|
SL: Several years ago I
saw in London the exhibit "Bodies", which displayed in
respectful manner real human bodies preserved in plastic. It showed the muscles
and organs of humans in various forms of frozen motion but with the human
skin removed. There was also a display of just the skin, rolled out and
laid flat on a table. I learned that the skin is the largest human organ.
What impressed me was to see the holes for the eye balls, the holes in the
nose, the large hole between the lips and the nails on fingers and
toes.
I do not have a photo of that skin in
its display case, but the drawing below hints at what I vividly remember
from the display of another human's skin.
The Skin
Me
Association Model of
Perception
Attention }--
Movement --{ Perception
Us
... like rolling
stones on a planet that favors balance ...
SL: During the
Interlude
it
occurred to me that the Association Model of Perception is as
important to understanding life and living, as is Einstein's (e = mc2)
to understanding physics.
The AMP describes how we take in
the outside Reality and deduce from our perspective a Subjective Reality,
which has Meaning to us in context of previous observations of Reality. We
associate current input data with stored memory data, many of which are
hard to access directly, and we respond accordingly: physically, mentally,
emotionally and intuitively.
The AMP also allows us to recognize
what elements are important for designing a loudspeaker, a loudspeaker
that is friendly with our perceptual apparatus, when we use the speaker in
the room we happen to have.
Pause
Fitz: It is just amazing
to me, where our conversation has taken us, since you brought up the tree
falling in the forest. And then you put in this 'Intermission'
for gathering visual material, that you thought was needed to explain the
association model, which you now call AMP.
SL: Yes, I am surprised
too.
I now see, that the process of gathering material brought up thoughts in
me, which were related to more than psychoacoustics and your speaker
design. It dawned on me how important this model is in everyday living,
when we make decision about how to act.
A while ago I had read Daniel
Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", in which he describes
the interplay between the automatic functions of the brain and the
deliberate functions of the brain, and how that affects our decisions, particularly
when it comes to business and money. It's a good read and coming from a
Nobel Prize winner in economics.
Fitz: I will add that to
my reading list.
SL: And then there is
this whole thing about information, what it is, who sends it, how it is
received. And the idea that information is always sent in a context and
received in a context, but that the sender's and receiver's context are
rarely one and the same.
I was not even a teenager during WW2,
when I often sat with my mother and older brother in our living room to
listen to our Telefunken radio with the long and wide glass dial and the
fascinating names, like Ljubljana, of cities from all over the world on
it. The radio could receive Long Wave, Medium Wave and Short Wave. My
father was not home at the time. He was in the German Army.
We also had a second radio, a DKE.
During the day it could only receive the broadcast station from Hannover,
some 70 km (50 miles) away. After sunset you could try and sometimes get
many more stations before the radio started to whistle and howl. So we
preferred the Telefunken. But every German was supposed to have a DKE.
That way you could not tune into London and the BBC. But with the
Telefunken we did. My mother pulled the curtains and kept the volume
low, as we learned, which battles were being fought, where they were,
how many prisoners had been taken and so on.
Not much later, my 16 year old
brother's high school class of boys was stationed near the railroad
bridge and the autobahn bridge over the river Weser to defend the
bridges with Flak, artificial fog and captive balloons against enemy
aircraft. He had access to a map, which showed Germany divided into
little squares and with a letter in each square. He also knew of a radio
station, which broadcast to the military the course through the squares,
which enemy bombers were flying. That way we had a pretty good idea of
where the bombers were headed and what to expect and whether the air
raid sirens would start railing later on or not. The Telefunken gave us
early warning after my brother had made a copy of the map.
I say this because I want to emphasize
the importance of information to every moment in your life. For example,
I can still hear in my mind the tone of Goebbel's voice, of Hitler, of
the speaker from the BBC, though I do not remember words. But I remember
the story that went with the tone. Today I call these memories
'associations'.
When I came to the US in 1961 I was
struck by the lack of news about Germany on American radio stations and
on TV. Everything was about this country and everything was in
superlatives like: the best, the greatest, the most. Other than about
Communism and how communists are going to take over the world and how
ruthless and godless they are, not much else seemed to be of interest.
As university students in Germany we had discussions amongst each other
about racism against the Jews and about racism against the blacks as
reported from Little Rock. Now in the US I got an inkling of prejudice
because I was German. But then I was overwhelmed by the openness and
friendliness of people here. The assumption that the other person is
well intended was always there. Whereas in Germany you seemed to start
out a relationship from a basis of mistrust, and the other person first
had to prove itself to you. Seen from Germany the Americans seemed
naive, teenagers in the history of the world and unencumbered.
Working at HP in research and
development of the most advanced electronic test equipment was a dream
come true for this fresh baked engineer coming out of post-war Germany.
The people I met here, their welcoming openness, their ideals and
searches for the highest, those experiences were ultimately what kept me
in the US, for wanting to become a citizen, to join and to actively participate
in shaping our future to the best of my abilities.
During the last few days my wife Eike
and I listened to some of the Republican Convention speeches. Last night
I sat through Trump's whole speech. I could not help it, that
associations came up from memory, from my early years. But memories also
came up from a time at HP, when I designed and built myself a dual
conversion, multi-band, short wave receiver using just JFET's. I did
that not only as a learning experience about the applications of JFET's,
but also to have a receiver of news from outside the US. Important to me
at that time was Radio Moskau and Radio Beijing with words from Chairman
Mao Tse Tung, to hear the other version of propaganda to that of the
Voice of America. Today we have cable network 'news' from CNN, Fox,
MSNBC, etc. Each giving their slant to what has happened and talking
endlessly and spinning stories on little information and data, bringing
in their own favorite associations to what they perceived. Listen for
the tone in the voice.
When I heard Trump, I heard fear,
aggression, war, fight, law and order. I can understand that many, many
people in the US are frustrated with how their lives progress and about
the future they see for themselves and their children. The gap between
poor and rich has ever widened during the years, which I have
lived in this country. Money rules everything and has taken on a life of
its own, where it is no longer an exchange currency for value, but has
become a tool to manipulate and control. When looking at the US from the
outside I do not see this country as a democracy and a beacon of light,
but rather as a dictatorship of money with organized corruption. Capitalism
has wildly gone off track, serving the few. Democracy was meant to serve
all, to bring out the best in each of us. Of course Communism has been a
failure, because it negates the individual's dreams and aspirations. And
what does organized religion have to offer? There is so much judgment
and hypocrisy. So little mercy.
In the end, everybody in the world
wants peace. Who does not want to live and fulfill their life? Why were
you born?
Ours is a planet of Balance.
You can clearly see this when you observe vegetation or animals. The
lion kills the zebra for food. The lion does not kill zebras to dominate
the herd, but just for food. He even serves the health of the herd.
After the tragic fight and the kill, they both continue to live with
each other in relative Peace and in a form of balance, which
assures survival of either species. But it is a peace, which requires
constant attention.
When I look at our time, at what we
are doing to each other and our planet, then I see a scary trend towards
much greater imbalance, towards violence and domination. Maybe it has to
get worse, before we wake up and say: Enough of that!
Is Trump the change agent, the wake
up call?
And where will Hillary take us?
Will battles be fought, which lead to balance?
Neither
a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely
or to
think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Bertrand Russel (1872-1970)
|
