Postscript #119 to the "Lanzarote" paper (10/15/98)
‘FAQ' #4 ON "RHYTHM BASED COMMUNICATION"

 How can I "wrap my head" around "Rhythm Based Communication" (RBC)?

     Here is our belief as to why most humans seem to be "magnetically" attached to "Signal Based Communication" (SBC). The majority of messages that we have been consciously aware of receiving, after the age of approximately two years, have been functionally and directly dependent on signals, signs or symbols.  For almost all of our entire learned vocabulary, our mathematics, our reading, our science, our writing and much more, our received messages were united with received signals. This union could have been direct, as in seeing the offering of an apple (a visual signal), being related to the message: "Would you like an apple?" Or the union could have been indirect as when we wrote the word "springtime" and then were consciously aware of messages such as: "new life, birdsong, daffodils." 
     Once we learn to break this informed affiliation, by using RBC or by other methods, we become freer to enjoy an additional, real world now found in altruistic, unstressed Nature! It is a world, not where messages are dependent on signal quality (seemingly a characteristic of neoDarwinism) but where messages are in fact independent of signal type but dependent on signal timing! Of course there is a middle ground where messages become less dependent on signal type and more dependent on signal timing or, where both signal quality and signal timing contribute to messages.
     In SBC, information is: 1) encoded in signals, signs and symbols (for humans, mostly sights and sounds), 2) mainly associated with higher biological stress, and 3) involved with the classical "arrow of (linear) time" (past, present and future). Whereas in RBC, information is: 1) encoded in "Rhythm Based Time" (RBT) and is independent of signals (i.e. it is not what we do but when we do it, that "counts"), 2) of lower biological stress, and 3) involved with circular, "always-in-the present", at right angles to the above mentioned "arrow" (i.e. orthogonal) RBT. But the two systems may occur simultaneously so we should try to recognize each and then seek higher orders of RBC for our recreation while maintaining excellence in SBC for our creativity, competitiveness and the "procuring of a required living." 
     In other words in RBC we get our "head into the present," which is also referred to as experiencing 'now time' (see also postscript #112). We could, for example, try to surmise now time thoughts of any animal that we may be studying (or trying to photograph). Then, allow "recharged" brain parts to create ingenious 'Ideas re Future Manoeuvres' (IFM's), considered a mental behavior of humans only. This often happens in early morning after a successful recreational period during a previous day. If we have quality nowtime during most days, then we may quite possibly have quality IFM's thereafter, thus vastly increasing our productivity!
     So we must understand that RBC is a different communication system, dealing with a different form of time and apparently existing throughout much of Nature, but only during periods of low biological stress amongst both message senders and message receivers. In this communication it becomes less important what we do and more important when we do it. It is, to a large extent, similar to dancing.