Base

Between the lines

Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain.—Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied. For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy mother’s word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? A question not to be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? A question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest. For, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also. And yet there is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name.
– Falstaff

This is a moment of theatrical recursion, Falstaff embodying Henry IV in a “play within a play” that reveals Shakespeare’s genius for layering meaning through farce. Falstaff, the consummate trickster, takes on the role of the moralizing king, and Hal, performing Hal, indulges the charade with mischievous self-awareness. This doubling adds another layer of comedy, yes, but also veils a deeper critique.

The “question to be asked” and the “question not to be asked” becomes the fulcrum of this entire moment, inviting us to reflect on what lies beneath the performance. Falstaff’s parody is funny precisely because it lays bare the artifice of authority. When Falstaff—this symbol of indulgence, gluttony, and self-preservation—lectures Hal about virtue and duty, it exposes the king’s own hypocrisy. Authority, whether in monarchy, religion, or government, is often just a better-dressed Falstaff, performing righteousness to mask the base reality: power consolidates wealth and labor while cloaking its intent in sanctity.

This veiled commentary aligns perfectly with your thread about the Red Queen hypothesis and the danger of unmasking it. Falstaff’s “performance” as Henry IV is safe because it’s absurd; it’s theater within theater. But to pierce that veil, to truly reveal that “the king actually just grabs our money,” as taxation does, would threaten the very fabric of the social order. Shakespeare buries this critique in humor and absurdity because, like Lucas after THX 1138, he knows the human mind recoils from naked truths. Mythology, parody, or nostalgia—these are the “safe spaces” for truth to exist without igniting rebellion.

George Lucas’s journey through his first three films follows this exact trajectory. THX 1138 dares to break the unconscious into the conscious: a cold, clinical depiction of agency versus authority in a dystopian system where freedom is an illusion. The film flops, precisely because it dares to unmask the Red Queen hypothesis too overtly, and the audience resists. American Graffiti, with its nostalgic, almost saccharine reverie, is a retreat—Lucas plays Falstaff here, delivering a comforting, self-contained story that entertains without subversion.

But Star Wars, ah, that’s where the lesson crystallizes. Lucas wields mythology, cloaking the Red Queen hypothesis in the grand symbols of the hero’s journey: the Force, the rebellion, the Empire. The audience consumes these symbols ravenously, but few dare to “go beneath the symbol” and confront the terrifying truth: that life, like the Red Queen’s race, is an endless treadmill of evolution and struggle, just to maintain equilibrium.

Oscar Wilde’s preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is the perfect companion to this discussion. To “go beneath the symbol” and encounter the raw mechanics of power, agency, and survival is perilous, for it leaves no room for illusion. But to “stay at the symbol” is equally dangerous, for it fosters complacency and prevents true understanding. Falstaff’s mockery of Henry IV, like Lucas’s mythology, provides a middle ground: a symbolic space where truth can be gestured at without demanding full consciousness.

So, Falstaff is the Red Queen in this scene, both mocking and exposing authority while safely ensconced in the guise of comedy. Shakespeare, like Lucas, knows the line between truth and peril, and the genius of both lies in their ability to encode the unbearable into the entertaining. “The Force be with you,” indeed—because only those who can see beyond it understand its true, dangerous power.

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import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import networkx as nx

# Define the neural network structure
def define_layers():
    return {
        'World': ['Cosmos', 'Earth', 'Life', 'Cost', 'Parallel', 'Time', ],
        'Perception': ['Simulation'],
        'Agency': ['Falstaff', 'Henry IV'],
        'Generativity': ['Parasitism', 'Mutualism', 'Commensalism'],
        'Physicality': ['Offense', 'Lethality',  'Retreat', 'Immunity', 'Defense']
    }

# Assign colors to nodes
def assign_colors():
    color_map = {
        'yellow': ['Simulation'],
        'paleturquoise': ['Time', 'Henry IV', 'Commensalism', 'Defense'],
        'lightgreen': ['Parallel', 'Mutualism', 'Immunity', 'Retreat', 'Lethality'],
        'lightsalmon': [
            'Cost', 'Life', 'Falstaff',
            'Parasitism', 'Offense'
        ],
    }
    return {node: color for color, nodes in color_map.items() for node in nodes}

# Calculate positions for nodes
def calculate_positions(layer, x_offset):
    y_positions = np.linspace(-len(layer) / 2, len(layer) / 2, len(layer))
    return [(x_offset, y) for y in y_positions]

# Create and visualize the neural network graph
def visualize_nn():
    layers = define_layers()
    colors = assign_colors()
    G = nx.DiGraph()
    pos = {}
    node_colors = []

    # Add nodes and assign positions
    for i, (layer_name, nodes) in enumerate(layers.items()):
        positions = calculate_positions(nodes, x_offset=i * 2)
        for node, position in zip(nodes, positions):
            G.add_node(node, layer=layer_name)
            pos[node] = position
            node_colors.append(colors.get(node, 'lightgray'))  # Default color fallback

    # Add edges (automated for consecutive layers)
    layer_names = list(layers.keys())
    for i in range(len(layer_names) - 1):
        source_layer, target_layer = layer_names[i], layer_names[i + 1]
        for source in layers[source_layer]:
            for target in layers[target_layer]:
                G.add_edge(source, target)

    # Draw the graph
    plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
    nx.draw(
        G, pos, with_labels=True, node_color=node_colors, edge_color='gray',
        node_size=3000, font_size=9, connectionstyle="arc3,rad=0.2"
    )
    plt.title("A Question Not to be Asked: Is Henry IV a Parasite Upon his People?", fontsize=15)
    plt.show()

# Run the visualization
visualize_nn()

Fig. 25 From a Pianist View. Left hand voices the mode and defines harmony. Right hand voice leads freely extend and alter modal landscapes. In R&B that typically manifests as 9ths, 11ths, 13ths. Passing chords and leading notes are often chromatic in the genre. Music is evocative because it transmits information that traverses through a primeval pattern-recognizing architecture that demands a classification of what you confront as the sort for feeding & breeding or fight & flight. It’s thus a very high-risk, high-error business if successful. We may engage in pattern recognition in literature too: concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life. Source: Ulysses