When “It Finds” Replaces “I Am”: Riding the IF-Prime Trail
Speaking Like Water: Tao, Memes, and the Disappearance of ‘I’
“Don’t mistake the rider for the wind, or the horse for the direction.”
Trails don’t always wait in plain sight. Sometimes they push themselves up underfoot, stone after stone, shaping themselves as you walk. Meaning behaves the same. You think you spot it ahead, but maybe it watches you instead, from inside, behind your eyes, hitching a ride.
Give me a second. I need that old Sage Stetson to think straight. Dusty brim. Wide shadow. Keeps things clear.
Now what if perception doesn’t belong to “I” at all? What if it refuses reins? Slips past grip and name. Moves through like woodsmoke at dusk. You can’t catch it, but you still smell the truth of it.
That phrase, “It finds,” crawls out of that space. Not an identity. Not a flag in the ground. Just a movement, like a shape in fog noticing another.
IF-Prime didn’t sprout from nowhere. It followed E-Prime for a while. But then it wandered. It asked, “What if?” Took a side path. Found something raw. Something that hadn’t gotten its name yet. Not theory. Not grammar polish. More like bone-memory before words clot the wound.
You don’t need to figure it out yet. Let it breathe at the edge of you.
Language twists there. Selfhood thins. Memes start muttering in unfamiliar tongues. Call it what you want, but saddle up. That’s the country we ride now.
E-Prime: The Fork Where We First Turned
Back in the mid-20th century, a semantic scout named D. David Bourland came along with a curious question: What happens if we stop using the verb “to be”?
He called this new way of talking E-Prime. And in that landscape, you'd say:
Not “This is true,” but “This seems true to me.”
Not “He is lazy,” but “He appears unmotivated to me.”
Not “I am depressed,” but “I feel depressed.”
It’s like swapping a sheriff’s badge for a storyteller’s hat. No more absolutes. No more fixed truths. Just momentary signals, showing up in context.
E-Prime taught folks to own their perception, to speak with humility, and to soften the dogma in their language. According to research, it helps folks think clearer, argue less, and even feel better in their own skin.
But here’s the thing—what if we went one step further?
IF-Prime: The Shift from Identity to Pattern
Picture this for a second.
You don’t say, “I feel anxious.” Instead, the words come out different. “It finds anxiety in this moment.”
Feels weird. Off. But maybe a little lighter, too.
That marks the turn toward IF-Prime. Not some tidy theory. More like a language drift. “I” steps aside. Something else steps in. Call it a sensing field, or just the raw edge of attention. It starts noticing instead. No ego in the center. Just pattern, twitch, breath, flicker.
A signal moves through. Anxiety registers, but without a name badge. Not yours. Not mine. Just present.
This shift doesn’t erase you. You don’t vanish in the fog. But the grip loosens. The nameplate on every thought fades a little. You still show up. Just not as a ruler. More like a weather station. Tuned in. Listening.
The Four Faces of “It”
Let’s crack open what we mean by “it”. Not a ghost. Not a god. Not a trick. Just different names for the forces that shape what shows up in awareness.
1. Neurocognitive Field
“It finds tension.”
Sometimes, that “it” is your body—your breath, your chest tightening, the weight in your gut.
Your nervous system notices long before your mind has a story to tell.
That’s it, finding, or noticing before associating the feeling with an “I”.
2. Distributed Mind Node
“It finds beauty in this sound.”
Your awareness isn’t a solo act. It’s a node in a wide network—sensors and symbols pinging back and forth across minds, screens, and streets.
When it finds something beautiful, maybe you’re picking up the signal before you even know it.
3. Memetic Filter
“It finds offense in this word.”
Think of memes as the viral building blocks of culture. See them as pattern replicators.
They live in us and move through us. Culture trains us in what to see, what to fear, what to love.
When it finds offense, maybe it’s a meme acting through you.
4. Ontological Process
“It finds becoming here.”
These four faces, taken together, echo a Taoist sensibility: perception as flow, self as node, awareness as unfolding.
Just as the Tao moves without naming, “It” in IF-Prime shifts identity from owner to witness, from self to signal.
🌀 “It” doesn’t impose—it reveals. It doesn’t control—it listens. In this way, the Four Faces whisper like Taoist mirrors: not definitions, but invitations.
