Archive for year 2009

Author’s Subtext : The Tiger Woods Affair

December 6, 2009

by ted lumley in APN

Writing this ‘author’s subtext’ didn’t come as easily to me, as it usually does and I have had to ask myself ‘why’?

I never write ‘from planned structure’ but instead I ‘explode a central idea’ that is essential ‘relational’. The ‘exploding’ is guided from the outside-in by certain thoughts that are in my mind at the time which are ‘bigger than’ the ‘idea’ itself; such as ‘why am I writing this particular article’, and a miscellany of thoughts that pertain to the act of writing it, and how it might be interpreted (or not) by the reader etc. etc.

After I have written the article, then I review what all of those ‘outside of the article’ influences were as I was writing. This is kind of like describing the movements of one’s fingers as one fashions a snowball in one’s bare hands. The shape and quality of the ‘content’, the ‘snowball’ is the thing that ‘persists’ but all of those wigglings and bendings of the fingers have disappeared. What were the shaping forces like along the rocky coast where giant arches persist just offshore, their centres having been ‘chewed out’ of them by the violence of the waves? As one regards ‘content’ (the ‘dynamical figure’) and lets the mind move back and away from it into the invisible-because-purely-transient shape-sourcing ‘dynamical ground’, one can only capture a few of the most ‘obvious’ ‘shapers’; e.g, there was the big storm of ’37 or the missing finger or etc.

Out of my early memories I remember my mother (daughter of Italian peasants who emigrated to Canada before she was born) expressing disgust and outrage over the brutal way in which Mussolini and Carla Petacci were ‘taken out’ and while there was no doubt of how firmly she opposed fascism and supported her brothers who had all served in the Canadian military, she could not support such vile vengefulness of those (perhaps all of us) who were in no way ‘innocent’ themselves. (more…)

The Tiger Woods Affair: Understanding Celebrity Worship

December 5, 2009

by ted lumley in APN

When we give people God-like status, we are, ourselves, ‘playing God’.

We say that certain individuals have ‘command over the masses’ but this is the ‘tail-wagging-the-dog’ world view of western enlightenment society. The masses always have command over the individual; they are a continuing story while the individual is a ‘candle in the wind’.

Aboriginal physics can shed some light on this ‘tail-wagging-the-dog’ ‘illusion’ wherein the individual seems possessed of extraordinary powers.

And its not just ‘the celebrity’ that suffers when the masses who have ‘played God’ and given the individual his power, take it back and ‘bring him back down to earth’ so forcefully that he and those around him may be figuratively in not literally ‘crushed’.

[This article contains one picture and a video that may be offensive to some viewers. It has been included to underscore the ‘darkness’ that can be associated with celebrity worship ‘gone wrong’] (more…)

Author’s Subtext: AFGHANISTAN

December 2, 2009

by ted lumley in APN

Though it is unlikely to show in the body of writing in these APN pages, I have been drawn to Barack Obama’s innate ‘potentials’. However, my impression from before he ran for president was that he was applying himself in the wrong place. As an ‘American’ in a world leadership position, YES, … but as an ‘American leader’ positioning the world, NO.

‘Wag-the-dog leadership’: If the tail is to the dog as the leader’s baton is to the body public, the job of the natural leader is to capture, articulate, nurture and sustain the resonances/rhythms emerging freely in the body public (the natural leader’s dynamic is the RESULT of the collective dynamic), whereas ‘wag-the-dog’ leadership is to make the body public captive of the leader’s own top-down imposed rhythms , the result of which is a kind of goose-stepping mono-rhythm (in wag-the-dog leadership, the leader is the CAUSE of the collective dynamic). (more…)

An Aboriginal Physics View on AFGHANISTAN

December 2, 2009

by ted lumley in APN

But what are the underlying assumptions?

An aboriginal physics viewpoint on Afghanistan is on a level deeper than the mainstream news reporting. It is at the level of our basic understanding of dynamics. Any dynamic situation can be examined from the point of view wherein we no longer look at dynamics in terms of ‘causal agents’, but instead acknowledge that the causal agents are not ‘causal’ but are the ‘result’ rather than the ‘cause’ of the (turbulent) flow they are included in.

