What is Concept Theory?

If you know a teacher who works with students who have difficulty learning through traditional instructive techniques, you may point them to this post. I expect there are many conceptual theoreticians out there. If I had teachers in my childhood who understood me, my life would have been much different. Just being aware of the process goes a long way to dealing with it.

Google or Bing “Concept Theory” and you will get diverse, loosely related definitions. Odds are you won’t get a firm definition of the specific phrase itself. Though I came up with it on my own, it would be narcissistic of me to think that I actually coined this term. Surely someone else thought of it first. Whether their definition is the same as mine is yet to be determined. Here is my definition.

Concept Theory is a verb describing a thought process. It’s how I view the world. Indeed it’s the framework for my very perception of reality. It’s not something I learned or taught myself, but rather my attempt to define the process by which I arrive at conclusions. Growing up, I wasn't able to learn like the other kids in school. This brought me difficulty with both my peers and teachers alike. It wasn't until I applied Concept Theory to my own thought process that I was able to determine how it is that I think. Concept Theory is the act of theorizing concepts.

A Conceptional Theoretician thinks in 5D. Now we’re all used to the three spatial dimensions, height, width and depth. So thinking in 3D is like contemplating a cube. We’re also all familiar with the linear dimension of time. Therefore, 4D thinking is like contemplating that cube as it exists in past, present and future. The fifth dimension (spatial) is best described as inwardness and outwardness, and is a little more complicated.

I have a tool box. It is a 3D object. It’s also dirty and scratched. How it got that way is a function of time. It exists in past, present and future, making it a 4D object. Impacts, collisions and other forces from outside the box through the course of time have had an effect upon it. That’s outwardness. Moving still outward are the forces that caused these forces to interact with the box, and the forces that acted upon them, and outward to infinity. Outwardness is infinite. Open the lid and the box is cluttered with various tools, nuts, bolts, nails, pins, staples, etc. That’s inwardness. All my tools are dirty and scratched. Everything inside the box has been affected by outside forces over time. Various objects within the box are designed to interact with others. The wrench is designed to interact with the nut for example. The tools can be used to influence the world outside the box - outwardness. Moving still inward are the various components of each tool; how these components interact with each other to cause the tool to function. Inwardness is finite down to the sub-atomic level of each atom comprising the molecules of each component. Each component of every tool can be explored 5 dimensionally to complete the 5D perception of the box.

5D thinking then, is to examine a concept from every possible perspective, what it contains, how it interacts with other concepts over time. Patterns emerge. These patterns interact with other patterns to produce more complex patterns. This process may take seconds, minutes, hours, days or years. A concept is “chewed” on until it has been thoroughly digested, exploring inwardness and outwardness only as far as necessary.  At any given moment in time, I have several concepts being simultaneously processed in my head. This occasionally keeps me awake at night or causes me to be distracted during conversations.

Another way of exploring inwardness is asking the question “Why?” Then repeating the “Why?” to each answer until there are no “Whys” left. When your four-year-old keeps asking “Why?” as you try to explain something, instead of saying “Because I said so.” try eliminating the whys one at a time. You might discover something you’ve never considered before.

Concept theory then is the process of applying thought to raw observation to arrive at a theoretical conclusion. “Raw observation” is data that has not been cluttered with other applied thought processes.

When I apply concept theory to my personal Biblical studies, I contemplate a particular idea, looking inward, dissecting it, looking at it from various perspectives, relating it to surrounding Biblical ideas, expanding outward to how it relates to the entire Bible, outward still to current events, society, culture, history and various perceived future possibilities. Once I have the raw observation digested, then I look at how my conclusions relate to the conclusions of others. Sometimes I find things that cause me to reevaluate, and the process is repeated. Sometimes another completely different idea emerges and the original concept is shelved for later contemplation. I also include prayer in this process. God has already provided all the needed data and using Him as a resource for compiling it is one of the best tools that I have ever encountered.

Concerning geopolitical concepts the idea is similar. I observe something, I evaluate it 5 dimensionally and produce theories. I disregard clutter (pundits for example) unless I think further data is needed to complete my hypothesis.

