"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Overview: The following article, ‘Anarchy and Order’ and subsequent discussion was published on the Anarchistnews.org website on July 20, 2010 and includes comments and discussion through to July 27, 2010.  The last comment posted at that time was ‘Makes sense! Thanks’ by Squee on July 25, 2010.

This overview is to provide some contextual perspective (the article and discussion is copied ‘as is’ without edits) of where the author of the article is ‘coming from’ since the reader may otherwise ‘come in’ to the reading employing one or other of the very different definitions of ‘anarchism’ that are ‘out there’ in the mainstream media and/or in the intellectual writers forums.

To the author of the article, ‘anarchism’ may be compared directly with ‘decolonization’, a term used by indigenous peoples of North America (‘Amerindians’).  The ‘decolonization’ movement (e.g. see Taiaiake Alfred’s video presentation at http://vimeo.com/4650972 ) [taiaiake starts speaking at the 10 min. 22 sec. mark]) orients to ‘the resurgence of traditional ways of being’.  It has this in common with the ‘de-westernization’ that is implicit in ‘anarchism’.  That is, the quest is for a way of life that is indicated by the Lakota words ‘Mitakuye oyasin’ (‘we are all related’, not just humans but.everything in Nature).  This way of life is ‘backwards’ from our western urbanized or government organized way of life in that the organization is ‘extrinsically shaped’ by the dynamics of the space we are included in.  For example, if one is in a sailboat in a storm, or driving a small car or motorcycle in the flow of the freeway, the spatial-relational dynamics we are included in extrinsically shape or individual and collective behaviour; i.e. ‘how we are organized’ is orchestrated from the outside-inward.  By contrast, if one is on the Titanic and/or if one is in a semi-trailer or tank in the flow of the freeway, the organization is ‘intrinsic’ (directed from this inside-outward) and is deliberate intention/purpose driven.

In the west, since Aristotlelian ‘telos’ became dominantly popular; i.e. the belief that dynamics in nature are governed by ‘intrinsic final cause’ (e.g. the acorn is directed by its inner ‘purpose’ to become an oak tree), western intellectual/scientific man has conceived of himself as a ‘purposeful system’ (i.e. as having locally originating, internal purpose directed behaviour).  This Aristotelian notion of the organism as a purposeful system has been built into western biology and into Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  The ‘purposeful system’ view of humans and organisms is ‘over-simplied’ in that it ignores the extrinsic shaping influence that we experience in the dynamic space of nature.  Nature, as we experience it in ‘real-life’, is ‘purposeless’ (anarchic); i.e. it is a ceaselessly innovative unfolding field of spatial-relationships in which we are each uniquely situationally included.  In its entirety, there is no ‘encoding of what Nature is going to become, nor is there any ‘local internal purpose’ directing its unfolding (Nature is not one ‘giant acorn’ knowledgeably pushing out of itself on its way to becoming a ‘giant oak tree’).  But western intellectual scientific thinking (the mainstream or popular variety which we build into our institutions::education, governance, justice) has locked-on to the purposeful system model of Aristotle, and imposes it on the individual ‘members’ of the ‘organization’ (the state, corporation, membership club etc.)   The social ramifications are huge.  As McLuhan pointed out, the purposeful system orientation blinds us to what is really going on.  While we purposefully focus on constructing a factory in a small town (where ‘labour’ and ‘materials/resources’, the ‘factors of purposeful production’ are available), it matters little whether this purposeful system makes “Cadillacs or cornflakes”, what matters is how our relationships with one another and with the land are transformed.  It’s not that we shouldn’t have technology, its just whether we should put ‘Mitakuye oyasin’ first as the orchestrator of our behaviours, or whether we should ignore it as is the current western way; i.e. our ‘western ethic’ is to focus purposefully on achieving our self-interested objectives/destinations.  ‘Decolonization’ and ‘anarchism’ are both to do with ‘restoring to its natural primacy, the ethic of Mitakuye oyasin’.  ‘Decolonization’ and ‘anarchism’ implicitly represent the resurgence of natural ways of being, the ‘reconnecting’ in the wake of western ‘disconnecting’.  The traditional ‘connected way’ can still be found in the ‘spandrels’, those spaces which form ‘in between’ the arches and supportive beams of a deliberate and purposeful architecture, but as purposeful structures increasingly ‘take over’, the last of the  spandrels in which the practitioners of Mitakuye oyasin can ‘breathe easy’ are being eliminated.

* * * Start of ‘Anarchy and Order’ Article * * *

_There is much dissatisfaction with so-called (hierarchical) ‘democratic process’ in both central and local governments, however, the knee-jerk reaction is to try to fix what is there without questioning the fundamentals. ‘Anarchy’ does not appear to be a ‘contender’ to many people because they immediately think of ‘disorder’ even though ‘anarchy’ associates with the highly ordered systems in nature (hierarchy is not the source of order in nature; it is something that linear-thinking science imposes). This mistaken impression deserves to be addressed.

Western culture indoctrination teaches one to think in the Aristotelian [telos] terms that order derives from ‘purposive’ behaviour; e.g. your drive and direction is supposed to come from your interior (you picture yourself like a powerboat with locally originating drive and direction rather than as a sailboat whose source of power and steerage is of ‘nonlocal’ origin). If you succumb to the ‘powerboating’ cultural indoctrination, then it makes sense to architect your organizations the same way, installing a central control authority as the centre of purposeful drive and direction. Nature, on the other hand, is ‘purposeless’. ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans’, as John Lennon said, but ‘purposeless dynamics’ are not without ‘order’.

Nature’s ordering ethic lies in the cultivating of spatial-relational balance in the continually unfolding present. As the meteorologist observes, there is no other reason for a hurricane to gather in the flow of the atmosphere but in the service of bringing about balance by transporting thermal energy from thermal-energy-rich equatorial regions to thermal-energy-poor polar regions. In nature we can observe the growth of have and have-not disparity and at the same time we can observe a pervasive ‘Robin-Hood ethic’, the inherent tendency to always restore balance (which always ultimately prevails). We may think of mountains and wave-crests rising and falling (and ditto for ‘personal empires’ and ‘political hierarchies’) but the reality is that ‘rising and falling’ is more realistically understood in the ‘relative’ terms of the action of a stretched/compressed spring as in ‘range and basin’ and ‘crest and trough’ dynamics. The ‘order’ in the system derives from the continual pursuit of balance in which the visible movement of particular ‘local forms’ is secondary; i.e. movement is orchestrated by nonlocal tensional fields, as in earthquakes and avalanches; i.e. movement does not originate locally but is in the service of always restoring spatial-relational balance(as in energy ‘field’ flow). This is not a ‘purposeful ethic’ but it is nature’s ethic and it can be man’s ethic as well, in which case the term ‘anarchy’ or ‘nullarchy’ would be a good fit.

If it ‘turns out’ that a man’s pile of wealth rises up into a mountain, he can let it go to fill in the valleys as is nature’s way. To actually embrace a purpose of building mountains of wealth may be Aristotle’s grand idea of how nature and humans work, but he also brought us the idea that men have more teeth than women and that bodies fall to earth at a speed proportional to their weight (a rock ten times heavier than another, he claimed, would fall at ten times the speed), Aristotelian ideas that got locked in for centuries/millennia thanks to the indoctrination cultures build into education.

More foundational inquiry into ‘order’ and ‘social organization’ can found at http://goodshare.org/wp/gender-and-space-in-the-social-dynamic/

Posted Comments/Discussion

[[Posted Comments (with threading levels) can also be seen at; http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11789 ]]

this is cool and romantic

Submitted by anon on Tue, 2010-07-20 12:10.

this is cool and romantic and all… but wtf this thing is all over the place.

»

so what about eastern

Submitted by anon on Tue, 2010-07-20 12:41.

so what about eastern culture? i see a lot of hierarchy there!

»

First of all… if you’re

Submitted by Squee on Tue, 2010-07-20 14:57.

First of all… if you’re going to talk about Eastern hierarchy, you’re not going to start off with a discussion of Western individualism and artifice. There is not just one way in which the subject forms a knack for this sort of “order”.

Second… I’ve always liked this argument, but overall I think that as anarchists… it has been a losing argument to rely on. Appeals to “natural order” are themselves problematic since human beings and other mammals do rely on a good amount of intentionality. There is an “order” to nature, but I don’t think the idea of “living in accord” with that order is appropriate for a person “an anarchist” that wants to live an intentional life. I am more taken by the idea of respecting the natural order and living in balance with it… trying to mark off some sort of sacred territory in the natural order that is not open to our inconsiderate intentions.

Meh

-Squee

»

Sounds like we need to

Submitted by anon on Tue, 2010-07-20 16:15.

Sounds like we need to advance the idea of natural order to include intentionality. Kauffman’s book “Reinventing the Sacred” explains that idea rather well. From an anarchist’s perspective I think the problem of our age (in these types of terms) is that what the “totality” is. The aspects of the very complex system we are trapped in that turn people’s intentions away from social harmony. So we have the great psychological dilemma, how may we reverse the effects of “totality”.

»

Walter Kauffman? The one who

Submitted by Squee on Wed, 2010-07-21 16:07.

Walter Kauffman? The one who translated and wrote some of the best work on Nietzsche? That Kauffman?

-Squee

»

Stuart Kauffman, the micro

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 10:16.

Stuart Kauffman, the micro biologist.

»

no, i am marine biologist

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 11:44.

no, i am marine biologist for vandelay industries

»

‘Intention’-is-directional;

Submitted by emile on Tue, 2010-07-20 17:59.

‘Intention’-is-directional;

Squee writes;

“… human beings and other mammals do rely on a good amount of intentionality. There is an “order” to nature, but I don’t think the idea of “living in accord” with that order is appropriate for a person “an anarchist” that wants to live an intentional life.”

The point is that ‘intention’ or ‘purpose’ is a just a modeler’s way of understanding the dynamics of organisms when they are seen as ‘local systems’. Its largely because it has been woven into our western way of thinking since Aristotle that we automatically fall back on it. Once we declare an organism to be ‘local’ and ‘independent’ and to move about in an absolute fixed [euclidian] reference space [once we remove the natural ‘relativity’ of motion] we are then forced to ‘equip such a model’ with an internally originating drive mechanism and Aristotle chose ‘purpose’ to fill the bill (Plato argued for extrinsic final cause, ‘abtention’?) but Mach’s principle says that extrinsic and intrinsic influences both work together; “The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat” (wind-and-flag move at the same time).

As Nietzsche observed, ‘intention’ is a human feeling (associated with ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’) that we impose on our simple [Newtonian] scientific model of dynamics, making such science ‘anthropomorphism’. If you are caught up in a tsunami, you can say that you still have ‘intention’ and you can announce your intention to flail your arms and legs and do so to demonstrate that you have ‘intention’ but all the while, you are caught up in a dynamic that is bigger than your intention. That’s the general case. ‘Intention’ is just a directional ‘feeling’. ‘Intention-driven results’ as in an ‘intention-driven life’ are ‘idealization’ that should not be confused for ‘reality’. The surfer may ‘intend’ to ride the breaker to shore, but in so doing his power and steerage derives from the spatial dynamic he is included in. His intention does not produce his actions/results. That’s where the fallacy lies in the notion of a ‘productive hierarchy’ or ‘the purposive system/organization’; i.e. as Plato suggested, ‘extrinsic final cause’ takes precedence rather than ‘intrinsic final cause’ (acorn-to-oak-tree purposeful cause-and-effect is euclidian idealization that is part of our transgenerational western cultural indoctrination; it is over-simplification that we have come to confuse for reality), and it obscures the natural efficacy and order in ‘anarchism’ or ‘peer-to-peer’ networking.

»

I’ll admit right off to bat

Submitted by Squee on Wed, 2010-07-21 15:39.

I’ll admit right off to bat that I am so ignorant of geometry as a formal science that I couldn’t give any dignity to the term “euclidian” if I tried.

That being said, I’m not sure that we are working with the same definition of terms. Nietzsche posed some great arguments for the inversion of cause and effect in the psychology of human beings, also some great arguments against the idea of a free will, and a determined one. But in this case I am not talking about the concept of Will and whether or not it is ‘free’ or ‘determined’. When I use the term “intentionality”, I am using it more akin to existentialists such as Sartre. Which is why I think I didn’t really present my argument appropriately.

You have some interesting notions about what the order of nature is (below) and I have no real disagreements there. The area for my argument is the role human, directional (so be it) intentionality plays in social life… and interaction with life other than human. I doubt the notion that intentionality can be dispensed with in social life. Actually, I doubt that human beings can really ever phenomenally be a part of the natural world as it “really is”. And this is where I find your arguments confusing…

Our cognitive mapping of the universe, nature, etc. isn’t necessarily fated to linear conceptions of “the order of things”… but I’m not sure that such “mapping” will ever be anything more than just that: a map, and not the territory. No matter how exacting and complicated this map is, it is ultimately a image (perhaps a collective one… a big perhaps) of the psyche that in one way or another, we relate to. There is room to play with how much of our subjectivity is determined by “external” or “unconscious” causes, and how it is scientifically possible for the human subject to function individually (though I do reject the notion of “independently”); but, as human beings we have and continue to “plan” our social lives one way or another – intentionally.

The way that I think this process works is that I do not believe that the influence of external or unconscious causes completely dominate the subject. I think that through our abstractions and images (of self, world, universe, nature, whatever), we just as much affect our unconscious states of being and cause effects in the world external to us. One might try to dispense completely with abstractions, images, and this sort of reflective cognition through meditation and other various techniques… but practically, that ability is still there and used for charting personal or social progressions through space and time. Of course space-time is relative, of course there are plenty of realities that we simply don’t (or can’t) consider in this intentional charting. But, existentially: I think we are stuck with that for a good while until some sort of biological changes presumably occur that change our perceptions to the point of making intentionality superfluous.

Here’s an analogy:

The entirety of what I do today may be determined by external/unconscious circumstances or causes. But, today I can still use synthetic reason, abstraction, images (imagination), etc. to dream up some different circumstances or behaviors for next week. I can intend and plan to realize that intended situation as much as possible by next week – but unless I have a damn good handle on the actual way things are… chances are next week that image won’t be realized even near exactly as I imagine it today. But, such a process in general guides my life personally, and our discourse socially guides our lives collectively.

While the role “intentionality” plays in this scenario isn’t immediately significant, in the long run… it is how even an anarchist world can be realized. So I see a conflict inherent in an anarchism that intends to realize an anarchy that is something better than what we have now, without placing a high value on intentionality. To include my doubts that it is even possible for human beings to truly live “in accord” with the way things actually are, that value is granted even more significance for me.

In short, what I am suggesting is that despite the actual order(s) life exhibits without interference from our abstractions and intentions… I can only see us getting anywhere near a harmonious relationship with this actuality through intentional processes.

-Squee

»

squee wrote; “There is

Submitted by emile on Thu, 2010-07-22 05:03.

squee wrote;

“There is room to play with how much of our subjectivity is determined by “external” or “unconscious” causes, and how it is scientifically possible for the human subject to function individually (though I do reject the notion of “independently”); but, as human beings we have and continue to “plan” our social lives one way or another – intentionally.”

I missed your post at the time it was posted as I was looking for new comments at ‘the bottom’ of the interleaved arrangement of posts. I understand your point and I would go back to geometry to explain my point because geometry does play a role in shaping our mental models. For some, it is everything (as Kepler said; ‘God is geometry’). Geometry is ‘a way to play’ with how we mentally model ‘our self’ relative to the world. As McLuhan said, our western culture has demoted ‘acoustic space’ (space, like the gravity field, that is everywhere at the same time) and elevated into an unnatural precedence in our thinking, ‘visual space’ (the space of local visible forms in the flow (reified as ‘objects), ‘their’ actions and interactions).

What does this have to do with ‘intentionality’? My point is that the apparent dilemma between whether form and organization is shaped intrinsically (by local internal drive and direction) or whether form and organization is shaped extrinsically (by nonlocal influence; i.e. the spatial opening of possibility that accommodates receptively here, resistively there).

(for a mental picture of this, if one pumps clear plastic under high pressure into sedimentary strata it forms fingers as it intrudes into the sediments. If one ‘digs up’ the plastic form, it looks like a ‘fountain’ or a ‘tree’. We may be tempted to give all the credit for the form to the ‘pump’ or ‘fountainhead’ but in fact, the differential (receptive-resistive) spatial accommodating (extrinsic shaping influence) was equally influential. Philosophically, there is no way to separate intrinsic from extrinsic shaping influence. This is a direct fall out of ‘field’ being in precedence over material movement as in the thermal field that incites the emergence of convection cells.).

What I am suggesting is that ‘both’ (intrinsic/intention and extrinsic) influence at the same time. In other words, the ‘either/or’ form of this questions arises from using our implicit standard ‘geometry’ for space wherein space is a limitless container that we see/understand as being inhabited by a vast collection of local objects. In this ‘geometry’ space is seen as a ‘non-participant’ and that has become our western cultural default, but it is not our only way of understanding things. The alternative is to see space as an energy-charged medium in which concentrations of energy are continually gathering into forms and re-gathering into new forms. Convection cells are an example. We can always describe them as local systems as we do a hurricane (that which is actually a visual feature in a flow, we treat as a locally existing object/system). If there are multiple hurricanes in a common spatial flow (in this case ‘atmospheric’ flow), as there often are (it is the general case), it is no longer realistic to speak of them purely in terms of ‘what they do’ since the relationship of their dynamics now follows Mach’s principle; “The dynamics of atmospheric flow condition the dynamics of the storm-cells at the same time as the dynamics of the storm-cells are conditioning the dynamics of the atmospheric flow”.

The implication here is “space is not euclidian”, “space is a participant in physical phenomena” (these are both Einstein quotes) and “local visual images” are “appearances” (Schroedinger), inviting us to ‘re-think’ ‘what is real’ and what is ‘apparent’. The hurricane is real enough AS A FEATURE WITHIN THE FLOW but it is a case of ‘choosing that which is not most true but that which is most easy’, simplifying the job of describing the hurricane by way of ‘words/language’ by approximating the hurricane AS A LOCAL SYSTEM WITH ITS OWN LOCALLY ORIGINATING (INTRINSIC) BEHAVIOUR.

We can and do choose either one of these ‘geometries’ for any dynamics in the world whatsoever that we observe/experience, as the selected geometry in our mental modeling of dynamics, but in our western culture, the latter is our automatic ‘default’. Language aids and abets this reduction which extracts the inextricable feature from the flow and treats it as a local system with its own locally originating (intrinsic) behaviour. This ‘geometry/symmetry/topology’ was where McLuhan was coming from (he was an English professor), not from physics.

So, what difference would it make if we were to understand ourselves as features within a common energy-charged medium as if we were contemporaneous storm-cells? When we engaged with one another we would, as you say, reject the notion of ‘independence’ and think in terms such as Amerindians whose cultural tradition in fact opted for the ‘features within the flow view’; i.e. we would think or say something like;

‘mitakuye oyasin’, Lakota words that mean ‘we are all related’ and there is a “oneness and harmony with all forms of life: – other people, animals, birds, insects, trees and plants, and even rocks, rivers, mountains and valleys.” … “You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.” – Wikipedia

It is no accident that physicists delving into the implications of relativity and quantum theory find a replication of what they are currently discovering, in the Amerindian cultural beliefs/understandings (e.g. ‘Blackfoot Physics’ by F. David Peat “What becomes apparent is the amazing resemblance between Indigenous teachings and some of the insights that are emerging from modern science”).

Now, if we ‘give up’ the notion that form and organization is shaped by internal purpose and acknowledge that we are all dependent on one another, this does not mean that we give up on ‘organization’, … we only give up on organizing schemes that are PRIMARILY ‘purposeful’ or ‘intentional’. Before we claim that a ‘purposeless’ social dynamic will collapse into hopeless chaos, we can check out the ‘reviews’ on this, of some highly credible reviewers;

“To Engels, Morgan’s description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois] was important because “it gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state.” Jefferson had also been interested in the Iroquois’ ability to maintain social consensus without a large state apparatus, as had Franklin. Engels described the Iroquoian state in much the same way that American revolutionaries had a century earlier: “Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households — still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal — including the women. “ — Bruce E. Johansen, Forgotten Founders (cited in ‘Anarchy for Saboteurs’ at http://goodshare.org/wp/anarchy-for-saboteurs/ )

The point is, this sort of efficacious anarchical (non-hierarchical) social order did not employ purpose-driven organization or ‘intentionality’ ON A FIRST PRIORITY BASIS. The ‘anarchic technique’ worked as follows;

1. Anchor the collective understanding in ‘Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans’

McLuhan’s point was that all of those that plans that we purposefully try to achieve (making Cadillacs and cornflakes) do not add up to ‘what happens’. What happens is that our activities induce transformation in our relationships and in the spatial dynamics (habitat) that we all share inclusion in. This is consistent with Mach’s principle; “the dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat.

In the Amerindian tradition, a ‘current reading’ on the condition of the habitat is used to anchor the collective understanding and this is achieved by the ‘learning circle’ where the talking stick is passed and every one is invited to ‘speak from the heart’ about the condition of the habitat as they are experiencing it. This is not ‘documented’ and what is said in the circle, the sharing of personal intimate feelings, is to ‘stay’ in the circle’

2. Once all the members of the council are brought onto ‘the same page’ by the ‘learning circle’ and thus understand how their social and habitat dynamics are transforming, only then do the ‘what we must do’ agendas appear.

In this two-pronged approach, the ‘life that happens while we’re busy making other plans’ (the changing spatial circumstances) is the ‘gold standard’ and it is acknowledged that purposeful action cannot have a known-in-advance effect on the dynamics of the living space/habitat. The best assessment of how the conditions of the habitat are transforming is to suspend everyone’s giving their analysis of what’s going on at the council table, but instead reporting on what they are currently feeling/experiencing in their inclusion in the common dynamics space of community/habitat.

In our western culture, we don’t use the ‘gold standard’ of how the dynamics of society/habitat are transforming. We start with our personal assessments of what is ‘going right’ and what is ‘going wrong’ and propose plans to ‘set everything right’, to ‘purposefully construct our desired future’. Everyone pushes to get their view accepted and crony groups are formed that support particular views and corresponding purposeful desired future-constructing plans.

There is a built-in ‘I’m all right, Jack’ stance in the common western (bullshit-) notion that; ““You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”

Whether you agree with anything in this post or not, the evidence is pervasive that the condition of our living space (a) conditions our inhabitant-behaviours, and (b) our purposeful actions transform the conditions of our social and nature space in unintended and unanticipated ways. Thus ‘purposeful action’ (‘intentional action’) is not, and never can be the prime mover and shaper of the world we live in.

So, where you said; “as human beings we have and continue to “plan” our social lives one way or another – intentionally.”, … I would offer that ‘purposeful actions’ that are not understood as ’secondary support’ in the service of cultivating and sustaining harmony in the continually transforming habitat dynamic that we all share inclusion in, are not helpful. Purposeful action, when it is primary, is an approach that leads, logically, to hierarchical organization and to intensification of unintended and unanticipated changes in what is felt and experienced by the little cogs in the purposeful machinery, whose experiences are not given voice at the council table of the ‘big wheels’ who formulate and operationalize purposeful ideas ‘for the good of the community-as-a-whole’. The orientation is to the wrong ‘gold standard’ to ‘intention’ rather than to the transforming ‘actuality’.

