Posted September 4, 2013

There's this weird idea that God knows what He's doing and made everything just right, no mistakes. An alternative interpretation is that God creates through Himself becoming everything, a great part of which doesn't survive into the next aeon. We see evidence of profligacy and failure all around and it's okay. Several hundred million sperm try and don't make it, but one does, at least often enough to perpetuate the species. Flower seeds, tree nuts, fish eggs, billions formed and very few carry on into adulthood. No sweat, it happens throughout the cosmos.

Cybernetics is an activity whereby complex systems work. Through many, many tries, one estimates the general goal, aims, tries, misses the mark, notices that it missed the mark, re-thinks, re-calibrates, tries again, overshoots the mark in the other direction, tries again, assesses the error, re-aims. Ther error is reduced each time. In artillery this is called "bracketing." Eventually it's close enough to be called a hit.

My mandalas express a cosmic cybernetics. This is more in line with the way things really happen. They're approximate, rather than perfect. They get in the ball-park and are corrected further. Here, for example, is a mandala of cybernetic manifestation.
This isn't easy. In developing cybernetic systems, whole sub-systems or skill-sets need to be developed just to assess how well a try did or did not succeed, and by how far was it off and in exactly which direction. Related systems calibrate the next effort which, early on, almost always overshoot a bit too much. These are highly complex systems, please note, and distance and other factors operate to make precision impossible. So we approximate and repeat. Finally we get close enough so it works, it's enough on target---but it's still not absolutely pristine.

It's amazing how much subtle variation can be tolerated for a diamond still to be moderately pure, a house to be adequately designed to protect from sun or rain, a living being can be anatomically just a little off and still live successfully. Cybernetic implies that the final created products arise from a billion trial-and-error gropings as they were embryos, and when they were little. And yet the cosmos is magnificent!