ZIGZAGZINE #23, structuur #7: The process as seen from the inside:
introduction to the internal operation of the process

The process as seen from the inside

v Introduction: interconnectedness of components

v The once-only process in grand context

v Intermezzo: world-views behind psychological models
Behaviouristic model, a 'clean slate' in their environment
Jung's model with archetypes in the 'collective unconscious'
My own model of cooperation between process and world

v The moment of beginning: a cooperation agreement
That one moment of beginning
A 'cross-section' in space and time
Human, animal, plant, thing, idea or any other event

v A process as seen from the inside

v Summary: the list of components

Introduction: interconnectedness of components

In the last number I have looked at processes mainly in a general sense. From the beginning I have chosen to look at the process from my own point of view and from that, on the basis of common sense and general philosophical notions, to draw general conclusions. I shall try to do that again. This time I shall focus on the essence of the individual process, on the components which in their internal interconnectedness define the once-only character or uniqueness of that process. I start searching from my perception of the process because that is the only option in my situation. Therefore examples again, taken from life.

The once-only process in grand context

Previously, in number 6 of the structure-line, I made the statement that processes always bear an objective with them, and in other places that processes are a function of the environment. It is time to base these theses on more solid ground.

When I, a few weeks ago in a documentary, had a chance to follow bits of the first months of quintuplets I was quite fascinated. All babies were placed in incubators immediately after birth as they, weighing about two pounds, were very small. Two of the babies needed more medical treatment than the others but otherwise they were treated and taken care of equally and - how else could it be done - according to a strict schedule. The physician emphasized that all five of them were born simultaneously. The birth must have been a caesarian.
In the hospital their older sister had already taken part a bit in caring for the babies. After about six months the diversity of the babies was clearly visible, which shortly after birth - in view of their weight - could hardly be established. Apart from differences in their faces one was active, another quiet, yet another very attentive, a fourth curious and the last one laughing contentedly.

There is always some planning done preceding the beginning of a process. What I wish to say with that is that the preparation is not part of that process. It is itself a process with its own beginning and own objective. A few examples may clarify the point:
The preparation of a birth, especially that of quintuplets, demands more than that two parents prepare themselves nine months for the extension of their family. Many more people are involved: the families, friends, society which grants leave of absence, security and medical care, the medical staff. Also the material environment has to be accommodated, the information for the selection of the name, the printer of the birth announcement cards, the arrangements which need to be made around all sorts of consequences and the genetic investment is indispensable. Besides all that the birth process has to be set going by the baby, the mother has to cooperate and the baby's heart must adjust itself.
Before a person can start saying something to another person via his gsm or the telephone, quite a bit has happened. The decision has been made to ring a member of the family to inquire about her health, or to make an appointment for the repair of a door-lock, or to catch up on all the news with a friend. I do not need to go into details of what is involved technically before the telephone rings at the other end. The process that someone wanted to start can only begin when the other party picks up the phone and the right connection has been confirmed.
In the preparations for the establishment of a state, an organization, a business company, in the preparations for war, a rescue operation, like in a telephone call, many people are involved. In both an intellectual and material sense the preparation can be complicated. It precedes the real moment of beginning of the process at hand, it precedes the establishment that all parties involved agree and that it can start.

This leads to the conclusion that the start of a process is the confirmation and the acceptance of an agreement between the environment, better still, between the world and the new process. The agreement is based on three facts: cooperation, the carrying out by both parties and the inclusion of a specific objective.
The cooperation also includes reactions - which could even be opposition - from the world, it takes as long as the process lasts and the purpose is always extant. The goal may seem vague, like a telephone call to catch up with a person, it can even be not reaching the intention. If at the end of a process it seems to have been 'pointless', even then the process has been meaningful.
It becomes clear now that the environment in fact has become the whole world; the whole world offers pros and cons and contains other interests and influences which play their own role. The preparatory process and the prepared process both are learning processes. They are learning processes both for the processes themselves as for the world which invests in them by generating them and by staying involved till the respective purposes have been reached.

Link:
about the interconnectedness of processes and about functions - structure #19/6.

Intermezzo: World-views behind psychological models

For comparison I put three diagrams side by side: the behaviouristic psychological model, Jung's psychology and my world-view from which theoretical models would follow naturally: three different concepts of the situation of the human within a larger whole.

World-view 1.

Explanation: Behaviouristic psychological model, claiming we are born in this world as a 'clean slate'. The own environment, or, more recently, also with influence of the genes, programmes all human behaviours onto it.
We are locked up inside the space-time box. The triangle inside the box represents the sum total of the human psyche. Outside the box is the 'unknown void'. This void has no direct effect on the human psyche, since the human psyche is conveniently and quite safely wrapped up in the box of space-time reality. Accordingly, it is of no interest what the unknown void might or might not contain, it's not considered pertinent to human development or growth.

