A Cognitive Schema is the organization of knowledge about a particular concept or subject. When I speak of Your Cognitive Schema, not to be confused with a Self-Schema, I am talking about the incredibly complex Web of ideas inside of your mind you use to make sense of the world. It is an evolving system, growing and maturing with your experiences.

When we work out our bodies, whether aerobic or pumping iron, we stress them, pushing their limits. On a microscopic level, we are tearing up our muscles, shocking our heart, and forcing our body to adapt to increased levels of physical stress. During the recovery period between workouts, our bodies rebuild those muscles in preparation for the next shock to the system.

Our minds are receiving information about the world and trying to fit it into a great big web of understanding. The facts we learn are like the vitamins and protein we feed our bodies during the rest times. When we are at rest, contemplating and introspective, we reorganize the Schema, revising it for the next stress.

But what about the exercise? This Web Site will get to that later, in The Memepool, the mental gym where we stress our ideas into solid theories.

In this section concerns what goes on inside of the brain, hypothesis formed from observations, not yet tested in the Idea Marketplace. These are, of course, merely the inner workings of my own belief net:

Observations: These are explorations of the Natural World. Understanding our common reality is the best place to start when deciding how you think about things. These are where the nutrients of a worldview are gathered.

Hypotheses: These are the assumptions derived from the observations. Seeing patterns in the morass of reality has led to these personal beliefs about things.

Resources: Don’t ever take my word for anything you read here. I’m no authority, not even an expert. You have to test, retest, and test again everything you know. The truth will endure.

Disinformation: Like a computer virus on your hard drive, false facts in your mind corrupt the information linked to it. Here I have provided some examples of when to beware, a healthy skepticism is like a strong immune system.

Local, National, and Global means of communication, our minds, our histories all form a collective Idea Schema that we are all working to change or reinforce, whether through discovery, argument, or force. This vast, complex network of ideas forms a sort of soup, similar to the Earth’s genetic soup. Ideas compete like genes in this environment, the stronger or more effective ideas survive. This is part of the fairly recent Science of Memetics: a survival of the fittest, only instead of genes we have “memes.”

All Governments are a sort of community contract, ultimately only as powerful as its citizens make it. Even a Dictatorship requires some form of popular, if not majority, support. Only Democracy seeks to foster and harvest the power of ideological consensus, providing an official communal arena for ideas to compete for public favor. Just as Capitalism is a Marketplace of Products, Democracy is a Marketplace of Ideas.

Here we take ideas inside our personal Self Schema and place them into the Idea Marketplace, allowing them to compete with, compliment, or reinforce the memes already there. Just as a Scientist must conduct experimentation to convert hypothesis to theory, so must we all conduct disputation with society in order to convert our personal ideas about the world into public policy:

Disputations: Democracies are fueled on the conflicts of ideas that occur within them, like stars burning on the energy of fusing atoms. Fair-minded, informed, and respectable debate provides the cleanest burning, most efficient fuel. Here you will find explanations of the debates our Society currently faces and fair articulations of how to find the ideal mean.

Theories: If you’ve read this through from Observations to Hypotheses to Disputations to here, you know that this site is nothing but Theory. Here I have gathered some of my own modest conclusions. I leave you to judge them. This entire site is, after all, my Self Schema communicating with yours.

Resources: The steps I think each participant in the Idea Market should take before becoming involved and sources to inspire deep thinking and debate. These are my inspirations, what are yours?

Disinformation: These are the closest approximations to the “villainy” of the system. Here are people, institutions, and rhetorical devices that bend logic, distort facts, and otherwise stoke the fires of unconstructive fury in our society. Understand these to prevent yourself from being pulled into and victimized by another person’s skewed belief system.

“Pather Panchali” explores the microcosm of an impoverished Indian family’s daily life. Their poverty is apparent in the state of their home, holes in the walls, worn-out wooden doors and window coverings. Cats wander about everywhere like pests, plants grow in the courtyard, and everywhere is open spaces, letting the home merge with the natural elements. This contrasts with the pristine home of their nearby wealthy relatives, which sports walls so high we do not see where they end and a courtyard completely clean of animals and runaway growth.

Their poverty brings endless strife to their existence. Obtaining small needs, such as food and adequate shelter, are a constant struggle. Sarbojaya’s relationships with her family are affected by this state of poverty. She scorns Indir as a burden on the household and accuses her of spoiling Durga. She bickers with her husband, who pursues unrealistic dreams of writing and providing religious guidance, while smoking too much tobacco, instead of providing practical financial support to his family.

Sarbojaya also pines for the easier times of her youth, before relatives took her family’s orchard for Harihar’s brother’s debts. This once wealthy background has ingrained her with a severe concern for respectability, which is difficult to maintain in their impoverished state. The two women, Durga and Indir, bare the brunt of this concern, through Sarbojaya’s frequent and severe reprimanding.

The conflict surrounding Sarbojaya’s attempts to keep her household together contrasts with the ways the other characters try to escape it. Auntie Indir cannot suffer the indignation of answering to Sarbojaya, as one who remembers her own time and resents the dependence on others that age has brought. She simply leaves when she has had enough.

Durga escapes through simple life’s experiences. She follows the candyman, crosses the countryside to see the train, and dances in a monsoon. She let’s Apu tag along with her to a degree. They explore together, but when she is invited into her wealthy relatives’ home to play, she sends him home.
Throughout all of this, Apu plays the quiet observer. His mother lavishes love on him. He sits with his father and learns. He follows his sister in her exploits. Apu partakes in all the aspects of his family’s life; experiences that I expect will shape him for the second and third films.