Re: is SIP an Emergent Property

Hi Dossy,

Your responses are always up there with my favorites. I'll take frankness 
over silence's severity, any time :)

>I would love to see Dan write up a series of actual steps to perform
>with concise instructions for all of us to try.  I'll bet anyone a beer
>that it'll never happen in Dan's lifetime.  He may very well be on to
>something, but he just isn't the person to share it with the world.

Since I have constructed a computer driven double entry bookkeeping 
framework that supports my needs, it would seem both obvious and simple to 
supply your above request.

Yet, as you correctly point out, it is questionable whether I will 
accomplish this seemingly simple deed in my lifetime.

My life's experience finds a number of patterns that are not as obvious as 
they first appear to be. And as simple as it seems to resolve them, they 
mystify our best minds. For example, I live in a small, well-to-do town. 
The divorce rate here, as it is nationally, is near 50%. I have followed a 
number of these breakups, including my own. The people involved are among 
the nicest, well educated people one meets. Yet these nice, well educated 
people suffer this wrenching life's experience. I see no indication among 
professional psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, lawyers, and judges 
that anyone has a clue how to heal this cultural dysfunction. At the same 
time none that I know of have stopped taking fees for their services, which 
obviously don't work. It's a problem.

I have made it my vocation in life to study cultural patterns. They are 
indeed simple. But watch out for that word "simple." And, again, don't take 
this from me. I have read a number of contributions to the XP list where 
the contributor has rightly pointed out that simple is among the most 
difficult of patterns to achieve. In double entry bookkeeping simple is so 
simple that the lion's share of rules can be written in a three bit byte of 
information. If one wants to be a party to such simplicity, I find, one has 
to make some concessions to ways of reasoning that are different from the 
patterns that are commonplace in today's culture.

And that concession, pure and simple, is my perception of the issue at 
stake. Whatever I say, as Mary Poppendick's responses do so well to make 
clear, will be judged in the listener's pattern experience, without 
consideration of the patterns upon which my statement rests. It's a tough 
issue--I Ching's metaphor for it is "tough as rawhide."

Nonetheless, I will continue to document the universal patterns I perceive 
as essential to achieving a successful language of commercial trade. And if 
I do not complete it in my lifetime, do know that I am experiencing a great 
deal of joy in life experimenting with ways to both resolve and to 
communicate solutions to conflicts in cultural life.

Dan