When you come right down to it, the problem with intention is captured in a phrase like; ‘my intention is to herd these cats’. The meaning and sense of ‘intention’ has to derive from ‘what actually results’ from the operationalizing of that ‘intention’; i.e. for the cat herder or the man being carried off in the tsunami (by the natural dynamic which is always greater than himself), ‘not a hell of a lot’.

The Amerindian cultural choice (supported by ‘the new physics’) is to assume that the habitat-dynamics are in a natural primacy over the inhabitant-dynamics and that we are stuck with ‘cat-herding’ (intentionally constructing a desired future is a pipe-dream). The western cultural choice is to continue to believe that we can intentionally construct a desired future and to blame ‘inferior people’ for inhibiting our efforts (Ayn Rand’s ’second handers’, the purposeless Amerindians she sees coming at the top of this list). This leads to the growth of an elitist hierarchy who become pawns in the purpose-driven machinery of the hierarchy.

‘Intentional anarchy’ is an oxymoron.

»

Well, I’m not sure where you

Submitted by Squee on Thu, 2010-07-22 05:39.

Well, I’m not sure where you think I’m coming from… but, I profoundly AGREE with what you just wrote. Not only did you answer the questions I asked with a very similar answer to what I would myself give (bracketing intentionality, not adhering to our intentions as if they are anything but magical thinking), but you gave a much more elaborate and sophisticated answer than I could have. I am completely satisfied with what you wrote, and I think a lot of the disagreements I stated arise more from my semantic inadequacies.

The Lakota have been great teachers to me, and I jump at any opportunity to be with them again. “Mitakuye oyasin” is one of the most elegant and beautiful concepts I’ve learned. The rituals I have participated in have opened me up to more in hours than years of Western philosophy. Thank you for bringing them up.

Your points about geometry have not been ignored and I would have to note that though I don’t formally think about geometry in terms like “euclidean” and such, my intuitive sense of geometrical principals has a huge impact on my thinking… as would be assumed by your statements on the affect of geometry on cognition or perception. I agree with your points about the predominance of intentionality as our mode-of-relating inherently leads to hierarchical thinking (how I would word it anyway). I guess my defensiveness of intentionality appears out of proportion to where I actually see its use.

Anyway, glad to have this encounter.

-Squee

»

OMG! Emile and Squee have

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 06:10.

OMG! Emile and Squee have suddenly become retro-primitivists, in other words liberal anthropologists. Don’t give me this shit, don’t abandon Stirner or Foucalt for the mystique of scientific novelty.

»

lol – Foucault’s Care of the

Submitted by Squee on Thu, 2010-07-22 06:24.

lol – Foucault’s Care of the Self and his concepts of Power-Knowledge, Stirner’s Creative Nothingness and Ridding of Spooks don’t conflict with any of this? I actually would have to say overall that what I love about both of those philosophers is that they evaluate intentionality and power in a way that breaks with traditional western evaluations. I think Binswanger’s break with modern, Western psychoanalysis is completely appropriate and in line with many other culture’s way of life… especially Taoist thought or what I understand of Lakota traditions. I’ve always looked at the turns in science and philosophy since the 60’s as finally admitting the faults of traditional Western valuations and as coming into close similitude with some non-Western thinking.

-Squee

»

But I was critical of Emiles

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 09:49.

But I was critical of Emiles acceptance of the Lamarckian fallacy in genetics, his/hers inference that external conditions influenced the selective processes of genetic reproduction. Emile is an emotional and social criple, he/she spouts a psuedo-scientific and ancient Milesian doctrine to vent a belief that verges on heresy to logical or sensual modern realities.
Their was no mention of modern influences on the qualities of consciousness, only a crass data spewed account of how vitamin C prevented pneumonia ( I agree with that from recent events I ate 25 oranges in 1 hr and was cured) but that is different to his/hers extrapolation of such cures to the total theory he/she states that this flux/flow aether permeates and controls an omnipresent web of global proportions. As onr poster above described, this is akin to replacing one constructionalist myth with another.

»

Hey honey, Aristotle said a

Submitted by emile on Thu, 2010-07-22 17:23.

Hey honey, Aristotle said a lot of things. Lamarck said a lot of things. Some things were bullshit, some things were brilliant. Who can help it if the public picks up on the bullshit, people do like to share good stories. Where’s my anti-depressants, … I need to hang in here long enough to get a few more things off my chest, … that you are trying to put there.

Ok, you believe that jeans open up to unleash the intrinsic purposeful ballooning of tiny acorn to woody-oak, and that’s all she wrote as far as evolution goes, apart from random variations on the theme. Fine, lots of people believe in the one-sided intrinsic drive and direction of evolution, a purposive evolution variegated by ‘random chance’ (how about some ‘wings’ coming up on the role of the dice? Several phyla have been lucky enough to roll ‘wings’) and modulated by ‘natural selection’ (what works well gets to hang out and continue to ‘score’).

This is not bad. Or, rather, it beats the six-day creation story, … but not by a hell of a lot (i.e. the story competition was not that great). Popularity-wise, it has done amazingly well, not yet ranking up there with the Ptolemaic earth-centric worldview, nor with Aristotle’s ‘bodies fall to earth at a rate proportional to their weight’ (unchallenged for almost two millennia), since we are only 150 years into Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ and its tautological complement ‘genetics’.

Ok, the purposive model of the ‘gene’ is still holding up, but a few stress cracks are showing up. Stem cells are said to be able to ‘change into’ whatever type of cell is needed in the, um, er, ‘spatial situation’, … if it is ‘the heart place’ the stem cell can become a heart cell, … if it is the ‘liver place’, the stem cell can change into a liver cell. And the cells in the tail of the salamander, without even a mirror to look into, can reproduce exactly that portion of the tail that was lost. These purposive cells have an amazing intrinsic intelligence that allows them to act on their own, … no need for female extrinsic shaping influence, … its all an insider-job, according to the theory that beat out the six day creation theory. ‘Epigenetics’ suggests that the intelligence of the gene/cell is upgraded by the cells working together cooperatively. There is thus no need to do away with the notion of the cells having ‘purposeful minds’, the answer to this amazing awareness of the cell to spatial geometry can be explained in terms of the multiple purposeful minds of the cells ‘working together cooperatively’; the ‘many-minds-are-better-than-one’ theory.

This one-sided (intrinsically driven) ‘genesis’ has had its critics, of course. Stephen Jay Gould did write an entire book on the ‘intrinsic-extrinsic shaping’ issue. Using the metaphor of baseball, he explained why .400 hitters became ‘extinct’; i.e. why the fitness of the species known as ‘batters’ went on the decline. He pointed out that one couldn’t really split the two dynamics of ‘hitting’ and ‘fielding’ apart. The fitness of the species ‘hitter’ wasn’t really all that solid of a concept since bad fielding made mediocre hitters look really good, and good fielding made superlative hitters look really bad. The baseball field is a space that accommodates receptively over here and at this time, and accommodates resistively over there and at that time. It has a lot of ‘dimensionality’ which ‘complexifies’ the phenomenal description/understanding. It is a lot simpler to reduce this ‘dimensionality’ and just measure the relative frequency of ‘hits’ on the part of the hitter (’hitter fitness’ if you like). With the notion of their intrinsic fitness, we can rank the hitters against each other on the basis of their intrinsic powers and develop a whole evolutionary schema for different types of hitters, righties, lefties, long hitters and short hitters etc. The most fit get to hang out and continue to score and the less fit are sent to the minor leagues and may never be heard from again.

What did Einstein say about how theory evolves?

“To use a comparison, we could say that creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles of our adventurous way up.”

Maybe, by and by, the one-sided intrinsic acorn-to-oak-tree evolutionary theory will give way to an intrinsic-extrinsic male-female ‘androgynous’ theory (in keeping with relativity) and we will look back on the one-sided intrinsic genetics as a tiny part of our broad new view, … what you say, big guy?

»

Hey, remember first you are

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 17:52.

Hey, remember first you are beautiful, and second, oh gasp, can you spare some liver and brain cells please? You win, but promise to read Stirner and Foucault, goodbye my hearty.

»

first, in the “politics” and

Submitted by anon on Tue, 2010-07-20 17:11.

first, in the “politics” and in “nichomachean ethics” aristotle unequivocally condemns “artificial forms of wealth getting” including especially retail trade and usury. again, in the politics he is unequivocal about the inability of the rich to govern appropriately. for what it’s worth aristotle’s idea of a complete life involved good moral habits that led into the ability to engage in contemplation. pursuing wealth was considered the paramount sign of a person who did not understand the real purpose in human existence. yes, by all means jettison the ridiculous shit about “civilized” and “barbarians” and natural slaves, and “silence is a woman’s glory.” but it is useful to remind people that all the classical philosophers would have condemned modern capitalism.

agree with the poster above regarding using claims to nature as a basis for ethics. one could easily reconstruct the social darwinist argument that evolution proceeds through increasing variety and complexity within species and that capitalism is the evolutionary height of the human species’ development.

might be more useful to think of the nature of humans as a range of possibilities nearly all of which are cut off by the capitalist totality. passions, creativity, the arts, emotion, friendship, family, playing sports and other games, festivals, spirituality, compassion are nearly all eradicated for average people in the name of production and consumption.

»

The classical philosophers

Submitted by emile on Tue, 2010-07-20 18:45.

The classical philosophers were working with a different set of ingredients. They had ‘gods’ to complete their formulations. Newton also had God to complete his; i.e. in ‘Principia’ he noted that the three-body problem, the inherent harmonies (interconnectedness) in the overall celestial dynamic and the influence that was responsible for the gathering and regathering of systems of multiple things were beyond his mathematical formulations and, he assumed that they could only be by the hand of God. I am not trying to inject ‘religion’ into this post, only ‘complexity’ that is beyond the standard simplified view of dynamics (including social dynamics); a simplified view that the modern western culture has come to confuse for ‘the way it is’.

Society has ‘nonlinear dynamics’ akin to ‘earthquakes’ and ‘avalanches’ where people or groups of people ‘go postal’. Science has no predictive formulas for earthquakes and avalanches because they arise from ‘nonlocal’ influence (spatial-relational stress). The same applies to people. Economic theory is rational, but people aren’t. When the stress of uncertainty reaches a certain level, the global economy undergoes an earthquake where the accumulated stress (potential energy) is relieved by an explosive burst of stress-resolving kinetic energy (activity).

Similarly, revolutions are preceded by sporadic outbursts of unlawful behaviour (symptoms of rising stress) and finally there is an explosive stress-relieving transformation or ‘inversion’ (bottom becomes top). Morality is supposedly infused into the justice system. The trouble is that it is always the citizen that is on trial and never the society, so the law-breaking behaviour is understood as ‘intrinsic’, coming from the interior of the individual, and never ‘extrinsic’, induced by the spatial (social) dynamics he is included in. This ‘problem’ is otherwise known as ‘Goedel’s theorem of incompleteness’; ‘The judge who judges all those who cannot judge themselves, cannot judge himself.’ (Finite) hierarchical systems of logic are exposed to ‘breakdown’ and the justice system is an example.

The order in nature is based on ‘balance-seeking’ while the order in western society is based on hierarchical control. capitalism is what you get when objectivism/egoism (the notion of ‘intrinsic final cause’) rules. Ayn Rand had that right. The problem is, she studied Aristotle and Plato, loved Ari and hated Plato and so she went with the notion of a human as a local, independent, organism with its own locally originating, internal purpose driven behaviour that acts/interacts in absolute fixed space and whose life could be modeled in the Aristotelian acorn-to-oak-tree fashion (no extrinsic shaping/organizing influence).

Capitalism and egoism (Ayn Rand) are artefacts of hidden conventions built into cultural beliefs

»

Finally, an explanation of

Submitted by anon on Tue, 2010-07-20 23:53.

Finally, an explanation of how magnets and gravity work in a non-linear social environment. Thankyou!

»

But this is not ‘new’.

Submitted by emile on Wed, 2010-07-21 04:03.

But this is not ‘new’. Part of the western cultural ‘mind-draw’ is to give human beings a notional exemption from the extrinsic shaping influences of nature, so that we can continue to think of ourselves as little powerboats equipped with our own intrinsic power (biochemical) and direction (narcissist ego-purpose) ‘putt-putting’ around in absolute space (no over-riding thingless-connectedness as in ‘field’ dynamics for us human, no sir!). It is the same kind of notional exemption that we give to ‘sovereign states’ when we Declare them to be Independent. Historians of law (D’Errico et al) refer to this as a ‘secularized theological concept’. First we draw some imaginary lines on a map and declare what’s inside them to be a ‘real object’ which we notionally equip with ‘real powers’ and ‘real purpose’ [centralized hierarchical control authority].

Whether it’s the United States or whether its ‘The Kingdom of Ralph’, the recipe is the same. This ‘reality’ is not ‘physical/natural’; it is based on nothing other than ‘common belief’ (insane beliefs spawn effects that are every bit as real as realistic beliefs). The incentive to sustain belief in this self-declared-as-local-independent-intrinsically-powered-and-directed ‘organism’ is achieved by giving everyone a piece of the real-estate action in exchange for their swearing to bear arms and give their lives to sustain that common belief, and to use the force of arms to ‘make believers’ out of others (e.g. the Amerindians) who rightfully call ‘bullshit!’. This is just the ‘group form’ of the secularized theological concept known as ‘ego’, which can be ‘overcome’. As John Lennon wrote: ‘Imagine there’s no countries, … it’s easy if you try’.

In the ‘new physics’, ‘field’ rules. ‘Field’ is a nonlocal (spatial-relational) form-and-organization-shaping influence. In the western culture, we cling to a view of ourselves as absolute local objects with absolute motion driven and directed from our absolute interiors (thanks to the conventions of absolute space and absolute time). This is bullshit (idealization that only works thanks to ‘common belief’), based on the most simplistic ‘geometry of space and time’ conventions, but try insulting the group ego by burning someone’s flag to test the strength of their ‘secularized theological belief’ in the ‘local independent existence’ of an imaginary-line bounded piece of real estate that they ‘own’ and ‘have the right’ (issued by their self-appointed ‘supreme’ authority of their ‘independent state’) to exploit as they please.

You, we, anyone can continue to issue notional exemptions to ‘organisms’ including humans and groups of humans (notably groups that organize themselves intrinsically using hierarchical controls) so that they can ‘self-declare their independence’ and no longer see themselves as subject to the form and organisation-shaping of extrinsic ‘field’, and that is certainly the majority view in our simple-science-minded western culture, but the majority has no monopoly on the truth/reality. Attraction and repulsion are ‘simplifications’ of ‘force’ which reduce the nonlocal extrinsic/intrinsic influence of ‘field’ to ‘local intrinsic force’ but as physics acknowledges, this only works for two bodies at a time (e.g.’positive’ and ‘negative’, ‘self’ and ‘other’). This ‘self-and-other’ western worldview associates with the emotional feeling of ‘intention’ (what the acorn feels as he pushes everything else aside to become a self-made oak-tree [or self-made man]).

Lamarck’s views were rejected because he believed that evolution derived from the extrinsic shaping influences (on form and organization) of ‘field’ or ‘les fluides incontenables’ (fluids that contain but which cannot themselves be contained) such as gravity, thermal fields, electric and magnetic fields). The acceptance and use of ‘epigenetics’ is currently stirring a ‘revival’ of Lamarck’s basic ideas which, unlike Darwinism, resisted giving organisms/humans a notional ‘exemption’ from extrinsic form and organization shaping influence as pervade nature.

»

i enjoy what you are

Submitted by anon on Wed, 2010-07-21 11:53.

i enjoy what you are writing. i think there is something to it. but you seem to think that saying something about physics or “nature” necessarily means that you are also saying something conclusive about society, economics, and politics. i don’t think so.

getting people to think of themselves as (entirely?) non-intentional beings who are determined points within fluxes/flows constituting certain fields is a political action. the truth of the statement in the political field (pun intended) will matter to the extent that it alters outcomes. in other words you will be substituting one political myth for another. the issue is the myth’s effectiveness and its tendency to move people in a direction of support for a generally existing set of conditions (private ownership of means of production, electoral rituals, corporate dominated media, etc. etc.) or opposition to those conditions.

i do recognize that there are larger structural currents that will affect (not determine) outcomes. there are conditions when oppositional, revolutionary politics will be more likely to succeed. but those conditions do not determine the decision of one actor or another to organize a rebel army or run a guerilla radio station.

as for aristotle and ayn rand, i still think its worth noting important differences. ayn rand is a sort of lunatic wannabe capitalist heroine. its true tat she might share with aristotle a basic belief in a static, objective, basic order of reality. but on the important issue of private wealth accumulation they are entirely different for intersting reasons aside from general cosmological views. not recognizing that misses so much as to turn aristotle, a really exceptional philosopher, into a strawman. and, worse, to put rand on the same level as him.

»

That’s very true about the

Submitted by anon on Wed, 2010-07-21 13:32.

That’s very true about the random nature of Emile’s ‘flux/flow’ field, which he thinks is a static universal constant. I forget the name of the French 19th century philosopher who introduced the non-linear theory of ’scientific paradigm shift’, what I would call ‘the point of reverse polarity’, the successive spiralling of ideologically formed systems through the positive and negative fields of the environment, the social rotor of variable potentiality spinning in the bipolar field. And then suddenly the field is given reverse polarity, you see the similarities in the political/social environment at the time of revolution.
As for Lamarck, his postulations momentarily co-related with data from the genetics field in their data, nothing more than a random coincidence, like a road accident fatality, nothing to do with a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, but due to an exploited worker being too poor to get the brakes repaired on his heap of shit motorcar.

»

Thanks for the opportunity

Submitted by emile on Wed, 2010-07-21 17:52.

Thanks for the opportunity to engage.

I am not trying to start a political movement, I am trying to dispel some myths that have been hidden in our western cultural indoctrination that are screwing us up.

Re nature/physics and ‘socio-economic dynamics’. It seems to me that we have taken our ‘understanding of how things work’ from nature; i.e. we analyze things, take them apart, try to understand what each part does and how everything works with everything else (how the whole thing works). The industrial age grew out of our analytical skill (as embodied in science and technology) and the notion of putting machines into ‘the system’ together with (hybridized with) people. Analytical thinking and its embodiments within our social dynamic have transformed our social and economic dynamics. The principles of mechanics where ‘this acts on that to produce this result’ were given a boost by science; i.e. by Newton’s laws.

Newton’s laws are very simple. They allow us to think of a ‘system’ as a ‘local system’ whose behaviour is locally originating; i.e. what things do is seen to derive from a combination of local externally applied forces and internally (in the local system) originating forces. This allows us to explain pretty much anything and everything that moves in this particular sense (of a local system with or without locally originating behaviour). This is where the problem with ‘intention’ or ‘purpose’ arises.

And Nietzsche pointed out that notion of ‘intention’ stands or falls with the notion of ‘cause’.

““Attraction” and “repulsion” in a purely mechanistic sense are complete fictions: a word. We cannot think of an attraction divorced from an ‘intention.’ — The will to take possession of a thing or defend oneself against it and repel it—that, we “understand”: that would be an interpretation of which we could make use. In short: the psychological necessity for a belief in causality lies in the inconceivability of an event divorced from intent; by which naturally nothing is said concerning truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief)! The belief in ‘causae’ falls with the belief in ‘télè’ (against Spinoza and his causalism).” – Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’

The charge laid by Nietzsche was laid against western science, saying that it was ‘anthropomorphism’ (we are infusing our own emotional definitions into science; maybe this answers the question of why we should associate physics with social dynamics). The problem with ‘intention’ (its ‘intrinsic final cause implication) crops up in a lot of places e.g;

Is streptococcus pneumoniae really a pathogen that ‘causes’ death by pneumonia? Albert Szent-Györgyi got a Nobel prize for showing that while streptoccus pneumoniae was in his body in hordes and holding the smoking gun (he nearly died), his pneumonia was caused by vitamin C deficiency (which provides fertile conditions for the proliferation of over 100 possible pneumonia-causing bacteria and viruses). Streptococcus pneumoniae finds vitamin C deficient ground very good grazing; i.e. they have a cow like innocence and no intention. Western medicine nevertheless still calls them ‘pathogens’ (illness-causing agents). Pasteur, on his deathbed, conceded that Antoine Béchamp had been correct; ‘le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout’ (the microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything).

So, we are back to this problem with our western culture’s addiction to interpreting all dynamics in terms of ‘intrinsic cause’ and ignoring extrinsic cause (how the dynamics of the habitat conditions the dynamics of the inhabitants).

McLuhan pointed this out in ‘Understanding Media’ (‘the medium is the message’; i.e. ‘le terrain est tout’).

“In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs.” – Marshall McLuhan

We sowed this notion of ‘intention’ (intrinsic final cause), coming to us from ‘social dynamics’, into science in the first place, so we are reaping what we have sown.

We don’t get ‘really’ what we ‘intend’ because the world doesn’t work that way (’we’ as a collective transform the common space we are included in, in an ‘unintended’ way). As Mach’s principle says, the extrinsic and intrinsic are one dynamic; “The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants condition the dynamics of the habitat’. or ‘the medium is the message’ (the dynamics of the content is not the message.).

Community initiatives today, that seek to get out from under hierarchical control where everyone feels like a ‘pawn’ of central government, are moving away from the term ‘intentional community’ towards ‘resilient community’. Nature unfolds purposelessly (without intention) but it does manifest resilience. The man who gets put in prison is not living an ‘intentional life’ but he may write a great novel and/or learn a new trade (if he is ‘resilient’).

With respect to Aristotle, the man; … my view has the same geometry as Pasteur’s and McLuhan’s, ‘le terrain est tout’. Aristotle’s brilliance is not questioned, some ideas proliferated more than others because the ground was fertile for them. Intention or ‘intrinsic final cause’ associates with ego. The ice cream vendor will claim responsibility for the big peak in his sales, even if it correlates with a stretch of unbearably hot weather. Was his production ‘intrinsically driven’ or ‘extrinsically induced’? Does Aristotle’s acorn give credit to the habitat for blossoming out into an oak tree? No, the acorn caused the oak tree and more than that, it ‘intended to cause’ the oak tree. The ‘driving purpose’ is understood as being inside the acorn. If a western child is given a science lab where he plants an acorn, he will sit there each day and watch the acorn push its new parts up and out of itself in its self-purpose-driven genesis/development. If an Amerindian child was watching it, he would be doing sun dances and rain dances so that the sky could nurture his acorn and pull it up and out into a strong and healthy oak tree.

Ayn Rand, to me, is like an ‘idiot savant’ who takes one simple principle (‘intention’ as in ‘internal purpose’) to its ultimate extreme, the one-sided inflation of the ego and to hell with the ‘medium’ (natural/social habitat) that she lives in (the ‘second handers’ will get ‘her’ trickle downs, but she hopes, not enough to survive.).

