9. ConclusionBy emphasising the temporal component of situated presence, Surfism lays the ontological groundwork for a functional model of the psyche, characterising the spatio-temporal structure of experience as a subliminal template for how we see the world. Spatial perception takes shape within the fluid movement of one’s own visual perspective. Just as a wave changes shape as it enters shallow water, vision converges with the visible to render spatial relations. The confluence of movements coalesces to give us the impression of form in our surroundings. Like a wave, spatial perception propagates through reciprocal causality. Motion determines the observer’s perspective, which detects the spatial relations that situate the observer. There are thus two directions of causation: a feed-forward from motion to space and a feedback from space to motion. The observer’s perspective rides the interface between space and motion. While its basic function is to situate the agent in space, the observer’s perspective vacillates between the spatial and temporal paradigms. Too much of the spatial paradigm causes the individual to see himself as an object. Too much of the temporal paradigm makes him oblivious to his circumstances. The individual needs to balance the two paradigms, to be able to act decisively in circumstances that continually change, because the ability to anticipate change underpins the ability to read a situation. Although it emerged from our immediate circumstances, this mechanism also operates within language to give structure to a society in which the individual is at risk of becoming an abstract entity, disconnected from his own Being, like a surfer who's fallen from his surfboard. The surfing analogy provides a structural interpretation of how the mind operates, and encourages the individual to become reacquainted with his own perspective, so it can lead him back to the temporal source. Surfism : Emergence : Articulation : Synaesthesia : Semiosis : |