Life on Balls.

I’ve just watched a robot demonstration. It was like a miniature 3’ tall office block balanced on top of a basketball. It sensed any inclination and rotated the ball to right itself 160 times a second. It could stay where it was or move around in response to being pushed, follow a person and dance to music. And then there’s the Arab Spring. OK this is a bit tenuous but go with it. Now perhaps it’s just me but balancing on a basketball and righting myself 160 times a second to counteract dangerous inclinations is an apt metaphor for my cognitive condition. I exist in a constant succession of micro tweaks this way and that so as to appear, outwardly at least, sensible. I call it thinking. God forbid some ripple in the carpet should send me spiralling off into an uncontrollable wobble, but then again I might perfectly maintain my basketball balance whilst imperceptibly drifting around on the inclines of my circumstance. So now lets look at the long standing Arab leaders, Gadaffi et al. For thirty years they’ve been on a steady incline tweaking themselves upright 160 times a second. Everything is and always has been perfectly ‘sensible’ so “why on earth has the world suddenly gone mad?”

Surely it would benefit the human race greatly if we took into account that however upright we may appear our individual cognition has no way of identifying where it is in the overall cognitive landscape. All we have is the facility to right ourselves 160 times a second. If we did recognise this universal proclivity as fact it would dramatically alter our approach to social organisation. “Power corrupts…” would no longer be a whimsical myth but a scientific fact that must be designed out. Anyway skyscrapers on balls is a great idea. They’d bend with the wind, we could move them around and when it’s time to demolish them just drive them to a land fill and tip them over.