“Cracks in the Cosmic Egg” by byzantiumbooks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
A PATTERN LANGUAGE
What would a set of simply-worded, widely-agreed upon set of laws originating from people’s common needs look like?
I’ve wondered this for decades, since reading A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et. al. An architectural mainstay, the book uses a casual style and unique format to explore the interconnectedness of culture, technology, nature, and psychology within the built environment. The patterns illustrate basic relationships that, for example, an Italian village understood centuries ago but were lost over time. Some patterns can heal their surroundings from earlier bad choices; all of them try to see deeply into the timeless nature of things.
Expanding this exploration to create living laws of a society in harmony with itself, and with nature, could be as valid a thousand years from now as today. Historically, the laws imposed from above by the sovereign state laws have were never reconciled with the totems and taboos of tribes or the customs of an archaic village, This remains true in modern times. For years I looked for patterns, taking notes for the grand project to be written one day.
A CRACK IN THE COSMIC EGG
In 2010, I sustained a traumatic head injury that left me with vertigo for weeks. The only thing that stopped my world from spinning was reading, so I read voraciously as though to save my sanity. In mythology, the cosmic egg symbolizes primordial wholeness—a contained world that, when cracked, initiates the birth of something new, often in an unpredictable or painful way. Likewise, my normal consciousness and identity were altered, forced into unfamiliar psychological territory and new cognitive pathways. Both events mark a point of no return. I never felt the same.
Modern medicine offers little for major head injuries, so I explored healing through ayahuasca and sacred mushroom ceremonies—uncanny experiences that further expanded my worldview. Wanting to speak about what I had experienced and read led to creating a talk show titled Sane Society at Berkeley Community Media in 2012. They are half-hour talks on language, consciousness, education, cognitive neuroscience, ecology, entheogens and politics with UC Berkeley faculty and others.
JIM CARREY, PRAYER & AI
Donald Trump’s reelection as President, and his wrecking ball agenda, created a new sense of urgency to get this book out. But writing has never been easy, made worse since the injury. Experimenting with AI seemed like cheating, and one person pontificating so universally felt grandiose. Despair setting in, I came upon a video where Jim Carrey described an Irish teacher telling his childhood class that when she really wants something, she prays for it and always gets what she wants. Jim went home and prayed for a bicycle, his family being too broke to buy one. Two weeks later, he found a bike sitting in his living room. A friend had entered Jim’s name in a raffle without his knowledge. “It’s about telling the Universe what you want, and letting go of how it comes to pass. I’ve been doing that ever since, and when a door opens up, I walk through it.”
So, I added a wish for a folklaw to my morning gratitude prayer. Specific AI prompts soon occurred to me for each pattern. Feeding my paragraphs into Chat GPT 4.5 produced first drafts which exceeded all expectations. My insights and data points for each of the 95 topics were combined with others which I hadn’t considered, and tied together in action plans expressed as laws. Pattern recognition being AI’s strength, it fleshed out the intellectual scaffolding presented to it in a coherent, succinct manner. Fact checking revealed few errors and no hallucinations.
“ROWEN PENCE” – A WRITING PARTNER
Using AI to propose legal codes— crowd-sourcing from the keenest writers, nonprofits, and institutions—makes sense. Yes, you are using other’s words, building off of their work. But isn’t that what true social critics hope will happen? Having a methodology with which to stand on the shoulders of others is what makes science so powerful.
To honor those contributors, it seemed appropriate to name my new writing partner. For a surname I suggested my mother’s maiden name of Pence. For a first name, the AI chose “Rowan.” In Celtic mythology, the rowan tree is the Tree of Life, planted near homes to ward off evil and guide those who have lost their way. The rowan tree is the symbol of Folklaw.
This website, and the accompanying book, are a beginning. Much vetting and elaboration is of course needed from others. The U.S. is the subject the essays, but most of the Primary and Therefore statements could apply anywhere, and at any time. Clearly, new thinking is needed as democracy and our ecology falter. If not this, something like it…a codified value system of modern totems and taboos, built up over time through local adoption, and passed on to our children. Until humans evolve out of the dominator instinct, something eternal will always be needed to ward it off. In solidarity, let’s build upon each other’s work and initiate the birth of something new. There’s no going back.
Tom Palmer – Berkeley, CA