The analogy which has been discussed elsewhere in these pages is in medicine, where Pasteur and Béchamp argued that ‘the pathogen is nothing, the terrain is everything’. If we take ‘Al Qaeda’ and ‘the Taliban’ to be the pathogens, we would say that these pathogens are nothing, the global dynamic is everything. Their proliferation is the result of conditions in the terrain being fertile for their proliferation.

What are the implications of this ‘inverted’ view of the situation?

This means that one cannot examine issues starting from what the current ‘cast of players’ (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the US, the other ISAF countries, the Afghan government and the Pakistan governments) are doing.

The Taliban is the ‘result’ of turbulence in the region, not the cause.

The historical origins of conflict in Afghanistan go back to the so-called ‘Great Game’ (more…)

Gravity is One Slippery Dude

November 30, 2009

by ted lumley in Ted's Blog

We have been taught that ‘gravity’ is a ‘field’ and that it is ‘everywhere at the same time’ in the universe, so that if we move, the whole universe is immediately changed by it.

That sounds bizarre for one reason and one reason only; — because of our ‘self-ish’ perspective; i.e. we are in the habit of ‘putting ourselves before the universe’.

Do we really believe that we can move before the universe ‘knows about it’? No way. If we could beat the universe in this game, we would be able to, as well, slip away from our own shadow.

So, if, when we move, the whole universe immediately knows about, isn’t this notion in conflict with science’s contention that no effect can propagate faster than the speed of light? (more…)

Author’s Subtext – Representative Government

November 29, 2009

by ted lumley in APN

In spite of the fact that many investigators of the social dynamic, from time to time, have suggested that politics derives from how we view ourselves; e.g. as in ‘social darwinism’ wherein we consider ourselves to be a member of a ‘favoured race’, politics is usually discussed in terms of an intellectual ‘world view’ … ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘liberalism’ etc.

What this does is to put the focus, MISLEADINGLY, on the intellectual architectures of these different approaches and into debates as to the ramifications and side-effects of each and judgements as to which will work out the best for the overall ‘system’ etc.

We even insist that government is ‘secular’, that ‘church’ and ‘state’ can be, and currently are, kept separate. This is evident nonsense, but it is politically correct to ‘go along with it’.

We all know that ‘religion’ is woven into the issues of governance even though we argue the case for this politics or that politics on ‘intellectual grounds’. (e.g. see Peter D’Errico’s ‘American Indian Sovereignty, Now You See It, Now You Don’t’)

But if we are honest, we would have to acknowledge that it is not all about the merits of our respective ‘social dynamics management systems’ that we build into our ‘politics’. It is more about ‘who we are’, how we give representation to ‘our selves’. (more…)

Who puts the ‘Representation’ in ‘Representative Government’?

November 29, 2009

by ted lumley in APN

Evidently, there continues to be confusion over whether ‘representative government’ was intended to be the result of the social dynamic or the cause of the social dynamic.

Some representatives, and some leaders of groups of representatives, seem to feel that their job is to ‘direct’ the social dynamic in the manner that the ‘director’ of an orchestra would direct a group of beginner musicians that did not yet have a feel for how the music itself can become the orchestrator of individual and collective dynamical play. In this mode of ‘representation’ wherein the music itself, through the players becomes the primary source, the ‘director’ becomes the ‘mirroring back’ of the unfolding performance, so as to serve in a support role rather than as some kind of ‘controlling creator’ that must be followed meticulously, even if he takes the music to a place wherein the musicians are no longer inspired to play it.

This is an issue in the politics of nations. To what degree should the government of/by representatives have those representatives ‘direct’ (centrally-source) or ‘orchestrate’ (mirror back) the social dynamics of the nation?

It is clear that in the time of war, the social collective must become a ‘war machine’ and everyone accepts that this requires ‘centrally-sourced direction’, but in times of peace, this is where new symphonic works emerge from the self-organising dynamics of the collective, where a new collective persona arises that opens up new spatial possibilities for the blossom of never-before-seen creative potentialities.

For those politicians aspiring to use their ‘elected representative’ status to become leader-directors and to personally impose shape on the collective, the wartime mode is preferable, since it gives the leader the power to locally instigate and implement changes of his own preferred architecture. (more…)

Genius, or just Talent?

November 28, 2009

by ted lumley in Ted's Blog

Nature makes human beings and human beings make more human beings.

