• Micro Empires
  • Posts
  • Weekly: Biogeometry, Environments & Community Behavior

Weekly: Biogeometry, Environments & Community Behavior

Weekly Review 011

Author

George Samuels
July 17th, 2022

Content published over the last week:

Hola amigos 👋

Hope you had a wonderful week! As per usual, I'm going to be weaving together all my learnings into a (hopefully) coherent newsletter.

Despite the seeming madness going on around the world - like Sri Lanka's economy collapsing, scorching heatwaves in Europe, and a serious copper shortage - there's still much to be thankful for, and even more to meditate on in order to keep your cool and make it through it all.

In this week's issue, I'll be exploring connections between geometric shapes, physical-to-virtual environments, and online community behaviors.

Enjoy the read,

George

According to Dr. Ibrahim Karim - world-renown architect and founder of a field called BioGeometrics - geometric forms, among other things, create specific energies that affect human beings and all life on Earth. He proved that there was a center of energy in all material matter, which produces its resulting form, demonstrating how even things like geometric shapes can subtly influence living things around it.

Dr. Ibrahim Karim bio: an Architect by profession; graduate of the renowned F.I.T. Zurich, Switzerland; with BA/MA, and D.Sc. in Tourist Planning. Dr. Ibrahim Karim occasionally teaches as visiting professor of Architecture at several universities. Dr. Karim owns Alemara Consultants Architecture firm, founded by his father Dr. Sayed Karim in the 1930’s, who is the main pioneer of modern architecture in the Middle East and author of several books on the culture behind the greatness of Ancient Egypt.

The power of shapes & form

In one of Dr. Karim's books, Biogeoemetry Signatures, he shows how we are not separate from the shapes, angles, and proportions that surround us all the time. He highlights how these shapes create energetic patterns that can introduce "equilibrium and harmony into our biological makeup."

This potentially explains why structures like the Egyptian pyramids may have been constructed the way that they were. Or even why certain practices like Feng Shui, sometimes referred to as "Chinese geomancy," developed in the East. Because of this type of awareness, trained professionals in Eastern medicine are often able to detect subtler causes that Western doctors may miss (which is why I'm a fan of both).

There are thousands of years of knowledge still buried in the past. In Western thinking, as mentioned in my blog about Set Theory and Illusions, we tend to see time as linear. But various ancient cultures figured out that time may be more cyclical and 'never-ending'. Modern scientists are only now starting to catch up with some of this past knowledge, as mentioned in my post about the Multiverse Theory.

Is perception truly reality?

In my post about Set Theory, I attempted to explain how modern science & mathematics are beginning to explain why our perceived reality is an 'illusion' ('dream' might be more accurate, but I'll save that for another day).

These new proofs are in line with ancient maxims such as "all separation is an illusion" and "we are all one."

But over the week, I came across even more examples to prove why we cannot trust everything that we see, but we also need to trust it in order to survive.

Below is an example of a dot turned line, turned square, turned cube, turned... tesseract.

Each of the numbers at the bottom represents dimensions. We are technically three-dimensional beings, constructing three dimensions from flat two-dimensions (because we can only perceive dimensions lower than our own). Our eyes also flip everything we see, because everything is theoretically upside down. This is similar to the way that we construct a three-dimensional cube using two-dimensional lines. The field of animation (one of my earlier career pursuits) is actually described as "the illusion of life" for similar reasons.

All animated films are constructed by manipulating pixels and lines through a computer. And all moving films are constructed by piecing together still images in a fast-enough sequence that produces the illusion of movement.

The very first "moving image" was a black man on a horse

Some might argue, though, "well if life is an illusion, and not real, try jumping off a cliff." The fascinating thing about this counter-argument is that we can become attached to how "real" everything feels, just like we react to horror films - what you're seeing is not real, yet you react like it is. And this isn't an argument for nihilism. It's just that though life may now be scientifically or mathematically proven to be an "illusion", it is a necessary one for us to learn whatever it is we've come here to learn (if indeed that is our purpose). In fact, increasing studies on psychedelics (e.g. psilocybin aka "magic mushrooms") are shedding even more light on our fears around death.

Sidenote: if you want to go further down the rabbit hole of perception and reality, check out this magnificent talk from neuroscientist Donald Hoffman:

Psychedelics & Habits

In newsletter issue Daily #54, I spoke about magic mushrooms (aka psilocybin) again. I've spoken about it in past issues such as Weekly #006 and Daily #030. However, the reason it keeps coming up seems to be two-fold:

  1. I'm in the birthplace of the 1970s psychedelics movement: Oaxaca, Mexico

  2. There seems to be increased studies on psychedelics in general

What I find most fascinating about the area as I continue to learn more (disclaimer: I have never taken psychedelics before), is its ability to break down ego attachments, pre-conceived notions of 'reality', and the general need for control.