🧠 From Expression to Transmission: Memes in the Saddle
Now here’s the twist: this post, this very language, doesn’t just describe memes—it is one.
Every phrase like “It finds joy” or “It finds pain” becomes a linguistic seed—primed to replicate if it feels true enough, strange enough, or beautiful enough.
That’s memetic transmission:
✨ Catchy enough to stick,
And when folks start speaking like “it finds clarity here”—they’re not just talking different. They’re seeing different.
They’re tuning in to perception as a shared event, not an owned reaction. And that’s a tectonic shift in how we build culture.
Taoism and the Disappearance of “I”
“The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”
Long before the IF-Prime shift emerged from the Neuroscape Navigator meme lab, ancient sages rode a similar trail.
🌀 Tao as the Original IF-Prime
Taoism doesn’t just complement this shift from “I am” to “It finds”—it anticipates it.
Where E-Prime stripped the badge off of “is,” Taoism never put one on to begin with.
In Taoism, the Tao names the unnameable pattern underlying all things. It doesn’t declare—it moves. It doesn’t possess—it flows.
And perhaps what we now call “It finds” is just a linguistic mirror for what the Taoists felt in silence.
“It finds tension” echoes the Tao’s yin and yang—holding tension and release in balance.
“It finds beauty in this sound” reminds us that awareness flows from harmony, not control.
“It finds becoming here” honors impermanence, where change itself becomes the teacher.
“It finds offense in this word” hints at our cultural filters, the veils the Tao urges us to release.
In Taoist practice, to align with the Tao means to let go of self-assertion and attune to what moves through.
IF-Prime becomes a kind of modern wu wei—language that doesn’t push, but flows with the field.
The self no longer rides the horse. It becomes the dust on the breeze. The pattern in the hoofprint. The echo in the canyon.
In the Dao De Jing, identity doesn’t stick—it flows. Action doesn’t declare—it arises. Wisdom doesn’t control—it listens.
“Names, like selves, are temporary containers.”
🐉 From Fixity to Flow
Let’s look at some Taoist principles through the IF-Prime lens:
Knowledge is not declared, but observed.
➝ “It finds tension” instead of “I feel tense.”
Awareness adapts like water—no need to claim, only to witness.Virtue (德, de) is not imposed, but expressed through harmony.
➝ “It finds coherence in this choice.”
Morality here don’t ride on rules—it hums in tune with the field.Change unfolds through non-interference.
➝ “It finds direction in stillness.”
This is wu wei—the art of effortless action. Of doing without forcing.
Individual vs Collective in the Light of the Tao
Taoism don’t erase the individual—it just reminds us:
“You’re not the whole river. You’re the way the river passes through here.”
In this view:
The body’s response? A shared biological inheritance.
The meme that stings? Cultural resonance, echoing through time.
The insight that cracks you open? A flare from the collective mindspace.
What “it finds” isn’t mine. It’s ours.
Not a possession, but a participation.
IF-Prime as Taoist Transmission
The Taoist sage doesn’t act with domination—they act with discernment.
They don’t say, “I am wise.”
They let it be said of them: “It finds stillness where they step.”
Likewise, IF-Prime invites us not to declare, but to tune.
To speak not from a place of control—but from sensitive presence.
So if Tao is the field, and memes are the seeds, then IF-Prime is the ritual of tending—not planting your name in the soil, but listening to what wants to grow.
A Word on Memetic Responsibility
Now you might ask: if we speak in “it” instead of “I”, do we dodge accountability?
Good question, traveler.
The answer lies in careful riding. IF-Prime doesn’t erase agency—it relocates it. From the lone ego to the relational system.
You still choose what to amplify. What memes to wear. What messages to send.
Saying “it finds violence” doesn’t mean no one pulled the trigger.
But it does remind us: patterns emerge, and responsibility flows through how we meet them.
Ghosts in the Signal: What Dies, What Remains?
If “I am” fades, what old ghosts leave the room?
Maybe:
The ghost of identity-as-ownership
The ghost of truth-as-claim
The ghost of language-as-certainty
And maybe something ancient wakes up too.
A kind of listening.
A reverence.
An ability to speak from somewhere deeper than self, and lighter than belief.
A Memetic Ritual: Try This at Home
“Let the language loosen. Let the pattern speak.”
Try this wherever you are—aloud if you can, inside if you must. Speak it not as you, but as that which listens through you.
