firehorse said:
Hi,
I'll go along with the excellent comments about observing and being mesmerized by new phenomena.
My own personal learning is by standing back and looking at the whole picture, it may prevent you from falling flat on your back. In the penguins case a few hundred metres might have done the trick, but in the market this means different time frames for me.
What may be a steep rise/drop in one time frame is no more than a blip in another time frame.
Obvious to the old hands no doubt but I hadn't seen it mentioned yet.
Also ... while typing, ... and reading the link to the penguins don't fall over provided by TheBramble, the penguins are standing guarding their eggs. So the additional lesson is staying in a fixed position (opinion) can also land you on your back!
And , in addition it is important to look at Penguin behaviour to see what we can learn, by default, that means in effect by learning what is missing from Penguin behaviour.
You see, Penguins are aclimatised to surviving in and overcoming extreme weather and cilmatic conditions. I will expand on this. Further down in the Antartic, large colonies of Penguins hacve evolved methods of staying alive in extreme low temperatures and through biting winds and wicked snowstorms.They do this by eating voraciously in the Antartic autumn in order to put on an extra layer of fat to help them survive the winter. During the winter they huddle together for warmth in huge flocks of anything up to 5000 at a time.
They form themselves into a concentrated mass, and shuffle about incessantly to keep warm. This is not all. They take turns between them as to who is going to be on the outside edge. Because they rotate, their exposure varies. It is much colder on the edge facing the wind because of the wind chill effect than it is on the other side, which is in the lee of the wind and in the lee of whatever marginal warmth there is blown over from the flock. But they take it in turns to be on the outside edge and rotate so that they have periods in the centre so that they can recover from heat loss sufficiently to be able to venture to the edge again.
The baby penguins are very vulnerable. They have to be protected. They represent the future of the flock. The adults keep them in the very centre of the flock to ensure that they are kept warm. As their litle flippers are very tender, the adults permit them to stand on their own flippers so that they do not get frostbitte. As the duty adults carriying out this caring function have to take their turn at the edge, the babies are passed from one adult penguin to another, and end up standing on the feet of every adult member. This is a bonding process as well , for the entire flock. When the baby penguins grow up , they also have to take their turn at being the "shoes" for the new babies. This shift in duty is a right of passage. Also the younger ones who are well fed and strong have greater exposure at the edge. so you see within this rotating flock that appears to rotate and shuffle endlessly there is order, although at first it may not seem likely. This is part instinctive and partly learnt behaviour.
Penguins can not fly. Therefore their world on the ice and on land has a horizontal perspective. The luxury of a bird's eye view as enjoyed by other birds is not available to them.
Therefore we can say that penguins are very familiar with being upright when on land and otherwise when in the sea. We can now reason that the "penguin persona" has a perimeter of development beyond which there is no need to learn anything new.
When a helicopter or an aircraft passes overhead, this knowledge is not included in the penguins' mindmap of the world it inhabits. The penguins are puzzled. They are intrigued by these whirring things above them. They are not afraid, but equally these new things do not appear in their frame of reference. They do not know how to cope with them in advance.
They are unaware that looking up may upset their balance, and that unless they are floating, it is not possible for them to get on their feet unaided. Therefore they are caught unaware by their lack of knowledge in advance of an event and topple over backwards.
The PPP Patrol comes to rescue them by putting them again on their feet. This for them is experiential. After the experience is repeated several times they learn not to look up and follow the flying object but to spin round to look at it coming towards them and away from them. What is happening here ? The penguins in terms of "penguin logic" learn what to do and what not to do. The object is the preservation of life. Even in primitive forms of life the preservation of life mechanism is present. Hence the protection of the young, the rotation, and later not falling over backwards,. The penguin persona becomes armoured.
This is very similar to what happens to human beings as they grow up. Knowledge leads to experience, and experience leads to armouring.
This does no mean that the penguins are armoured for everything. They are armoured until another event occurs which does form part of their frame of reference. It will take time before the correct frame of reference is worked out via knowledge and experience , leading to armouring.
As the great majority of human beings are more sophisticated than penguins, therefore the frames of reference, the knowledge and experience is different, hopefully at a much more sophisticated level. Nevertheless comparatively speaking there are areas which as a consequence of remaining unexposed either to knowledge or experience, these areas remain lightly armoured or not at all. These are the areas available in which to develop the TP, right under the nose of the HP, without the HP able to do anything about it. Those of us who are very streetwise are not at an advantage in this respect. Perhaps those of us who are naive are at a better advantage. But we must all try to develop a TP if we are to be able to trade successfully, repeatedly, at will, on command, as the correct opportunity presents itself.