* * *

»

Oh of course Emile, now that

Submitted by anon on Wed, 2010-07-21 18:36.

Oh of course Emile, now that you have admitted to being a member of the physiological dobe dobe non-doctrinal fellowship, welcome, and let’s have the external spiraling social rotor of potentialities interact with our intrinsic cellular diversities.
Gunter

»

Emile, I think that a

Submitted by anon on Wed, 2010-07-21 19:16.

Emile, I think that a reading of Stirner and Foucault will fine tune your theoretical range to include the consciousness as a variable essential ingredient within the social machine.

»

But Western philosophy HAS

Submitted by Squee on Wed, 2010-07-21 15:52.

But Western philosophy HAS dispensed with this notion of the ego, of the subject/object and mind/body dichotomies, with may of the things that you are pointing out as problematic. This happened in the 60’s and since (existential phenomenology, post-structuralism, and whatever is out there now – a lot of good stuff). So I’m not sure if you haven’t explored this region of philosophy… or if you don’t recognize a difference between these older Western notions of intentionality, and these other notions of intentionality that I accept as more sound?

-Squee

»

I am not writing about the

Submitted by emile on Wed, 2010-07-21 18:05.

I am not writing about the history of philosophy. I am writing about how certain (over-simplified) ideas/understandings (e.g. hidden conventions of space, time, matter and force) have been woven into our western cultural beliefs and have become part of our continuing transgenerational cultural indoctrination. If I were assessing philosophy and philosophers, my view is that we should have stopped with Heraclitus (maybe let Socrates in there).

»

I was thinking hard Emile

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 02:06.

I was thinking hard Emile about how to explain ‘paradigm shift’ to you, and then I realised, via the cultural evolution of music, the universal language. I tired earlier on the repetitive yet alluring melodies of medieval guitar, I found the 12 bar blues a modern flowing relevent tendency, it expresses the consciousness of the era. When playing classical it returns one into the mindset of that particular era, often sooo structured, so imprisoned within the eras unenlightened feudal perception of hierarchical duty and pompous royal artifices, its sentimental fake ruthlessness hiding behind a masquerade of gracefulness, hiding when it would have been more noble to just declare war and have it on, in the Spartan or Viking manner. Its hypocrisy means it doesn’t flow, passion has been shackled, in that era one must have to have been either a privileged royal or an enslaved peasant weakling! No wonder the Vikings plundered their corrupt perverse hierarchical kingdoms!
And so, these ancient cultures, with all their logic and science fell to the rampaging variable social potentiality that emerges out of chaos, not rationality.

»

Fair enough. So with the

Submitted by Squee on Thu, 2010-07-22 03:44.

Fair enough.

So with the elimination of ’cause’ and ‘intentionality’ – with a cosmology or what-have-you attuned to these notions of fields, flux, etc. – what manner of being-in-the-world do you think is appropriate? Are you only enumerating the anthropomorphic fallacies of Western world-views, or are you suggesting also a specific transvaluation of these values? Or no values at all? Or what?

What are the implications of your writing for my existence, in other words? The resignation of synthetic reason or analysis to a being-in-the-now, a being that doesn’t project images into the future in an attempt to survive, one that rejects the illusions of psychological space-time because of its truth-value and not its use-value? Or just better images, a change in the media of our socio-cultural imaginary instead of the medium?

-Squee

»

POST-ANARCHISM! : )

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 08:04.

POST-ANARCHISM! : )

»

I almost feel silly jumping

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 09:23.

I almost feel silly jumping into the middle of this already happening and lively discussion, but in any case I feel I need to make some comments/ask questions.

First off I just want to say that I’m very glad to have stumbled upon this discussion. It adds nicely to my ongoing study of modern and non-modern societies.

Now, I’m aware that many people use the term “modernity” to describe completely different things. I’m using (the severely misunderstood historian) Leo Strauss’ definition of the term, referring to the ‘revolutionary’ break with classical philosophy that was first initiated by Machiavelli and then refined by Hobbes, Locke and the like, roughly correlating with the “enlightenment.”
The fundamental essence of this break was the suggestion that in freely and open-mindedly asking questions about the the nature of virtue itself, and thus of what the best order for humanity is, classic philosophy “aimed too high” and ended up wasting time and energy blabbing on about Utopian fantasies that were too difficult to try to effectively achieve. A very careful reading of Plato and kin reveals that the classics knew that ultimately the order of society was in many ways up to chance, people’s sensibilities could be cultivated and honed, precautions taken, but “fate” would decide how things turned out, sometimes more favorably (from the standpoint of hopes or intentions) and sometimes less. In any case the trick was to recognize ultimate perfection as an unreachable but worthy goal, a constant orientation rather than a destination that could actually be arrived at. According to the new, modern, revolutionary philosophers, the sensible thing to do was, rather, to “lower ones sights” to that goal which was eminently achievable. Real, substantial progress in human society could only be made if philosophers stopped dreaming and set about perfecting concrete institutions that would be held to the standard of only those ‘virtues’ which were easy to cultivate, or rather were thought to be natural and inherent. The question of “what” was replaced by “how.” At that time and place they thought that greed was the highest natural morality to which social order could reasonably orient itself, but ultimately this disregard for the importance of which virtue was to by held high introduced a radical relativism that denies the superiority of any one “virtue” over any other. In this way it was thought that “fate” or “nature” could be conquered completely, humans could successfully realize their plans to exacting standards without bowing to chance. The scientific process became the guiding tool used to try to understand and predetermine human destiny. This denial of the importance of any particular virtue released people to commit unspeakable horrors in the name of ordering society scientifically, in pursuit of the perfect actualization of a far-from-perfect goal.
We have seen this delusion play out to ruinous ends in the past few centuries.
Perhaps this spreading of the form of the natural sciences to social issues, creating the “social sciences,” relates to the issues discussed above in the original and subsequent comments? In as much as prevailing notions of physics and spatial geometry were (perhaps somewhat unconsciously?) applied to the designing of social systems those things have in fact come to influence social realities.
Of course as Strauss points out, modernity came in waves, each of which set out to destroy and replace the earlier, but which in fact actually radicalized and obscured the original suppositions of modernity. The second and third waves of modernity were initiated by Rousseau and Nietzsche respectively. Of course both offered real and valuable insights into the deficiencies of the earlier waves of modernity, and into other things in general. That is to say, they do have much to contribute.
However, Rousseau’s critique and proposed solutions, outraged by the fist wave’s cold denial of real virtue and passionately concerned with justice as they were, hinged on identifying that which was good (or virtuous) as that which was obtainable by all. Essentially, his theories, democratic through and through, suggested that if large numbers of people agreed on something, and if that thing was obtainable by large numbers of people, then it was good. But in practice this equates to just more relativism, as large numbers of people can relatively freely agree on and/or obtain many common things, horrible/atrocious/ non-sustainable things included.
Ultimately the rise of Marxist, communist ideology was one result of the interplay between the first and second waves of modernity. Scientific, materialist dialectics is as much a result of modernity as is any capitalist or liberal ideology.

What was utterly fascinating to me was to find that several notable indigenous authors agreed heartily with this particular theory, espoused by some stuffy, personally somewhat conservative 1940’s era German historian dude.

Russel Means, Vine Deloria Jr., Frank Black Elk and Ward Churchill, in the book “Marxism and Native Americans” all made arguments against standard Marxist (Leninist) revolutionary aspirations for various reasons that related to the fact that Marxist communism is a part of modernity (and more specifically, industrial civilization) no less so than capitalism. An more concise, summary article by Ward Churchill on this very topic can be found here: http://cwis.org/fwj/22/falsep.htm

So then I’m reading through the above post and see many of what may prove to be the exact same points brought up, references to Lakota world-views included. Imagine my surprise and interest!

At this point I want to hazard a guess that as various strains of anarchism develop clearer and more biting critiques of Marxism and classic Marxist influence (and thus, if only unconsciously, modernity) it absolutely makes sense that they would would lean towards one or another insurrectionist interpretation of what appropriate revolutionary action looks like. As I’ve come to understand it, insurrectionary politics have in fact developed something of a critique of the centralized/intention-as-primary model for social change that was more prevalent amongst the “red” anarchist(-communists). If this is true, than insurrectionist tendencies couldn’t help but be benefited by the analysis offered in the original post.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that a group formed in Portland Oregon, largely inspired by Ward Churchill’s arguments in this regard, focusing on Decolonization and solidarity with indigenous communities, was largely made up of insurrectionist anarchists… Does it seem like I’m drawing too many connections where perhaps none exist?

As for a very specific question, I just want to make sure I understand Emile’s stance.
For example, with the person caught in a storm metaphor, you wouldn’t suggest that the appropriate response is to give up all intention, would you? That is, while intention plays very little into this situation, there’s no reason not to do simple intentional things like cover your head and attempt to avoid obviously dangerous objects being tossed around. And furthermore that a will to live will give you at least slightly increased chances at survival. Right?

»

I don’t think you would be

Submitted by Squee on Thu, 2010-07-22 09:41.

I don’t think you would be pushing the buttons of any Insurrectionary Anarchists to note the connections they have been making with indigenous people – not just in Portland, OR, USA. I know that in Phoenix, what may be called Insurrectionary Anarchists are making close ties to the Indigenous groups effected by the border issues. I think that in Greece, this is also happening a lot with IAs. But, I’m not familiar enough with the literature to make any certain claim.

Ummm – as far as the definition of modernity you are using and anarchists who have been attempting to make theoretical and practical breaks with modernity, you can find some good literature from the emerging “school” of post-anarchism. I don’t know how much of a stretch there is between post-anarchist works and the recent insurrectionary anarchist tendency… but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a small gap.

Then there’s David Graeber and his work from anthropological studies or anarcho-primitivists or post-civilization anarchism… which for the most part I am not well versed in at all.

*shrugs*

-Squee

»

As a pragmatically

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 19:59.

As a pragmatically anti-civilization (somewhat post-)anarchist and fan of most of David Graeber’s ideas/research, I will not hesitate to say that the connections do indeed abound.
I think it would also be fun to look more closely still at the connections between the issue that Emile brings up and the insurrectionist attitude. How much have insurrectionist theories already primed people for these specific analyses, or conversely have they gotten people sort of close but still missed the mark?
cheers!
Oh yeah I forgot to put my name above
-Al

»

And a nice rant Al, thanks.

Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-07-23 05:30.

And a nice rant Al, thanks.

»

‘intention’ only exists when

Submitted by emile on Thu, 2010-07-22 11:12.

‘intention’ only exists when we portray dynamics as being intrinsically shaped; i.e.

anon wrote;

“As for a very specific question, I just want to make sure I understand Emile’s stance.
For example, with the person caught in a storm metaphor, you wouldn’t suggest that the appropriate response is to give up all intention, would you? That is, while intention plays very little into this situation, there’s no reason not to do simple intentional things like cover your head and attempt to avoid obviously dangerous objects being tossed around. And furthermore that a will to live will give you at least slightly increased chances at survival. Right?”

The metaphor of the storm, I use to try to bring out the ‘extrinsic shaping influence’ on human behaviour which orchestrates both individual and collective behaviours. When the ‘habitat-dynamic’ gets stirred up, it tends to orchestrate our individual and collective behaviour. To then inquire into the makeup of the individual, so as to impute to his internal capacities what might explain his movements, is to bypass the possibility that the spatial-dynamic (habitat-dynamic) is in a natural precedence over his local object dynamic (inhabitant dynamic), the situation as emerges from ‘the new physics’ for example, and which has been implied by Lamarck (there is only one physics for all things [‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’] and by Emerson (‘The Method of Nature’) who derives from our ordinary observations and experiences that forms that appear to have a persisting identity (e.g. ‘cataracts’) are ‘made of spatial-relational motion’ and thus that what we call the organism is not only inhabited by ‘the flow’ is created by ‘the flow’ (the ‘cell’ as a ‘convection cell story’).

Modern biologists, experimenting with the evolution of multi-species microbial communities (e.g. Douglas E. Caldwell et al) suggest that natural selection (based on one-sided intrinsic evolutionary drive and direction)is too small a view and that evolution derives from ‘bidirectional innovation’. The mutually supportive not-yet-species are drawn together by the spatial dynamic (community dynamic and environment dynamic in which the constituents inclusionally nest) so that the constituents of the community (the ‘constituents’ whose organization we describe in terms of ‘genetics’; i.e. intrinsic shaping influence) are induced in form and organization by the extrinsic dynamics of the community that, in its turn, nests inclusionally within the spatial flow. This inclusional nesting is ‘figurative’ to navigate the layers of words we have imposed on the spatial continuum we are included in.

If we can suspend our ‘default’ presumption that we can get to an understanding of social dynamics by the route which takes us through the internal drive and direction of the individual, then the alternative suggestion emerges that ‘resonances’ in the spatial dynamic (habitat-dynamic) are the extrinsic source of form and organization that emerges and develops within the flow (e.g. as suggested by the ‘one mind’ of Schroedinger).

Explaining one’s behaviour in the terms that it is shaped ‘extrinsically’ by the spatial dynamics one is included in seems like ‘mindless’ behaviour on the part of the individual. Another metaphor that helps ‘fill in the details’ is the wildgeese in ‘V’ formation which can also be experienced on a motorcycle when riding within a group of motorcycles or mixture of vehicles. With every individual there is an associated ‘turbulence envelope’ and these turbulence envelopes ‘interfere’ either constructively or destructively. One is naturally drawn to the co-evolved ‘sweet spots in the slipstream’ wherein destructive interference greatly attenuates the turbulence and allows those inside the slipstream to ‘go faster and farther for less expenditure of effort’. This says that the habitat-dynamic CAN be the extrinsic shaper of the form and organization of the ‘biker group’ or wildgeese flock. There is no reason not to assume that this situation is anything other than general. The reason why we do not normally consider it, and consider only the movement of the individual is because the moving individual is VISIBLE and LOCAL while the turbulence in the flow-medium is INVISIBLE and NONLOCAL

In this biker example, we CAN move (rather, let ourselves move under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence) so as to cultivate and sustain being in a sweet spot in the turbulent slipstream. That is, our movements can be orchestrated by the spatial dynamics we are included in. We COULD call this an ‘intention’ (to cultivate and sustain balance and harmony with the spatial dynamic we are each uniquely situationally included in) and we would always be able to express this, in unfeeling voyeur observer mode, in terms of the local internally originating drive and direction of the individual WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO MENTION THE ACTUAL PRIMACY OF THE EXTRINSIC BEHAVIOUR SHAPING INFLUENCE. i.e. we can feel it but the outside voyeur observer cannot see it, he can only see our movements.

‘Bikers’, from my experience, are very ‘independent’ people in the sense that they do not ‘take orders’ compliantly (apart from Hell’s Angels wannabees), not from other human beings. But they do give themselves up, like the wildgeese, and allow their movements to be orchestrated by the spatial dynamics they are included in, … and when cruising through the hills and mountains, relativity makes it ambiguous as to whether one’s behaviour is being orchestrated by the changing landscape or whether one is deliberately pushing one’s way through the mountains. Hills and mountains are not obstacles to a biker, they are a delight and a pleasure. To the seasoned sailor, the storm can be the same (an ‘into the wild’ experience).

So, where you say; “while intention plays very little into this situation, there’s no reason not to do simple intentional things like cover your head and attempt to avoid obviously dangerous objects being tossed around. And furthermore that a will to live will give you at least slightly increased chances at survival. Right?”

… my answer is that you are capturing the dynamic in a particular way; i.e. this is the ‘intrinsic shaping influence’ portrayal of the dynamic, but there is no reason why we cannot (and many reasons why we should) portray this dynamic in terms of ‘extrinsic shaping influence’ wherein the spatial dynamic (habitat-dynamic) is orchestrating the local object dynamic (inhabitant-dynamic). This way of understanding the dynamic, taken across all of the inclusionally nested levels of dynamics (environment, community, organism, organs, cells, molecules, atoms), recalls Emerson’s understanding wherein, the spatial dynamic (flow of nature) not only inhabits the organism, it creates it) and gets us back to Lamarck’s ‘one physics’. Since we tend to revert to this mode ‘in a storm’ when we are shaken out of our civilized protective shell, we might call this our ‘pre-intellectual’ ‘evolutional mode’ of behaviour.

One might conclude that western humans are reluctant to remain in ‘evolutional mode’ since while we ‘can’ let our behaviour and organization be extrinsically shaped by the spatial dynamics we are included in, we most often ‘choose’ not to and attempt to drive our behaviour ‘intrinsically’ from some kind of knowledge or idea/concept that we have acquired [look out, that’s not a ‘real’ choice because we’re included in the unfolding spatial dynamic whatever we ‘choose’]

The British stiff-upper-lip bicyclist, back and shoulders erect, cruising down the coastal road at the customary time and by the customary route, will not deviate from the rules and cross into another lane without signalling even as the tsunami surges towards, and engulfs him. We say this is ‘his choice’ but the choice is simply to live in his own self-constructed reality in which his intrinsic drive and direction (aka his ‘intention’) ‘rules’. His ‘intention’ certainly doesn’t ‘rule’ in the ‘real/natural world’; he is continually dancing to nature’s tune while blithely smiling and claiming that it is by his own ‘intention’ that he does so.

»

Just wear a helmet 24/7,

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 11:56.

Just wear a helmet 24/7, then you don’t have to ponder the inevitable

»

we ARE wearing it; it is

Submitted by emile on Thu, 2010-07-22 14:28.

we ARE wearing it; it is called ‘intentional community’ aka ‘western civilization’

»

Too late Emile, I have scars

Submitted by anon on Thu, 2010-07-22 19:25.

Too late Emile, I have scars all over my head from authoritarian batons, but that is the price of true individual freedom!
GTH

»

Have you ever read a book

Submitted by Squee on Fri, 2010-07-23 02:38.

Have you ever read a book called “The User Illusion” by a guy with the last name Noretrander (sp)? He uses information theory, mirror neurons, quantum physics, and etc. to cover a lot of the ground you are writing. In it he gets really into entropy in information, consciousness, and physics to explain the illusion of the intentional subject. But, also concludes that the relatively minuscule information processing of consciousness (to the brain) is a noise-to-signal phenomenon and that the real power of the conscious mind is it’s ability to “veto” impulses, desires, and what-have-you. It’s very good…

Anyay, there is also a recent Ted.com talk about mirror neurons and their Lemarkian implications. I would suggest watching it for the arguments sake n
-Squee

»

Also, most of what I think

Submitted by Squee on Fri, 2010-07-23 03:29.

Also, most of what I think is useful in the concept of “intention” comes from addiction psychology, hypnotherapy, sigil magic, and semiotics. I really think I may be talking more about the powers of mental images to influence the unconscious and shape human evolution than I am talking about the “internal cause” or the personalization of the imaginary’s dynamics in human life. Dawkins’ meme theory is also interesting to me here; along with the gene altering effects of neuropeptides and such that suggests not only natural selection, but even sex economy (Freud, Reich, Darwin) is not everything when it comes to human evolution.

Then there is personality and charachter developmental theories which could go a long way to explain the illusion of a intentional subject. But, I must still say that even if it is an illusion, it has it’s practical merits ias a concept for psychotherapy and daily life. Empathy is important to understanding art (often used to suggest an intentional subject at work), but many artists aren’t creating their works through intentional processes. They are in the pre-reflective mode when art is happening. Regardless, if because of our Pronoun use in language as a nominal, subject-creating force alone, the Subject still exists and is phenomenologically significant to our existence, at least us Westerners. Therefore, it is necessary to work with what is and address the Subject as a subject (individualized consciousness, personality, identity, with “intentions”)… not for the sake of truth, but for the sake of getting from “here” (impotent self-images subjugated to other self-images in this state-capitalist, individualist, spectacular society) to “there” (anarchy).

The subject doesn’t initiate it’s own development, but does bend back on itself through categorized knowledge and self-care in “maturity” to influence it’s development. It is this reflective mode of being we identify with as subjects and are working our way through. So until we can collectively exist-together without the exhausting over-mediation of the “intentional subject”, I think it is safe to say we will continue to need “intention” as a tool in order to resist. The thing that makes an “intentional community” intentional is that above-all in our society, there isn’t much “community” at all until we come together through a shared vision of something different. This doesn’t apply to communities that have resisted because they are not mediated and completely atomized by civilization and thus, are first a community, second one in resistance. For us, we are “consumers” first and maybe a community mediated by commodities second, a community resisting this system as a rare third (which requires “intentionality” to get from atomization to inter-subjectivity – at least a conscious inter-subjectivity that isn’t defeated by conflicting identities and such). That is my point.

Granted, we may be coming together and in reality attributing it to our “intentions” when it is other dynamics at work… we get to coming together whilst relying on our user-illusions, “intention”-concepts, etc.

-Squee

»

the ‘disconnect’ you point

Submitted by emile on Fri, 2010-07-23 06:21.

the ‘disconnect’ you point to is worth exploring.

“the real power of the conscious mind is it’s ability to “veto” impulses, desires, and what-have-you.”

I agree that we don’t have to abandon ‘language’ with its subjects and objects, but I do believe that in order to understand ‘order’ and ‘organization’, we need to be aware of how language can ‘take us captive’ by the visual imagery it conjures up: “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Ok, compare that with “the real power of the conscious mind is it’s ability to “veto” impulses, desires, and what-have-you.” which is highly relevant to ‘understanding order and organization’.

The result? … The influence ON DYNAMICS of the ‘real power of the conscious mind’ is not accessible through our faculty of vision, nor through our language when used to convey ‘what things do’ (PICTURABLE DYNAMICS).

Conclusion: ‘visible dynamics’ or dynamics portrayed through language (picturable dynamics) are not the ‘big story’ on dynamics (this is only the ‘intrinsic’ view). This ‘invisible’ (nonlocal, extrinsic) essential aspect of dynamics was being explored in the east at about the same time as Aristotle was exploring ‘intrinsic’ dynamics (telos) in the west.

Chang Tzu argued that the processes of nature unify all things so that it was wise to live in harmony with nature rather than imposing upon it (i.e. to let our behaviour/organization be extrinsically shaped/orchestrated. He suggested that we could do more by doing nothing (being intention-less).

What comes to mind is the familiar experience of driving in the flow of the freeway. In this case we move under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence, and what is responsible for sustaining harmonious flow is ‘what we don’t do’. In this mode, we let the spatial dynamics orchestrate our individual and collective movements, and thus descriptions of ‘what we do’ fail to capture the essentials of this harmonious order/organization. The western observer considers harmonious flow ‘un-eventful’ and waits and watches for something ‘remarkable’ to happen, something he can describe. He builds his worldview on the basis of ‘what things do’.

