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Though Mesmer’s wild science allowed these dreams to surf into the modern world on magnetic waves, the man’s ultimate goal was to restore balance and “perfect harmony” to the body’s polarized energies. His vision of healing was basically indistinguishable from Chinese medicine, which also holds that a vital spirit infuses the body, and that disease results from blockages in this dynamically balanced network of polarized energetic flows.
TechGnosis
Erik Davis and Eugene Thacker
Musashi bowed in veneration to the gods and even worshipped the Buddhist bodhisattvas, but the ever-practical swordsman had little patience with revelations or secrecy. These, he felt, were nothing more than impediments to self-reliance. As he lay dying years later, he wrote in "The Way of Walking Alone," his last testament for his disciples, that one should "Respect the gods and buddhas, but do not rely on them.”
The Lone Samurai
William Scott Wilson
Recall that mental models are constructs that represent our understanding of classes of situations that are more similar than not. Deep stories, by contrast, are enactments that create sui generis mental models applying only to one significant new situation. Simple enactments can unfold on the basis of an existing mental model. Deep stories, however, would be impossible without narrative rationality. They require us to continuously improvise the background story while acting. This means constructing the mental model as the enactment unfolds (learning in the most general sense). During the construction phase, situation awareness is very poor for an extended period, and is experienced as the disorientation characteristic of early phases of learning. By contrast, the context-switching period of a normal enactment is short, and managed subconsciously. No active learning behaviors are required.
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