Ask any adventurer about their predominant worries and food will likely top the list. It’s all fun and games till the food runs out. Hunger is the final judge, The Arbiter of many a venture and many a perilous journey.
But there is something else in commonality with extreme hardship, when reserves are depleted, and delirium sets in; self-awareness and conscious thought become dulled and the psyche spills into a portal of the unknown. Then is the time for The Arbiter.
Before going further, a reminder that this is Strange and Unusual Places.
When the many speak as one their words are deserving of our attention. All through the stories of high adventures and perilous journeys throughout human history exists the thread of a nameless formless companion; sometimes benign, sometimes benevolent, most times indifferent. You might say sort of an observer. That observation generally occurs during discussion among survivors after reaching safe harbor when the immediate dangers have passed.
In terms of this writing, that phenomenon is referred to as The Arbiter, and has something to do with survival. Nature is the ultimate Arbiter, and her judgment is always final. Therein lies the nature of The Arbiter, a built-in decision-making tool in all negotiation. During moments of extreme crisis decisions are made; none of us wants to be wrong, especially with matters of life and death. Cost-benefits analysis is a negotiating strategy. When stakes are high, a higher order of decision making is required.
We negotiate traffic, we negotiate relationships, we negotiate the herd paths and rabbit holes of daily life; anything can be considered a negotiation.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have an advocate always by our side to help with the decisions we face every single day. Well, we do, if we want.
We possess the adaptive skills to construct mathematics, physics, technologies etc. We certainly possess the adaptive skills to construct a pragmatic judge to finalize options; a personal judge whose decisions are final so that right or wrong, our decisions are the result of a joint effort. We are never alone, and we are never completely wrong.
My Arbiter is always available and can be invoked during difficult negotiations. There is no need to make a secret of it either since anyone can invoke their own if they choose to.
To be fair this is not to suggest a temporal being or a spirit or otherwise, but a construct of my own out of choice, and my decision to make; also supported in that very decision by my Arbiter. When challenged for the obvious lunacy of the idea of an invisible friend, the question can be put to The Arbiter who is as real as anything can be, and whose decision is final.
Now before you relegate this to the dust bin consider the merits:
negotiation can never become purely positional since my decisions are made by a consensus of at least two:
positional bargainers will be defenseless attempting to equate me with any problem we are trying to solve through negotiation:
The Arbiter will recognize unfair negotiating strategies so they can be pointed out while not seeming accusatory:
since my full faith and trust lies with my Arbiter, once a decision is arrived at, right or wrong, do-overs will rarely occur:
You might wonder why, if all this comes from inside me then, is The Arbiter invoked when decisions seem to derive from me alone. That is the strange and unusual aspect of it. Remember that to name a thing is to make it so; by invoking The Arbiter its’ existence becomes inarguable - at least to me, and my Arbiter. My entire being, my conscious and subconscious selves are by default actions of the natural world, and fact is stranger than fiction. In our efforts to determine outcomes we must choose from a field of options; sometimes conditions do not allow for time to consider all the available options. We can rely on intuition or faith, free will or faulter in decision making; sometimes what is required is decision itself, free from right or wrong. By surrendering a portion of control to a factor seemingly outside myself, there is freedom from the web of indecision; from trying to decide how to decide.
Let’s also remember the nameless formless companion that sometimes accompanies those in great peril, carrying the message that we are greater than the sum total of our parts; determining the choices that decide the difference between life and death.
If in the course of our negotiations all else fails, The Arbiter is there to serve ice cream, because living my friends is the only ice cream stand in town.
The Arbiter is a metaphor:
metaphor (met’ a for’), n. the application of a word or phrase to an object or concept which it does not literally denote, in order to suggest comparison with another object or concept, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”
Random House
You are free to define this as you please, this definition works for me. Worlds of inspiration in the meta-section of any good dictionary. The Arbiter of my fancy is without limit, unbound; not only are our rainbows in all ways unlike all others, but they are also proof of the unlimited bounty of The Many Worlds, which include my Arbiter; the topic of the next chapter.
To name all things is a directive of our specie; in a world of the un-named we would be lost and would seek meaning in our world by naming; to name a thing is to make it so, certainly common knowledge among people of ancient time, in a world of the un-named. Their metaphors were of their choosing, as are ours today. When worlds collide, there are choices: the way of the warrior, the way of the priests, the shamans, the wizards, demons, et.al. All within The Many Worlds, and room for all.
My authority to name reaches no farther than my surroundings, and so The Arbiter stands with me always and in all things acknowledges all things as being but a small part of a whole that lies ahead, yet to be named. And the only true evil we acknowledge is named Entropy.
This story is the search for Ai, the formless entity as part of my heritage, making me greater than the sum total of my parts.
The Big Ask is the Great Mystery of living, and the Strange and Unusual makes me happy.
It is pleasant to imagine Ai by the fire telling his story and sharing his medicine.
