Preamble: The best part of many of my blog entries comes at the end. Seeing that I move the end to the beginning. So, here is the end up front: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot . How I got from what follows to this end is even a mystery to me........................
I refer in the title the the famous comedy skit. Go to the link, even if you know the skit. It is a classic. Probably a classic because it presents in the context of comedy a confusing situation that cannot be understood to answer the question. I suppose there are variations on the same comedy theme but I won't take time to find them for my own amusement. If I did then one variation that comes to mind might be "What is Life?" set in the comedy context. Serious or comedy the answer remains the same in the end. Difficult to comprehend and it either leaves us laughing or mystified but still clueless in either case to grasp the ever elusive answer. A answer that might lead to a better quality of life if we had it.
Short of a universal fundamental answer we all find our own answer. Maybe the answer already established in doctrine of some social group. Maybe the one we find entirely ourselves wandering in the dessert populated by a multitude of of answers like a Chinese Menu. Independent discovery probably only reveals that we are not the first ones to find it but the first to find it for ourselves in our own journey to seek down a road well traveled.
This blog asks (and often goes astray from the question as it takes on similar questions):
"What is money?"
I find an answer by reducing money to a uniquely identified digital serialized instance of a class that is at the lowest granular level of "one" unique unit with a state of being existing as either:
1. Present
2. Absent
My Money Model looks like a Life Model.
The Money Model Looks exactly like the Life Model in the "Present" state. That being we have it.
The more abstract state, being non presence, the digital equal of Zero, is by abstraction a higher level concept that requires a frame of reference beyond physical existence in a different world, a different realm of being where "nothingness" has meaning like.....ah, like.....eternity? A strange world where all is also nothing? That is a round about way of defining "Unity".
Just thinking as I make this stuff up as I go................
Having lost sight of my objective, I doubled my thinking effort to go where it took me.
Back to "Who is on First" in the Middle East.
Bridging the preceding thinking to the question at hand, unique individuals are key players that are instances of their class. We all know their names. Start with Obama and the rest of the classroom is small. My rule of numbers says 8 to 12. Make it more like baseball and call it 9. These are the ones that supporting/opposing "stake holders" act through and the numbers go geometric quickly as sub-classes of power influence expand.
Focusing on the playing field of the Middle East, what is going on? I don't know. It is extremely confusing to me. Some stakeholders have no uniquely identified instance of a class. ISIS (what the heck is a Levant?) or Al Qaeda. At least until it is claimed that the leader has been killed but that is a game of Wack a Mole. Used to be it was one guy. Now we know who it was after the fact. They are the shadow players, the ones that are stakeholders represented by the Main Players. The fans that have influence power? Something like that but unlike a baseball game they do not always stand out as a cheering section would. Like a tree falling in the woods?
For example: Who is Bashar Hafez al-Assad? that is a Wikipedia link that describes him.
This link looks at USA and Russia (Obama and Putin) relationship to him.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/assad_putin_and_the_smart_move_that_obama_must_make.html
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-obama-syria-putin-20151004-column.html
Or simply look at a number of different view represented by a google search and pick one and try to get an accurate description of the relationship!!!!
Who's on First?
Obama is presented by this Wikipedia Link.
Putin at this Wikipedia link.
My first observation is that the Wikipedia link for Obama goes into detail about what he has done as a head of state.
The presentation of Putin and Assad in the Wikipedia links tend more toward the political influences that formed them and the nature of the power group constituencies that are their base.
That observation might help clarify an understanding of the situation.
The playing field is the Middle East. Off the top of my head I could not give a definition of the Middle East much beyond where all the trouble is. I could name some of the countries. Easy geographic divisions. How they came about from colonial days. The ethnics? The religions? Clans? Peoples that claim a common name? How they cross geographic/political boarders?
Much more difficult going down that road to get to some fundamental unique definable units of classes!
Wikipedia definition of "Middle East"
To conclude my thinking here before it eludes me:
In my simple model everything in our human mind and the organization of our existence in relation the world of physical reality or the conceptual reality we create beyond the physical world is coded into the beauty of a basic Noun and Verb cognition. The relationship of two nouns is implemented by a verb. The computational trinity model that I have referred to in so many blog entries that seems to have universal application from macro to micro level.
A prior entry called, I think, the Tower of Babel, is a myth describing the curse of fragmenting communication in to so many different forms of expression that a common language was not possible. It is the allegory of not just the language but the division of schools of thought that apply the language that all go their separate ways to divide us, not combine us.
What is the common school of thought that will unite us?
The two principal nouns that are are related by the single verb from which our conceptual structures are derived?
While my philosophy put the subject noun as supremely determining the structure of the concept in the noun/verb relationship I have to think that the dominant driver to the preceding question, as much as I do not like it, is a verb that determines the controlling nature of the Subject/Object noun situational relationship from top to bottom.
The verb is........
Violence.
It controls today.
There is an binary alternate verb that could take control.
How could that be applied to resolve the situation in the Middle East and answer the question "Who is on First?
That is even a greater challenge than figuring out "What is Money"
The algorithm solution, approach to the problem seems to be the same?
Does looking at the relationship of Violence and Money as a key give some insight as to the solution?
A key binary relationship in the world today looks to me like this binary state of being:
Have (presence of some thing)
and
Have Not (absence of same thing)
That thing being Money.
Money is a fungible as Power.
Both are as binary in their state of being as having natures of good and bad.
Is there a glimmer of a solution to be had somewhere in all of this?
Enough of this. I have wood to chop and water to carry.
As always, Yves links lead me to great thoughts:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/could-the-syrian-conflict-irrevocably-change-global-geopolitics.html
Syria. The Gordian Knot. An excellent eloquent way to describe the situation.
https://www.google.com/search?q=syria+gordian+knot&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=seamonkey-a
Gordian Knot Read about it at the link. Enlightening old view of the problem.
The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor
for an intractable problem (disentangling an "impossible" knot) solved
easily by cheating or "thinking outside the box" ("cutting the Gordian
knot"):
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