The Next Big Step
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© Copyright 1999 by John L. Waters.
All Rights Reserved.
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The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit,
is the integration of free flowing body movements with
music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical
mind.
When I say TNBS, I really mean it. That's Not Bull Shit.
But it takes me a bit of time to explain The Next Big
Step to you. So dear reader, let me begin.
Take a clipboard and sit in a chair. Relax your body
and you mind. Take a ball point pen in each hand and
let your muscles and bones lead you to express what is
in muscles and bones to be expressed. Don't try to
draw the image of something you visualize or see in front
of your nose. Just let the notes of your body trumpet
be blown out through your body, by using the instrument
consisting of two ball point pens and the clipboard
well stacked with paper.
When you are done with the first piece, just take it
out and draw on the second sheet. In time the floor
will be littered with sheets of paper which have lines
upon them. The free movements of your body will have
been recorded for all time. Or at least for a few
moments. This is long enough to get a good look at these
recordings.
Pens and paper cost a lot less money than movie film
and a movie camera. And a whole classroom of kids can
engage in this exercise, without having to use up a lot
of camera film and camera time.
The message rolls out of your body. You feel your
right hand and your left hand moving in concert, like
the hands of a trumpeter blowing notes on his trumpet.
"Yes, but!" You say. "But art isn't taught this way."
And so what do I sound like, some kind of nut?
The best I can do is repeat what I said at first, that
The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit,
is the integration of free flowing body movements with
music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical
mind.
Let me say also that the ideas which come out of this
are ideas which come freely as your mind relaxes its
guard, so that you may get an idea that you've been
waiting for a long time to receive. You just couldn't
get the idea because your mind was too tightly constrained.
You were suffering from a kind of mental constipation.
As you were able to relax, the big idea was able to
be excreted by your brain.
So this is my big idea. about TNBS and That's Not Bull
Shit. I repeat this because in the past some people
have asserted that very thing. But mind you, this is
one of my own brain children, this theory about balancing
the right hand and the left hand, and the right brain
and the left brain, with the help of your muscles and
your bones. That is, you have an active body. I show
you how you can integrate your active body with your
brain and get a more active mind!
This can be a help to you if you are working on some
problem which is hard to solve. By working your mind
harder by using your body more, you can get more ideas
than you ever could get before.
Try this and see if it works for you! But don't get
the idea that I am God or that God is you, or that God
is your body, or that God is behind this! Psychotic
people get that idea, because they don't understand this
theory.
So yes. I am presenting you with a new theory of
genius and insanity, which looks at the body as the
bridge between dullness and wizardry. The slow person
just has a poor connection between his mind and his
body. The intelligence is there, but you just can't
access it or use it. When the connection is made by
some fortuitous event, you feel invigorated and inspired,
and you can't explain the change. You think that
maybe an angel has touched you or that you have become
one of God's messengers. In ten minutes the spell may
be over. Or you may become the next sage of the age.
In past ages the sage could not explain the source of
his wisdom. So the vast majority of humans lived in
utter darkness.
Now do you see why this is The Next Big Step for the
evolving ape?
We rise higher up the DNA spiral staircase which leads
to heaven.
We rise above the drug experience, which makes a person
feel high without being able to remain high without
losing his brains entirely, or at least his dinner.
We rise high enough to retain our food, and retain our
rational intelligence, but we rise above the bickering
and the battling of savage beasts. This is the next
imperative, above and beyond the well-publicised
territorial imperative of Robert Ardrey.
The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit,
is the integration of free flowing body movements with
music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical
mind.
You have only to come and visit me in person, and I
will treat you to a show of universal intelligence.
I will take you around from place to place and I will
show you how the language of pure mathematics is expressed
in all things natural and man-made.
I will show you spirals, parabolas, straight lines,
circles, and a host of sinusoidal functions. And with
the pens and paper I will produce without conscious
effort scores of other functions which a mathematician
calls continuous functions. These are just the graphs
of these functions. The functions themselves are defined
by equations.