[Note: Quantum Electro-dynamics (Feynman)says that space is not empty but is an energy-charged medium composed of dynamically balancing particles and anti-particles. What we 'can see' is thus the departures from this harmonious spatial dynamic. QED is the most correct validatable theory]

Chang Tzu suggests that there is a world’view’ (i.e. non-viewable reality) based on ‘what is not done’;

“They were upright and correct without knowing that to be so was righteous. They loved one another without knowing that to do so was benevolence. They were sincere without knowing that to do so was loyalty. They kept their promises without knowing that to do so was to be in good faith. They helped one another without thought of giving or receiving gifts. Thus their actions left no trace and we have no records of their affairs” – Chuang Tzu

Our experience informs us that the larger aspect of life is the spatial possibility that opens up that we do NOT impose ourselves into. Some may call it ‘morality’, but men and women spend plenty of time alone with innocent, defenceless children but do not impose on them for sexual pleasures (except by rare exception). ‘Morality’ is generally understood in the context of purposeful behaviour. If behaviour is purposeful, then there is ‘good purpose’ and ‘bad purpose’ and pedophilia is ‘bad purpose’. But if our behaviour is orchestrated by the cultivating of harmonies in the spatial dynamics we are included in, there is no ‘morality’ involved; i.e. as Chuang Tzu would say; ‘They refrained from pedophilia without knowing that to do so was ‘good moral behaviour’.

It has been written that man’s downfall was in eating from the tree of knowledge; i.e. (Genesis 2.9 …) “God directly forbade Adam (Eve having not yet been created) to eat the fruit of this tree. A companion tree, the Tree of Life, was in the garden, also. A serpent tempted Eve, who was aware of the prohibition, to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent had suggested to Eve that eating the fruit would make one wise. Eve and then Adam ate the forbidden fruit, and they became aware of their nakedness.”

Let’s examine our notion of ‘knowledge’. It seems to be defined by our simplistic model of the ‘self’ as a ‘local, independently-existing organism/system with its own locally originating, KNOWLEDGE-INFORMED, purpose-directed behaviour.’. ‘Purposeful behaviour’ requires ‘knowledge’. The notion of ‘purpose’ (or ‘intention’) stands or falls with the notion of ‘knowledge’.

But man has behaviour that is pre-intellectual. As Vico suggested, when early people heard thunder, they thought it was the voice of an all powerful God who might zap them with a thunderbolt if they didn’t pay heed and flee for shelter in a cave. When they found a woman taking shelter in the cave as well, they hung about and had sex and decided to cohabitate (God’s will?). Some of the people claimed that they could translate the voice of God and they became the priests and clergy and along with it came God-governed behaviour or ‘government’. As law professor emeritus Peter D’Errico observes, western sovereign state government is a ’secularized theological concept’;”The notion of “absolute, unlimited power held permanently in a single person or source, inalienable, indivisible, and original” is a definition of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. This “God died around the time of Machiavelli…. Sovereignty was … His earthly replacement.” – Walker, cited in http://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/nowyouseeit.html

Government (western) is thus based on the concept of knowledge-informed behaviour. ‘Intentional’ behaviour would make no sense unless it was ‘knowledge-directed’. So ‘knowledge’ and ‘intention’ stand and fall together.

Furthermore, there is the implicit understanding that the knowledge that informs purpose derives from God. That’s the implication of order/organization that is purely ‘intrinsic’ as in the central governance of the sovereign individual and/or the individual sovereign state. So long as we are in denial that our behaviour is informed by nature, by extrinsic invisible, nonlocal influence, we are stuck with the notion that our behaviour is intrinsically shaped by knowledge-informed purposeful (intentional) behaviour.

Extrinsic behaviour and organization shaping influence in nature may be ‘nonlocal’ and ‘invisible’ but it is ‘real’. The gathering of the storm cell and its behaviour is shaped extrinsically by nonlocal, invisible influences (‘thermal/pressure field dynamic’).

‘Intentional behaviour’ kind of ‘butts in’ and ignores extrinsic behaviour shaping influence. It is not ‘the way of Chuang Tzu’, to be sure, and it is not ‘real’ but rather a way of ‘thinking about dynamic behaviour’.

So, we have a kind of disconnect here. The dynamics of our experience incorporates ‘what we do not do’ and ‘what we do not do’ is ‘not visible’. Meanwhile, our description of ‘what is going on’ is based on ‘what things do’ and our linguistic description (most ‘descriptions’ are ‘de-pictions’) presents a ‘picture’ of ‘what things are doing’.

Politics and government start from ‘what things are doing’ and seek to shape ‘what is being done’ using various moral and ethical principles and laws. so that the entire dynamics of government are ‘knowledge’ and ‘intention’ based.

But this is like ‘herding cats’ because the over-riding aspect of dynamics derives from ‘what is not done’, which is invisible and spatial (nonlocal). The two semi-trailers rolling side-by-side up the hill on the two lane (each way) freeway doing twenty miles an hour keep you creeping along behind them. Your behaviour is being extrinsically shaped. The behaviour of the individual drivers complies with the rules because the rules are based on individual intention (knowledge-informed, purpose directed individual behaviour). But there may be the smell of a control ethic of the ‘what’s good for general bullmoose is good for everyone’ in the air.

Dynamics are not fully describable in terms of ‘what things do’ (intrinsic shaping influence). Dynamics are more generally described by Mach’s principle of space-matter relativity; “The dynamics of space condition the dynamics of the included matter at the same time as the dynamics of the included matter are conditioning the dynamics of space”. That is, we can arrange ourselves spatially so as to inductively shape the behaviour and organization of others who share inclusion in our living space, and as in this example, we can really piss them off, all the more so because the law is based on the ‘intrinsics’ of ‘what individual people do’ and it blinds itself to ‘extrinsic shaping influences’ even though extrinsic shaping influence is in a natural primacy.

We don’t have to put all our dynamics-understanding eggs into the ‘knowledge’ and ‘intention’ basket, but that’s what western governance and justice systems do. All of the stuff we don’t do so as to cultivate and sustain harmony in the spatial dynamics we share inclusion in, goes unconsidered. In our western worldview, this harmony is ‘silence’, ‘nothing’, the uneventful ‘norm’ that sets the stage for us to focus on ‘departures from the norm (‘good’ and ‘bad’).

Western social dysfunction, spearheaded by innate incompleteness in western government and justice systems, arises from understanding social dynamics as being fully and completely attributable to ‘purposeful behaviour’; i.e. ‘fully intrinsic’.

By way of common belief in this innately incomplete view of dynamics, we make ourselves over (in our minds) into little automatons constrained to purposeful behaviour that is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to the judgements laid down by the elite amongst us who are somehow able to interpret what the thunderous voice in the sky is saying. This opens the way for big movers to manipulate the over-riding EXTRINSIC social dynamics shaping influence which is not even on the radar screen of western ‘intentional-behaviour’ based justice systems.

»

I get your points, I am not

Submitted by Squee on Fri, 2010-07-23 11:51.

I get your points, I am not arguing against your understanding of social dynamics. I am arguing that right now, in the Western muck we are writing of, the degree of atomization and mediation by images is so undermining that to get anywhere else, a Western subject is going to rely on their “intentions” to form a community, and that there isn’t a way around this. It’s a matter of strategy: first come together, then resist this atomization and mediation by Western norms, values, ideology; etc. The point is this… since most people are stuck in the perceptions you just described, the way “out” must be transformative and therefore it starts where people are “at”. In Bujinkan Taijutsu, you don’t learn the flow of the waza immediately because you are a Westerner that doesn’t pay attention to space and the “invisible”, but learning it does require some knowledge and intentionality. MI didn’t learn to meditate immediately after studying and practicing meditation… but wouldn’t have learned without that instruction and the “intention” to eventually reach a state of no-mind.

Am I making any sense?

-Squee

»

Comparing sense-making

Submitted by emile on Sat, 2010-07-24 06:29.

Comparing sense-making approaches

Squee wrote;

“It’s a matter of strategy: first come together, then resist this atomization and mediation by Western norms, values, ideology; etc.” .. “a Western subject is going to rely on their “intentions” to form a community, and that there isn’t a way around this” …. [We need] “that instruction and the “intention” to eventually reach [the transformed state].” … “Am I making any sense?”

In my view, ‘yes’ and ‘maybe no’. There is an ambiguity here, it seems to me, that has to brought to the surface and addressed.

If you can suspend, momentarily, any bias you may have against ‘geometric/topologic reasoning’, which I have been using and would like to use in this instance, I will try to explore the issue of ‘ambiguity’, which can lead to different ways of understanding the ‘strategy’ you are suggesting.

Geometry/topologic reasoning is simple, if uncommon, and has some powerful attributes (it was the mainstay of Henri Poincaré who, in the 1890s, came up with ‘chaos theory’ [chaos is actually highly ordered behaviour associated with sensitive dependence on initial conditions’]. This way of understanding dynamics was so contra-cultural to the ‘causal’ (intention/cause) way of understanding dynamics that few scientists ‘got it’ until Edward Lorentz, an MIT meteorologist, rediscovered it (accidentally) in 1962 in a way that it was demonstrable; i.e. thanks to supercomputer simulations).

So, here’s a geometric sense-making view of ‘transformational strategy’;

1. “first come together”.

‘Mitakuye Oyasin means that we are ‘together RIGHT NOW’. We don’t have to ‘do anything’ other than acknowledge that THE REALITY IS THAT ‘we are all together’ in this unfolding spatial-relational world dynamic. ‘Mitakuye Oyasin’ or ‘we are all related’ is consistent with the geometric/topologic principle (of space-matter relativity) of Ernst Mach; “The dynamics of the habitat are conditioned by the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat”. The ‘connectedness’ implied here (by ‘relativity’ of all movement) is that of the storm-cells (convection cells) in the flow of the atmosphere. The western habit is to reify these flow-features (storm-cells, body-cells, organs, organisms etc.) and portray them IDEALLY (NOT-AS-IN-REALITY) as ‘LOCAL systems’ with their own LOCAL INTRINSIC intention-driven behaviour. Thus what was ‘already together’, we re-render and consider to be ‘apart’ as in dispersed ‘local systems with their own local intention-driven behaviours’.

The point here is that this togetherness is the REALITY that we experience RIGHT NOW, so that there is ambiguity in statements such as “the “intention” to eventually reach a state of ..”.

We live in a ceaselessly innovatively unfolding spatial-relation dynamic continuum, call it the universe or paradise, RIGHT NOW and the challenge is not to give the universe a make-over, but to take off our blindfolds, or rather our western mindset viewing lenses which present the world to us in terms of a collection of disconnected things, including ‘our disconnected self’. That is, we do not have to ‘work towards something’ BY A SEQUENCE OF CHANGES TO THE WORLD THAT WE WILL MAKE ‘OVER TIME’, we have to acknowledge that we are already ‘one with everything’ and begin to let our individual and collective behaviour be orchestrated by this un-spin-doctored (de-acculturated) realization.

2. ‘resisting … Western norms, values, ideology etc.”

The geometry of ‘mitakuye oyasin’ was implicit in the IWW (Industrial workers of the world) by way of the common identity of the ‘worker’. ‘The worker’ is a ‘nonlocal concept’ implicitly defined in a conjugate habitat-inhabitant dynamic relational sense. While the definition may have been SECONDARILY overprinted by ‘class difference’ (management, labour), anyone in the world could be defined as a ‘worker’. The implicit idea is that ‘we are all brothers in a common world-space’. What ‘has to be demoted to secondary level’ here is the notion of LOCAL SELF-INTEREST DRIVE ‘the American worker dream’ and/or ‘the British worker dream’.

That is, western ‘norms’ put ‘local intrinsic drive’ into an unnatural precedence; i.e. western values see LOCAL SELF-INTEREST or INTRINSIC ORGANIZATION SHAPING INFLUENCE as a ‘natural driving force’ (they are decidedly UN-NATURAL in spite of Darwin’s contrary assumption). The western world puts imputes the primacy of this ‘local intrinsic drive’ whether we use ‘local’ to refer to ‘the self’ seen as a ‘local organism/system’ or we use ‘local’ to refer to ‘the sovereign state’ seen as a local organism/system. Putting a notional ‘first cause intention’ into a local system (cell, organism, state) is a ‘theological concept’ equivalent to putting a God with first cause powers of creation/origination inside of the ‘local thing’ to notionally drive from out of itself its form and behaviour (fully and solely from within, in acorn-to-oak-tree Aristotelian fashion), reducing the parenting medium in which it is included to a passive, secondary role.

nce we have outlined, defined and named the hurricanes, we take out our eraser and get rid of any traces of the invisible nonlocal dynamic ‘body’ of the parenting medium and its NONLOCAL FORM AND ORGANIZATION SHAPING INFLUENCE (‘extrinsic’ shaping influence) so that we are left with a clean slate (euclidian space) inhabited by discrete ‘local systems’ whose ‘trajectories’ and ‘interactions’ provide a new and simpler ‘reality’ (pseudo-reality) for us to discuss and orient our behaviours to (the resonant-energy-charged spatial-relation fluid-dynamic ‘field’ ‘parenting medium’ has been mentally banished).

The ‘worker of the world’ IMPLICITLY takes our mind/understanding into ‘non-euclidian space’ (bear with me). In non-euclidian space (which Einstein and others found to be needed in order to understand/explain the spatial-relational dynamics of nature that we actually experience), such as the space on the surface of a sphere (think of ants crawling around on a smooth, reference-feature-less sphere), the notion of ‘local’ vanishes, and so does the notion of ‘intrinsic form and organizational shaping influence’. Now there is a conjugate extrinsic form and organizational shaping influence for every intrinsic form and organizational shaping influence (expansion is, at the same time, compression; the one or other are by subjective ‘local focus’ only). Furthermore, the notions of ‘attraction’, ‘repulsion’ and their association with ‘intention’ and ‘cause’ (as tied together by Nietzsche in ‘Will to Power’) all ‘collapse’ (they are, as he suggested, human emotional impressions).

When the ants (people, whatever) ‘spread out’, they are at the same time, gathering together. This is characteristic of the inherent ‘relativity’ of inside-outward and outside-inward in a finite and unbounded spherical space. It ties to our real life experience; e.g. if everyone on one part of the earth increased the distance between one another, others in the common finite and unbounded space on the earth’s surface would have to squeeze together to accommodate it. Expansion is, in spherical space, at the same time, compression. This is true for us because we do live on the surface of a sphere. This is why I use (in describing organization) the picture of the cluster of growing soap bubbles which are becoming hexagons due to the ‘back-reflecting pressure’ (extrinsic shaping influence) coming from their own ‘intrinsic driven growth’. That is, their form and organization is NOT SIMPLY intrinsically shaped but is given by Mach’s principle where the shaping force is neither purely intrinsic nor purely extrinsic but ONE FORCE with a dual extrinsic-intrinsic aspect.

Ok, this also captures McLuhan’s point (he discusses things in terms of ‘euclidian’ and ‘non-euclidian’ space in his interview with Powers in ‘The Global Village’) that what matters is not ‘what things do’ which is our ‘visual space’ focus, but how ‘our relations with one another and with the common space we share inclusion in are transformed. For the ants or people on the surface of the sphere, whatever one does, back-reflects on everyone (actions are relative and space is relative) by the mediating role of space. That’s ‘everyone’ not ‘everyone else’, a point that can easily be missed (i.e. if one storm-cell in the flow pushes out (expands) then it puts pressure not only on ‘the others’ but also, at the same time, on itself. This is what we experience in ‘acoustic space’ which is ‘everywhere at the same time’ (as in the gravity field).

Now, so long as there is ‘curvature’ to this space, and it doesn’t matter what the radius of the planet surface happens to be (how great the curvature is), all of the purely one-sided intrinsic locally originating dynamic stuff ‘has to go’; i.e. ‘intention’ and ‘cause’ and ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ which all imply locally originating ‘shaping influence’ all ‘have to go’ because there is no such thing as ‘locally originating’ force or dynamics in this sort of space, the curved space which far better approximates the reality of our life experience than ‘euclidian space’, an ‘idealized space’ where ‘intention’ and ‘cause’ and ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ are all viable; i.e. they are viable because of the hidden implicit assumption that space is absolute (euclidian).

How do we (geometrically) get from ‘spherical space’ to ‘euclidian’ (rectangular) space? We simply increase the radius of the sphere to infinity so that the space becomes ‘flat’ so that when the storm-cell or the ants/people ‘push out’ there is no ‘back-reflecting’ because we ‘push out’ in a ‘straight line’ and it doesn’t boomerang on us and come back and hit us from behind (from all around as in ‘acoustic space’ aka ‘curved space’).

Western thinking is ‘flat earth’ thinking. Western values and ideology are ‘flat earth’ thinking. The ‘secularized theological concept’ of the ‘sovereign state’ stems from ‘flat-earth’ thinking. Flat-earth thinking forces us to put a God inside of every LOCAL cell and organism and organization (e.g. state) so as to invoke the notion of absolute local ‘first cause’ origination of dynamic behaviour.

Ok, this is getting ‘too long’ a post, so I will cut it short here and try to summarize.

1. Mitakuye Oyasin is ‘reality’. We already are ‘all together’ and what we do ‘locally’ (as individuals and/or as individual states) effects everyone because ‘space is a participant’ in physical dynamics (Einstein) and because the dynamics of habitat condition, at the same time, the dynamics of the inhabitants and vice versa (Ernst Mach’s principle; Mach was a mentor to both Einstein and Poincaré).

2. Where we need to get to is already here. The challenge is to remove blindfolds.

3. The ‘workers of the world’ concept is a ‘we are all in this thing together’ concept which elicits the geometry of the ants on the surface of the sphere; dynamic INTER-DEPENDENCE (NOT ‘LOCAL INDEPENDENCE’) mediated by the common space we share inclusion in.

4. We can stimulate ‘ initiatives’ if we do it like the ‘wildgeese’ (or honey bees) and acknowledge that extrinsic and intrinsic are ‘one dynamic’; e.g. they stir up the parenting medium they are included in and let the resonances in the turbulence orchestrate their individual and collective behaviour (spatial resonance-based organization). The bees do not set out to produce hexagonal cells, they (implicitly) eschew the notion of independent tracts of property and respect the fact that the outside of their property is at the same time the inside of someone else’s property (as in spherical space). There is no such thing, in this case, as ‘inside-outward movement (locally originating movement) since such direction can only be established by subjective local self-interest. This is a problem today with local governance that seeks to put a ‘habitat-preserve-and-protect’ ethic ahead of the ‘local self-interest driven’ ‘right to own property and to develop it as one pleases. The former incorporates a ‘curved space’ ethic while the latter incorporates a flat-space ethic.

In speaking of the strategy for transforming out of the western cultural overprint, you say:

“The point is this… since most people are stuck in the perceptions you just described, the way “out” must be transformative and therefore it starts where people are “at” “…. [and involves] instruction and the “intention” to eventually reach [the transformed] state”

My point boils down to the fact that, in doing this, ‘intention’ cannot be associated with LOCAL SELF INTEREST (‘intrinsic organizational shaping influence) that pits ‘one side’ against ‘the other’. When we as a ‘local group’ push out, it back-reflects on ourselves. As the Amerindians say, “Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” [Note: Mach's principle is about transformation in terms of 'spatial relations', there is no dependency on the notion of 'time' as in x,y,z,t flatspace transformation which 'takes time'.]

Giovannitti and Ettor were involved in a social transformative initiative (activist demonstration) in Lawrence Massachusetts, a kind of ‘pulse’ like the wildgeese approach wherein a group ‘stirs up’ turbulence in the social-spatial-medium which back-reflects on everyone as outside-inward pressure and which got Giovannitti and Ettor out of jail where the ‘local self-interest’ driven faction had put them by framing them. The ‘global pressure’ is a real thing. It is McLuhan’s ‘acoustic space’ (which is everywhere at the same time extrinsic/intrinsic) shaping influence. Everyone is included in it even though a ‘subgroup’ (‘local’ only in the RELATIVE sense that a storm-cell in the flow-medium is ‘local’ or a subgroup of ants in the ant collective in spherical space is ‘local’) stimulated the turbulence (conditioned space) in manner that comprehended that the dynamics of space are at the same time conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.

If Giovannitti and Ettor had chosen to develop a local faction that MERELY (plainly, simply, exclusively, without comprehending the participation of space) went head to head against the local non-immigrant control-seeking establishment, then that would have turned into a standard ‘war’ of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, one side against the other, each side having ‘intentions’ of an ‘intrinsic’ LOCAL SELF-INTEREST seeking nature. But the IWW was a global movement which was IMPLICITLY (intuitively, poetically, romantically) seeking ‘global transformation’ by way of Mach’s principle (i.e. the Mach’s principle ‘geometry’ is implicit in the global approach.) It was not a case of ‘we’ll transform this local place this year, those other places in subsequent years until we have succeeded ‘OVER TIME’ in transforming ‘the entire world’ (that is the hierarchical flatspace view).

The ‘anarchic’ approach of the IWW, of ‘establishing/inducing order in the world’ transformatively by way of Mach’s principle; i.e. by conditioning the habitat-dynamic which is at the same time conditioning the inhabitant-dynamics, … is an alternative to ‘establishing/imposing order on the world’ by ‘oligarchic hegemony’ by the self-appointed few who feel that they have ‘goodness’ in their hearts and in a patronizing sense (God made me superior and more intelligent and compassionate than the poor relatively ignorant and primitive little others so that I have the ‘noblesse oblige’ responsibility to govern them, all of them). The latter ‘hierarchical’ approach only makes sense in a ‘flat space’ view of the world where ‘intrinsic actions’ are not simultaneous associated with (conjugate) ‘extrinsic back-reflection’. If the space of our experience is more like ‘curved space on the surface of a sphere’, then the anarchic Mach’s principle approach to transforming the social dynamic makes more sense, and the ‘flat-space hierarchical approach’ is exposed as ‘insane’.

Does any of this ‘make any sense’ to you?

»

It does make sense in a very

Submitted by Squee on Sat, 2010-07-24 08:09.

It does make sense in a very “big-picture” way and even with the IWW example, I am still confused about what you are suggesting. Ok – so we are already together in this global movement, we are removing our Westernized blindfolds, and this is causing changes because ________ ? Or ought those like you, without these impediments to reality, to communicate this message widely? Lol, I know this is probably frustrating… It seems like resigning to the dynamics of the universe to me, and like somehow the change in my perception and resulting behaviors will have an impact despite my solitary life-style? It’s like you are telling me I gotta just pop my balloon and all the revolutionary juices inside will meld with the natural forces of the universe and simultaniously change me, the universe, and ssocial life in the US or somewhere else in this sphere. Almost like I remove my Western ‘block’ and that will be one more clog of damned up revolutionary energy released into the aether. Is that what you are getting at? I can grasp that in a way but it is so counter-intuitive for Kentish it feels like “giving up” or “letting the order take care of everything” or something along those lines nit really sounds a lot like my mother’s mysticism and her way of being the change that changes everything. I guess I am best to ponder this all more instead of expecting a ‘a-hah’ moment to happen right away.

-Squee

»

Just to recap, my posts have

Submitted by emile on Sat, 2010-07-24 18:29.