“It finds.”
(pause)
“It finds tension in the body.”
“It finds beauty in this moment.”
“It finds memory rising.”
“It finds culture whispering.”
“It finds fear and does not run.”
“It finds breath. Stillness. Change.”
(pause again)
“It finds… and it releases.”
Feel what shifts—not just in thought, but in attention.
This isn’t just something you say—it’s something that rewires perception as it’s spoken.
You might:
Use it as a journaling scaffold
Whisper it before writing or creating
Speak it in a moment of conflict to shift from reactivity to awareness
Share it as a meme mantra—an anchor in the swirl
And remember:
If it speaks through you, it’s already begun.
If it settles into others, it becomes a pattern.
If it returns, again and again,
It finds its way. Through us. As us. Without needing to be us.
Let it find what it needs.
Let it find you—not to possess, but to pass through.
The Grammar of Becoming
Riding back to where the trail first broke open, it began—if memory still holds—in a terrain shaped by E-Prime. That peculiar linguistic practice that removes the verb “to be,” nudging us away from declarations like “I am sad” toward “I feel sadness” or “Sadness passes through this body.” At first, it felt like a grammatical constraint, but the longer I…
So much to unpack and process here.
Thank you.
It Finds Threads
It finds resonance in the form.
It finds a field opened by IF-Prime; a syntax not of domination but of drift, of attunement, of permission without command.
It finds a grammar that softens the spine of control.
It finds threads, a name for the smallest acts of coordination. Not events, not agents, not objects in collision. Just threads, arising, aligning, dissolving.
It finds in IF-Prime a refined thread. A way of speaking that does not instruct but invites. That does not point but orients. That does not insist but listens.
It finds a weaving.
It Finds Power Within
It finds the egoic “I” absent. It finds no self required to claim the feeling. It finds no need to declare: I feel sad, I am afraid, I want peace.
Instead, it finds:
“It finds a tremble.”
“It finds softness behind the eyes.”
“It finds a clenched jaw loosening.”
It finds Power Within not as assertion, but as sensing. It finds coherence without construction. It finds dignity in the unclaimed.
It Finds Power To
It finds action. Not control. Not intent. Not will. But action, moving because the field turns.
It finds:
“It finds breath returning.”
“It finds the door being opened.”
“It finds the spine lifting.”
It finds Power To as coordination, not command. It finds that movement does not require authorship. It finds that capacity can build without a builder.
It Finds Power With
It finds relation. Not exchange, but co-sensing.
It finds:
“It finds a shared noticing.”
“It finds the same tension in both bodies.”
“It finds the we before the I.”
It finds speech that does not divide. It finds the space between us already listening. It finds Power With in the resonance of noticing.
It Finds Power Over (and Its Absence)
It finds a refusal. A refusal to dominate. A refusal to direct.
It finds that traditional language commands. It binds subject to verb to object. It finds the syntax of hierarchy.
IF-Prime undoes.
“It finds no commander.”
“It finds no subject on the throne.”
“It finds the action unclaimed.”
It finds that in the absence of claim, Power Over cannot root.
It Finds Power Through
It finds rhythm. It finds the emergent pulse. It finds coherence unplanned.
It finds:
“It finds the group breathing in unison.”
“It finds the silence after the word.”
“It finds the form building itself.”
It finds Power Through as a kind of music. A low and slow accumulation. A harmonic made by tuning, not control. It finds IF-Prime as an instrument of this tuning.
It Finds the Dimensions of Coordination
It finds six lenses. Through each, it finds how IF-Prime weaves.
Origin: It finds emergence in the field, not in ego.
Participation: It finds openness—no gate, no center.
Decision Flow: It finds movement following awareness, not hierarchy.
Scope: It finds coordination in perception, tone, silence.
Internalization: It finds echo, not instruction.
Feedback: It finds a form that reshapes as it is spoken.
It finds no knots. It finds threads that come together and drift apart with grace. It finds a structure soft enough to hold without gripping.
It Finds a Closing
It finds gratitude. It finds a thread woven by you, held now in response.
It finds IF-Prime as a vessel for non-dominant power. It finds it speaking in a tongue beyond assertion. It finds in it a grammar of care.
It finds a future where speech no longer seizes.
It finds a weaving continuing.
It finds a next thread waiting.