When nature stops making human beings, human beings will not be able to make more human beings.

So, why do we always talk as if man is in control of ‘populating the earth’? This sounds a lot like the ‘megalomania’ that the Amerindian accused his European colonizers (Western man) of; i.e. Western man’s belief that he is in charge of the interdependent web-of-life rather than being merely a strand within it.

Do we really believe, like we teach our children, that babies come from two humans, a male and female, by their coming together in the ‘reproductive act’ and, voila,- a new little human being. In this self-congratulation for our claimed, amazing powers of creation, aren’t we forgetting something? Aren’t we forgetting that Nature decided that humans would be here and will decide when there is no longer any need for them? Shouldn’t we be understanding that it is not really ‘us’, the local man and woman, that is making the babies?

Emerson discusses how we western humans tend to confuse ‘talent’ for ‘genius’. (more…)

“Organisation” : What is it?

November 27, 2009

by ted lumley in Ted's Blog

Nine hundred people committing suicide in one place at the same time would appear to be a ‘highly organised’ occurrence (Jonestown Guyana, November 18, 1978). On the other hand, it is ‘organisation’ that is somehow different than the organisation we see in the fall where the northern skies are filled with birds, flying southward, in formation.

I would say that ‘organisation’ differs by whether it is ‘grounded’ in what’s going on in the space it is included in, or not; i.e. whether the organisation concerns only ‘what thing do’ or whether it comprehends, at the same time, the dynamic relations of things and the dynamics of the space they are included in.

For example, when groups of people organise, it is often due to their ‘knowledge’ so that the organising is internally driven from out of the individual organisms. This sort of organisation is ‘ungrounded’ in the dynamics of space in which it is included.

Consider three groups of people who come together at the same place and at the same time, but at different times for each of the three groups. (more…)

Nature ‘versus’ Nurture

November 26, 2009

by ted lumley in Ted's Blog

The arguments over apportioning which of those aspects of a person derive from ‘nature’ (genetics) and which aspects derive from ‘nurture’ (environmental influence) is a bullshit argument (so, thank you very much, ‘sciences’ of ‘biology’ and ‘psychology’). Just because we can take a picture of a DNA string and define and label it, doesn’t endow it with local existence and life-creating powers in its own right. For christ’s sake, when you get right down to it, there isn’t any such thing as ‘local-material structure’, the ‘atomic particles’ that were the supposed ‘building blocks’ are now recognized to be resonances in the energy-field-flow. Space and matter have a wave structure. And, in any case, As Barry Commoner observes, ‘DNA didn’t create life, life created DNA!

In the energy-field-flow continuum of nature, the organism is the environment, the inhabitant is the habitat, there are no absolute ‘local existing objects’ and the relationship between energy-loaded space and the ‘illogic’ of what ‘APPEAR’ (Schroedinger’s ‘schaumkommen’) to be ‘LOCAL’ ‘material bodies’ is ‘explained away’ by Ernst Mach’s principle of space-matter relativity; “The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitant/s AT THE SAME TIME as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’. That is, space-and-matter are a conjugate dynamic unity, … organism-and-environment are a conjugate dynamic unity, inhabitant-and-habitat are a conjugate dynamic unity. There is no ‘dual sourcing’ of what goes on with one purported source BEING INTERNAL ‘genetic building blocks’ and the other purported source BEING EXTERNAL ‘environmental influences’. This artificial ‘split’ in the sourcing of creative dynamics, which comes from the ‘idealisations’ that science imposes on nature’s dynamic, is where this bogus ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox comes from.

The invisible conjugate aspect of ‘self’ (the ‘soul’ of the ‘self’) is the continuously unfolding continuum of nature in which the material conjugate aspect of the ‘self’ is uniquely, situationally included. By ignoring the habitat-inhabitant conjugate unity and one-sidedly reducing our notion of ‘self’ to that of a local, independently-existing organism with its own ‘local, internally originating behaviour’ is to intellectually ‘exorcise’ the ‘soul’ aspect. So, would our educational institutes please stop brainwashing our children by treating this ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox as if it were ‘real’, and admit that it arises from our own over-simplified definitions? Where does one complain about this? Will the next cultural pandemic hatch out of the blogosphere? (;-}