> Reed and other virions, what is you opinion on the following:
> Narratives, of all kinds-- literary, dramatic, verbal, symbolic (as in
> visual art), are a technology for condensing life experience for
> translation to another host. If this condensing process is part of the
> discipline of translation, how does it relate to the Reed Principle
> (That is the grid, which I am grappling with.)
I'd guess that it was a simple and very effective tool for translation.
Perhaps one of the first complex meta-meme transfer techniques developed.
By following the story line the listener effectively recreates a region of
meme-space within their own mind (but in a safe-zone known as "fantasy")
and runs emotional processing through that temporarily established
"hyper-meme-space". The result is that emotional states, things very hard
to translate otherwise, can be passed on relatively effectively (depending
on the skills of the author/actor/artist/musician).
I suspect this is why Zen is taught using koans. It is not the riddles
that are the teaching, but the states of mind they can trigger.
-Prof. Tim
(As an aside: Perhaps this is why logic is ill suited to this task
(teaching Zen). There are no clear one-to-one relationships to describe
the state being invoked or translated, and they do not necessarily bare
any resemblance to the tools being used to transfer them. "One hand
clapping" doesn't lend itself very well to an if/then or and/or
statement.)