Static Pattern Thoughts

David Bohm, in a series of talks (that later became the book Thought as as System) once said that we should delineate between ‘thoughts’ and ‘thinks’.   Thoughts are former products of consciousness that are stored in memory and passed around from person to person, while ‘thinks’ are products of consciousness created in the present moment with active mentation (or which consicousness is actively operating on even if former products of consciousness).  Bohm’s clever wordplay has finally led me to a perfect catchy term for describing the far less catchy term ’static pattern’:  thingk. That is, a static pattern, in the form we are most interested in for application can be called a thingk.

Thingk is a union of the words think and thing, and when pronounced sounds deceptively identical to think.  I like it because it embeds a lot of semantic hints that convey what a static pattern is:

• The first word in static pattern, static, comes from Greek and Latin roots for standing, remaining, and implies persistence.  When something persists, we usually identify it (generically) as a thing.
• When you first encounter (or create) a static pattern that resonates with you, it has the effect of gathering such awareness and attention in consciousness that it seems less like a thought and more like a thing.  It usually invokes active mentation and becomes a think in Bohmian terms.  This duality, as it grows, begins to qualify it as a thingk (in the cognitive domain).
• In the physical or virtual domains, before that thingk is manifested, it is just a thought ( think ); however, as you, the creator, drive it toward manifestation, it becomes not just a thought ( think ) but also a thing that exists (stands, remains, persists) with some degree of physical persistence (depending on degree of virtuality).  Yet, behind that now existent thing is the thought(s) that resonate with the creator such that they evoke active mentation and thus are still think(s).  Thus, the manifested static pattern is a thingk spread across multiple domains (cognitive, physical, virtual).
• If you encounter a thing that you can perceive with your senses, there are thoughts that brought it to creation.  When these thoughts and the thing itself invoke resonance in a perceiver, it can be now be described as a thingk.
• When you find a talented individual with a personal connection to the work they create, you can certainly be assured that everything they create has the quality of also being a thingk.
• If you begin to approach the things you work with with the intent to turn them into thingks (or to change your work so that the things you work with have a higher rate of probably of being thingks for you), or you begin to have the intent to find thoughts that resonate enough to become thingks in consciousness and then reified thingks in the cognitive, virtual, and/or physical domains, then the nature of your creative work is transformed.

I intend to not only use this term for describing static patterns in a more easily graspable semantic framework, but also intend to use it drive the fluxpoints project further.  A fluxpoint, by criteria, will be in fact a thingk; however, I am actively working on a partner project to actively get people moving from thought => think => thingk, which will ensure a natural evolution path toward turning those thingks into FluxPoints as well as physical, virtual, and/or cognitive creations.  This will most likely be a free community web site that will allow for active work on static patterns (or thingks) with the intention of bringing them about as creations.

Until then, I still prefer to use the technical term static pattern, but after discussing this more compact and expressive reduction with people who have talked to me about SPs for years, it immediately catches on and they finally ‘get it’.  Nonetheless, this particular journal about static pattern engineering will probably continue to use the technical term – I intend to post a link to the community site once I get it going and that site will probably make scarce use of the technical term, favoring the one described in this post.

Thanks for reading.