Desert Outpost

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There are places you can live easily, and places you will die quickly.  In human experience, we've discovered that there are sometimes, maybe even often, liveable places on the far sides of deadly places.

This provides motivation for The Desert Outpost.  (Inside of what do you live?)

Here's an outline, I'll post more when I have more time to herd words.

    The Desert Outpost is a building with walls.  Those walls, along with the roof, protect you from the elements--especially the sun, dust, and wind.
    Inside, the Outpost contains a spring--the outpost can survive indefinitely, given linear models of current trends.  Aside from that, I haven't really decided; the inner structure probably varies with time, according to remodelling efforts.  It could be a Prison, for all I care.  My metaphor, your world.
    Outside, desert.  It will fucking eat you alive and still be hungry.  Unless you get to another Outpost or an Oasis before you run out of water or the desert kills you to death.  Those Others, of course, are only hypothetical.  I couldn't tell you if any are close enough to us for you to get there today, much less if we ever will.

This model has a "zoom" feature:  Is one outpost a language?  A civilization?  All of "Society"?  A given model could be any one of these, as long as you keep that scale for the whole story.

[Richter]

As a sort of alternate BIP metaphor, I like it.

I can very easily see the outpost as each individual mind.  We exist in our own headspace, and it's got the basics, but it's not necessarily enough to sustain us.  So we get hungry for more and go out.  Sure, going out may kill us, but it's the only way to go to get ANYTHING else.  Anyone can cower in the outpost as long as they want, but it doesn't really make a difference how short or long you stay, because in the end, you always have to strike out to some degree.  Or someone else may stumble in, and make our choice in the matter pointless.

This could apply to your "Zoom" feature too, in that the same could easily play out for a couple, a tribe, a city state, nation, planet, etc. 
If we're alone in our space with only "how then shall we live" for guidance, then eventually the only option is to venture out.

Maybe ultimately a parable about action vs. stagnation? 

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Don't mind me, I'm just bringing out some of my old posts, to mine for raw material.

I'm still learning BIP.  Not thought on it in a while.

In my mind, I'd embedded the BIP in a desert.  The sandy kind, with nothing but hot and dry in practically every direction a dying man can walk.  The prison campus could, in this case, be the union of all possible (human) reality tunnels.  Everything that one can sense, believe, or imagine.  One's personal cell, assuming it remains unmolested most of the time, could be a better representation of a physical body.

With the desert metaphor, I got the phrase, "Break down every wall.  Die in the desert."

Yes, well congratulations on totally ignoring my explanation and making up your own fucking definitions, you pair of dipshits.

If you're going to riff on my terminlogy and not even bother to try and engage with the ideas I associated with them, start your own threads, and stop filling mine with bullshit.

Who, me?

I did miss your second post the first time I read this thread, I suspect.  The particle/wave business.  I'd like to be able to put both into a single world (of sorts) so that I can examine them at the same time.

You know, make an evocative model, then interact with it.  Maybe it's the wrong approach, but my level of interest and dedication doesn't allow me to handle jargon at the level I handle metaphor at this time.

What I hear in this thread:
* We want to re-shape or expand BIP-space to talk about physical/sensory-sensual limitations AND about social/conceptualization limits.
* Cain suggests that we could represent the two worlds through different forms of imprisonment.
* I don't want to treat physical limitations as imprisonment--it implies a dungeon-builder, but that doesn't bother me much.
** I like the "desert" image more and more.  It's full of unuseable stuff, most of which we can't distinguish at all.  We die if we stay out there too long.
* I stopped paying attention for a while.

On further reflection, the physical-limitations aspect might want a distinctive name, such as the Desert Outpost.  I forgot to reference Borges's unsolveable labyrinth earlier--sorry about that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Kings_and_the_Two_Labyrinths
http://the-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2004/06/two-labyrinths_26.html

And for kicks:

The dungeon isn't the body; the dungeon represents all possible minds.  The limits may be purely physical, but that doesn't mean you're ever using all the space.

I suggest putting a desert around the BIP, and calling liveable places Outposts, Oases, or Wellsprings.

No offense dude, but I think you are talking about something VERY different than the idea Cain is developing.  Maybe you should start a thread about your ideas about the BIP.