There have been increasingly documented cases of "magic mushrooms" completely: (1) altering one's perception of reality (for the better); (2) dissolving issues such as OCD, anxiety, and depression; and (3) removing any fears around death.

This brings us back to that counter-argument of "well if life is an illusion, and not real, try jumping off a cliff." Yet, there are many in life who live with the same type of fear - as if they were about to jump off a cliff, but aren't - every day. In most cases, decision-making becomes impaired due to the fear of something happening, not the actual event. In ancient times, this fear may have been warranted due to the very real dangers that our ancestors were surrounded by. But in modern times, this fear is often a genetic habit, with some more predisposed than others. These genetic habits become embedded to ensure survival, but as times change, such habits become debilitating (as in the case of chronic diseases).

It is these very behaviors, however, that fuel fields such as marketing, and even the design of modern applications.

Studying Habits & Online Community Behaviors

In my line of work, I'm often studying people and behaviors. Whether it's the internal culture of a company or the external 'community' for a Web3 brand. When I started Honā, I came across a book called Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products.

I learned how companies like Google, Twitter, and even Facebook used data analytics to understand and then manipulate user behaviors, culminating in the now infamous Cambridge Analytica Scandal. The scandal showed how far a technology company could go in manipulating people en masse through its virtual environments (apps).

So earlier, I talked about how shapes can influence subtle energies. And then how those shapes, in the form of structures or ornaments, can influence the subtle energies around them to change the behavior of living beings. An easy example of this is neighborhood revitalization programs, which aim to improve the lives of residents in neighborhoods. This often comes with urban planning, home renovations, etc. In the East, many Asian families and communities would go on to employ Feng Shui professionals to ensure that any new changes are in line with Feng Shui principles. This adds a subtler, deeper layer that inhabitants hope will improve their lot in life - from career to marriage, to prosperity. There's actually a great article about how ancient feng shui influenced modern Singapore.

But in the same way that building shapes may influence living organisms around them, the way apps are designed today certainly influences the way in which we interact with them.

For many social media platforms, the focus is usually on bringing users back, so anything that encourages 'endless scrolling', gets rewarded. According to the book Hooked, this falls into a loop we are all hardwired to:

We like to think we're freely choosing our own actions, but a lot of them may just be habits that have been conditioned to the point that we're not even aware. Just like our perceptions of reality are.

Collective Realities & Pentaquarks

So if you extrapolate this individual experience to large groups or communities, just imagine how much of what we experience collectively is simply a loop of each other's creations? Much of what we accept as reality is a collective agreement, but one that helps us operate more smoothly through it.

Some collective agreements might be more recent, like the existence of pentaquarks (states of matter than exist for less than a blink of an eye), while some are more ancient like the earth being round instead of flat.

In mathematics, as mentioned in my post on Set Theory, Cantor's Paradox outlines how we may never be able to count all possible numbers (whether natural, whole, rational irrational, real, complex, etc.).

Because, first, we can only count what we have the energy to count. And second, between any measurable numbers we conjure up - remember, even mathematics was invented to bring together all the units of accounts we conjured up, and standardize them in a way that could help us explain our tangible reality - there's always the possibility of dividing numbers further and finding new measures of account (like the recently discovered pentaquarks). Our "sets" define our limits until they don't.

And this is why human beings are often hard-wired for limited views. Why we're so prone to manipulation. In order to focus or be productive, we hide certain things. In order to move through our reality, we ignore potential other realities. To not do so would cause chaos, and a lot of our constructed world is a way to bring control and order to such chaos. Could you imagine if you had to read these words in machine language? This is what you'd see:

Just a bunch of 0s and 1s. Not very helpful for your brain, is it? But this is the argument for how we construct reality in a way that we can comprehend, but forget the true essence behind it.

Conclusion

All in all, this week's review came from a place of breaking down my own assumptions. It was accelerated by a video about Necessary Assumptions (when it comes to Logical Reasoning), and a subsequent incident at work that involved me dealing with a troll (go figure).

What I realized was that, more often than not, people (like "trolls") fight to be heard or "right" without realizing that their own assumptions may be leading them to false conclusions. Much like how our own assumptions of reality may deceive us into making incorrect or flawed conclusions about life itself (example again: seeing the world as round instead of flat). This then leads to constructing environments, communities, and even civilizations despite these fundamental flaws. We get so caught up in our own stories, false assumptions, and imagined scenarios, that we focus on the projected images, but forget what's sitting behind them.

Do you think online communities are influenced by the way we design applications? Do you think 'reality' is what you perceive with your five senses alone? Hit reply. Let me know.

Until next week, remember: it will come.

PS. Found this insightful? Please forward it to a friend!

Reply

or to participate.