274 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
Teacher cycles can also be created artificially. Our paycheck may
arrive every Friday on payday, or we may go home every year to celebrate
Christmas as a family. Even fashion tends to fall into cycles with the same
trends continually coming and going, each time in a slightly different
incarnation.
Teacher emotion can also be created by structures which repeat over
space. This leads to patterns. For example, most wallpaper designs make
use of patterns. A tree also contains patterns. The shape of „trunk and
branches‟ is a general pattern which ties together all of the individual
elements of a tree.
Cycles and patterns are often interchangeable, producing a mental
blending between time and space. For instance, if I let my eyes travel from
one side of a forest to another, I see branches alternating with trunks. In
other words, the spatial pattern of „trunk and branches‟ repeats itself
cyclically. On the other hand, an oscilloscope turns a cycle into a pattern. It
allows me to see a picture of Teacher structures which repeat over time.
Cycles and patterns may in turn contain subcycles and subpatterns. For
instance, a musical note is a cycle of sound which has both a fundamental
waveform, which the ear hears as pitch, and harmonics—subcycles which
create the tone of the sound. A tree is an example of patterns and
subpatterns. If I look at the trunk of the tree, then I see only one example of
„trunk and branches.‟ However, if I examine the branches, I notice a
pattern of „trunk and branches‟ as twigs are interspersed with leaves. As
for the tree itself, it is only one element in the pattern of a forest. In terms
of waves, the core of the tree is the „fundamental,‟ whereas twigs and
leaves are the „harmonics.‟ A The end result is a fractal multidimensional
order which is capable of producing intense Teacher pleasure—if the mind
is programmed to notice it.
Words and theories in turn can be used to combine artificial order with
the naturally occurring Teacher order of the external world. Many of us
have probably not noticed the relationship between beauty, mathematics,
and grammar. I suggest that the complexity of these interactions is the
reason for this confusion. The patterns and cycles which occur within some
types of beauty are fairly obvious; it does not take great learning to figure
them out. For example, even a stupid teenager can enjoy a good beat, a
total couch potato can appreciate the elegance of figure skating, and a
A There is a crossover between Teacher and Mercy processing. It appears
that Teacher strategy is responsible for analyzing waves which repeat at
less than about 20 cycles per second, while Mercy thought processes waves
which repeat at higher frequencies, interpreting the relationship between
fundamental and harmonic as tone. This suggests that the mind is only
capable of intellectually analyzing slowly repeating waves and is limited to
forming general impressions about faster cycles.