[Richter]

So you're thinking of a similar metaphor that highlights different factors / encourages mindfulness of different things?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

When I read that, I saw basically a (very good) metaphor for the for and against of looking outside your reality tunnel. You can stay inside where it's safe and boring, or you can leave and seek something new that may or may not be there.

That said, this doesn't replace the BIP really -- at best, we put the current BIP inside the outpost (or some variant, like the green logos prison or the erector set prison or the GSP) and we use the desert extension to explain why jailbreaking is so scary.

Though it's late and I'm sick, so if I don't get this at all you have my apologies.

[Richter]

In the spirit of reality tunnel breaking, I like the idea of having several different metaphor / parables on hand.
Each one, whether set in a prison, a dessert, or a hut made out of legos (to steal the phrase), seems to approach the same idea a variety of different ways. 

In the good old "Feeling the Elephant" tradition, each on is inherently valuable for approaching the same thing in a different way.  A differnt facet of the overall idea can be had by feeling the idea out with each metaphor.  Also, where some could find certain versions or presentations upsetting or offensive (Finding the elephant's fundament first, so to speak), they could still benefit from the greater idea by appraoching it a different way, and getting a better objective idea of the whole.  (Speaking from experience, I found the BIP idea offensive at the start.  People tripping into their own preconceptions or missunderstandings is HARD to get around, especially your own.)

A book / expanded pamphelt compilation of these would be quite a thing to have on hand...

[Mu]

Tell me if I'm getting the wrong idea but could it be possible to see the desert as having more than one outpost in it that correspond to different societies or ways of thinking (like you said in the zoom feature). And although you cannot survive in the desert indefinitely it could be possible to break out of one outpost, and travel to another, less constricting one? People bought up in different ways will have different ways of thinking but the way you think can be reprogrammed. That's where I'm coming from when i see more than one outpost.

Just my thoughts on the matter. 

[rong]

reminded me of this:



relevant?

[Mu]

reminded me of this:



relevant?

Wow that is crazy, where is it from? Um... i suppose it could be relevent, their in a desert? 

[Elder Iptuous]

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

(Sand worms. you hate 'em! I hate 'em!)

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Tell me if I'm getting the wrong idea but could it be possible to see the desert as having more than one outpost in it that correspond to different societies or ways of thinking (like you said in the zoom feature). And although you cannot survive in the desert indefinitely it could be possible to break out of one outpost, and travel to another, less constricting one? People bought up in different ways will have different ways of thinking but the way you think can be reprogrammed. That's where I'm coming from when i see more than one outpost.

Just my thoughts on the matter. 

I'm ambivalent about this part.  I'd rather model changing reality as taking apart the building and reconstructing it.  Lego house suggests this part well, but I thought of it immediately when I heard the prison was built of stuff.

If I talk about crossing the desert, I really want to have some good myth/parable to go with my views.  That desert is serious shit.  Note:  I mean "myth" as "informative/elucidative model for something that really happens."

Also, the model definitely allows for unsettled Oases, even if I have no idea what they'd mean.

It's hard to conceptualize lethality in BIP or something.

I started out thinking about the Desert as the limitations synonymous with human existence.

[VIDEODROME]

A little simpler but I thought of the Outpost as your Job.  I place of sustenance and stability but that is also a kind of trap.  Some stay there as long as they can.  Some get kicked out or feel compelled to leave.  Then some might be cunning enough to actually survive and cross the desert while most will be swallowed up by it.

[Mu]

I'm ambivalent about this part.  I'd rather model changing reality as taking apart the building and reconstructing it.  Lego house suggests this part well, but I thought of it immediately when I heard the prison was built of stuff.

If I talk about crossing the desert, I really want to have some good myth/parable to go with my views.  That desert is serious shit.  Note:  I mean "myth" as "informative/elucidative model for something that really happens."

Also, the model definitely allows for unsettled Oases, even if I have no idea what they'd mean.

It's hard to conceptualize lethality in BIP or something.

I started out thinking about the Desert as the limitations synonymous with human existence.

Ye, i think i sea what you mean. I thinks this model would go well with the lego model as you said. I like the idea of the oasis, maybe they could represent places where there is a potential for you to build your "house" from scratch and totally start over?