Words
The evolution of “Doing” is a profound event in the lineage of Living Things. In their quest to utilize the potential of dimensionally more complex physical space, for example, evolving from persisting at single point to becoming capable of moving along a line, they began their exploration of the Archetype of Doing, as they had, at the beginning of the emergence of life, embraced the Creation and Persistence Archetypes. (This writer has identified two other Archetypes: Socialization and Intelligence, which are discussed elsewhere.) For 6/7ths of the time that Living Things have inhabited our planet they were perfectly content to expresses themselves without engaging in anything more active than the cyclic processes forming the basis of life. Relatively recently some life forms discovered benefit from doing – performing a specific, event-triggered linear action, based on an intent to produce a beneficial result. This discovery is the foundation of Animals – creatures that move. Evolving into Animals required that the underlying cyclical processes functioned consistently robustly and delivered a surplus of energy that could be invested in exploring the potentials of movement (adaptation).
It is challenging to identify Animal Neurophysiology that is not there for the purpose of Doing. (The Metabolic Core pre-dates the emergence of animals, which are organisms that move.) The essence of Doing synthesizes the functions of sensing, making sense of what is perceived, and performing some beneficial or protective action. Originally Animals expressed basic variants of this in presenting either an open (receptive) or closed (protective) state (Corals are examples of this physiology). With the Cambrian Explosion, Animals explored innumerable variants of movement with the co-evolution of increasingly complex abilities to sense what was around themselves, comprehending usefully what these sensations meant, and a cornucopia of mechanisms of action to utilize what they had comprehended either beneficially or protectively. These three attributes are the essential qualities of Animals, forming the three legs of the tripod supporting our evolutionary lineage.
In the Doing Archetype, we are what we do – we experience our presence, or Being through the acts that we perform. Our foundational animal neurophysiology, our Locomotive Core, is dedicated to the expression of tasks. The feedback that we get from the acts we perform informs us about the status of our relationship with our surroundings. In this model, it links to Vertebrate Neurophysiology and the Mesomorphic Somatotype. Examples of professions where this archetype is dominant are first responders (Ambulance drives, Fireman, etc.). Our Manipulation Core extends Doing to unparalleled heights.
Doing has a linear quality – we experience ourselves as and through the progression of actions we undertake. The vector of the next act in the sequence or series of actions is a mirror for our identity. Assessment of our wellbeing (feeling of safety, level of stress) uses feedback on the congruence between expectation and perceived success of what we do. The linear quality of this archetype required the evolution of neurology that can process the passage of time, imagining a future where if a task was completed there would be some benefit. This part of our brain functions to collate past experience, generate predictions about future states, and plan actions. These are manipulations of the dimension of Time, which is a fundamental role of our Neo-Cortex.
/Vision
PAPERS RELATING TO THE DOING ARCHETYPE
The “Doing Archetype” Is the foundational framework for our actions, and it permeates through almost all aspects of our daily lives. These papers discuss some of the attributes of this core dynamic of our experience:
MOVEMENT
The neurophysiology of movement, the foundational attribute of animals, is discussed in this section of papers:
MOVEMENT
PLANNING
The Doing Archetype is expressed in the original actions of animals, and at a superficial level can be observed in the stimulus-response mechanisms of reptiles. Doing expresses intentional action, demonstrated in seeking behaviors and competitive impulses. Hunger is so deeply ingrained in the physiology of Living Things it is perhaps the most foundational reflexive drive.
HUNTING /GRAZING
A fascinating evolutionary advancement that is at the foundation of the emergence of intentional actions as discussed here in the Archetype of Doing is animals evolving ability to make use of the dimension of Time predictively. This is discussed in the paper:
TIME
SENSING – VISION
The Doing Archetype is organized on visual sensing. The neurology and information processing attributes of vision are discussed in this paper:
LIGHT SENSING
The anatomy and physiology of our eyes, and how they integrate with our Locomotive Core, are discussed in this paper:
ATLAS/OCCIPUT AND VISION
PROTECTION
The special case of being in which protective mechanisms are triggered, as it relates to the archetype of Doing, is discussed in the section on:
SURVIVAL
META READING
As species become more specialized, Archetypes facilitating those specializations can be observed. The Archetypes discussed below are those which are also specific to our lineage, becoming incrementally more focused on the peculiarities of our species as we diverged towards our unique niche from our common ancestor:
PERSISTENCE ARCHETYPE
CREATION ARCHETYPE
SOCIAL ARCHETYPE
INTELLIGENCE ARCHETYPE
an overview of the qualities of archetypes:
ARCHETYPES
Archetypes are elemental qualities that express both in the anatomical structure, and the forms creatures embody to interact with their surroundings.
The Structures associated with the Doing Archetype are discussed in the section on the:
LOCOMOTIVE CORE
The Forms associated with the Doing Archetype, as expressed in our ancestral lineage, are discussed in the sections on:
VERTEBRATES
Discussion of the attributes of a Living Thing, in the context of the emergence of our species, is facilitated by finding perspectives from which these attributes cohere into a framework within which the attributes form relationships. The frameworks discussed on this website can be found here:
EVOLUTIONARY PARADIGMS