time!

With love,

c