a founder of the codex

Oblivion

Lethomyces purgans·the Clearing Current

From Greek lethe, oblivion, and mykes, fungus, and Latin purgans, clearing, a fungus that clears the ground by breaking the past down.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Forceimage schema
Class: Decayits damnatio memoriae
Niche: Decomposerwhat is dead
Mode: Politicshow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Ruin

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Formation of Ideas · Wilkins, 1668: Natural Power · WordNet, 1990: Cognition · Llull, 1308: E · Man

Clearing Current, the whole specimen — Plate XXXIX. Lethomyces purgans, the whole specimen.

Forgetting clears what is unused so that a mind can learn and act and a divided city can live together again, and the same force, pressed too far, erases what should be kept.

To keep living, a mind and a city must let most of the past go.

behavior It moves through what has been left untouched, softens it to loam, and leaves standing only the paths that are still walked.

provocation

What would you have to forget in order to begin again?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its decay, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Oblivion — Fig. 1. Kernel
Clean slate
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
A mind that kept every trace would drown in them, so letting most of them go is part of how it works and stays open to what comes next.^{1, 5}
drawn as: clean slate · view: cast

Boundary of Oblivion — Fig. 2. Boundary
Doorkeeper
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from the damage of amnesia by its use. It lets through what matters and shuts out the rest, a doorkeeper of the mind's quiet.¹
drawn as: doorkeeper · view: pressed

Intake of Oblivion — Fig. 3. Intake
River of unmindfulness
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on all that is taken in and left unused, unrepeated or unwanted. In Plato's myth the souls drink it from the river of unmindfulness before they are born again.^{2, 5}
drawn as: river of unmindfulness · view: microscope

Mechanism of Oblivion — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Synaptic pruning
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
The brain weakens unused synapses, new neurons overwrite old traces, and recalling one memory suppresses its rivals, so most of what is learned fades unless it is used.⁵
drawn as: synaptic pruning · view: at work

Output of Oblivion — Fig. 5. Output
Fallow ground
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It frees room for new learning, lets the mind keep the gist over the detail, and makes peace possible where every wrong kept alive would breed another.^{5, 1}
drawn as: fallow ground · view: exploded

Dispersal of Oblivion — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Lotus fruit
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels in tales of forgetting fruits and waters, such as the lotus of the Odyssey, and in amnesties, as when Athens swore after its civil war to leave past wrongs unrecalled.^{3, 4}
drawn as: lotus fruit · view: detached

Decay of Oblivion — Fig. 7. Decay
Damnatio memoriae
❦ dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
Forced on a people it erases, chiselling names from monuments and denying crimes, and what was buried returns. In illness it takes the self along with the clutter.⁴
drawn as: damnatio memoriae · view: series

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Placebo, Presence, Prophecy, Knowing Trust, Afterlistening, Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology

same kind in Wilkins Apophenia, Dream, Memory, Presence, Trance, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering

same kind in WordNet Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Qualia, Silence, Volition, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology

same kind in Llull Echolalia, Glossolalia, Love, Memory, Nostalgia, Placebo, Possession, Presence, Prophecy, Solitude, Threshold, Trance, Volition, Knowing Trust, Rushmaker, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Shared Cell, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology

same phylum Diamond, Fear, Fire, Glossolalia, Spring, Storm, Volition, Rushmaker, Self-Ending Order

same dominant organ Entropy, Innocence, Memory, Petrification

Genome

erasure
release also in Glossolalia, Spring, Storm, Weightlessness
pruning
renewal also in Ash, Fire, Spring
peace

III In the world

Echoes

the river Lethe of the dead
the lotus-eaters of the Odyssey
the Athenian amnesty of 403 BCE
a name chiselled from a Roman monument

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 5, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	flora
symmetry	asymmetric
organization	solitary
silhouette	bell
scale	hand
proportion	elongated latent
growth	gnomonic
articulation	tethered latent
openness	hollow latent
skeleton	woody
locomotion	gliding latent
pattern	spots latent
coloration	nuptial
substance	wire tissue
surface	frosted
palette	oilslick
luminosity	inner glow
transparency	layered
gesture	gathers
unity	aggregate latent
modality	contingent latent
causation	efficient latent
determinacy	doubled latent
fusion	carried
anomaly	one break
graft	quipu
technique	engraving
viewpoint	below
value	high key latent
balance	unmarked latent
density	sparse latent
rhythm	unmarked latent
saturation	muted latent
appendages	sails
anchor (body)	a geode cut open, its cavity lined with crystal points
anchor (detail)	a mosaic of photoreceptor cells packed in a hexagonal pattern

Sources

Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), second essay
Plato, Republic (c. 375 BCE), book 10, the myth of Er
Homer, Odyssey, book 9
Nicole Loraux, La cité divisée: l'oubli dans la mémoire d'Athènes (1997)
Blake A. Richards and Paul W. Frankland, The Persistence and Transience of Memory (Neuron, 2017)

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