blue trane's Journal: Focus vs. Dispersion

Just awoke from a dream where I felt Tracie was influencing it, lying in the next bed in this hotel room. We've made an appointment for Tykee and Buddy at a vet tomorrow, in Seattle, and decided to take all the birds on a little vacation, to spend the night in this hotel, before going to the vet's tomorrow, further north.

In the dream I experienced a series of sensations I can best describe by comparing them to tubes. At first I was a tube that bent, flexibly; then I became aware of a straightening, strengthening impulse; the tube that I was became focusing, as if electricity sent through it would travel straighter, faster. Or if a bullet was shot through it, the bullet would go further because the tube protected it from outside influences such as wind.

At first the stronger, straighter, focusing tube seemed obviously better than the bent, flexible, dispersive, porous one that I had been before. But I was uncomfortable, made more so by Tracie's audible groan or snore that accompanied me waking up with the thought of these two tubes still vivid. It seemed as if she was highlighting or reinforcing the thought that the straighter tube was better; but I wanted to resist that idea.

Other episodes followed, containing the same theme of a flexible, dispersive tube followed by a straighter, more rigid, more focusing one. Each set of tubes was conveying something different; a bullet, then sound, then electricity, photons, light, etc.

At the end of each episode, Tracie woke me with some audible sound, a grunt or a groan or a snore, and I had the feeling she approved of the more focused tube that I had become (or become aware of) in the dream. But I resisted the idea that the focused tubes were better.

In thinking about the series of dream episodes, I realized I was more naturally bent towards the dispersive element, the unfocused tubes that spread out signals. I think there is some dispersive vs. focusing force in nature. I think society currently chooses to reward the focusing impulse. This is arbitrary, a fickle whim. Why can't society support both forces? It is a matter of politics, policy, not physics. The two forces exist in nature without judgment; why can't society let them coexist without prejudice?

I thought that birds tend towards the dispersive, the chaotic, the spreading: bird calls have wide frequency ranges, spread out over a broad spectrum rather than focused like a tuning fork. Birds also disperse seeds far and wide. When birds eat they shake their heads, spreading some of the seeds they're eating around them.

Armstrong's trumpet sound is like a bird call in that it too is spread out over a wide frequency range. Armstrong's genius was that he could also focus, play perfectly in sync when he wanted with other performers. Armstrong could combine the two tendencies for dispersion and focus, for discipline and elasticity, in one performance or in one note.

In monetary policy, the two forces are called "discipline" vs. "elasticity". My tendency is to support elasticity, creating more money, expanding the money supply, ending the artificial scarcity of money. The disciplinary approach believes in making money scarce, raising interest rates, forcing austerity policies on others.

I think monetary and/or fiscal discipline should be voluntary. Each individual should decide for themselves if they want to practice austerity in their own lives. Government should enable each individual to make a free choice, for themselves. Government can encourage austerity but should not impose it.