The Mandelbrot Set and The Universe

When one takes a look at the universe and removes the blanket of familiarity, the only thing that is left is a repetition of pre-symbolic patterns whose construction is only logical if viewed through a set of traditional measurement systems. That the planets orbit the sun, that humans live in houses, that atoms have protons and neutrons; each one of these facts is confirmable but not traceable to any one origin--wherever one originates things, always presupposes an earlier origination. This is a paradox only if one insists on the necessity of meaning in the patterns of reality. If one interprets reality in the sense that everything is just a calculated result of a complicated expression of esoteric functionality, in the vein of the Mandelbrot set, one can view the universe as simply a viewing of that expression, onto which one of its expressions is self-imposed meaning.
Let's take a look at a Mandelbrot set zoom.

The patterns in the Mandelbrot are beautiful, complicated, and infinitely complex. They resemble each other on a level of scales, and there are different sections that diverge in different ways. Imagine if there was a four-dimensional set in the same vein as this one. That set would resemble our own universe in every way except superficiality.
Thought is just another dimension in the set, another line on a plane that intersects with the other dimensions to create a more complex mathematical shape. The shape is not planned. Nothing and something lose their meaning when both are just pieces of an overall puzzle, just pockets in an infinite vibrancy that is static, motionless as it absorbs motion into its self-reflective intimacy.
The universe can be explained by recognizing the fact that everything is as it appears, and that concrete is concrete and etherial is etherial until proven otherwise--what we are doing is simply cataloging the contours of our locale on the greater discus. We see what we see and don't see what we don't see. Sometimes we see further. Sometimes we use tools, sometimes we use our minds--sometimes we argue and sometimes we fight over what it looks like or should look like. And we have control over some parts of it, as well.
But the takeaway from this piece is the idea that everything is part of a whole, and that whole does not need to be explained as it encompasses everything and the only thing that is missing is our local understanding of that everything. There is no real impetus to finding the origin of the universe--the universe has an origin, however convoluted and farcical, and we as humans are presupposing that our lack of understanding about that origin can somehow mean that the universe actually does not know its own origin. The universe knows. We're just playing catchup.
Whether it be God or the Big Bang, or some other fruitlessly contorted explanatory mechanism, the universe is simply waiting for us to figure things out and understand that the only thing keeping humans from understanding the universe is our own ignorance, and only by conquering our ignorance can we understand the universe. It sounds self-explanatory, but the main idea behind that statement is that the search for understanding, no matter what form it takes, is the primary mechanism by which humanity catalogs its local space in the formally recognized piece of the universe.
We are observing one minute of that video, randomly selected, with our naked eyes. We are observing a minute ahead with our microscopes. We are observing a minute behind with our telescopes. That is the nature of what we are seeing. It has no meaning other than the meaning we impose on it--and that meaning is a natural part of itself. Everything is within the confines of the shape--or it isn't. That is the question of the nature of thought that everyone struggles with, and this is the baseline for which I will tackle this question: the Mandelbrot method. Is thought a dimension of the fractal set, just set to self-reference? Or is it an active outside force that has an alternate origin? Are those two ideas even different?
I hope you enjoyed my musings. More will come later, on many other topics. Thanks, and keep a lookout for more!

I want to be someone's white knight.

Listen to me out there. No one can hear me. No one cares about what I have to say, regardless of what I do say. I don't want to sound depressed, angsty, or emotional to the point that you throw down this page in disgust--I want to make clear the point that, in my mind, I see a little bit of my own emotion that I want to show you today through my prose.

I don't think you'd understand, and yet you probably do. That sense of loneliness you get when you realize that something is wrong with how people see you.  That sense of loss you feel when you realize that your voice is one among millions, that you are a single molecule in an ocean the size of the Pacific. I am not useless, I have skills, but at the same time I have nothing more than my desire to be heard driving me on towards the next tomorrow.

Friends are difficult to come by when one does not deal well with conversation. Conversations can drag on, on and on and on, emotions can tangle themselves up in big knots that one can then feel the consequences of, and sadness can creep into every aspect of someone's life before they know what has happened.

When you are sad, and you have no one to wrap their arms around you, there is a certain feeling that you have to understand only comes around in this miserable, filthy state of mind. The state of mind when you want somebody who understands you. Someone who, maybe not fully understands the entirety of your being, but gets you enough to know that you are hurting on the inside.

Where is the pain coming from? Is it going somewhere? Why do we keep feeling defeated like this, when the pain is driving us so crazy that we think it will never end? Where can we find solace from this never-ending fall from the cliff that keeps rising higher?

But I digress. I have nothing to say other than the thoughts I am scraping off the top of my mind. What I write is what I feel. I am trying to understand it, to describe it, to gather it up, my courage, and tell it to people straight, that I can do things that I don't understand.

I don't understand. But I do. Every last bit of that feeling in my chest has to come from somewhere. From where I do not know--all I know is that, sometimes, it goes away, and other times it is still there. I just want to be noticed. By someone. Anyone, someone who understands who I am and what I'm struggling with.

Which is to say, not much. I do not have that much emotional pain within me. But it does feel bad to get ignored completely by the people who I once thought were my friends, who I thought would stay by my side even after I went crazy and started believing things that weren't true.

But that's too much. I hope this post could, at least, open up someone's heart and let them see what they might consider to be a well of good-natured heart.

Anime you've never heard of: Joshiraku

Rakugo-source-Wikipedia Commons

I'm going to be doing this a lot because I'm out of things to do. My anime of the day that you probably haven't heard of: Joshiraku. https://myanimelist.net/anime/12679/Joshiraku

It's an anime about one of Japan's most honored and traditional art forms, Rakugo. Rakugo translates to "Fallen Words" in Japanese, and is a performance art where a single storyteller sits on a pillow in traditional style and tells a story from multiple perspectives using only their voice and their body language.

Joshiraku--Source: Myanimelist.net

But this show isn't about the actual performance. It's about five girls and the meta mayhem they get up to behind the curtain in the dressing room. There are a lot of quick-worded pure Japanese word games thrown about, and a lot of heavy deep culture references that Americans--not even the culturally relevant ones--would get. There is also a lot of enjoyable straight up plain comedy that will get pretty much anyone laughing.

Notably, the middle third of each episode features the five girls in street clothes going to famous locations throughout the Tokyo Bay area. It's a pretty good replacement for an actual sightseeing tour, and you'll get to learn a lot about Japanese culture and tourism.

Be warned, there is a little bit of sexual humor, but I'll be arguing in my next post why this should be tolerated by Americans as a cultural allowance in the same way we tolerate other cultural artifacts.

Overall, the best way to enjoy this deep dive into Japanese language and culture is to binge it all at once, because this show is one that you shouldn't miss. If you want to become an anime aficionado, you have to try this show, or else your portfolio won't be complete.