Do you always think consciously about the things you do, say, or wear? Of course you don’t, constantly reflecting and evaluating your daily decisions costs a lot of effort. When you see this (slightly dramatic) video of heroes saving people from train tracks or stopping burglars without any hesitation, you know they did it just because it was the right thing to do. Not to look good or anything. Often, heroes, celebrities, villains, teenagers, presidents and even you, don’t really have a reason for the things they are doing. And if you ask them, why did you do that? Why did you wear that? Why did you say that? Many will answer: “just because”. Just look at the picture of Michael Jackson at the right, why would he wear those clothes? At these moments, you see people’s personalities shine through their behavior. 

Would Michael Jackson have a good reason to wear these extravagant clothes?

When people show this kind of behavior I call them fractal people, and I will explain later on why I call it fractal. If we talk about a fractal person, I mean someone who just does exactly what (s)he wanted to do. A girl who was cute just because she had a genuine smile. Someone who said funny things just because had something funny to say. A hero who was saving a child just because that was the right thing to do. I love those people, I think they are perfectly themselves. But who are those people? What makes them perfect? And can you become on of them? I have come up with a theory for this, and named it “the fractal being theory”.* Hope you enjoy it.

Synchrony in the mind and behavior
When a person does something really good, just because that was the right thing to do, you’ll like that, if a child is crying because he’s sad, that’s okay. However, if someone is crying to get attention, you’ll dislike that. If a person does something good to be adored by others, we dislike that. I believe that you are not purely yourself when your mind (your true intentions), mismatch your behavior. You’ll do something you dislike, or you think often about things you don’t do. When you do something you don’t want to do, we call it cognitive dissonance. However, I don’t know the  (positive) antonym of cognitive dissonance; the phenomenon when the mind and behavior patterns exactly synchronzie with each other. In these cases, I believe that the mind and behavior become one entity. At that moment, the mind and behavior become one entity, they are one. If you do exactly what you want to do, the more pureness you show. This pure behavior is when you are in flow while you are a playing an instrument, when you are truly comfortable with your best friend, or when having the most awesome sex. Having sex is a good example, because if one has real good sex, he/she can lose certain social boundaries like loud screaming or one can ask for “crazy” things. The mind and behavior, do exactly what they want during good sex, thus they are completely synchronized. In public things are different. Many people can’t be truly themselves while being in public. Because here, there are many social norms. Nevertheless, some people can be “themselves” better than others. I consider various famous people like Michael Jackson, Donald Trump, Gandhi, as true pure fractal people. These people are how they are without consciously worrying about their appearance. At least, it seems like that. However, things are more complicated.

Synchrony in multiple elements of behavior
As you know, the mind and behavior are much more complicated. Behavior is not just one thing, behavior has several elements. Suppose, you want to say that you are happy with a gift you received, then there are multiple things you need to do when responding sincerely, which are all part of your behavior. Behavior is what you say, the tone you use, the volume, your facial expressions, the gestures you make, and many more little things. I believe that when all elements in behavior synchronize with each other you make a genuine response. The better each element synchronizes, the more genuine your behavior will be, the more pure you are. I use fractal in my definition of pure fractal beings because of this. When things are pure, each element of behavior shows self-similar behavior in correspondence to the larger overall concept of behavior, thus fractal. In the example, I used five elements of behavior, which already to seem challenging to synchronize exactly with each other right? But we do it all the time. Most of our behavior is genuine behavior. Therefore, I think there must be one central controller in our brain that controls all our behavioral elements. However, as humans we have the ability to control all these elements separately, but it costs a lot of effort to manipulate separate elements (yes, lying costs effort). Animals don’t have this ability, the happiness of a dog is truly pure. Dogs can’t separate behavior from mind. The evilness of a lion is pure as well, we don’t hate lions because they kill mercilessly.