World-view 2.

Explanation: Jung's model, based on archetypes and a collective 'unconscious'. The archetypes are the inherent predispositions which since birth are set down in the human mind.
Here again a box which represents the space-time reality. Outside of it is the 'collective unconscious'. The human psyche is represented here by a split square, half of which resides in the box of space-time reality and half in the unconscious. Archetypes generally reside outside the space-time box and so they affect us from the vast 'unconscious'.
In this model the archetypes influence the human development and the human psyche profoundly.

World-view 3.

Explanation: My world-view starts from the idea that the world and everything that exists is a process, once-only processes developing in and with the world. It follows that everything is equivalent, that continuous flux and volatility are inherent in development and solidarity ensues from shared responsibility for everything. I think that this world-view offers a natural basis for a convincing psychology (or economy, constitution even).
In this case a big circle represents space-time reality, a cyclic learning process. The small circle represents the 'singular' processes existing within the 4-dimensional reality. The circles are in communication with one another and with a field, the 'extensive continuum'. The pairs of small lines represent (quantum) processes along which transfer of information with the field passes.
The field should contain potentials.

The moment of beginning: a cooperation agreement

In some cases it can be quite hard to decide in retrospect when exactly a process has started. Establishing the beginning of a war, the acquisition of a house, the foundation of a business enterprise or a state is not always obvious. It mainly seems a problem of interpretation. Sure enough: the moment that a process starts coincides with the beginning of the covenant with the world being carried out. This conclusion follows logically from the foregoing. However it looks more simple than it is. The consequence is that it is not only babies who choose their time and space of beginning the new life together with the environment. It must follow that every process chooses its beginning together with the environment. This calls for examples. Some of my recollections can be of use here.

That one moment of beginning

First of all, it often strikes me that things, which I planned to do at a certain time, can't take place at that moment but can at another. Good examples are telephone calls. One morning I had planned a number of calls which I wanted to have done before I would go out to do my shopping. The strange thing was that everything went wrong: one person did not answer, the other person to whom I needed to speak was not home, a third called me before I had a chance do so, and so forth. Later, it may have been the next day, everything went smoothly. One of the calls was no longer necessary, the second person had called me back shortly after my first attempt and the other calls caused no problems this time.
Another case is that, after signing the documents at the notary's office, the key of the apartment which I had bought was not at hand. It was only the next day that everything was sorted out. Which of the two moments with a very different character was the beginning of the process and describes the character of my employment? The first must describe that some obstruction occurs, the second that the transfer of property is completed.

A 'cross-section' in space and time

When I try to imagine the space-time continuum of the world that would be a large filing cabinet or a sausage containing all events of the world. The systems of coordinates then would be sheets or slices of the sausage without any thickness which one could view individually.
It is just not possible to sever space and time, cut space in slices hoping to find time or split time in pieces. These are only faulty comparisons. They are typically deterministic images [ note ]. The 'cut', on the contrary, must represent precisely a connection, namely the image of place and time of the covenant between the outer world and its there and then newly initiated process.

Being born as one of quintuplets does not alter the fact that for every one of the five babies the other four form a part of his outside world and that every one has an individual once-only system of coordinates.
When saying that the system of coordinates of a process contains information which describes the characteristic qualities and relation with the world of that process, I revert again to an observation of Einstein's. He discriminated between that system and the system of coordinates of the world where he let his train move. Thus he could describe the process of a falling stone. By looking from two viewpoints at the same process, alternately from one of the two settings, he ascertained their differences in space and time.
My starting point is that a system of coordinates by definition is a snapshot somewhere in the space-time continuum of the world, like an virtual 'cut', and that a process, mine just like anybody else's, brings along an individual continuüm of space and time which is and remains connected with the continuum of the world [ note ].

Links:
elements of the human system - structure #6/2,
unique systems of coordinates - structure #9/3.

Human, animal, plant, thing, idea or any other event

When the given time and place of beginning of a process is exact the coordinates describe the characteristics of the cooperation agreement. They describe the properties which the process has at its disposal in order to approach the outer world, to react to it and to fulfil its part of the covenant. The coordinates of the beginning do not describe whether the process is a human being or the ownership of a house, only the inner and outward characteristics of the process. The question is how to read the information.
As a human's approach of the world is so plainly visible and so characteristic I have at the beginning decided to accompany my search with a series of descriptions of patterns of beginning. Therein, little by little, I have added some other components. Up till now I have not yet dealt with the outer appearance of the people with specific patterns of beginning in that series. I could do so, but would have to take into account the other factors that play a role as well. This will find its place in the following parts of this series. It seems to fit best in the frame of the inner interconnectedness of a process.