Do I sense a bit of fear in you, dear reader, as your
eyes parse the word "equation"? If you feel upset
viscerally, it is because of poor teaching at some
point along in your schooling. You came to associate
fear and sickness with mathematics and the mathematical
mind! All that is rubbish now. and The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit,
is the integration of free flowing body movements with
music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical
mind.
Just think of a frisbee in flight, if you will, and you
will see the spinning movement of the frisbee as it
arcs above the ground from the hand of its messenger
to the hand of its receiver.
The frisbee itself is spinning like the stars of a
galaxy spin around the galactic center. Trillions of
atoms in the frisbee are as stars in a galaxy, spinning
around the galactic center. The path of each atom is
basically a circle, and a circle is defined by a
mathematical equation. So what is to fear? Children
enjoy playing frisbee.
The flight of a baseball is parabolic. Every time
people play catch with a ball, they are masters of the
parabola. Why then should confusion and fear fill the
air inside of any classroom where parabolas are studied?
Again, it is just poor teaching. The SPIRIT of nature
hasn't been felt in either the teacher or the teacher's
pupils.
Well, maybe SPIRIT isn't the best word. But it's the
inherent nature of a stone, or a ball, to travel in a
parabolic flight when hit, dropped or hurled. And every
piece of matter is quite the same in this regard. A
tree or a car will travel in a parabolic flight if hurled
by a giant. An adult can demonstrate by using a toy
car, or a small potted plant. the demonstration can
be further enhanced by using models of cars and plants
made out of cookie dough or candy. As children try to
make the catch, the lesson will penetrate farther into
their soft and mushy brains.
You may perceive by now that TNBS is the next big step
in education and you may also perceive that
The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit,
is the integration of free flowing body movements with
music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical
mind.
Now let's consider the flight of a pen in space as you
write with it.
As you sit writing with a pen, the earth is travelling
thousands of miles an hour around the sun as the sun
is travelling thousands of miles a second around the
center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Humans exist on a
celestial merry-go-round. But we aren't conscious of
all this mighty movement. Movement, however,
characterizes everyone and everything. So let's look
at the motion of the ball point pens we are using to
draw with as we are using both sides of our body to
draw with.
As our hands and fingers move in grace, the pens trace
out curves executed in grace. The grace we feel in our
bodies is indicated by the grace in the curves we
draw with our pens. As we come to feel more grace
in our bodies, the curves we produce become more
graceful and more continuous. So it is really continuity
which we feel, and the connectedness of each point and
each moment. As we come to feel more connected and
more graceful, the grace in our bodies increases and
our art, our music, our thoughts, and our movements all
become more connected, more graceful, and more
continuous. We come to feel continuity more and more.
In time we have magnified our sense of continuity and
connectedness. We have magnified out sense of SPIRIT
in nature.
In short, we have come to understand mathematics
better, and the spirit of mathematicians.
The thing is, that the brain is evolved to respond to
every part of nature. This includes the sounds we hear,
the objects and colors we see, and the weights we bear.
We delight in the sounds of wind in the trees. We
delight in the flight of birds, and the humming of
bees in a flower garden. The senses of nature delight
us because humans evolved in a wild, natural state.
For millions of years the brains of our ancestors were
functioning at peak efficiency in wild nature. This
is why nature delights us, when our brains are healthy
and our senses aren't jaded.
What happens is that people get diverted and distracted
away from what is healthiest and best for young
developing minds and brains. And the farther away
nature is pushed by well-meaning but ignorant parents
and teachers, the harder this is on young, developing
minds and brains. The conditions which encourate and
stimulate young brains to develop to maximum potential
are being rejected and inferior conditions are being
pushed in their place. The adults don't understand
what is happening. The living device which nature
has perfected through millions of years of evolution
is being exposed to harsh, even toxic conditions by
adults who do not understand evolution at all.
The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit,
is the integration of free flowing body movements with
music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical
mind.
5:14 PM Sunday, August 15, 1999