Resonance when we see synchronized people 
When we see other people, we don’t know about their minds, we just see their behavior. Only from behavior we can judge others. Suppose we have a clown, this clown has funny clothes, a funny face, a funny hat, he talks funny, he walks funny, and makes funny jokes. As you can see; all the elements synchronize fractally with each other. If none of the behavioral elements deviates from the overall perception of the clown; the clown is just a pure funny clown. I believe that when this happens, all the elements in the clowns’ behavior create a resonating perfect clown. Everything just fits with each other. Beautiful people can appear when all elements resonate. Just to name a few; an actor who plays his role beautifully, a rock superstar who is truly cool, a Goth-girl who truly wears an amazing black leather goth-like outfit, a hip-hopper who truly loves loud beats, baggy clothes, and shiny cars. I really love it when I see people like that, and they often get a lot of stares. There are many more examples, just think of one, I know you are good at recognizing them. Nevertheless, also with these examples, pureness does not need to be “good”, it just needs to be pure.

Interaction between the larger concept and the elements
Suppose, we have a boy who loves dinosaurs. This boy has many dinosaur-toys, socks with dinosaurs, books with dinosaurs, a wallpaper with dinosaurs, and dinosaur-games. This boy is a real pure fractal dinosaur-lover. But what started it? It is uncertain what is first, all the elements of the dinosaur-lover (like the toys and the books) or the larger concept of him being a dinosaur-lover. Maybe, the boy didn’t knew that much about dinosaurs but he received many dinosaur-toys from his older brother what made him a dinosaur-lover. But it could also be the other way around, where one moment this boy thought “Yeez, I love dinosaurs, let’s ask a lot of dinosaur-toys for my birthday”. Both elements (the toys) and the larger concept interact and influence each other, and creates a positive feedback loop towards a total love for dinosaurs. But as long as the larger concept and the elements are aligned, we have a pure fractal dinosaur boy. If one day his overall dinosaur-love declines, it is more likely that he would throw away a dinosaur-toy. But it also happens the other way around, if his mom suddenly throws away (some of) his dinosaurs-toys, he is less likely to be reminded by the dinosaurs and his love for dinosaurs might decline as well. It is a mutual interaction between the large “overall concept” of someone and all the small elements within his behavior. 

How can I be a pure fractal being?
Just look around you, do your clothes, shoes, house, haircut, and hobbies fit your personality? Do you consider yourself to be a hipster/a metal-head/wealthy and do you go to places that cohere with these styles? The more you do, the more pure fractal you are. If you don’t, but you want to; try to achieve the elements that make you who you want to be. If you truly want to be cool, don’t buy all the things that others think are cool, but buy the things you think are cool. If you want to be a true gamer girl/boy, don’t settle for a bad computer, buy a good one. Although, it might cost a lot of money, it could really form you towards who you want to be. In the past, I wanted to blog often, so I forced myself behind my computer and started writing, even though I had none inspiration. After a writing garbage for a while, I always came up with a good thought and suddenly there was a (good) blog. Today, I love to write and it is has become a large part of me now.

Sometimes you need to adapt
However, I have to admit that it is difficult to make your mind fully synchronized with your behavior. It is very hard to live exactly fractal. Sometimes you need to adapt to make a living, and to be accepted. Adaptation costs energy, however if you truly manage adapt, you have a new (adapted) you. This new you, can be pure fractal again, while accepting the constraints of the environment. For example, if I didn’t knew our society and just dropped into it, I would get crazy from the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, over time I could truly adapt to the fact that this bureaucracy exists. By learning how the system works, I could understand that bureaucracy is needed to sustain (some) quality, and I accepted it, and adapted to it. Now, I could truly be myself while working with the bureaucracy. I want to live in this society, therefore the bureaucracy becomes part of me. If you can’t accept and adapt, you can try to change the system but this is harder to do. Either way, you need to find the right balance between the current you, and adaptation to the constraints of the environment. If you can manage this, you will become a pure fractal being. Good luck being you!

*I am not sure whether a theory like this already exists. Either way, I just like to make theories, and this is one. If you know similar theories, that would be great then it makes sense. Otherwise, I invented something new, or didn’t make sense. That’s both fine to me. I just love to think about things and have ideas.