The Matrix Project
The origin of the Matrix Project was a short story I write in 2007 entitled “Sunset in Eden”. The premise of the story is that the ‘author’ is presenting an academic paper some 500,000 years unto the future about the discovery of the existence of our age of humanity, an existence the knowledge of which had been buried under a great ice age that had lasted for 400,000 years, preceded by a catastrophic global collapse of human society. Yet, though all writing had disappeared during that vast length of time, yet the core tradition of faith and civilised valued and a body of critically important knowledge had been preserved and transmitted cross the entire period to regenerate a new human society when environmental conditions permitted.
After writing the story I thought a great deal about how such a transmission might be possible. My thinking was not simply idle speculation but evolved from my strong sense that global humanity is indeed set for such a cataclysmic time of crisis, threatening its very existence and it may well be that any continuing human existence will have to cope with hostile planetary conditions for a great many millennia to come. All of this may come upon us very suddenly.
The traditional skills of oral transmission found in pre-modern sociétés have been almost entirely lost and in any case would prove entirely inadequate to act as an oral container for the key knowledge gained from modern society. Rote learning could never suffice even if we could re-train our minds.
It was in wrestling with this problem that the idea of the matrix was born and over the last two subsequent years has been steadily developing and been tested. I am now confident that it works as an ‘oral’ container. The critical factor for me was the ability to be able to retain a vast array of conceptual knowledge to be transmitted even in the absence of writing. The answer I found was in the construct of a matrix with a basic grid of 12 x 12, with a cubic dimension of 12 – 1760 cells I all. The power of the matrix to recall lies in the dynamic interaction of the three dimensions that occurs in each specific cell. I have tested this and know it works and works amazingly well.
The two aces of the basic grid comprise, on one axis ‘individuals’ and on the other axis, concepts or abstracts and it is important to maintain this distinction. The next thing I have found important is to crate or find some kind of mental conection between the number and the individual or concept on each axis.
Accordingly, in the ‘individual’ axis my arrangement has more or less settled at
1. God
2. Models
3. Trinity
4. Scripture
5. Narrative
6. Humanity
7. Sacraments
8. Jesus
9. Holy Spirit
10. Kingdom of God
11. Life of faith
12. Church
The conceptual axis:
1. Being
2. Ambiguity
3. Community
4. Wholeness
5. Gospel
6. Sin
7. Communication
8. Faith
9. Hope
10. Love
11. Contingency
12. Completeness
I am not going to attempt to identify here at this point the numeric connections between the items on the axes and the numbers.
The cubic axis stems from my theory of knowing, that knowing arises out of six roles – observation, insight, wisdom, theory, believing and analysis. According to the model of understanding reality that makes sense to me, there are two basic stances we can take towards the universe and as Christians we move freely between these stances. The one stance is to see the universe as wholly physical, and in response tot his stance the universe presents itself to us as wholly physical and all six roles operate at the physical level. The other stance is to see the universe as ‘grace’, and in this stance the entire universe, all reality, presents itself to us as grace and all the roles function as enabling us to know grace as grace. So there are six knower roles and these comprise the cubic axis. I shall be expounding the model more fully in Book II of this series, “Model Basics”.
Over the past few months I set out initially to ‘live’ the matrix and see how well it functioned. This led me tow write down what I generated at each intersection, the product coming from my mind and not a as product of research. I tied to create a hypothetical situation in which I had no recourse to written material, even the scriptures in written form. Out of this exercise has arisen a series of books, one for each cell on the basic grid. If I ever get to complete the project this would mean no less than 144 separate books which seemed an improbable task when I set out but at this time of writing (march 2009) I have already generated seven texts.
Now I need to say something about the order in which I am generating these texts. I know that if I attempted to generate them systematically the sheer size and scale of the undertaking would overwhelm me. So I resolved to write them in random order and this I am finding highly satisfactory. Having no knowledge of the length of my life – and sentient ability – I cannot say whether or not I will ever complete the writing of all the manuscripts. I doubt whether that is very important whether I do or not. If the Matrix Project has any value for anyone other than myself it is more likely to lie in the concept than in the substance of anything I write.
David Guthrie
March 2009
Book 1: Scripture - the Key to the Future
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