Just to recap, my posts have been about ‘architecture’; i.e. ‘anarchy and order’, to try to describe how the order in nature is ‘purposeless order’ (order that does not assume ‘intrinsic’ locally originating drive and direction) and to argue that our western culture is dysfunctional because we have infused our thinking and social dynamics with a radically over-simplified view of ‘dynamics’ (we left out ‘extrinsic’ form and organization shaping influence).

Ok, so far as that goes, it was in support of what many feel is the intuitive ‘correctness’ of ‘anarchism’, and it was an attempt to ‘ground’ that support in ‘architecture’ of nature’s dynamic that is being revealed by ‘the new physics’, a key expression of which is Mach’s principle which makes the same point as McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ (“the dynamic of the habitat conditions the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’. This understanding of nature is fundamentally contentious with ‘intrinsic shaping influence’ (Aristotle’s acorn-to-oak-tree time progression), and Darwin’s natural selection wherein, like almost all mainstream western science, ‘space is a non-participant’ [there is no ‘substantive (energy-charged) medium’, only the emptiness of absolute rectangular euclidian space]).

If we take off the western cultural blinders, then we are in pretty much the same boat as ‘indigenous people’ in that western society and its institutions are forcibly ‘disconnecting us’ from ‘who we are’ (‘mitakuye oyasin people’) making ‘decolonization’ (de-westernization) an imperative.. The strategy and tactics are up for grabs but one thing is for sure and that is that this problem cannot be solved “from the same level of consciousness that created it” (Einstein); i.e. it cannot be solved by intrinsic organization shaping; e.g. by a ‘de-westernization MOVEMENT’ (we need a Mach’s principle approach).

Taiaiake Alfred (‘Peace, Power and Righteousness: an indigenous manifesto’), in my view, has a lot of good insights on the problem of ‘de-colonization/de-westernization’. For example, he observes that the way of the indigenous peoples is in fundamental contention with the western way (governance, institutions, values etc.). The justice that the indigenous peoples want is not ‘social justice’ in the western sense of economic prosperity (that is like ‘pouring gasoline on the fire, as in Hobbema’, a Cree reservation in Alberta) nor in the sense of legal justice (e.g. land claims). These are the two prime features of ‘western justice’. ‘Justice’ for the indigenous peoples is ‘decolonization’ which means ‘reconnection’ with the land and with one another. Their measure of the success of their ‘decolonization’ efforts is whether their great grandchildren will be able to live in a more ‘reconnected’ manner than today’s ‘disconnected’ generation are living.

Taiaiake notes that when he speaks on behalf of the indigenous way, he is intellectually well prepared but compared with native chiefs who went to Europe a century ago, it is like he is standing on a small boulder compared with their huge rock they stood upon (they still lived the traditions and were fluent in the language), so for him, all the energies spent on ‘social justice’ and ‘legal justice’, as fine as these objectives are, draw energy away from central imperative, the re-strengthening of the cultural base before it is lost.

Perhaps this is what you are talking about with respect to the unsatisfactory feeling in simply developing a strong ‘architecture’ that shows why de-westernization is an imperative; i.e. it is still just intellectual and we have no ‘rock’ to stand on that comes from living the theory.

Taiaiake’s observation is that there are no ‘decolonized communities’ because of the way the western system puts co-opting stress on a community and ‘decolonization’ seems to happen individual by individual. In small intimate groups, rather than in a big televised meeting/movement, people can have profound effects on one another. ‘Networking’ is thus a more effective way of nurturing decolonization and in the groups he works within, accountability keeps you ‘on the path’; i.e. you declare that you are on the path within the small group and hold yourself accountable and have your friends help to keep you on the path..

The western ‘crowd’ is not an ‘object’ in itself. If you mount a video camera on the balcony of your apartment overlooking the Ponte Vecchio and take shots of the crowd that mills around and over it, a mental image may form of the character of the people constituting the crowd. Of course, if you left the camera on for 400 years, this notion of who the people in the crowd were wouldn’t make much sense since the crowd is not a collection of discrete people but is being continually ‘replaced’. The crowd is like Emerson’s cataract (in The Method of Nature); i.e. what we call a ‘crowd’ is the spatial relational dynamic, while particular material bodies are something secondary since the crowd persists while it is added to from the bottom and subtracted from at the top. Disagreeing factions within the crowd do not have to battle it out since a new belief system can be streamed in from the bottom.

Taiaiake says; “We cannot expect a better future in the absence of a commitment to take action, to attack and destroy the heart of colonialism. … The goals that flow from our traditions demand an approach based on undermining the intellectual and moral foundations of colonialism and exposing the internal contradictions of states and societies that promise justice and practise oppression. Non-indigenous people need to be brought to the realization that their notion of power [intrinsic] and its extension over indigenous people [people trying to de-westernize] is wrong by any moral standard.” … “… most urgently, we must begin to re-create a place of honour and respect within our societies for young people.” [not what western education system does].

He rejects both violence and pacifism as forms of political action. This ‘scholarly warrior’ served in the U.S. Marines for 3 years in Asia and Central America doesn’t advocate the old model of revolutionary armed struggle (“That only makes sense if your aim is to impose your power on someone else and create a new state. … I believe we should use arms only as self-defence, as is the right of anyone who is defending his home, his family and his basic human rights against criminals and other armed aggressors.”)

Decolonization (de-westernization) aims to restore ‘connectedness’ that is being blocked by obligatory western cultural institutions, values etc. so that it will be once again be possible to reconnect with one another and the habitat in an attuned manner, rather than behaving as intention-driven and directed systems. The suggestion is that we can’t solve the problem “from the same level of consciousness that created it” which means that we can’t use local intention-driven behaviour to transform the current system. That seems to be being built in to the ‘decolonization’ approach of the first nations (no mass movements, no imposing of power to create a new state etc.).

emile

»

Makes sense! Thanks -Squee

Submitted by Squee on Sun, 2010-07-25 02:20.

Makes sense! Thanks

-Squee

»

Well a musician uses

Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-07-23 04:43.

Well a musician uses noise-signal veto processes, or maybe this is something else? but will look into this, if I wasn’t so tired I’d rave more, and thanks, seeya.

»

It’s part of this persons

Submitted by Squee on Fri, 2010-07-23 04:56.

It’s part of this persons notion of what consciousness is. He is really making a general statement about consciousness itself using information theory and such… not just human behavior.

-Squee

»

Is the book a rarity or

Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-07-23 05:13.

Is the book a rarity or available through amazon, just wondering? But I only have a few years, and 50 books to read, along with freedom chores, I want quality, Foucault or Rimbaud, or radical pulp, it may just be it. Nice, bye.

»

Tor Nørretranders (born

Submitted by Squee on Fri, 2010-07-23 05:26.

Tor Nørretranders (born June 20, 1955) is a Danish author of popular science. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. His books and lectures have primarily been focused on science and its role in society, often with Nørretranders’ own advice about how society should integrate new findings in science. He introduced the notion of exformation in his book The User Illusion.

»

A sociologist/scientist,

Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-07-23 05:48.

A sociologist/scientist, they are so common now, whereas the 19th century had a few, but thousands of religious missionaries, the paradigm shift now has thousands of scientists and a few missionaries, how fickle is history? There are no poet beserkers roaming the hills now, battle-axe in hand, except myself, oh how I wish to die standing upright in battle! But I am interested in this text, you have previously been an inspiring source of sustaining empowering discussion, but I would rather read extracts, time is short, I must move on.
Gunter

»

oh how I wish to die

Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-07-23 06:13.

oh how I wish to die standing upright in battle!

why wait?

-Retnug

»

It’s about context you

Submitted by anon on Fri, 2010-07-23 06:41.

It’s about context you moron, or are you a random shooter?

»

Yeah – I would put it on the

Submitted by Squee on Fri, 2010-07-23 11:37.

Yeah – I would put it on the back burner too (and did for years). It just fits this particular debate well.

-Squee

»

New Thread Started on July 26

Talk about ‘new

Submitted by Squee on Mon, 2010-07-26 12:45.

Talk about ‘new science’:

“Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been done on these questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.

The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that “to have a second language is to have a second soul.” But the idea went out of favor with scientists when Noam Chomsky’s theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all human languages—essentially, that languages don’t really differ from one another in significant ways. And because languages didn’t differ from one another, the theory went, it made no sense to ask whether linguistic differences led to differences in thinking.

The search for linguistic universals yielded interesting data on languages, but after decades of work, not a single proposed universal has withstood scrutiny. Instead, as linguists probed deeper into the world’s languages (7,000 or so, only a fraction of them analyzed), innumerable unpredictable differences emerged.

Of course, just because people talk differently doesn’t necessarily mean they think differently. In the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk, but also how they think, asking whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language.

For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don’t use terms like “left” and “right.” Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, “There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” To say hello in Pormpuraaw, one asks, “Where are you going?”, and an appropriate response might be, “A long way to the south-southwest. How about you?” If you don’t know which way is which, you literally can’t get past hello.

About a third of the world’s languages (spoken in all kinds of physical environments) rely on absolute directions for space. As a result of this constant linguistic training, speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes. They perform navigational feats scientists once thought were beyond human capabilities. This is a big difference, a fundamentally different way of conceptualizing space, trained by language.

Differences in how people think about space don’t end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build many other more complex or abstract representations including time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality and emotions. So if Pormpuraawans think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time?

To find out, my colleague Alice Gaby and I traveled to Australia and gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. When asked to do this, English speakers arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written from right to left).

Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time. And many other ways to organize time exist in the world’s languages. In Mandarin, the future can be below and the past above. In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.

In addition to space and time, languages also shape how we understand causality. For example, English likes to describe events in terms of agents doing things. English speakers tend to say things like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Spanish or Japanese would be more likely to say “the vase broke itself.” Such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses and how much they blame and punish others.

In studies conducted by Caitlin Fausey at Stanford, speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two people popping balloons, breaking eggs and spilling drinks either intentionally or accidentally. Later everyone got a surprise memory test: For each event, can you remember who did it? She discovered a striking cross-linguistic difference in eyewitness memory. Spanish and Japanese speakers did not remember the agents of accidental events as well as did English speakers. Mind you, they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their language would mention the agent) just fine. But for accidental events, when one wouldn’t normally mention the agent in Spanish or Japanese, they didn’t encode or remember the agent as well.

In another study, English speakers watched the video of Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” (a wonderful nonagentive coinage introduced into the English language by Justin Timberlake), accompanied by one of two written reports. The reports were identical except in the last sentence where one used the agentive phrase “ripped the costume” while the other said “the costume ripped.” Even though everyone watched the same video and witnessed the ripping with their own eyes, language mattered. Not only did people who read “ripped the costume” blame Justin Timberlake more, they also levied a whopping 53% more in fines.

Beyond space, time and causality, patterns in language have been shown to shape many other domains of thought. Russian speakers, who make an extra distinction between light and dark blues in their language, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue. The Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon in Brazil, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities. And Shakespeare, it turns out, was wrong about roses: Roses by many other names (as told to blindfolded subjects) do not smell as sweet.

Patterns in language offer a window on a culture’s dispositions and priorities. For example, English sentence structures focus on agents, and in our criminal-justice system, justice has been done when we’ve found the transgressor and punished him or her accordingly (rather than finding the victims and restituting appropriately, an alternative approach to justice). So does the language shape cultural values, or does the influence go the other way, or both?

Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around. To demonstrate the causal role of language, what’s needed are studies that directly manipulate language and look for effects in cognition.
Journal Community

One of the key advances in recent years has been the demonstration of precisely this causal link. It turns out that if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world. When bilingual people switch from one language to another, they start thinking differently, too. And if you take away people’s ability to use language in what should be a simple nonlinguistic task, their performance can change dramatically, sometimes making them look no smarter than rats or infants. (For example, in recent studies, MIT students were shown dots on a screen and asked to say how many there were. If they were allowed to count normally, they did great. If they simultaneously did a nonlinguistic task—like banging out rhythms—they still did great. But if they did a verbal task when shown the dots—like repeating the words spoken in a news report—their counting fell apart. In other words, they needed their language skills to count.)

All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.

Language is a uniquely human gift. When we study language, we are uncovering in part what makes us human, getting a peek at the very nature of human nature. As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. The next steps are to understand the mechanisms through which languages help us construct the incredibly complex knowledge systems we have. Understanding how knowledge is built will allow us to create ideas that go beyond the currently thinkable. This research cuts right to the fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.”

—Lera Boroditsky is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and editor in chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology.

-Squee

»

Boroditsky & Vygotsky . . .

Submitted by emile on Tue, 2010-07-27 09:21.

Boroditsky & Vygotsky . . .

This is not the same as ‘language a la Vygotsky’ (‘мышление и реч’) and what’s missing in Boroditsky seems to me to be very important.

Boroditsky says;

“The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.”

Just about all of the old presumed-wise philosophers imply that the truth of our experienced reality is ‘ineffable’; e.g. ‘the named path is not the true path’, and where Vygotsky was coming from was to say that at the very bottom of language, all there is for ‘foundations’ is relational webs (pseudoconcepts); e.g. “Vygotsky’s discussion of the phenomenon of pseudoconcepts has far-reaching philosophical implications. First of all, if the conscious awareness of one’s own intellectual operations (“concept for me”) is only a secondary achievement, which follows the practical use of these operations, then the individual cannot be considered a self-conscious center of activity.” – Alex Kozulin (Kozulin is the translator from Russian To English of the popular ‘Thought and Language’ version of мышление и реч (’thinking and speech’))

What’s missing in Boroditsky’s thinking, at least in the excerpt you cite (I have never read Boroditsky), is that we may also be shaped by believing that what we say is ‘coming from us’; i.e. that we ‘know what we are talking about’. This sort of thinking aligns us with a view of ‘self’ as a local system with its own locally originating, internal knowledge-informed purposive behaviour’.

This view of self is one in which ‘we know what we are doing’ because ‘we can listen to ourselves talk’.

Consider the difference between the Amerindian languages as discussed by Dan ‘Moonhawk’ Alford; i.e. they are ‘poetic’ rather than ‘explicate’. They only ‘allude’ to things by way of ‘metaphor’. This keeps everything ‘relational’.

So, we can use language in a relational sense so that we never expect ‘meaning’ to ‘bottom out’ as something ‘real’, or, we can use language in a manner wherein we believe that there is something real at the bottom of our statements. Is there a ‘real object’ that corresponds to the word ‘hurricane’? When we say ‘Katrina is strengthening’ or ‘Katrina is dissipating’ is this ‘really happening’?

No, what is happening is spatial relational; i.e. as the sun’s irradiance varies and the earth’s orbit goes through its various wobble cycles and as the solar flares issue particles that flare up in the earth’s magnetic field, the atmosphere moves towards and away ‘from the boil’ and ‘boil-like’ flow-features gather and regather in this mess and thanks to language, we can focus in on an interesting one to us humans, … as far as Nature is concerned, the whole thing is ‘of interest’ and there is no need to ‘break it apart’ and if we do, it is insanity to use the broken-up-into-bits rendition as a ’substitute reality.

According to the new science, the world dynamic is a dynamic unity or ‘enfolding-unfolding spacetime continuum’ It is an energy-charged spatial-relational dynamic. Anything we want to talk about, if we want to preserve this inherent relational character, has to be by way of metaphor and poetic talk which is ‘spatial-relational’ and which never ‘bottoms out’ in anything ‘local’ and ‘explicit’.

There is thus a radical split in how we ‘construct reality’ based on whether we assume that language derives from something explicit that we ‘know’ or whether language is, at the bottom of it all, ‘arm-waving’. This arm-waving is not arbitrary, it ‘makes sense’ by comparative allusion to ‘the method of nature’, the examples of natural phenomena which we don’t need to understand ‘absolutely’ but only by the common patterns in our experiencing. According to Vygotsky, there is no way to know anything absolutely. Poincaré makes the same point about science. There are those who he calls ‘Cantorian realists’ who believe in the reality of their own definitions and there are also (in a minority in which he included himself) ‘pragmatist idealists’ who accept that scientifically defined sets of things are ‘idealizations’ which we can make use of, but which are not ‘real’. He uses the example of the thermal field. On the one hand, we say that it is nonlocal in its influence (as in the hurricane example) but we want to ‘make it local’ because that’s how science, in choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy, constructs things, by way of locally applied forces that ‘cause’ some result, so we invent ‘temperature’ which we define as ‘the average kinetic energy of the molecules’. This is like applying differential calculus to a complicated surface, it will show up all the local ‘irregularities’ but it will ‘drop out the subtle long wavelength spatial curvature trends’ which parent the short terms trends in the way that the sliding body of continental sediments creates its own fault systems and ‘overthrust’ structures. The ‘mistake’ as he says, is hidden in ‘averages’ which allow us to portray things in terms of ‘departures from the norm’ (the ‘norm’ because an infinite flatspace plane or ‘datum’).

So, the result is that what started off as nonlocal influence is reduced to locally arising influence. Newton did the same to the gravity field and declared so; i.e. the gravity field is in itself a motive influence, but that’s too complicated so we come up with a method whereby we calculate the gravity based on mass distribution at any/all points (whatever we need) in absolute (x,y,z,t) space and then claim that things move as a result of ‘the local force’ of gravity being applied to the local mass.

This reduction of spatially extended (nonlocal) motive influence so that it re-appears driving out from the opposite direction as local origination doesn’t stop with ‘matter’, Aristotle derives the notion of ‘morality’ from it which forces a retro-fit on how we model our human ‘geometro-dynamic’. Aristotle says;

“Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited … and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”

That ‘mark’ that seems to keep on changing is otherwise called ‘the norm’ and its origin is buried in the averaging just as it chops up the thermal field by way of ‘temperature’. This allows us to use the Aristotelian ‘intrinsic final cause’ and portray all behaviour as being locally originating.. Extrinsic (invisible, nonlocal) form and behaviour-shaping influence is what the word ‘occult’ was originally invented for. To westerners, the notion that what happens derives from invisible nonlocal influence (from ‘occult’ forces) is too spooky to allow. Far less spooky for the western psyche is the assumption that the form and behaviour shaping influence is ‘locally originating’ (intrinsic). That way, if Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread we need not look beyond the local Jean Valjean physical person to discover where that behaviour originated from. And if the behaviour is ‘really wicked’, guess where it originated? There is nowhere else to put the origins of it in the western Aristotelian view, but in the interior of the local smoking gun. We can call this local point source origination power ‘evil’ (making the person ‘evil incarnate’). This will save us from having to extend our inquiry and have us looking for invisible, nonlocal influence such as a spatial stress field imposed by an oppressive regime. Everybody ‘feels’ stressful spaces but in the west, we claim that ‘it’s all in our mind’, even though we accept, after the earthquake happens, that there was an invisible, nonlocal stress field that was real, lurking furtively in them there hills.

When Poincaré said that ‘Cantorism is a disease that mathematics will have to recover from’, he was talking about ‘Cantorian realism’ where we define things locally (intrinsically rather than extrinsically). We proceed from the general to the particular not from the entity’s unique situational inclusion in the dynamic spatial energy-flow medium but by first assuming a ‘locally existing’ common genus; e.g. ‘humans’, and studying the differences in their similarities; e.g. two legs, two arms (long or short, hairy or smooth), three orifices (..) etc. Once we have defined the genus and the qualification for membership, it is, to the Cantorian realist, as if we can have as many of these things as we want, as if we can order them from a supermarket of infinite supply in the sky (there is no extrinsic conjugate spatial relation as in Mach’s principle; e.g. as in the convection-cell – flow relationship).

Another name for ‘Cantorian realism’ is Aristotelianism (constraining dynamic shaping of form and behaviour to (‘intrinsic’) locally originating influence).

“Language’ deals in both ‘spontaneous concepts’ and ‘scientific concepts’ and Vygotsky disputed Piaget’s conclusion that ‘spontaneous concept formation’ got in the way of ‘scientific concept formation’. Piaget’s view reinforced the ‘structured’ architecture of education, whereas Vygotsky advocated ‘situational learning’ which means that the dynamics of the spatial situation we are included in can orchestrate our behaviour, rather than using what we have learned (knowledge) to bull our way through into the unfolding dynamic space of our experiencing of the continuing present. That way, the precipitation of knowledge always follows spatial experiencing so that the point is never reached where we would start using our accumulated knowledge ‘backwards’ to start off locally and drive ourselves forward through the unfolding spatial dynamic we found ourselves situationally included in. That is, we would have all that knowledge just the same, but we would use it in a ’secondary support’ fashion and we wouldn’t be using it as a locally originating behaviour drive, we would continue to be ‘open to experience’ and to letting our individual and collective behaviour be orchestrated by the particular spatial dynamics we found ourselves to be situationally included in (we would continue to ‘sailboat’ rather than converting to ‘powerboat’ mode when we had a sufficient stockpile of knowledge to drive the system backwards, as is what characterizes those Boroditsky evidently refers to as ’smart’ and ’sophisticated’).

Its not hard to see that this ‘split’ between ‘Cantorian realism’ (intrinsic reality) and ‘pragmatist idealism’ (relational reality) is going to impact our view of self and worldview. this can be explored as follows;

The invisible, nonlocal, extrinsic shaping that organizes a collection of iron filings on a piece of white paper derives from an invisible, nonlocal magnetic ‘field’ which is focused by a large filing (aka ‘magnet’) that serves as a ‘lens’ for the field-flow, which lies underneath the paper (every science student has seen and ‘accepts’ that there is invisible nonlocal extrinsic shaping influence in the world. But, we say, “that doesn’t apply to us humans because when we come into being, we are local, independently-existing systems with our own locally originating, internal purpose-driven behaviours, and thus the dynamic social organizing of a human collective is from the inside-outward starting from the internal purpose of the individuals, as Aristotle insisted”.

Clearly, something ‘has to give’ here with respect to where we ground our mental models. Marshall McLuhan (the ‘global village’, the ‘medium is the message’) pointed out that when you fire up local purposeful systems; e.g. a factory in a town, it matters little ‘what this purposeful system does’, what matters is how our relationships with one another and the land are transformed. Mcluhan is saying the same thing as Einstein, that spatial-relational transformation is the ‘greater reality’ while ‘what local systems/organisms do’ is a kind of visual object/feature based secondary reality which ignores the inherent primacy of ‘field’ and the secondary nature of local matter (E=mc^2). ‘Language’ is where we define and name label these ‘local visual features’ (the ‘reifying process’) and as John Stuart Mill noted; ‘every definition implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the local existence of the object defined’.

So, for example, the convection cell ‘form’ in the flow becomes a local object with its own local agency (after we name-label and define it, we start saying stuff like; ‘it strengthens, it moves, it wreaks destruction, it weakens, it dissipates’). Thanks to language and our ability to visually isolate interesting features (whorls in the flow), we render ourselves incapable of seeing the flow for the whorls.

