Originally Posted by Fredrick  Nobody, I think the language is getting in the way truly seriously here. "Separation is really unification" and "one is none," are words that fit right into the novel '1984.' I am the first to admit that words can get in the way, but since words are our only vehile in this thread, we have to base our communication on the logical use of language. Interestingly, discovering language problems in what others are writing is what you are trying to communicate to Lloyd yourself.
Still, and while I am glad that you, Lloyd, have worked with a pyramidal model (so I don't have to ask you at all to get acquainted with it) it appears that the mirroring one can find in this model is a problem. One is none, and doubling the pyramid to get to a diamond are aspects of doubling that we should find incorporated already in the model itself.
If we go from the abstract shape of the pyramid to the mathematical (which is in general abstract too, but with more application options) then we find the cone appearing on the spot of the pyramid. One has clear lines on its surface, and the other is smooth and rounded, but both models have a clear up and down aspect. A diamond does not have a clear up and down aspect, and while that may in some cases make it easier to display all information we find, we will then have lost the bottom of our conversation. So it is important to keep the base the base.
One more delivery of the pyramid to make the use of this model more clear:
When placing 'directional position' in top, the four corners are North, East, South, and West. The top distinction is real, and we can read it as either 'directional position' or just as 'position.' Any location on our earth can be seen as position; it does not say anything more about the location in specific, and we can imagine this location to be the one location at which each of us find ourselves right now. We can walk around, fly somewhere else, and this position is basically always the same: wherever each of us are right at that specific moment. If we want to communicate to others more specifically about our position, we'd give more information, for instance, in the form of giving two points of coordination, or of describing how we in reality are either facing one of the wind directions, a combination of two wind directions, or that we are laying in a grassy field with our heads facing the sky or snorkling in the ocean with our faces to the bottom of the sea.
In the pyramidal display of 'position' we find the opposite pair of top and bottom, with the top being a real but general characteristic, and the bottom delivering the specifics. At the bottom of North, East, South, and West, we find two oppositional pairs. One of them absolute (North-South), one of them relative/transformational (East-West). While it depends on our positions to call something North of us or South of us, the absolute North and South poles deliver an ending to the directions North and South. Yet East and West are directions that can always merge into the other; all positions can be seen as East or West (except on the North and South pole). In all, the pyramid delivers three pairs of opposition: top-bottom (= generic-specific), true oppositional, and transformational. The latter two pairs are specific pairs.
The diamond may now become easier to find in this picture, too, when viewing the entire planet, for it would be easy to place a directional pyramid on the Northern hemisphere and one on the Southern hemisphere, yet we make ourselves then one-eye blind. Gone are then the distinct meanings of the four corners, since the top and bottom of the diamond are then the North and the South pole, creating confusion where both pyramids are fused.
As far as being the first to come up with this model, I think we are too late by a couple of millennia. |