Overview of Relational | CNS
Before applying the principles of the Relational System, I need to clarify what I mean by Relational.
Although the English word Relational may be associated with social relationships, Relational, in the CRONOS Framework, defines our ability to relate, not just to people, but to places, possessions, and perspectives in time—everything we know, everyone we know, everywhere we spend time in, and everything we have, both past and present; our identity, personality, principles and patterns of knowledge and behavior.
We create experiences, which develops our foresight. We make choices, which will increase the probability they will occur. We collect things, which will occupy space in our mind. We make commitments, which will take our attention. We learn concepts, which deepen with experience.
Whatever info we take in was encoded in some form by another intelligent entity. Cave paintings, scrolls in clay jars, repetitive voice prompts from the phone tree, instruction manuals, audiobooks, captured in films and portrayed in duets on goofy TikTok videos.
We express ourselves in music composition, poetry, etch-a-sketch, and non-verbal body language. The turn of the head, jump of the eyebrow, twinkling in the eye, and folding of the arms; what is unsaid and our tone of voice, as well as what they say. Finger painting and mosaics, jigsaw puzzles. Recording “note-to-self” on the new voice recorders with the tiny cassettes, lost and then rediscovered by our grandchildren who try to figure out what that long strip of shiny stuff is. We paint with acrylics and pixels, write sonnets and ballads on parchment. We compose on Digital Audio Workstations, play the kazoo and the hurdy-gurdy.
That fact on the tip of our tongue from the yellowed Reader’s Digest recalled at 3 am. Interviews with the author on YouTube that take us back to that radio show. A smell reminds us of Mom’s cooking. The teller at the bank has the annoying mannerisms of that professor; and the way our boss somehow cheers us up like our kindergarten teacher. What we were taught in Sunday School and later disproved by ancient scrolls in clay jars.
Dry facts about tectonic plate shifts become frightening tsunamis destroying beachside villagers, who themselves become mere statistics. That feeling of awe from the night sky in the cabin by the lake twenty years ago is rekindled upon our first glimpse of the Hubble Deep Field—to be eclipsed with experts gushing over early galaxy formation captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Why the smoke from the barbecue billows out towards our face regardless of the wind direction. Memories of the family cat getting run over when we learn about quantum weirdness and Schrödinger’s Cat. Irony of coffee stains on our birth certificate while our recipes survive unscathed on the kitchen island. The absurd voicemails from telemarketers, infomercial jingles we desperately try to forget and the panic of what our wife said to remember. These are like threads woven throughout the brain.
The sum total of our outer world is modeled in our mind like layers of fabric, stitched together over the course of time, starting from before we emerge from the womb until they unravel in our final moments of life.
Neural networks, mental models, reference frames, mindsets, paradigms and other terms refer to the same phenomenon. It is how the information is stored.
They are not necessarily in one location in the brain; all patterns are connected to some degree or another. The emotional aspects are encoded via the hippocampus and amygdala; then resurface when we least expect it. We learn, remember, express and communicate.