It is not that hard to believe that ‘it is Katrina that is doing the growing’, as if she were a shapely rubber balloon that is being inflated from the inside (her form and behaviour being 100% intrinsically driven, as Aristotle persuaded us). Plato, on the other hand, argued that extrinsic form-and-organization shaping influence prevailed and that such growth was ‘celestially-driven’ (aka, in our terms, ‘field driven’). Instead of the acorn-pushing itself ‘out-of-itself’ to fountain forth into an oak tree, Plato argued that ‘space pull-pushed itself into shape’ (as is the ‘way’ of ‘fluid dynamics’). Plato would have made a better meteorologist than most because he would have acknowledged, as some meteorologists do, that the hurricane takes shape and moves for no other reason than ‘extrinsic shaping influence’; i.e. to transport thermal energy from thermal energy rich equatorial regions to thermal energy poor polar regions. That is, the mover-and-shaker persona of the hurricane is first and foremost an invisible nonlocal dynamic (aka ‘energy-field’) that is ‘everywhere-at-the-same-time’ and it is our use of linguistic definitions and labels that objectify/localize the extrinsically-engendered flow-feature and notionally infuse within it, its own (notional) locally-originating behavioural fountainhead. So, when we set up a dairy products factory in the town and offer good wages and benefits, we pull all the workers off the farm who were milking the cows (‘what we do’ is the ‘little reality’, ‘how our spatial relations transform’ is the greater reality).

Is ‘motion’ spatial-relational transformation as ‘the new physics says it is’ (e.g. Mach’s principle) or is it ‘the dynamics of local systems with their own locally originating behaviours’ acting/interacting in absolute space’ (space that is not a participant in the local object dynamics)? It is clear that which alternative we ‘opt for’ and impose on our view of dynamics in general, depends on our sense of who we are as ‘humans’. This is why Nietzsche described science as ‘anthropomorphism’ because we are going to model ‘the cell’ and ‘the organism’ after ‘the human organism’ so that everything we need to have in a ‘human’ will ‘come out right’. The Amerindians opted for extrinsic form and organization shaping (by ‘the Great Mystery’) so that what shapes our ‘form’ is an invisible, nonlocal influence or ‘field’ which is unique to each of us because of the uniqueness of our situational inclusion in the invisible nonlocal field. The Aristotelian ‘intrinsic final cause’ option that dominates western culture thinking claims that we are ‘wysiwyg’ (what you see is what you get [‘all she wrote’]); i.e. in this popular western view of ‘dynamics’, there is no extrinsic, nonlocal, invisible ‘overcoat’ as in ‘fluid (energy-field-flow) dynamics, that shapes our form and behaviour, there is only notional internally encoded information and inside-out pushing directive influence. That’s the anthropomorphism we plugged into Darwin’s theory, a theory that is currently under siege and undergoing (epicycle-based) ‘repairs’ ever more frequently (’epigenetics’, resurgent Lamarckism, bidirectional innovation in evolving microbial communities, etc.).

So, what we are talking about here is that we can build two types of anthropomorphism into our language; “(a) an anthropomorphism that restores the invisible nonlocal overcoat that shapes our forms and our spatial relations with one another”, and/or (b) an anthropomorphism that leaves us naked and wysiwyg in absolute space, a disconnected (non-mitakuye-oyasin) view that portrays ‘dynamics’ in terms of ‘our’ (disconnected self-engendered) actions and interactions in non-participating (fixed and empty) space.

Of course, we are going to have to ‘face up to the occult’ (the invisible, nonlocal form-and-behaviour-shaping force) if we are going to ‘restore’ the anthropomorphic worldview where form, behaviour and organization is understood as being shaped by energy-field-flow’.

It is ‘human nature’ that we must choose one of these anthropomorphisms; i.e. we have to put ‘the God of First Cause’ (creation) into dynamics somewhere/somehow. There is a clue to the thinking we use in making this choice, in the popular western habit of inventing the ’sovereign state of being’. As the Amerindians have pointed out, this depends on nothing other than ‘common belief’ on the part of self-interested ‘believers’, there is nothing ‘real’ at the bottom of it.

“The notion of “absolute, unlimited power held permanently in a single person or source, inalienable, indivisible, and original” is a definition of the Judeo- Christian-Islamic God. This “God died around the time of Machiavelli…. Sovereignty was … His earthly replacement.” (Walker, R. B. J. and Mendlovitz, Saul H. “Interrogating State Sovereignty.”

So, which will it be, God as the intrinsic-mover-shaper who blows up balloons that putt-putt about in fixed and empty non-participating space, or, God as the extrinsic-mover-shaper, the supplier of nonlocal invisible overcoats that line holes that gather and regather in a fluid-dynamic (energy-field-flow) space? (that’s only a metaphor for the ineffable, of course; i.e. a man’s reach must exceed his grasp or ‘what’s a meta phor’?.)

what would God say in regard to these two options? how about; … She said, …. ‘come look, there’s a wardrobe of love in my eyes… Take your time, look around and see if there’s something your size.’ (Ishtar)

emile

growth-of-form being shaped by its own back-pressure

This note is designed to serve as a simple ‘thinking tool’, to remind that there are two ways of visualizing the dynamic behaviour of matter (the dynamics of  form and organization) and two ways of understanding the role of space in these dynamics (participating and non-participating), yielding three different ways to contemplate the meaning of any dynamic.   The choices we make impact our sense of ‘self’ and ‘society’ and shape our manner of engaging with/in the world dynamic.

1. Attraction and Repulsion (‘gender relations’ in emergent form/organization).

Imagine a local cell-like form that is bounded on all sides; e.g. an amoeba-like form, and imagine a crowded collection of these forms, each of them pushing their neighbours and being pushed by their neighbours.  Their form and the form of the organization or collective movement will be due to a (four-part) combination of (1) how each individual cell pushes on its neighbours and puts a dent in their form (deforms the others as in the masculine-assertive sense) and (2) how collections of cells push on their neighbour cells and forcibly push flow channels (intrusions) within the overall collective, and (3) how each individual cell accommodates the pushing of its neighbours (deforms itself as in the female-receptive sense), and (4) how collections of cells receptively accommodate and open up flow channels within the overall collective.

The dynamic form and organization of the cells in this four-part view ‘comes to mind’ in the manner of, for example, a European war where the cell boundaries correspond to the country boundaries and where the cells have a ‘colonizing’ motivation whereby they are attracted by and seek to possess portions of their neighbours and to repulse attempts by their neighbours to possess portions of them.

2. Reciprocal Disposition (emergent form/organization as spatial transformation)

In the above visualizing of attraction and repulsion within a collection of local cells, ‘space’ is a non-participant.  As Einstein and others have pointed out; “Space is a participant in physical phenomena”.

Imagine this time, that the cells are ‘tiling’ the surface of a sphere, in which case when cells ‘push out’, their pushing ‘back-reflects’ on themselves due to what Einstein calls ‘reciprocal disposition’ (e.g. see Einstein’s essay ‘Geometry and Experience’).

In the first view where space is not a participant, the pushing and accommodating is understood in terms of ‘competition’ where the pushing of the strongest will prevail and be accommodated by the rest.

In this second view where space IS a participant, the pushing and accommodating is back-reflected on the cells in a non-simple manner given by Mach’s principle of the relativity of space and matter; “The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat.”

3. The precedence of nonlocal over local

The above and presently discussed ‘architecture’ of dynamics ‘complexifies’ our understanding of dynamics, a complexification that exposes the fact that our prior (space as a non-participant) understanding was a case of ‘choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy’ (Kepler, speaking of how science avoids the complexity inherent in nature, in its explanations of physical phenomena, in ‘Harmonies of the World).

In the following diagram, we can see that we have a choice of observing the movement of two-dimensional cells over a surface area as in ‘continental drift’, and/or in the more ‘complex’ terms where the surface dynamics are an expression of deeper, non-superficially visible fluid undercurrents.

expanding tiles put (back-) pressure on themselves

The topic of this discussion is ‘dynamics’ and how we ‘perceive’ dynamics.

Dynamics are fundamental to our understanding.  Our life experience is ‘inherently dynamic’.   ‘Stasis’ as in the notion of the local object which is stationary and unchanging is ‘idealization’ that does not exist anywhere in the natural world.

Summary: We have more ways than one to understand ‘our own dynamics’ and ‘the dynamics of others’.

1. We can imagine dynamics to be one-sided and male (with space as a non-participant) in which case the individual is deemed fully responsible for the results of his actions which ‘play out in time’.  This ‘male’ view of dynamics is impossible in ‘reality’ but it is employed extensively in Western thinking.  We use it to establish ‘credit’ and ‘blame’ for emergent ‘results’.  This is the legacy of Aristotelian notion of ‘purpose’ (‘intrinsic final cause’) as in the ‘acorn-to-oak-tree’ dynamic where we conceive of the encoded knowledge and purpose encapsulated within the acorn, pushing out of itself (self-actualizing) to produce its final form in such a manner that it is deemed fully and solely responsible for this result.  This simplistic (“not that which is most true but that which is most easy”) view of dynamics is used as the foundation for ‘genetics’ and for ‘Darwin’s theory’ and dominates in western architecture/design of organization (government and commercial enterprise)..

2. We can imagine dynamics to be two-sided and androgynous (with space as a non-participant) so that there will always be ambiguity as to the respective ‘male’ and ‘female’ combination; i.e. the dynamic is assumed to be one dynamic of an androgynous character.  This understanding we use when we observe a tree moving in the wind or a flag flapping in the breeze.  There is no ‘time’ separation in this view, between the re-forming of the tree-boughs and the re-forming of the airflow, since the one is simultaneously reciprocal to the other.  This leads us to complexify our understanding of dynamics to the point of seeing dynamics as geometric transformation; e.g. if we start with a simple dynamic view where Lulu is leaving work and heading for the party, we have two entities; ‘Lulu’ and ‘the party’ which are converging.  But the party is not the same party that Lulu was moving towards when Lulu is included in it, and work is not the same ‘work’ when Lulu has been removed from it.  That is, movement of things can also be understood as the transformation of the relational geometry of space where intrusion (male) and accommodation (female) are flip sides of the same coin (the transformation of the geometry of space).  This is still ‘one step short’ of including space as a participant in dynamic phenomena.

3. We can understand dynamics in terms wherein space is a participant as is characteristic of ‘flow’ – the worldview in a Heraclitean philosophy; i.e. the male-assertive fountaining-forth is in conjugate relation with the here-receptive-there-resistive accommodating of the fluid medium.  There are not ‘two dynamics’ going on in this view, but one dynamic which we can interpret as two.  For example, within a community, there is generally a mixture of ‘pushy’ and ‘accommodating people.  The pushy ones tend to have an ‘ego’ that gives full credit to themselves for ‘the results’ that ‘they achieve’ and regards their accommodating brethren as ‘weak’ and ‘inferior performers’ as trees that are whipped about by the wind.  This is the ‘social Darwinist’ view that gives zero credit to the female accommodative aspect and sees all results as if they derived from male competition.  This is at the origin of the feminist complaint; ‘my grandfather was a famous engineer, my grandmother had no name’.  But the big step in ‘complexification’ of our view of dynamics (bringing our understanding closer still to the reality of our experience) is when we ‘let go’ of the notion of the persisting identity of ‘local objects’ and acknowledge that they are transient ‘forms’ that gather in the flow.  As Emerson says, all material objects are essentially like the cataract; i.e. there is a persisting form there even though it derives purely from flow.  Material objects that gather and are re-gathered in the flow are not only ‘inhabited’ by the dynamic of the flow-medium but are created by it.  The flow is a ‘holodynamic’ or ‘holoflux’ in which material objects are flow-forms that are continually being gathered and re-gathered.

The above descriptions of dynamics give alternative ‘understandings’ that we can use when and where we choose to.  Which ones dominate (which we make ‘foundational’ in our common understanding) are the stuff that different ‘cultures’ are made from.

For example, our western culture, which is identified by its manner of organizing (how an individual from any culture organizes himself alone in the wilderness tends to launder out the differences in culture), opts for the simplest view of dynamics as in (1.) where the male cause-and-effect is seen to be responsible for all dynamics of form and organization (this corresponds, in a religious view, to a monotheist male God).  The result is that credit is attributed to particular ‘causal agents’ for ‘good results’ and blame is attributed to particular ‘causal agents’ for ‘bad results’; i.e. ‘everything’ is seen in terms of the ‘result’ of some or other ‘causal agent action’.

In Victor Hugo’s classic ‘Les Miserables’ the over-simplicity of this view of dynamics is caricatured by Jean Valjean’s going to jail for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread (because he reached a point where he could no longer bear to hear starving children crying with hunger).  Technically speaking, (‘TECHNICALLY’ in the sense of the simplest view of dynamics), Jean Valjean was the causal agent responsible for the criminal act of theft from the bakery.   Since space is not a participant in this simple view of dynamics, the argument could not be used that monopoly control over the accommodating properties of space infused stress into the overall matter-space system in the manner of earthquake/avalanche phenomena, to the point where movement emerged in the service of relieving stress (in social dynamics terms, a kind of ‘Robin Hood’ effect).

Everybody knows that such a view of dynamics is far more realistic than is the simple one-sided male-cause-and-effect view which goes hand-in-hand with the notion of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ results.   The ‘good’ and ‘evil’ view associates with Aristotelian ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘purposive systems’ (acorn-to-oak-tree); i.e. in this ‘most easy but not most true’ mental modeling, the ‘first cause’ origin of all human dynamics derives from the interior of the individual, from his ‘internal purpose’.  In this view, there is no reason for looking any further once the ‘guilty’ causal agent has been identified.  However, in the more complex (more realistic) view of dynamics where space is a participant, tensions can develop and build in space leading to nonlocal sourcing of material dynamics as in earthquake/avalanche/hurricane etc. dynamic phenomena.

Rejection of nonlocal originating of dynamics is the standard response from staunch members of the western culture because they have anchored their views and understanding to ‘western biology’ and ‘western psychology’ which have been developed using the (1.) view of dynamics.

Those people whose political views are described as ‘liberal’ are described as having fuzzy views because of their touchy-feely temperaments.   They would let Jean Valjean off the hook OUT OF THEIR COMPASSION for him and for the children.  But they would leave the justice system as it is, built on an over-simplistic understanding of dynamics.   The rich liberals would still believe that they were fully, causally responsible for the achievement of affluence, but that it was ‘right’ to be generous and forgiving to others who were ‘less gifted’ or ‘less fortunate’.

In other words, ‘liberals’ are most often ‘soft-hearted’ versions of ‘conservatives’, both of these ‘temperaments’ believing in the simple model of dynamics built into the political system where governance via a central regulatory authority is based on ‘control over behaviour understood as male cause-and-effect’.  Monopoly control over land (the common space that is a participant in dynamics) is protected by law and the justice system views land as ‘one of the factors of production’ along with capital, labour and entrepreneurship.   The right to own land is a privilege granted by the sovereign state to individual citizens and to corporations.

The ‘earthquake/avalanche’ dynamics which are just as viable in the social dynamics realm as in any other realm in the world dynamic, while they are excluded from consideration in the western culture’s approach to organization, are in fact provoked by forms of organization committed to the monopoly acquisition and control of land, the ethic that was foundational in the colonization that was launched by European nations. The colonization dynamic is alive and well in the modern world dynamic but is no longer ‘overt’, not since Hitler’s overt ‘lebensraum’ initiative was suppressed, and is now infused into the ‘global economy’ where corporations seek monopoly control of ‘the factors of production’ including land.  ‘Cornering the land’ has transitioned to ‘cornering the market’.

The western culture, by refusing to review and revise the understanding of dynamics that have been built into western systems of organization (political and commercial), is mired down trying to sort things out via a fuzzy mix of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ behaviour moderated by equally fuzzy notions of ‘compassion’ and ‘forgiveness’.

It will say that ‘Jean Valjean’ was ‘wrong’ to steal the loaf of bread, and it will say that change in the social dynamic should be accomplished through ‘democratic process’.  But meanwhile, the justice system NOT ONLY entirely ignores the manipulative control of land/space that forces the hungry, ‘un-landed’ masses into sweat-shop (legitimized slave-) labour force, but supports the society in applauding, rewarding and respecting those who achieve massive manipulative control of land/space, as is the Darwinian custom, itself based on an over-simple view of dynamics.

In the unsimplified view of dynamics (3.), ‘local causal agency’ and ‘local purposive systems’ are no longer understood as the ‘first cause’ originating shapers of dynamic form and organization.  Instead, the originating shaping influence of form and organization is understood as ‘nonlocal’ and the individual is understood to ‘have a dynamic’ that is inherently ‘relative’ to the dynamics of space, as in the cell-to-space relationship in the figure above.

We understand dynamics in this way when we are driving friendly in the flow of the busy freeway; i.e. like Lulu going to a party, ‘we’ and ‘where we are going’ are ‘the same place/space’ and what is happening is ‘transformation’ of the space we and they share inclusion in.  That is, the transformation of space is the bigger view of dynamics, … bigger than the assertive/purposeful actions of a collection of local, independently existing material systems/organisms, notionally equipped with their own locally-originating internal purpose directed behaviours.  When we move into the ‘hole’ that opens up for us (thanks to the collective we are included in who are all moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence), we are opening up a hole for someone else to move into.  Actually, the hole is not a local thing, but rather the medium of space in which we are included.   In this less simple view of dynamics, the opening of spatial possibility-to-move is conjugate to our assertive intrusion into it.  And, if we observe the flow of traffic for, say, one hundred years, several generations of drivers will have come and gone even though the flow of traffic has persisted; i.e. the nonlocal shaping influence prevails over the influence of the ‘local’ flow-features.

Where does ‘the mind’ fit into all of this?

Thoughts move in our conscious pursuit of understanding.  We could therefore develop an architectural understanding of the ‘dynamics of thought’ which would have to reconcile with our general understanding of dynamics.  In fact, we could invoke the same architecture for the dynamics of thought as in above dynamics architecture.

1. We can imagine the dynamics of thought to be one-sided and male (with space as non-participating ‘empty silence’) in which case the individual is deemed fully responsible for the results of his thoughts which ‘play out in time’.  This ‘male’ view of thought-dynamics is the popular view in our Western culture.  We use it to establish ‘credit’ and ‘blame’ for emergent ‘results’; i.e. we speak about ‘positive thinking’ and ‘negative thinking’ and some consider it sinful to ‘think bad thoughts’.   This is the legacy of Aristotelian notion of ‘intention/purpose’ (‘intrinsic final cause’) as in the ‘acorn-to-oak-tree’ thought-dynamic whereby the thought pushes forth out of itself.  Just as our physical self was fingered as the ‘causal agent’ in the case of physical dynamics, we would look for the physical seat where ‘thought originates’ in this view of thought dynamics, and the brain would appear to be the ‘likely candidate’.

2. We can imagine the dynamics of thought, as in ‘communicating our thoughts’, to be two-sided and androgynous (with space as a non-participant).  This is the transmitter-receiver view of thought, so that there will always be ambiguity as to the respective ‘male’ and ‘female’ combination (is the thought that I heard the same as the thought you intended?); i.e. the dynamic is assumed to be one dynamic of an androgynous character.  This understanding we use when we dialogue.  There is no ‘time’ separation between transmission and reception in this view, since one is simultaneously reciprocal to the other.  ‘Thought’ in this view of thought dynamics, rather than being a thought-object that is born inside of us and communicated to others as a kind of self-contained packet of information, is born at the confluence of transmission and reception.  ‘Words’ are like this; i.e. a word can have no meaning unless it is understood by at least two people at the same time.  In this second level of thought-dynamics, a word heading off to join other words can be like Lulu heading for the party.  The party when it is joined by Lulu is an entirely different party than it was prior to Lulu’s arrival..  The new word does not simply embellish what is already there, it entirely transforms it. That is, movement of thoughts can also be understood as the transformation of the relational geometry of thought where transmission (male) and reception (female) are flip sides of the same coin (the transformation of the relational geometry of thought).  This is still ‘one step short’ of including silence as a participant in the dynamics of thought.

3. We can understand the dynamics of thought in terms wherein silence is a participant so that thought can be understood as ‘flow’.  The male-assertive transmitting of thought is in conjugate relation with the female-receptive accommodating of thought, as within a fluid-dynamic.  There are not ‘two thought-dynamics’ going on in this view, but one thought dynamic which we can interpret as two.  For example, within the understanding of a conscious collective, there is generally a mixture of ‘talkers’ and ‘listeners’.  The ‘talkers’ tend to have an ‘ego’ that gives full credit to themselves for ‘the thoughts that they are propagating’, and they regard their listening brethren as passive putty in their hands, as trees that are whipped about and given shape by their windy rhetoric.  This is the ‘Darwinist’ view of thought dynamics that gives zero credit to the female receptive aspect sees all resulting ‘thought-shaping’ as if it derived from the competition amongst male thought dynamics (the ‘meme’ architecture for thought dynamics).  But the big step in ‘complexification’ of our view of thought dynamics (bringing our understanding closer still to the reality of our thinking experience) is when we ‘let go’ of the notion of the persisting identity of ‘local thought objects’ and acknowledge that they are transient ‘forms’ that gather in the flow.  As Vygotsky says in ‘Thought and Language’, all non-spontaneous (scientific) thought-objects (concepts) are essentially like the cataract; i.e. there is a persisting form there even though it derives purely from the thought-flow.  Local thought-objects (aka ‘concepts’) that gather and are re-gathered in the flow are not only ‘inhabited’ by the dynamic thought-flow but are created by it.  Thought-flow is holoflux in which local thought-objects are thought-flow-forms that are continually being gathered and re-gathered.  Thought context and thought content are reciprocal to one another in the sense as given by Mach’s principle; “The dynamics of context condition the dynamics of content at the same time as the dynamics of content are conditioning the dynamics of context.”

Descartes’ ‘Cogito ergo sum’ can be seen to fall in the Aristotelian “not that which is most true but that which is most easy” architecture of thought, wherein thought pushes forth out of itself, as in the ‘acorn-to-oak-tree’ (intrinsic final cause) rendering.   The physical seat of the fountainhead of thought is thus ‘looked for’ after one starts with this conclusion (cogito ergo sum) and works backwards to find the source.  The ‘brain’ is thus identified as the sourcing fountainhead.  This is a bit like identifying the penis and testicles as being responsible for human pregnancy/progeny.  It is ‘most easy’ rather than ‘most true’ because ‘the thought-origination buck starts and stops here’ with the ‘brain’.

The further complexification of thought dynamics, as in the case of the architecture of dynamics in general, leads one to the ‘flow’ view wherein ‘elements of thought’ are flow-features that have a conjugate context-content dynamic relation.  This recalls Schroedinger’s ‘one mind’ view wherein consciousness or ‘the field of thought’ is a dynamic unity (i.e. ‘consciousness is characteristic of the world-dynamic’).

This ‘Gender and Space in the Social Dynamic’ note can serve as a relatively simple ‘template’ for remembering the various ways in which physical dynamics and thought dynamics can be DIFFERENTLY understood.  The acronym GaSSd  could be useful in bringing the template back to mind; i.e. the ‘gender’ aspect pertains to ‘assertive’ and  ‘accommodative’ dynamics and to ‘transmissive’ and ‘receptive’ thought dynamics.  The gender relations can be thought of as (a) opposing and interacting in time, and (b) in simultaneous conjugate [assertive-accommodative] relation.  The big step in complexification of the dynamics architecture (i.e. in backing off from ‘choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy’), however, comes when we understand the fluid (energy) medium, ‘flow’ and ‘thought-flow’ to be in a natural precedence over the male and female object (thought-object) dynamics (asserted-and-accommodated, … transmitted-and-received).

