This and That
Everything that is profound is also simple. -- Sadghuru Jagi Vasudev.
Systems (that can evolve) have an inherent duality about them. This duality exists all around us in everyday life and we are so used to it that we don't recognise it consciously anymore. This duality is sometimes called Yin and Yan and sometimes it's called Good and Evil.
To create useful separation between ourselves and what we're discussing, we will refer to this simply as This and That.
- This is the logic and the smartness:
- This can do things (for others).
- This has internal state.
- This has a life cycle.
- That is what things are being done with:
- That represents the resources in the system.
- That is tracked in the state of the system.
- That is to this as soil is to a seed. It forms the basis on which utility is built.
This makes use of That in order to be useful. If you stand far enough away, they are indistinguishable from each other and form a unified system.
Contents
I will break up this idea into these parts, following the metaphor of The Great Circle of Life:
- Seed
- Germinate
- Waking Up
- Life
- Unconsciousness. (Afterwards, see 3)
- Death (
On Error Resume Next) - Burial
Plant a Seed
A seed is planted.
seed: noun "the unit of reproduction of a flowering plant, capable of developing into another such plant." (syn pip, stone, pit, nut, kernel, germ; technical ovule)
plant: verb "set or place in a particular position." Also, "deposit (young fish, spawn, oysters, etc.) in a river or lake." (syn put, place, set, position, station, situate, settle, stick, fix)
These are the smallest number of steps that have to completed such that the full system can be grown from this initial state.
(Do these things on your Mac OS X terminal...)
$ git clone [email protected]:pieter/application-environment.git
$ cd application-environment
$ ls -alp --color=auto
# <-- what magic is this?
If I don’t know my options, I don’t have any. ~ Diana Korte
Germinate (pre-life)
Growing the prime cause for life.
germinate: verb "(of a seed or spore) begin to grow and put out shoots after a period of dormancy." also "come into existence and develop." (syn develop, take root, grow, spring up, arise, emerge, evolve, mature, expand, enlarge, spread, advance, progress)
Steps:
- Resource acquisition has two approaches:
- Request the resources you need from the resource bank.
- Get your resources given to you in a manifest.
- Resource preparation is the specialization that you perform on the resources you are given.
$ cd vagrant
$ vagrant up
# <-- wooooow
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ― Edgar Allan Poe
Notes:
- Idempotent process. In other words, before waking up, germination is happening continuously until conditions are right for success.
- The logical opposite of Death. The instance which is dead becomes a part of that to this instance (which is germinating).
- But also not (yet) about doing work. Germination, once concluded, leaves the system in a ready state, but is not actually awake yet.
- The environment (loosely used, meaning resources) complects with the system in this phase. The seed germinates into the soil and becomes a part of it. This and That becomes one during this phase.
- The signs of life should be present. (heartbeat)
Wake Up
Waking up is the transition point from an alive, un-conscious state to an alive, conscious state.
wake verb: "become alert to or aware of." eg "he needs to wake up to reality" (syn: realize, become aware of, become conscious of, become mindful of, become heedful of, become alert to)
$ # fiction novel
Before enlightenment, chop firewood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop firewood, carry water. -- Ancient Zen Proverb
Notes:
- The inherent essence of waking up is that of increasing your awareness. You've been alive all this time, you merely realized it just now.
- The point of awakened-ness is to be useful to others.
- Waking up is a gradual undefined process, caused by human intervention.
- Idempotent. The instruction to awaken can fail or succeed, but it may be repeated many times.
- May fail if the conditions for wakefulness are not fully present.
Life
Life contains (is constructed from) other Life, fractally. (Composition)
(Unconsciousness)
The environment and the associated conditions for life remain mostly intact, but due to circumstances a period of non-busy time was entered. Unconsciousness is followed by either Death or by Waking Up.
Coma. noun A prolonged state of deep unconsciousness, caused especially by severe injury or illness. eg "she went into a coma" (syn unconsciousness, insensibility, stupor, oblivion, inertia). Also, humorous a state of extreme lethargy or sleepiness.
A system might crash because of a hard disk being full, a temporary problem, after which waking up can resume again.
$ # I'm really reaching here... TODO clearly needs work
Death
Death is the transition point between Life and After-Life. Death is final (on the gross level) and is imposed.
In contemporary language one can say that with death the hardware falls to pieces whereas the software is retained – although in a somewhat reduced form. This reduction means that the transactional memory – all data – gets wiped, the operational system remains, which will enable us to relearn the necessary data. As we all know most do not remember much of their past incarnations, if anything at all. Also, in a new incarnation we do not immediately have all of the above abilities at our disposal. They have to be activated. So what is retained is just the essence of all those functions, a kind of a blueprint of the subtle body. -- Death and Deathlessness from advaita-vision.org
(BTW -- We don't raise zombies from the dead as we're not necromancers. Everything, including computers, have to die.)
Notes:
- Not about state change.
- Death can be a conscious process (but this is optional)
- eg make and provide/export backups
Burial
This is when the resources are reclaimed by the environment. This is an external process.
Delete an AWS instance, drop a database etc.
$ sudo shutdown -h now