ON THE NATURE OF POTENTIALITIES IN HUMAN HISTORY

Greetings:

I recently engaged in an interesting series of emails with an Internet acquaintance of mine.

In the course of our exchange, the subject turned to the particular quirks of random chance that so often affects past human history, and thereby determine the present and future shape of our world.

We both agreed that the great flow comprising all that we are today, can be distilled out as the sum total of the current present and past "emergence and dominance" of an ongoing and transitory number of competing and cross purpose forces known as..... historical potentialities.

The universal totality of the above described force, is that of one possessed of a living energy and so encompassing in its universal totality that it's very existence is rarely even perceivable by those who would dream of someday living in the forest ... but currently find themselves forced to dwell among the trees.

Historical potentialities are forces in possession of a power that is enfranchised, not only by the collective and individual consciousness of all past and living humanity, but also by the omnipresent sponsorship and active interference of the physical and metaphysical realms of the universe.

A short allegory may help us visualize the nature of how these forces function.

All card players know that in the deck of 52 cards, the eight of clubs precedes the nine of clubs and follows the seven. Further, it is a given assumption that there will be four different suits of cards and that in each suit there will be one card that will bear the same exact number.

This knowledge creates an agreed upon communal illusion...a "Matrix" within which the card player interacts with other players in the communal game.

The common knowledge of the parameters that limit and define the reach of the above "matrix" that is the game, is an assumed premise the individual card players take for granted as being an accepted "given" by all in the game

It is at this point the synchronized illusion of a common matrix now become the communal reality. It is now a valid experience...Each player contributes an important portion of validation to the mutually agreed upon illusion All merges into oneness....A oneness that is enshrined within the now living matrix by the contract implied by the agreed consent of the participating parties.

One result of this is that the universe of the matrix becomes proactive.

Originally created as a means to an end, (the game) it soon begins to develop an inertia that carries it inexorably beyond the mandate of the intended reality it was created to vector. This inertia develops in the realm of abstract potentialities and forms a sort of self propelled vehicle that moves the game and the players toward an end-logic that slowly becomes based not in the ongoing game, but in some point that doesn't yet exist... This then is the emergence of the potentiality of the Future.

The development of the expectation of events yet to occur, obtains a certain predictability as the game develops and soon becomes a projected subset of the current reality of the game. This happens because of a natural predilection that develops within the group and is born out of the dynamic nature of the game. The common matrix responds to a subtle assignment by all the players to assume a role that now exceed its function as per the parameters of the game.

Thus, the Matrix AND the game become the medium by which the future of the game, (and all games) can be predicted by players with a reasonable amount of certainty. All this comes about due to, and based upon, the requisite acceptance as "reality' of a commonly agreed and created intangibility or "Illusion" by the group.

As the game progresses, so does the growth of the potential for effect of the current matrix within the realm of future potentialities.

In a card game, commonly agreed upon rules and knowledge can therefore lend themselves as a statistical certainty. They can, (and are) frequently used by the players to aid in the estimate of the amount of risk to consider and how that risk may aid or impair winning the game.

The card player's estimate of the potential risks of an any play he may make is based on computing the statistical odds affecting the cards that have past and presently emerged on the table. He will estimate how they may then relate to those currently in his hand.

The final function the player must perform is to apply the results of the prior two processes in order to estimate the potentiality of the future order and the odds of the future order, as both relate to the potential emergence of the remaining cards in the deck.

The sum of all these considerations will likely then indicate to the player that the chance potentiality of one type or number of card being played next, is higher or lower than another. Upon all this, the astute player will make his play.

So it is with the grand deck of cards we know as human history. It is a deck from whence many potential cards may emerge. Each one remains unique but related to all those that came before it. There will also exist a specific statistical ratio to the nature of the present dominant historical potentiality that is always in tandem with the sum of the past. It can be used to deduce the possible nature and order of potentialities in the future. Or...in other words, those cards yet to be played.

The events of history, broken down in such a way, can be seen to function (roughly) as would the play of cards, each defining and refining the odds applying to the nature and order all of the remaining cards as well as to the emergence of the next or "dominant" play in the game.

Potentialities are forces that move through time and space in a competing statistical flow. Each will strive to emerge as dominant. Only a certain amount, based upon the successful interaction with related or modular predecessors, usually succeed in doing so.

It is a given then, that all past potentialities that have emerged upon the "table" of history will normally bear a statistical relationship with the current dominant emergence we experience at what ever moment it may be that we choose to know as the "present."



To reiterate, In a card game, our willingness to take risk and our estimates of our future success are based upon what we know of past "cards" laid on the table and those in our hand.

Similar historical mechanics, therefore, also lend themselves as a benchmark of historical "risk and probability factors."

They can be used to determine the odds of events of the future and give us an uneasy amount of future predictability to apply to human history.

But, (as with most systems of order) there is almost always a big fat fly to be found doing the backstroke somewhere in the soup de jouir!

In cards, we know this meal-stopper as: "The Joker" Among the flow of historical potentialities it is known as the "potentiality of random chaos"

It is interesting to note that many of the events that have changed the course of human history have been situations where the "potentiality of random chaos" has unexpectedly emerged as the dominant potentiality of the moment.

This "joker's" emergence creates what is usually seen as no more than a small "glitch" in the Matrix of human historical events. It is rarely even noticed.

But, upon occasion, the disturbance created, begins to gain increasing amplitude. At that point, the after effects of this "glitch" begin to self sustain and to magnify.

When this occurs, it invariably has come to pass that the flow of Human history has been hijacked and the course of history has been changed. It's just the nature of the game...

This is the reason we would all do well to expect the unexpected, and (of course) and to always remember that....History has proven more than once that, out there somewhere, there is always....a joker in the deck!

-CliffMickelson