One must take account of the fact that in our Western culture we have become addicted to the simplest of all of the architectures, the one-sided male causal agent originating view of dynamics, and to its counterpart in the domain of thought-dynamics; i.e. the one-sided male transmission of thoughts is understood as being responsible for the origination of established thought.

While this addiction is not going to go away ‘overnight’, the GaSSd template allows one to identify the origins of dysfunction in our society, as a result of our over-simplified understanding of dynamics.

* * * * *

A restoring of extrinsic attuning over intrinsic asserting?

The Mayan prophecy that a 5,125 year cycle will give way to a new cycle on December 21, 2012 has been stirring increasing interest as the date approaches.  It excites us to think that we could experience both sides of a ‘turning point’ where our globally pervasive beliefs undergo a radical shift.  What was it like to have straddled the flip from the belief that the earth was the centre of the universe to the belief that the earth was one of several planets that circled the sun?  What was it like to have straddled Newton’s ‘discovery’ of ‘laws of motion’ that opened a door into a new industrial age?

There are many pressures on our current ‘belief’ system, but as Thomas Kuhn points out in the ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, finding fault with the prevailing belief system is not enough.  There will be no general ‘radical shift’ (paradigm shift) until an alternative belief system is available that is judged credible.  If not, the established conceptual framework will continue to be adhered to.

The ‘pressure’ on our current belief system deals with the ‘spiritlessness’ of our material, self-interest-seeking social ethic.   ‘Environmentalism’, which emphasizes connectedness and mutual interdependence is on the rise.  Aboriginal traditional thinking, with its belief in man as a strand-in-the-web-of-life is on the rebound. In politics, there is increasing disenchantment with the established order of ‘free market capitalism’, with the dominance of huge transnational corporations, the colossal rise in executive compensation and with the continued enlarging of the have/have-not gap.

The Mayan prophecy is interpreted by many, not as ‘end days’ but in terms that ‘we are the wave’ of change; i.e. that every one of us contributes to the whole of life (the spatial dynamic) and that we will be living the rising cycle of renewal which will be in terms of “conscious harmonious connectedness”.

So, there is an abundance of ‘breakdowns’ in our ‘established way of doing things’ that is leading to widespread questioning of our current beliefs, but where might the ‘credible alternative’ come from that will allow a ‘new paradigm’ to gather a viable foothold?

In the shift from the Ptolemy’s geocentricity to Copernican helio-centricity, one of the most convincing pieces of evidence, to astronomers, was how Kepler’s elliptical orbits of planets around the sun explained the ‘retrograde motion’ of Mars and the other planets.  Why would Mars appear to move in the earth’s sky in one direction but every couple of (earth) years, do a ‘loop-the-loop in the sky?  (modern telescope image or the retrograde movement of Mars immediately below is followed by Kepler’s plot for the years 1580 to 1597)

Retrograde motion of mars as seen in the earth's sky

Kepler's plotted position of mars in the earth's sky 1580-1597

The apparent retrograde motion arises from attributing all of the movement to mars when it instead derives from the combined movement of earth and mars.  If  both the earth and mars were runners on an oval track with mars running in an outside track that was roughly twice the circumference of the inside track that the earth was running, if they started off together, they would be running in the same direction but the earth would come to the end of his smaller oval first and would turn the corner and be running in the opposite direction of mars until mars reached the end of its oval and turned the corner, at which time they would once again be running in the same direction.

Similar retrograde motions in the orbits of the other planets as seen from earth were observed and explained in this same straight-forward manner which helped to make the new helio-centric theory a ‘credible alternative’.

Today, in every science, and in the economy and in politics, there is the same type of ‘pressure’ to make way for ‘extrinsic shaping influence’ in the established paradigm which allows only ‘intrinsic shaping influence’;

1. In medicine, it is the argument of Pasteur and Béchamp that ‘le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout’ (the microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything).  The established view is that the microbes do the proliferating as in the (intrinsic) purposive system view of ‘acorn-to-oak-tree’.  But the alternative view that keeps putting pressure on the belief system to ‘let it in’ is the notion that the spatial dynamics or condition of the body can open up commodious conditions fertile to the proliferation of a bacteria or virus (as in a ‘niche’ in ecosystems).  That is, ‘extrinsic shaping influence’ wants to be ‘accepted’ but this is being resisted by the medical establishment.

2. In biology, it is an argument in stem cell research, in studies of rejuvenative tissue and limbs and in the evolution of microbial communities, that the spatial/environmental dynamic has a shaping influence on the organization of the ‘local cells’.  The established theory is that the cells ‘know what they are doing’ in the ‘purposive systems’ model of acorn-to-oak-tree.  Yet there are more and more examples which are being referred to as ‘irreducible complexity’ wherein the development of cells appears to be orchestrated ‘from the outside’ (extrinsically) by the spatial dynamics they are included in.

3. In politics and law, there is an argument that says that relational tensions/pressures from inequalities (e.g. Bourgeoisie, Proletariat) as led to the French Revolution reach thresholds within individuals (analogous to earthquake/avalanche physics) that result in their violent stress-relieving release of the accumulating tensional energy.  The extrinsic shaping influence is not accepted since the models are limited to intrinsic sourcing (If someone ‘goes postal’, in the acorn-to-oak-tree model, the established ‘paradigm’, such behaviour must arise from within the individual that ‘goes postal’.

4. In psychology, there is the argument that the individual judged ‘abnormal’ is the sane person since society which serves to define ‘normal’ is ‘abnatural’.  Trying to return the ‘abnormal’ person to normality is thus dysfunctional.  But as in law, the established paradigm does not admit extrinsic shaping influence; i.e. there is no way to hold society (the spatial dynamic the individual is included in) responsible, in any way, for the ‘abnormality’.  That is, extrinsic shaping influence is putting pressure on the established theory, but to avail as yet.

5. In physics, we already know that nonlocal extrinsic shaping influences prevail in nature (we call them ‘fields’).  The non-uniform distribution of thermal energy in a thermal energy field is the nonlocal influence that engenders convection cells in the atmosphere/ocean and orchestrates their movements.  We know, also, that pressure and thermal fields have a ‘deformational’ (re-shaping) influence on spatially extended matter that seeks to re-organize the spatial relations of ‘part(icle)s’ in an overall sense.   We tend to think of this in the simplified pointwise (local)  terms of ‘local differences in shrinkage or expansion’, but ‘fields’ are ‘everywhere at the same time’ thus the individual and collective movements of electrons in an ‘eddy current’ are orchestrated by the ‘shape’ of the field which is coordinating their behaviour and having them move in a circular or vortical manner, similar to a convection cell.  This sort of field-induced circular movement cannot be explained in terms of the movement of the individual part(icle)s BUT IT CAN BE(, AND MOST OFTEN IS, )DESCRIBED, MATHEMATICALLY, BY THE NOTION OF A ‘LOCALLY APPLIED FORCE’ THAT THE INDIVIDUAL PARTICLE.EXPERIENCES.  IN THIS CASE, THE EXTRINSIC SHAPING INFLUENCE OF (everywhere-at-the-same-time) ‘FIELD’ IS ARTIFICIALLY REDUCED TO LOCAL/INTRINSIC SHAPING INFLUENCE. THAT ACTS SEQUENTIALLY-IN-TIME.

A very basic question is thus raised in regard to the behaviour of human collectives; i.e. DO HUMANS AND ORGANISMS EXPERIENCE THE EXTRINSIC SPATIAL-RELATIONAL ORCHESTRATING INFLUENCE OF ‘FIELDS’, BUT, BY REDUCING THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MOVEMENT TO TERMS OF LOCAL OBJECTS AS IF ANIMATED BY LOCALLY APPLIED FORCES, ‘LOSE SIGHT OF’ THE SIMULTANEOUS SPATIAL-RELATIONAL ORCHESTRATING INFLUENCE OF ‘FIELDS’?

The individual and collective movement of kayaks in a large bay, if their occupants suspended paddling, would nevertheless be orchestrated by the everywhere at the same time tide-induced (gravity field induced) convecting current in the bay.  If their spatial relations were not overtaken by their respective paddling efforts, they might, over time, be drawn by the tidal vortex into the centre of the bay.  The individual kayaker may nevertheless be thinking in terms of Newtonian physics wherein the movement of the kayak is determined by the resultant applied force.  This has the effect of having the kayaker think of himself as determining his own movement and in this thought he reduces the external shaping influence to a local force vector understood merely as a troublesome resistance that he must work harder to overcome.  That is, he tends to assume that his own ‘purposive’ motion is primary and that the forces of nature are mere ‘interferences’ (that he is in a ‘struggle with nature’).

But the truth is that he is inextricably included in the circular current which is the primary orchestrator of individual and collective behaviours so that his own ‘purposeful-effort-based movement’ is secondary rather than primary.

There is a general alternative way of thinking of things here, according to whether he accepts the natural primacy of the extrinsic shaping influence or whether he assumes the primacy of his own purposeful-effort-based movements.  The choice of outlook is captured in the familiar following alternatives;

(a)    “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon

(b) “You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”

Clearly, the continually unfolding spatial dynamic we are each and all inextricably included in, like the circular current in the bay, is primary.  That is, the worldview formulate in ‘a’, above, is the realistic worldview.  The worldview formulated in ‘b’ becomes less and less credible as the extrinsic shaping influences we find ourselves situation become more and more powerful.  When the tsunami engulfs us, the ‘b’ worldview is exposed as complete and utter nonsense.

Intuitively, we all understand this, but because we live in a western culture dominated world, we (most of us, much of the time) continue to behave as if we humans were the masters of destiny.  As a culture we have this ‘alpha male’ ego that was articulated by Machiavelli in ‘The Prince’;

“Fortune is a woman and it is necessary if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.” —  Machiavelli

Meanwhile, the circulating current in the bay is ‘outside of us’ (it is an extrinsic individual-and-collective behaviour-shaping influence) and we cannot get outside of it to ‘run herd on it’.

It is for ease and convenience that we reduce our view of dynamics to the dynamics of local material systems whose behaviour, we assume, is shaped locally (intrinsically) by a combination of local, externally applied forces and internally-arising forces (internal biochemical processes, internal knowledge that supports internal purpose etc.).

This intrinsic ‘local sourcing’ of dynamics which eclipses the natural primacy of nonlocal extrinsic sourcing of dynamics goes back to the argument between Plato and Aristotle which Aristotle won by ‘default’ (i.e. the masses bought into the simplicity of it so that it was the understanding that achieved popular belief and which has been foundational in our western-acculturated world view).

This over-simplified world view, in terms of local objects with their own local agency, is under stress, growing stress, and this gives rise to an intuition of an imminent collapse of the world as we currently know it; i.e. an intution of an imminent ‘paradigm shift’.

In reflecting on ‘how we got into this stressed’ situation where our too-simple worldview is butting heads with the reality of our experience and losing credibility daily, it is not difficult to ‘research’ the origins of how, in physics, our option has been ‘choosing not that which is most true by that which is most easy’ (as Kepler observed is often our habit in science).

Newton, in formulating his ‘natural philosophy principles’ ran into the problem that gravity appeared to be ‘everywhere in the universe at the same time’, a situation that implied that all massy bodies attracted all other massy bodies at the same time.  In other words, the implication was that the innumerable material bodies in the universe moved under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence.   As Newton developed the basic principles of motion, he ‘got stuck’ at principles 65 and 66 in ‘Principia’ because he could not figure out a way, mathematically, to go from ‘two bodies moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence ‘ to ‘three or more bodies moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence.  He made two remarks in correspondence with his friend Bentley in this regard;

“An exact solution to the problem of three bodies exceeds, if I am not mistaken, the force of any human mind.”

“It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason, why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another, at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”

The ‘three-body problem’ as it has been called, implies that three or more bodies set up an ‘extrinsic behaviour-shaping influence’ that operates on themselves, the included participants.   The ‘new physics’ of relativity can now explain this in terms of matter energy equivalence wherein the ‘energy field’ may have a spatial shape that is responsible for both the gather of energy into matter and shaping the individual and collective dynamics of the apparently ‘local’ material bodies.

But what Newton did to ‘get around’ the ‘three body problem’ was to invent the mathematical ‘device’ of a ‘vector field’; i.e. given a knowledge of the distribution of mass, one could calculate and any local spatial coordinate (‘point’) the magnitude and direction of force that would act on a unit of mass if were situated at the point (ignoring the fact that placing a mass there would then change the calculation unless the mass were infinitesimally small).  The movement of the mass at that point could then be calculated by the laws of motion (Force equals mass times acceleration).  The motion would then change the spatial configuration of mass, but it could be recalculated sequentially, in small time steps (where it had not had time to move very much and thus not to change the spatial configuration of mass, nor the associated force vectors too much).

But here’s where ‘the plot thickens’, as Nietzsche has pointed out, there are implications here as to how we ‘see ourselves’, in the same context as with the kayak example.  That is, if we describe our movement as being ‘locally forced’ either from locally applied force and/or internally produced force, limiting the motivation to ‘intrinsic’ influence, we would have to associate a positive force with ‘expanding’ or ‘proliferating’ and  negative force in terms of ‘shrinking’ or ‘making ourselves scarce’.  Alternatively, this can be thought of in the ‘predator-prey’ context of ‘attacking’ or ‘fleeing’.  Our state in between ‘attacking’ and ‘fleeing’ corresponds to the suspension of motion (paralysis) as with the behaviour of a mouse that is aware of an owl in the sky above.

In ‘L’eloge de la fuite’ (‘In Praise of Fleeing’) Henri Laborit observes that our biology and biochemistry is such that it does not support being in a stressful situation for a long time and that it is naturally advantageous for us to move in such a manner as to reduce the stress field.  Insofar as the ‘stress field’ is spatially extended, it is therefore capable of orchestrating our individual and collective behaviour.  For example, a thermal field may orchestrate the movement of people from hotter to cooler regions.  This could induce convergence of the people (towards a cool oasis if they were hot) or divergence of the people (away from a hot clearing into the surrounding cool forest.

The point is that the thermal field is an extrinsic behaviour shaping influence that we tend to deny, re-casting the behaviour in terms of ‘free will’ and our being driven by our own locally originating ‘internal purpose’.  So long as we limit ourselves to ‘intrinsic behaviour shaping influence’, we notionally limit our ‘drive’ to either positive or negative net force; i.e. of being attracted to something or being repulsed by something.  As Nietzsche says, we plug these constrained notions (of the origin of our behaviour as deriving from purpose (fight or flight, attraction or repulsion) into our physics theory, so that physics/science is essentially ‘anthropomorphism’;

““Attraction” and “repulsion” in a purely mechanistic sense are complete fictions: a word.  We cannot think of an attraction divorced from an ‘intention.’ — The will to take possession of a thing or defend oneself against it and repel it—that, we “understand”: that would be an interpretation of which we could make use.

In short: the psychological necessity for a belief in causality lies in the inconceivability of an event divorced from intent; by which naturally nothing is said concerning truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief)!  The belief in ‘causae’ falls with the belief in ‘télè’ (against Spinoza and his causalism).” – Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’

‘Causality’ is thus the mechanical counterpart to ‘purpose’ which in turn derives from our ‘ego’ which conceives of our self as a local organism with its own locally originating, internal purpose driven behaviour.   This view egotistically ‘forgets’ that our individual and collective movement is orchestrated ON A PRIMARY BASIS by the spatial dynamics we are included in.

All of the above ‘boils down’ to the fact that extrinsic shaping of dynamic behaviour RULES and the intrinsic shaping of behaviour, as in the notion of ourselves as ‘purposive systems’ is abstraction that comes to us by our notional reducing of our overall experience of being included in and influenced by nonlocal spatially extended ‘stress fields’, to the pseudo-experience of being the perpetrator of local-sourced dynamics.

If we return to the example of the kayakers, the ‘mental trick’ we play on our mind is to notionally impose a fixed absolute space frame over the kayakers so that we can ‘lift each kayak’ out of the overall dynamic by thinking of each of them as moving relative to the fixed reference frame (i.e. as having their own x,y,z,t trajectory).  This ‘works’ fine as a descriptive tool that can disassemble and re-assemble a picture of what is going on, but it loses track of the extrinsic shaping influence that orchestrates individual and collective behaviour.   Sure, we have a description of the coordinates of each kayak at every moment and the net local forces on them at each moment so that we can calculate their individual motion at each moment, but while we can calculate their individual movements, they do not move ‘individually’, the vortex in which they are included orchestrates their individual and collective movement in a manner that they cannot escape from..  We are included in life’s dynamic and have no choice in the matter.  Reality is thus like (a) while (b) represents our ‘ego taking over’

(a)    “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon

(b) “You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”

In the western culture, we understand ‘organization’ as being ‘intrinsic’, shaped from locally sourced behaviour of the acorn-to-oak-tree purposive type as in (b), even though ‘organization’ as we experience it is primarily ‘extrinsic’ and shaped from the outside-in by nonlocal influences (fields).   This is equivalent to ‘the ego taking over’ and this is the stress (the gap between our ego-shaped worldview and the reality of our experience) that we are feeling that we intuit is going to reach a limit and snap out of it (like a compressed or stretched spring). The intuition is a feeling that doesn’t come with all the details comprehended, but simply portends some kind of overall transformation, perhaps in an earthquake type violent release (the collision of planet earth and planet nibiru on December 21, 2012).

What stands to ‘fall’ are ideas like ‘Darwinian evolution’, a ‘credibility-stretching’ intrinsically shaped organization theory which has increasingly given us a sense of ‘who we are since 1859 and Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’, the full title of which is; ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.’

The ‘credibility’ stretching is not with respect to evolution per se since the idea has been around at least since Anaximander (600 B.C.) but instead of Anaximander’s ‘boundless’ origin of things, Darwin opted for  ‘local origination’ as in Aristotle’s acorn-to-oak-tree theory.  Instead of innovation emerging ‘ecosystem-like’ (mutually interedependent fields of influence); i.e.  from spatial-relational balancing as in ‘field’ dynamics, the innovation is by way of ‘lower forms’ progressing into ‘higher forms’.    His avoidance, like Newton’s, of the ‘three body problem’ wherein innovation could be understood as deriving from three or more entities (flows, fields, objects) moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence, put boxed his model in and forced him to come up with a local sourcing of innovation.  Newton’s solution had been the ‘vector field’ and the notion of a locally applied directional force.  Darwin’s was ‘random variation’ accompanied by ‘natural selection’.  Thus ‘wings’ are said to be a random variance that nature has selected so that winged species have persisted.   To many, ‘wings’ do not seem very ‘random’ and the notion of extrinsic organizational shaping influence comes strongly to mind.   The implicit outside-inward (extrinsic/Platonic) shaping of an embryo as it morphs into its adult form is another credibility-stretching requirement for sustaining belief in Darwinian evolution.   The ‘gene’ has been modeled after Aristotle’s acorn-to-oak-tree intrinsic package, but this does not explain how regenerative organisms can rebuild lost parts or how lost parts can regenerate the entire organism.   It is not understood how stem-cells can be introduced into the body and magically turn themselves into whatever types of cells the body seems to need (the process is termed ‘epigenetics’, the changes from which can be transgenerational implying support for Lamarckism).  The ideal forms of the extrinsic organizational shaping influence of Plato, and the notion of outside-in-shaping influence, as in the environmental ‘niches’ of ecosystems scream out to give the answers, but the stubborn Aristotelian acorn-pushing-itself-out-to-become-the-oak-tree (with the outside world as passive resource rather than extrinsic organization shaping influence) continues to resist such a paradigm shift.

Darwinian evolution carries with it a lot of templates for how we ‘egotistically’ see ourselves, as being ‘local material systems with our own locally originating (purposive) agency’, and as being those ‘higher forms’ that have ‘progressed from’ inferior forms.    These ego-based views, which ignore the ecosystem (mutually influencing) view have been incorporated in our western social dynamic prior to Darwin’s theory and it has been argued, not surprisingly, that Darwin’s theory borrowed from the racial supremacism of the times.

Just as our human ego resisted the paradigm shift from the earth-centric worldview to the sun-centred worldview, our ego will resist opening the door to ‘extrinsic organization shaping forces as in Plato’s worldview.  Darwin’s theory concretizes and uses as an ego-supported anchor, the intrinsic acorn-to-oak-tree organization-shaping theory of Aristotle.

Again, the message of Kuhn is that there will be no general ‘radical shift’ (paradigm shift) until an alternative belief system is available that is judged credible.  If not, the established conceptual framework will continue to be adhered to.

Our belief in the (b) worldview; i.e. the credibility of the (b) worldview, is coming directly from our ego, while our belief in the (a) worldview requires a good measure of humility.  The ‘paradigm’ shift, then, would be constituted by a relinquishing of the helm of our ‘self’ by the ego on a collective basis, so that instead of our ‘purposive system steering’ being unnaturally dominant (in our heads only since it cannot dominate in our experienced reality), we can once again attune to the orchestrating influence of Nature’s extrinsic behaviour-shaping influences that we have been stone-walling (i.e. trying to stone-wall since THEY WILL BE HEARD! since ignoring them is not the same as having control over them).

* * *

Ripabottoni, the home town of Matteo Fiorito and Arturo Giovannitti

The Author’s maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada from Ribobottoni, a small hilltop town in the Abruzzi-Molise region in 1890, a decade before Arturo Giovannitti (Industrial Workers of the World) emigrated from the same small town to the United States.  It was a time when ‘globalism’ referred not to corporate commerce but to Il Proletario (also the name of the newspaper Giovanitti was editor of).  It was a time when new ideas of freedom and governance were clashing with the established order.  It was a time when the establishment did their best to cast social activists as ‘evil’ people and ‘framed’ activist leaders for crimes they did not commit (e.g. Giovannitti and Ettor, Sacco and Vanzetti).  History and ‘the authorities’ later acknowledged some of these injustices  (e.g. the State of Massachussetts proclaimed in 1977, fifty years after their execution, that Sacco and Vanzetti had been ‘unfairly tried and convicted’). What has not been ‘owned up to’ is the darkness unfairly cast upon ‘anarchy’ and ‘sabotage’, words that emerged in a far less ‘sinister’ context than they became ‘overprinted’ with, a dark overprinting that continues to taint them today.  For those who seek to understand the frames of reference for these terms as they existed at that time, this essay may be of interest.

‘Sabotage’ derived from the french expression ‘travailler a coups de sabots’, ‘to work slowly and clumsily as if wearing wooden clogs’.  It derived from the logic of ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’ which suggested, to the worker, the parallelism ‘a less-than-fair-days work for a less-than-fair-day’s pay’, rather than ‘a fair day’s work for a less-than-fair-day’s pay’ as was often the employer’s ‘equation’.  That is, if the pay was not fair then worker moved about in the manner of one of the ‘three stooges’, a country simpleton whose wooden clogs greatly constrained his mobility.   Giovannitti underscores this in his introduction to Emile Pouget’s essay ‘Sabotage’;

“Whether you agree or not, Sabotage is this and nothing but this. It is not destructive. It has nothing to do with violence, neither to life nor to property.”

