C-246.12 Differentiation and drama

Drama’s happenings are scripted. Unlike music’s scores and dance’s choreography,” scripts are couched in B-speak and expressed in B-ness attributes and body-body relationships, emotionally drenched in sex, violence and noise.

One becomes a stage “actor” by interpreting such scripts.

Dramas typically speak of how things are – or, fancifully – how they were or might be. Their scripts deal with behaviors, with actions. Could those scripts come to deal instead with behavior per se, molecularly with acts? With the development not just of more learned actors … but of all of us as more knowing ACTors? Able to act in any circumstance: to meet what is called for (WICF). Able to solve the behavioral problem, Pbeh, and not just this or that situational problem, Psit. To possess an operating system (O.S.) so as not to depend for self management on a control system (C. S.) of customs, cultures, rules and regulations, statutes.* To possess a theory FOR and not just OF and/or ABOUT.**

The ACTor as a step builder. By becoming a script builder for acts, of mettles not actions, of step making and taking.*** With help from procedural technology: mettle alloying and R-words#; prepositions and punctuation. And from helpful precedents.## To build “self-confidence” as an operating system. To be “self-conscious” in the best possible sense of “self” – i.e., as a theoretical construct, not as the familiar concept. To be prepared, not just for this or that (B-ness) situation, but for the next step – that priceless option we possess AT, ON the Frontier of the Expansion and in the S-universe. An approach freed of B-ness here at the beginning of the next step, an approach focused on needed innovation to meet needed functionality.

Observers have forfeited much of happening … to B-ness ways and B-speak, to actions and their meaning, setting aside the ACTor’s act and its meaning, the latter with respect to all of its antecedents### … even going so far as to criticize act and ACTor for lack of “objectivity.”

***

This is a matter of mettle health. Which seen obliquely, from the B-ness perspective, may be characterized conceptually as matters of mental and emotional health. Mettle health is how we can come to know “ourselves as selves,” to find our way – and not just learn this or that way from others. To take a path more positive than those promulgated by control systems. How we can redress the imbalanced learn/know >1+ and C.S./O.S. >1+ ratios that surface, for example, in the “terrible two’s” and “rebellious adolescence.”

This is also the matter of community and of union. Neither community nor union can be realized as an operating system except in, not just by, steps. Conceptually they have been treated as B-ness instances. But to achieve the functionality needed to give them consequentiality, they need a foundation OF and IN the mettles of the molecular step. As in the case of the unsolved “We, the people,” the scripts for community and union have yet to be written. How long, for example, are we going to depend on an actuarial principle (“invisible hand”) to substitute for differentiatiate-based procedural technology to realize economic development?

Countless unsolved problems call on us to attend to improving our operating systems. The bigger, better picture that the Expansion and S-universe give us of the human condition provides a foundation on which and with which to build operating systems for our several selves as individuals and communities. The infrastructure for the infrastructures we need, especially the procedural technology for the procedural technologies we need.

Once built, an operating system should evoke the Superman principle, providing behavioral capability – i.e., molecular steps akin to the telephone booth into which and out of which Clark Kent stepped. No kryptonite required.

If we can script mettles. Working with mettles, alloying them, making molecular steps … could hardly start too early. An R-primer? To introduce basic mettles such as Be, Attend, Ask, Keep, Share, Stop et al ... and especially Slice and Splice. To go beyond the folk art of cultural dramas. To fight back against the cultural force of B-ness’ thingsness … fighting back with ways and happenings rather than things as that which observes and is observed.^ Before the instructional emphasis of formal education, certainly (I.e., ratios of >1+++ for Learn/Know and C.S./O.S.). The alternative, it seems, would be to generate procedural technologies to strengthen steps that might – or might not -- be adopted at any age just for competitive advantage … coping with this or that situational problem instead of addressing the fundamental behavioral problem.^^

Style considerations may come into play, when individuals and/or communities were to engage in step making as a way to express themselves. Employing functionality to establish identity.

***

*And inviting constraints on one’s steps (e.g., statutes, regulations).

** To work with theoretical constructs with which to build, rather than with concepts that collate instances or summary “theories” that collate practices. To build Community and then Union, for example. To compose, not just collect.

*** Note the parallel to Twyla Tharp’s initial approach to dance choreography. Build steps first.

# R-words comprise a “language” of their own”: Alloyed mettles, whatever notational system we use to denote the mettles (such as those in App. III).

## For example, J. Boggs’ “UW on Cue,” which used drama to convey difficult concepts to university students. Drama can – and often does – make needed functionality clear (e.g., crises), which is what theoretical constructs [see theory FOR] as procedural technology are prepared to do for behavior before the fact … what concepts re instances after the fact do for behaviors).

### Critically, the Expansion and the Nature of Things. They give meaning to the act. And to the ACTor. (See C. S. Peirce re abductive inference in regard to the Expansion and NofT’s.) Whatever meaning an action and/or its outcome (pragmaticism and/or pragmatism) might be said to have.

^ Just because humans got started with this B-ness focus on bodies, going so far as to see any condition as a thing, does not mean we can’t “turn things around” … now that we see that so much of behavior has been missed by neglect of the Expansion principle and S-universe phenomena. We need to find ourselves (“our place”) in the Expansion and the S-universe to develop the operating system(s) we need in order to solve our problems. Anthropogenic failings (e.g., warfare, global warming, species extinction et al) cry out for operating system development, for more fundamental innovative procedural technology to advance procedural technologies.

^^ Consider, for example, the sad fate of the presidential debate as a procedural tech, initially intended to give more emphasis to problem solving relative to decision making. D.M./P=>S >1++ is a serious “climate” problem of its own, abetted by partisanship.


In light of the very useful Search feature now available, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.


(c) 2021 R. F. Carter
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