Proportions of the Janus Ratio

Or, not what I had planned, which involved a matrix of ratios on self/world:reality

This is a planned post on proportions of the Janus ratio. But not the planned post. Planning got me nowhere. I ended up somewhere else, but at least I am not lost.

‘Planned’ means that I had an idea, and began mulling it over, thinking about it in such a way, that my imagination works through the details early each morning while I am still asleep-ish (I am one of those bastards who sleep well) as I rouse into being awake-ish with thoughts and good ideas. And I just write it down later as if I were a laser printer.

I think this late-sleep early morning mode is when I am most actively ‘worlding’. My self of me is weak, thoughts are themselves. And if the world in daylight reality is providing less stress, then the mental cycles are not over-wrought, and the greater creativity of being at ease is possible. Necessity by comparison is a rabenmutter.

Most mornings I get up and go to work and those opportunities are not recorded, but deferred until Saturday morning, and I remain pregnant through the week with possibilities. When younger I found this frustrating.

At least this was the general plan when starting the blog at the beginning of the year. There was to be one post a week, but the midweek bonus post has become standard without too much effort. Occasionally I do three, and feel I would do at least four per week if I was not working full time, however, I also know that it might drop to zero per week without the delay caused by working full time and being forced to defer my writing to Saturday mornings.

Routine and stress can be a good thing… — when it don’t interrupt me thoughts with the bad grammar of a wheel in me head, so I world better. I am also one of those bastards who instead of turning stresses into anxiety just turn it into high blood pressure and some sort of activity other than freezing in the bright lights now approaching…

One active proportion of the Janus ratio is planning what to do. Another proportion is having meetings about organising the planning about what to do.

So what do those two sentences mean? In part they raise the question, how much of me is me and how much of the world is not me? This blog in part attempts to address this question, as it is fundamental to moral philosophy, and ethical poetry, however…

—right now let’s look at the word proportion.

I’m told by the internet that proportions are a type of ratio that organise ratios in relation to another ratio. Some claim they are in proportion if they have the same ratio, but I don’t trust anything on the internet.

So, proportions are a re-intensification, or self-meta of ratios, an anaphoric overloading but same same but different. A routine of relationships.

If the face of a building is a ratio of width and height, the ratio of the face to the side of the building (with its own ratio) gives the proportions of the building.

Often when talking about the proportions of the building we are talking about parts in relation to the whole, even if we are talking about the same side. We will talk about the proportions of an element to that which incorporates that element.

Like the height of the columns to the height of the building and that ratio in proportion to the ratio of the size of the tympanon in regard to the crepidoma. Or the number of elements (already sized) on each side. The building basically unfolds from the size of one element in a ritual of ratios we call proportion. The temple dances into existence to the beat of a mathematical drum.

The basic proportions of the [Greek temple] were determined by the numeric relationship of columns on the front and back to those on the sides. The classic solution chosen by Greek architects is the formula "frontal columns : side columns = n : (2n+1)", which can also be used for the number of intercolumniations. As a result, numerous temples of the Classical period in Greece ( 500 BCE to 336 BCE) had 6 × 13 columns or 5 × 11 intercolumniations. The same proportions, in a more abstract form, determine most of the Parthenon, not only in its 8 × 17 column peristasis, but also, reduced to 4:9, in all other basic measurements, including the intercolumniations, the stylobate, the width-height proportion of the entire building, and the geison (here reversed to 9:4).[28] from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_temple

Personally I think such careful attention to mathematical detail is a bit fussy, but the unfussy ruins sure look good, romantic that I am.

The Olympieion at Athens.

The proportions of planning the day in sleepiness arise in navigating my self and my world with everybody else doing the same same but different.

It’s an animal thing, where survival has been boosted by hindsight faculties, and the rhythm of the sunrise dances us into the day.

I am at my best in the mornings.

Hindsight helps predict the future, but prediction is hard, especially about the future, so in lieu of that we create routines and rituals, and do them in spaces beautifully proportioned all the better to maintain joint attention, but which interrupt what I actually want to do because, like, autism weakens the(my) need for joint attention.

Or does it?

One of the reasons we like to lie in bed all day is to maintain that dreamy wakeyness, but that is doing it wrong. (I want to insert a joke here about not being woke, but feel I might have to explain it.)

We are human because we have meetings not because we dream. Dreams come after the day, we must bed those decision down after all.

“Meetings” that is in modern parlance. In palaeolithic olden times they were the evening meal we had before we fell asleep after a successful day, with some on guard, and mulled over what the crazy uncle had said two nights before he got eaten by that big cat.

I am currently planning on writing more about the “world” as in “to world”. Even as I hope I will not be corrected on my use of the word proportion as I was on ratio.

This post originally blogged on substack.