This is how I think, and why people sometimes find it hard to understand me. I’m not always right, and even when I am, my conclusions are often difficult to quantify, which is why I call this Concept THEORY.

The Case For the Trillion Dollar Coin

First off, I’m not a pundit and I don’t watch, listen to, or read pundits as a rule, though I do occasionally take note of what they say from time to time. My view is that pundits are nothing more than opinion merchants for those people who are unable to form a decision on their own. I came to this conclusion many years ago when I found myself repeating some of the things they said as though they were my own opinion and the thought was uncomfortable to me. Now when I give my opinion on a matter, it’s my opinion, untainted by the rhetoric of either the left or the right. It’s all mine and I own it and I take responsibility for it. I consider myself a conservative, though most conservatives would disagree on much of what I say.

There should be no question that the US Government has a serious spending problem and it must be reeled in. I would think that having the rudimentary skills to balance a checkbook ought to be a prerequisite for elected office, but the American people seem to disagree with that viewpoint, choosing instead to elect representatives who seem to lack this core ability.

Let’s make an assumption here. Let’s assume that somehow the American people come to their senses and elect a government committed to balancing the budget. (I don’t think this could be a Republican or Democrat government since neither have demonstrated the ability to balance a checkbook. For the sake of the illustration, let’s assume it’s called the Balanced Checkbook Party.)

So now the budget is balanced and we’re not spending more than we earn. What do we do with the trillions and trillions of dollars of debt? We could raise taxes, or we could decrease spending even more. Either option would create further hardship on the population. That’s where the trillion dollar coin could come into play. (Please hold your rotten tomatoes until you hear me through.)

I am over-simplifying the numerical values here to make my point, so please give me a little grace in that area. If our debt is 20 trillion dollars, then I would propose minting one of these $1T coins and depositing it directly into the Federal Reserve Bank. Now the bank has the funds to make it’s debt payments for a year. Inflation rises due to the influx of money but I have taken that into account. Every year for 20 years, another $1T coin in deposited into the Fed while no further debts are accrued. Inflation rises appropriately, as does minimum wage, and I would expect that by the end of the 20 years, one dollar bills would be laughable, people would be paying for things with much higher denomination bills. With me so far? Here’s the catch.

Twenty years have passed and the dollar has taken a severe blow. Prices are sky high but wages are rising with the increase of monetary flow. The dollar still has value but the bills in people’s wallets look different. $100 and $1,000 bills are changing hands casually. Now is the time to re-monetize the dollar. Here’s how I see this playing out. New money. New faces on the bills. A New Dollar is born. $1,000 old dollars are now worth $1 New Dollar. The two currencies would overlap for a few years with both old dollars and New Dollars changing hands as the old dollars are phased out. Wages are switched over to the new currency. In the space of a few years, the New Dollar would be worth more than what the current dollar is worth today. National debt is paid in full and we are a sovereign nation once again. Once the old dollars are relegated to history, the New Dollar is re-named and it’s simply “The Dollar” once again.

Yeah, I know there are flaws in this idea. Investors won’t want to invest in the dollar for one thing, which is why we need to stop accruing debt first. People and nations already heavily invested in the dollar will take a loss. That’s the price of investing in a doomed currency. Inflation will also take it’s toll on the livelihood of Americans but I predict less so than other methods of dealing with this problem.

“This is just a pipe dream.” you say. Well of course it is. We need a balanced budget in order for this to be feasible and Americans don’t want a balanced budget. They prove this point in the polls every election as they vote for politicians based upon how much Federal money they can pull into their districts in the form of “pork.” But we’ll leave that thought for another blog post.

Agree with me or don’t. It doesn’t matter. All that matters to me is that I get you thinking. (At this point, you are free to hurl your rotten tomatoes in my general direction.)

P.S. Those twenty $1T coins sitting in the vault at the Federal Reserve? Guess what? Since they are based upon the old dollar and since the old dollar is phased out and replaced, they are now worthless except for their value to high end coin collectors. In fact, collectors competing for one of only twenty minted platinum coins would possibly end up paying more for these historical trinkets then they would be worth monetarily. A small net gain on a long-term investment.