Cascades, Triggers, Pilots and Control . . .

Cascades ,
Triggers ,
Pilots and Controls
Growth and Development

We hear a sound. It provokes a thought.
We turn to investigate further.
We see the direction from which the sound came.
We walk towards it, to try to identify the source of the sound.
We would be helped if the sound occurred again.
We would be helped if the sound were continuous.

The sound had a quality we judged to merit more attention.
There are many sounds we ignore,
but this one attracted more attention.
We turned. We used our sense of sight.
We moved. We awaited, alert. We thought.
We tried to associate the sound with others in our experience.

The sound was a kind of sensation
or stimulus to which we submit more attention.
Which sounds cause that will vary with our setting,
our circumstances or our environment,
even our state or condition.
There is, however, some array of sounds
and our reaction or response to them that characterizes
who and what we are.
The sound of our name draws our attention.
Alarm takes our full attention.
Just the sound of some people’s voices commands our attention.

There are sounds that trigger
a cascading enlargement of our attention.
This cascading effect is an important structure
of our consciousness.
We have vast bodies of data, information and knowledge
that affect our perceptions, that qualify our sensations
or the stimuli that reach our nervous systems
and transforms them into perceptions.

There are amplifications systems at work within us.
Small signals release large reactions or responses.

We can consider two aspects of this phenomena:

1) What are those amplification structures like?
How do they work?

2) What are the contents
of our particular amplification systems?
Where do they come from?
How are they formed?

Part of the answer to the second group of these questions
illustrates and exemplifies the answers
to the first group of these questions.
The content of our personal systems have to do with values.
What triggers the cascading reactions
and responses within us has to do with our attempt
to “get it right”, to use the terms
of one of our recent sessions.
It has to do with deficiences, discontinuities and disbalances
within our experience.
We transform our episodic experiences into semantic knowledge,
to use the jargon of psychology.
We process our experience by means of some
of those amplification structures,
and the processing of our experience
using those amplification structures, in turn,
produces other amplification structures.

The gain, the increase in the energy directed or controlled
by the smallest signals, is immense.
That is an attribute of creativity.
We are creators being created.

We have biases. We are prejudice.
Some things matter disproportionately.
In our attempt to “get it right”
we remedy the deficiencies,
we supplement the discontinuities,
we balance the disbalances.

Our amplification systems have to do with
the structures of our consciousness.
Our physical consciousness situates
as a source of signals amplified by our body consciousness
or subconscious.
We hold a brief image in our physical consciousness
and the body consciousness directs the communication and control
to position our limbs or body or to enter the whole sequence
of actions and efforts – all triggered by a signal,
an image, a thought, a desire.

Growth and Development
Growth and development are different.
Growth is a matter of enlargement.
Development is a matter of differentiation.
As we grow, we are structuring amplification systems
we later deploy.
We do not simply grow and develop a bodily form,
but we grow and develop a mind.
The development of the mind involves the structures
of differentiation which amplify.

There are hierarchical structures of language, of reason,
of thought and intent.

There are higher levels of abstraction that control,
by deductive fiat or rule, subordinate structures.
e.g. We can make statements about animals
that include dogs and birds.
The word “animal” is a higher level of abstraction
and has fewer common elements,
but a greater number of referents or specimens.
We can graph the hierarchical nature
of the process of abstraction by plotting
the number of common elements
perpendicular to the number of referents,
examples or specimens.
Abstraction is an amplification structure.

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Fig. 1

Cascade or amplification effects can affect
the being and doing response.
We can acknowledge more referents
in a complex and compound connection and interaction
of being and doing.
We can increase the number of common elements
by means of a greater intimacy, a more intense relationship,
with fewer referents, perhaps only one.

Together, these two alternative processes, involve growth
and development.
Acknowledging more referents in our being and doing
can be considered growth.
Intensifying our relationship, producing more common elements,
can be considered development.

There is cascading or amplified growth.
There is cascading or amplified development.

copyright 2011, 2013, ECOhealth / Eve Revere