In the next post, the major technical terms will be “scripts,” “rescripts,” and “descripting.” There will be some technical terms throughout this work. I’ll try to give some examples of these terms; but when I give example, it will usually make use of made-up stories or dialogues.
It can be hard to give examples that you’re familiar with from real life. That is, it can be hard to say a particular political party, historical event, or institution is “script-like” or “rescript-like.” I can illustrate that via an analogy.
Suppose you’re a chemistry teacher and you’re telling a student about carbon. “What’s an example of carbon?” they want to know. “Humans are made of carbon,” you say. “You can’t fool me,” they respond, “humans are mostly water.” “Well,” you say, “diamonds are made of carbon.” “Oh, is that all carbon is – some little rocks?” You’d really like to tell them that life is made of carbon, but it’s hard to point out exactly which part of life is carbon without a powerful microscope.
In the same way, it’s hard to give a “pure” example of a script, because scripts, rescripts, and descripting are always mixed with each other. That means that this theory, like chemistry, can be challenging to illustrate. In a chemistry class, one could isolate a chemical reaction – say, by dropping baking soda into vinegar. But such examples are always a little dissatisfying, since they may seem to imply that chemistry is just about dropping baking soda into vinegar.
Of course, this chemistry metaphor is also a metaphor – there are not actually any “script atoms” floating around. It’s complicated and messy! It is, in a way, similar to how (in quantum mechanics) we say that an electron “is” a particle or a wave, although it is not actually either in any ordinary sense. Moreover, when we use the word “wave” for an electron, we do not mean the same thing as an ordinary wave (waving a hand, let us say), and so too when I talk about fear, collaboration, and liberation, I do not necessarily mean them in precisely the usual sense.
There are also three ordinary words associated with the three technical terms: fear, collaboration, and liberation. If I use the word “collaboration,” then I run the risk of meaning whatever the reader first thinks of with that word. But if I use the novel word “rescripting,” I run the risk of giving the reader no clues at all about what it means. In the same way, the word “wave” risks making us think that we already know its meaning (“wave hello!”) while the world “normal mode” (a kind of wave in physics) clearly shows us that the idea is mysterious – but perhaps makes it a little too mysterious. There is not necessarily any perfect choice here – fundamentally, some concepts are hard to communicate simply through word choice. (Why would we imagine that an idea can be exactly explained in one word?)
To take another example, consider the word “force” in physics. This is often defined as “a push or a pull.” However, when you lean against a wall, it technically exerts a force on you, according to physics. But most people wouldn’t ordinarily say that a wall is “pushing” you. This can be confusing! And yet there is no other accepted way of defining a “force.”
Another point is that physics and math, fundamentally, have to be “steel-manned” – that is, you have to give them some credit and try to work out what meaning could make them at least approximately true. If one starts by giving them the first meaning that comes to mind, then there is no point to picking up a physics book. (Suppose someone says: “this is absurd, walls cannot push on you – the theory must be wrong!” They would be missing out on a useful theory.)
Another thing this perspective has in common with math is that some aspects of it are obvious once you understand their meaning. That is, mathematicians who talk about the “commutative” law may want to say that 2 + 3 is the same as 3 + 2. After puzzling out what is meant by “commutative,” someone finally says, “what’s the point of that, I already knew that! Of course 2 + 3 = 3 + 2.” Yes, that is true. Some of math is about settling on what is obvious so that one can proceed to less obvious things later on. For example, when studying the Rubix cube, it’s helpful to say that the operations are not commutative: rotating side 1, then 2, is not the same as rotating side 2, then 1.
Nexus State Theory 