Link:
the survey of the pattern line.

A process as seen from the inside

Just like anyone I have the use of my absolutely personal inner motives, my own rhythm and my individual ability to reflect, to name just a few. For a process, for me, that personal characteristic forms a whole with the outside world. How can that be?
First I'll try to describe a process from my perspective as a human process.

'I am sitting in an armchair. I notice that my body is relaxed. I listen a moment to the music coming from the radio and then also notice the rhythmic whooshing of my blood in my ears and the softly murmuring city in the background. I look at the things in the room which catch and reflect the light. According to the depth on which I focus the objects give me a spatial stability and the sounds a relation in time. I am sitting in my chair and see part of my glasses, the arms to the right and left, a bit of my nose and cheeks and the clothes on the front of my body. My arms, knees and feet are visible. My senses apparently are active whilst my sense of touch, smell and taste have not much to report. My brains, as I receive the impressions, digest and consider them, are active in a quiet way.
I am feeling well, I feel at ease. I experience these emotions as a reaction to the noises, the light, the colours around me and to seeing (and hearing) myself in this familiar environment. I experience that inner motion, that reaction to the beauty or the familiarity of forms, contrasts, proportions, sounds deep inside where I breathe. My breath carries and moves my remembering, my inner knowing, viewing, asking and listening, tentatively touching, tasting, smelling and inner awareness. I feel and know myself as part of the things and events around me, and, conversely, I feel the involvement of things with me. I feel and recognize in myself the meaning and the value of my experiences and of my being.'

After the description of my reactions (in the first sentences of the second paragraph above) I could have stopped, but I think that my search began precisely with inner knowing and inner experiencing. This, it seems to me, must provide the material that evokes the important questions and that has to supply the answer. What am I doing here? Why me? Would anybody else experience exactly the same thing here? Why do I know that the answer to the last question is no?
In order to be able to analyse my inner movement and this tentative exploring, I must go back one step and bring in my intellect that has not been involved in the experiencing of emotions and inner knowing in the way it is involved in processing sensory observations and muscle movements. That is for my brain an unusual source of information. That demands conscious remembering, reiterating, reconsidering, recognizing, rethinking.

The description consists of two parts. The first part is my physical presence in an environment, which gives cause for my intellectual activity in the language of my environment. The second part is my inner motion, the quiet experiencing of the environment, the invitation to inner contemplation. The latter, the introspection, opens the domain that encloses the point of my presence and active life, and the contribution of the interaction with the world towards that point.
The two parts of the description of my sitting are actually twice two groups:
The first two groups, physical presence and intellectual activity, are practical and conscious, directed to my interaction with processes in the outside world. They describe space and time in terms of the world; finding my way around and developing orientation. How it works.
The last two groups, my inner movement and inner contemplating, are intuitive and unconscious and consist of the interaction of my singularity with the world and the 'zeitgeist'. Reconsidering memories of events and emotions makes them intellectually more knowable and conscious. The last two groups describe the inner (world of) space and time in terms of the singularity as I, and only I, discover connectedness and develop stability in myself. Who and what I am.
The first two groups and the last two groups run parallel: physical and mental or relational aspects, space and time aspects, alternate both in the relationship with the outer world and with the inner world.
The vital difference is the nature of consciousness.

A system of coordinates describes the way in which a once-only process manages its two space-time systems.

Summary: the list of components

Now here I have a process that follows from a cooperation agreement into which two space-time systems have entered. That process should be characterized by a system of coordinates which describes, by definition, a one-time event. That process' system of coordinates should contain information pertinent to the covenant which it has made with the world. I expect to find the capacities which have been given in order to fulfil the function.

The list of basic elements meanwhile includes:

the point in space and time at the start of the cooperation agreement;
the private space-time system, the inner world of the process there and then and
the space-time system, the outside world of the process there and then, between which the covenant has been made;

further the following components of the covenant with which we were already familiar:

the phases of the process, discussed earlier in part 2 of the structure line,
the phenomenon filter or colouring, discussed earlier in part 2 of the pattern line,
the capacities or functions, discussed earlier in part 3 of the structure line.

This has been the preparation for the question about the interconnectedness between relations inside a process. I started from the questions: What is there in a process to relate? The interconnectedness in relations between what?
The question of what significance freedom and truth can have in a jointly determinable and transient world shall, I hope, gradually gain more clarity.

Links:
about the phases of the process - structure #6/2,
about the notion space and time and extra dimensions - structure #9/3,
about filters or colouring - pattern #5/8.
about the world of space and time, colouring, coordinates and charts - structure #13/4.

ZIGZAGZINE #23, structuur #7: The process as seen from the inside: introduction to the internal operation of the process