But it was soon taken to mean ‘destruction of property’ which is the meaning it has continued to have.  As Giovannitti observes, working slowly and clumsily to protest poor pay is not a new tactic.  What was new was to give it a name and to openly advocate it.  Giovannitti describes the hypocrisy here by way of an example.  This excerpt is also useful for gaining an impression of how established logic/practice was being questioned in this era;

“… why is it that only since the Lawrence Strike, Sabotage loomed up in such terrific Light? It is easily explained.

A certain simple thing which is more or less generally practiced and thought very plain and natural, as for instance, a negro picking less cotton when receiving less grub, becomes a monstrous thing, a crime and a blasphemy when it is openly advocated and advised.

It is simply because there is no danger in any art in itself when it is determined by natural instinctive impulse and is quite unconscious and unpremeditated — it only becomes dangerous when it becomes the translated practical expression of an idea even though, or rather because, this idea has originated from the act itself.

It is so of Sabotage as of a good many other things. Take, for instance, the question of divorce. To be divorced and marry again is quite a decent, legal and respectable thing to do in the eyes of the church, the state and the ‘ third power, which is public opinion.

Now, a rich man having grown tired of his wife (or vice versa, or both ways), he properly puts her away through the kind intervention of a solemn-faced, black-robed judge, and marries a chorus girl through the same kind help of a very venerable and holy bishop. Nobody is shocked — on the contrary, the papers are full of this grand affair and everybody is well pleased, except some old maids and the regular town gossips.

The rich man may stop here if he is properly mated, and may go further if he thinks he is not. He can repeat this wonderful performance as many times as he likes – there is no limit to it and it is done quite often.

But, if you should — say at the third or fourth repetition of these public solemnities, find out that they are all quite unnecessary and that the aforesaid rich man could and should more properly keep his bedroom affairs to himself, if you should venture that he could as well dispense with judge and priest, you would be howled at that you are a filthy free lover, a defiler of the sanctity of the home, and so on.

How do you explain that? It is because, the fact that a rich man (he may be a poor one at that) puts away three or four or ten wives is of little importance in itself, it is only when out of this plain everyday phenomenon you draw the theory of the freedom of the sexes that the bourgeois jumps up and screams, for though free love be and has always been a fact, it is only when it becomes an idea that it becomes a dynamic and disintegrating force of bourgeois society, in so far as it wrests from the political state one of its cardinal faculties”

The impression of control and of obedience to the law was important, though for those with the means, the law was no obstacle to what might otherwise be judged unlawful or sinful.  Similarly, the cultural habit is to give the impression that the owner makes the production happen (the buck starts and stops with him for the ‘creation of wealth’) and that ‘labour’ is simply one of the commodity ingredients along with ‘land/resources’, ‘capital’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ that constitute the owner’s wealth-creating machinery, an ‘emperor’s new clothes’ illusion that ’sabotage’ exposes, to the owner’s embarrassment.   In the original roll-out of ’sabotage’, the only thing that was destroyed was the illusion that labour was a passive cog in the machinery that turned when the ‘big wheel’ said ‘turn’.

So much for ‘Sabotage’, how it emerged, how it was tainted and remains tainted.

‘Anarchy’ has a similar history of having been scarred for life by abuse during its youth, so that its deep philosophical roots relevant to the architecture of organization are obscured by its troubled adolescence.

To go back towards the beginning (at least to the documented beginnings) of the debate on organization in our western culture, Plato and Aristotle were in basic disagreement as to whether organization was ‘extrinsically shaped’ (Plato) or ‘intrinsically shaped’ (Aristotle).  Aristotle’s view was the one that became popularized and remains the default ‘architectural assumption’ on organizational design in our western culture dominated global social dynamic.

Plato’s ‘extrinsic final cause’ is often expressed in terms of ‘ideal forms’; e.g. there is an ideal form for a horse and a ‘real horse’ is understood to be a particular, imperfect rendering of the ideal.  This is one way that Plato simpified his position though his impression of the ‘mold’ was sometimes ‘more dynamic’  since he also spoke of a spherical vortex around the earth raising the question as to whether the extrinsic celestial dynamic organized what went on on earth or whether the earth was ‘intrinsically organized from within’.  Plato’s view of the natural primacy of outside-inward (extrinsic) organizational shaping can be compared with the ecosystemic notion of a ‘niche’ wherein the dynamics of the habitat open up spatial possibility for some potentiality to rise up and fill it.  In this case, it is not a particular species that the niche is inductively beckoning, but a suite of related dynamic behaviours that could be satisfied by perhaps several different organisms or a combination of organisms.

Aristotle’s ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘telos’ is so familiar to us ‘western-acculturated’ types today, that we can hardly see beyond it to the extrinsic alternative.  In Aristotle’s view, the organization of things was driven by ‘intention’ which translates into ‘cause’ and ‘purpose’.  An example common given is that of the acorn growing up to be an oak tree.  The intrinsic shaping of organization presumes that the acorn has within it the encoded knowledge of what constitutes an oak tree and the intrinsic ‘purpose’ to push itself out of itself into an oak tree.  This is, in effect, the essence of the concept of ‘ego’ wherein we imagine that we are the ‘fountainhead’ of the ‘results’ that we lay claim to.

While the Aristotelian ‘purposive system’ model is today’s popular model of genetics, such understanding is in the process of transformation as new understandings arise in biology (e.g. ‘bidirectional innovation’ where ‘outside-inward’ (extrinsic) and ‘inside-outward’ (intrinsic) shaping of organization are in a conjugate relation (simultaneous mutually influencing relation).  This manifests in the evolution of multispecies microbial communities as described by Douglas E. Caldwell et al, ‘Cultivation of Microbial Consortia and Communities’).  Also, the environment has an outside-inward role in stem-cell development as associates with the cells in regenerative tissue.  The injury may be in the form of a missing piece of flesh or a hole and thus the dynamics of the damaged periphery have an outside-in shaping and organizing influence on the repair job.

A point to remember is that when organization is ‘extrinsically shaped’, it can be like the ‘V’ formation of the wildgeese where the spatial dynamics (resonances) orchestrate the individual and collective dynamics of the wildgeese in the formation (from the outside-in).  Extrinsically shaped organization clearly occurs in earthquake, avalanche, hurricane dynamics, and in all those cases where pressure fields or thermal fields or gravity or electromagnet fields develop non-uniform spatial distributions inducing material to move so as to restore balance.

This ‘extrinsic shaping of organization’ (extrinsic-intrinsic conjugate shaping, to be more accurate) is the design approach of Amerindian organization, which by many accounts, worked very well in the social sector if not in the commercial sector.

The impression of leaderlessness or absence of hierarchical control associates with extrinsic shaping of organization.  Imagine that you were in an Amerindian community and that one day, without warning, everyone starting packing up and the entire group folded their tents and moved on as a group, without any ‘orders from the top’ or issuance of plans or instructions.   Where the organizational sourcing would be coming from would be from the dynamics of the space the group was included in, the first touch of frost, the turning of the leaves, a certain feel in the air, the sun’s inclination, birds flying south overhead etc. etc.   We all know what its like to be warm and comfy, to be in the zone, so if being ‘in the zone’ originates in the dynamics of the habitat we inhabit, in being in a resonant relation with our social/environmental habitat, then our individual and collective movements can be organized by putting our behaviour in the service of sustaining such resonance.  Such organization IS NOT PURPOSE-DRIVEN and it does not involve a hierarchical command and control system.  It is an example of where ‘extrinsic final cause’ is in a natural primacy over ‘intrinsic final cause’. It looks and feels like ‘anarchy’ but it is highly organized even though it is ‘without purpose’.  Just as the winds and currents of a storm can induce high levels of organization in the crew of a sailing vessel, everyone ‘reading the signs’ and responding the continually shifting forces so as to sustain continuing balance and remain ‘in the zone’ (in an inner outer resonance), this doesn’t mean that a Captain is not useful, but it implies that the Captain is ’secondary’, like a ‘coach’.  This sailboating system does not push out of itself to achieve its desired future state, NOT ON A FIRST PRIORITY.  Its organization is extrinsically shaped, and if the captain shifts so that he demands that his orders be put in first priority and demands that the ship stay on course, headed for a planned destination that is taking them, insanely, through the heart of a hurricane, the crew may mutiny, insisting that their actions be directed not firstly by plans and purpose but firstly by the dynamics of the space they are included in.

In Amerindian organization, there is a noticeable ‘lack of purpose’ but certainly not a lack of organization.   The local tribal community did not have a plan to purposively construct a desired future.  With their ‘strand-in-the-web-of-life’ view, they let their individual and collective movements be orchestrated by the dynamics of the habitat they were included in, not unlike the wildgeese and/or the sailing vessel (as contrasted with the powerboat).  Their goal was to cultivate and sustain a resonant relationship with the land.  Stories passed by the oral tradition underscore the relational aspects of the community dynamic, wherein the land organizes the community; e.g. ‘My Father and theLima Beans’ by Paula http://goodshare.org/wp/my-fathers-lima-beans/

Like many other things that have been popularized, intrinsic-shaping-based organizational design has enjoyed ‘lock-in’ not because it is superior but because it managed to become ‘established’ as the preferred approach (e.g. slavery helped to evolve the master-slave type of organization which transforms the captain from a coach to an absolute dictator).  Once a system becomes ‘established’, more and more activities become dependent on it, and the ‘switching costs’ become huge.  The sovereign state concept (which law historicans call a ’secularized theological concept)  is itself conceived of as a local, independently-existing  purposive system that pushes out of itself to create its desired future.  By contrast, the extrinsically shaped organization is ’stateless’; i.e. there is no locally-originating, internal purpose-directed behaviour; i.e. the Amerindians had no concept of a ‘sovereign state’ or ‘purposive system’ that pushed itself out of itself to become what it had decided and planned that it would become;  .

“To Engels, Morgan’s description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or  Iroquois] was important because “it gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state.”  Jefferson had also been interested in the Iroquois’ ability to  maintain social consensus without a large state apparatus, as had Franklin. Engels described the Iroquoian state in much the same way that American revolutionaries had a century earlier: “Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households — still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal — including the women. “ — Bruce E. Johansen, Forgotten Founders

Anarchy, in light of actual examples such as this, might be described in terms of the notable ‘lack of purpose’ and  ‘lack of morals’.  That is, both the driving energy and the ‘morality’ are immanent in the organizational architecture.   Like the sailboat crew, the community accepts that it derives its power and its steerage from the spatial dynamic it is included in, and the people let their individual and collective behaviours be orchestrated by the cultivating and sustaining of  balance, health and harmony in resonant, conjugate relation with the ‘parenting’ medium of nature (the social/environmental suprasystem they are included in).

The ‘purposive system’ not only rejects the habitat dynamic as the primary source of organization, it relegates ‘land’ to ‘one of the factors of production’ along with ‘labour’, ‘capital’ and ‘entrepreneurship’.  ‘Land’ and ‘natural resources’ are, in the western world view, taken to be ‘a gift from God’.

These different ways of understanding the architecture of organization have found their way into western science by an intesting and peculiar path.

As Nietzsche noted, the Aristotelian choice of ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘purposive organization’ was infused into the two-body formulations of dynamics in physics.   For this reason, Nietzsche termed western science ‘anthropomorphism’ because this human sense of ‘purpose’, of being an ‘acorn’ that had its own internal knowledge and driving purpose to become what it wanted to become, is what is otherwise known as ‘ego’.  In ‘The Will to Power’, Nietzsche observes;

““Attraction” and “repulsion” in a purely mechanistic sense are complete fictions: a word.  We cannot think of an attraction divorced from an ‘intention.’ — The will to take possession of a thing or defend oneself against it and repel it—that, we “understand”: that would be an interpretation of which we could make use.

In short: the psychological necessity for a belief in causality lies in the inconceivability of an event divorced from intent; by which naturally nothing is said concerning truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief)!  The believe in ‘causae’ falls with the belief in ‘télè’ (against Spinoza and his causalism).” – Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’

The anthropomorphisms of ‘attraction and repulsion’ did find their way into physics even though they are reductions of ‘convergence’ and ‘expansion’.  As we know, in the presence if non-uniform thermal fields, matter will expand or contract but there is no ‘local source’ of the inside-outward push (repulsion) or the outside-inward pull (attraction).  This dynamic, the generative drive of which is the non-uniform energy in the field, is an example of extrinsic shaping influence and it is a more general case than the dimensionally-reduced two-body geometry of ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ where the notion of internal ‘intentions’ (purpose) comes to mind.

An other example of extrinsically shaped organization associates with the development of non-uniformity in the thermal field that acts upon the atmosphere and ocean, engendering convection cells (storm-cells, hurricanes) that transport excess thermal energy from equatorial regions to thermal energy deficient polar regions.

In fact, relativity argues for a conjugate relation between extrinsic and intrinsic shaping of organization.

On the typical ‘maps’ that pretend to portray the full variety of political views, the extrinsically shaped organizational view is not even represented.  That is, they are all ‘intrinsically-shaped organizational variants.  All of the common political parties believe in organization that has the internal knowledge and the internal purposive drive to push itself out of itself to create its desired future self.  The extrinsically shaped organizational alternative (a) is not represented; only the ‘b’ (intrinsic) outlook is represented.  But these two ‘worldviews’ are radically different as the following articulations of them suggest;

(a)    “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon

(b) “You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”  [sometimes expressed; ‘if you don’t have a plan, you’re part of someone else’s plan’]

The typical map that tries to depict the differences between the ‘main political views’ (excluding extrinsically-shaped organization [anarchy])  deserves a little closer look;

extrinsically shaped organization is not represented

If we examine all of the ‘extremes’ on this map, we never get to a politics where extrinsic shaping of organization is even ’seen’ much  less advocated.  As ‘el loco Gringo’ says; ‘we are fighting the battle of Moot Hill, no matter who wins, we all lose.’

We can get a clue to why this is by examining the position of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand studied philosophy and took great interest in the different views of Plato and Aristotle;

“At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle (intrinsic shaping of organization) and Plato (extrinsic shaping of organization), who would form two of the greatest influences and counter-influences respectively on her thought.” – Wikipedia

Ayn Rand takes the notion of ‘purposive systems’ to the limit; i.e. if you don’t have a purposive plan, you don’t count for anything;

“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using…. What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their “right” to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent.” — Ayn Rand, “Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974″

There is an important point here in regard to Ayn Rand’s unmitigated extolling of ‘selfishness’ and her unmitigated critique of ‘altruism’.  Neither of these concepts ‘make any sense’ if one approaches the understanding of dynamics from the ‘extrinsic shaping’ side of things.  That is, if the spatial dynamics orchestrates (organizes) individual and collective behaviour; i.e. if one puts one’s movements in the service of sustaining balance and harmony as one does when one drives friendly in the busy flow of the freeway, then such behaviour is not ‘purposive’ (as with the sailboater compared to the powerboater, the first order of the day is to sustain balance, to get into the resonant zone and to sustain the resonance).

Both ‘selfishness’ and ‘altruism’ are types of ‘purposive behaviour’.  If you are in traffic and you slow down or speed up to give someone space to move and avoid a collision, then you are actually letting your behaviour be extrinsically shaped, by the spatial dynamics you are included in.   Drivers may move away from one another in a relative or mutual sense (divergence) to open up space for someone who is otherwise threatened with collision.  In this case, you are not in control and the dynamic is not ’caused’ by you, as the organization/form is taking shape, you let your behaviour serve the unfolding of that shape.   By contrast, pPurposive or intrinsic behaviour means that you are pushing out of yourself to create a desired future result (a result that satisfies either your selfish or an altruistic agenda).  Letting your movements serve the cultivating and sustaining of harmonious flow is extrinsically shaped rather than intrinsically shaped behavior.  Neither selfishness nor altruism apply.

But all of the political variants ‘on the map’ take for granted Aristotelian purposive organization.  That is, Ayn Rand has a strong argument for ‘selfishness’ and against ‘altruism’ BUT ONLY IN HER NARROW ‘purposive systems window’.  Therefore, in spite of her often ‘atrocious-sounding’ statements, they are logically consistent IF ONE ASSUMES THAT PURPOSIVE SYSTEMS ARE ‘ALL SHE WROTE’.  That is, she says;

“I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.”

Organization that associates with extrinsic shaping influence (or with a conjugate extrinsic-intrinsic shaping influence) brings on an entirely different paradigm.  ‘Purpose’ drops out of it because ‘intention’ no longer has any meaning.  Selfishness and altruism drop out of it because they depend on ‘purpose/intention’.  In extrinsically shaped organization, the ‘niche’ induces the emergence and shapes the dynamics of the organization.

For example, recent anthropological studies of the the Nenets of the European and Siberian Arctic show that they do not, as had been assumed, accumulate knowledge over the generations that they use to inform ‘their purpose’  so as to push out of themselves to create a desired future result.   Instead, they have developed keen skills for attuning to the dynamics of their habitat.  They follow the reindeer, knowing that the reindeer will following the exposed patches of lichen and the lichen will follow the wandering patches of lower precipitation and more sunshine.  They let what is happening in the space they are included in shape the organization of their behaviour.

On the other hand, were they to make permanent camp locally, they might round up some reindeer and start a reindeer feedlot.  They might then take on the form of a purposive organization with a locally instigated, hierarchical make-it-happen organizational structure that pushes out of itself to form its desired future self.  The dynamics of the land (or the dynamics of the larger community) they are included in might no longer be orchestrating their behaviour; i.e. there might no longer be extrinsic shaping of their social organization, their dynamic might then be locally driven and insensitive to the world dynamic in which they are included.

The same extrinsic or intrinsic organization shaping options apply when a group of people is included in a larger group of people; i.e. to what extent does a particular group let their behaviour be orchestrated by the spatial dynamic they are included in.   Within the flow of a crowd, islands and channels form, estuaries form.  There is a morphology similar to geomorphology and ‘relativity’ of motion is at play (extrinsic shaping influence is in conjugate relation with intrinsic shaping influence).  Mach’s principle of relativity can be seen; ‘The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’.   What shapes the ‘geo-like’ morphological organization in the crowd is not ‘one thing’ (intrinsic) or the other (extrinsic) but both (in coniunctio) at the same time.

The point is that we are not limited to the Aristotelian ‘purposive systems’ approach in our manner of organizing.  Yet we (the western culture dominated world)  have designed our governments and our business enterprises using this purposive systems paradigm.  We have infused the concept into science as well to the point that we can only think of ‘intention’ even where it is pretty obvious that the organizing influence is extrinsic.  For example, Wildgeese do like the Nenets, they let the dynamics of space orchestrate their movements.  If the patch of warm weather with abundant food moves south, they move south and if it moves north again, they move north again.  It is not as if they have the internally coded knowledge and the purposive drive that has them push out of themselves to engineer their desired future state of affairs.  But our habitual choice of intrinsic final cause leads us to force-fit this notion on inherently extrinsically shaped organization, eclipsing our view of the extrinsic (when one reduce the tool box to a single tool, a hammer, then everything looks like a nail).

Insofar as we are capable of ‘driving friendly’ in the flow of a busy freeway, or sailing in robust winds and currents, we are capable of experiencing extrinsic shaping of organization.  It is like nature calling us to take our place in the natural scheme of things, to invite us to ‘get in the zone’ (resonance) rather than one-sidedly pushing our selves out of ourselves to construct a desired future state (ignoring the dynamics of the space we are included in).   We can always force-fit our purposive models on top of these dynamics.  As Poincare observed, once we have extracted a theory, law, or fitted curve from the data, we then use the theory to ‘correct our experience’.   If we put paint on our wheels so that we could go back and see our meandering path on the freeway, we would likely still insist that we purpose-driven and destination oriented.  The same with our sailboating trajectory which tacked back and forth and back and forth.  We would tend to say that these meanderings where we departed from our ‘purposive plans’ were ‘noise’ and were not relevant.  There goes the natural primacy of extrinsically shaped organization, trashed as ‘noise’.  The Amerindian mind would say, ‘no!’, that is not ‘noise’, what is most important is staying in harmony with our living space while self-interest sourced purposes and objectives are secondary.

In conclusion, ‘anarchy’ speaks to a different organizational paradigm that we lose sight of when we ‘go into our inquiry’ armed only with Aristotle’s intrinsic final cause (inside-outward shaping of organization), having left behind Plato’s extrinsic final cause (outside-in shaping of organization).  We never get to really talk about ‘anarchy’ because it is one of those words whose basic meaning is summarily dismissed and replaced with the popular distorted meaning.

‘Purpose’ is a word we ‘understand’, so we believe in our culture.  In the Amerindian culture, when the people in a village spontaneously fold their tents and collectively move to where the game have moved to, or to where the sunshine and warmth has moved to, they are answering nature’s call to them to take their place in the scheme of things.  The Great Mysterious unfolding is calling them and they do answer and they do realize that they are inextricably included in the One unfolding and they do realize that they ‘are all in this together’ and that like small tributaries answering the call of the Ocean, joining together as they answer the call brings them the power of the mighty river.  ‘Purpose’ is like the ‘inner lining’ of the ‘Calling’ that, only in our minds, takes on a primary status when we start to believe that the calling starts within our own interior, when we start thinking of ourselves like the Aristotelian ‘acorn’ that is fully equipped with the wherewithal to push out of itself to become what it wants to become.  This is egoism that goes by the name ‘purpose’ and/or ’cause’.  As Nietzsche observed, we have infused the egoism of ‘intention’ into science and we call it  ’cause’ in physics and ‘purpose’ in biology, the notional empowering of local material objects/organisms/systems from within themselves to act on their present state of self to notionally determine their immediate future state.

‘Anarchy’ is a word that rains on the ego’s parade.  When the spring equinox calls the serfs to their participation in the unfolding by preparing the soil for planting, and/or when the migration of the warmth and game calls the people of the tribal village to their participation in the unfolding, some fool will call out; ‘I command you to prepare the soil for planting’ and/or ‘I command you to fold your tents and move on’ and believe that he is the ’cause’ of these dynamics.   In the western culture, that ‘fool’ could be you or I.  Instead of understanding ‘community organization’ in the sense that the call of the ocean brings many tributaries together into a powerful river, the new egoist understanding is that such organization is driven and directed from out of the interior of each of us.  ‘Ego’ is this new internal ‘calling’ and ’cause’ and ‘purpose’ are its illusion-propping cohorts.  The ’spirit’ of nature that includes all of the diversity in the unfolding universe, that breathes life into us and inspires us to rise up and participate in the unfolding is, in the western culture, misconstrued as something that starts and stops in our interior, that is our private and personal ‘fountainhead’ whose organization on an individual and/or collective basis is ‘top-down’ or ’shaped by intrinsic influence’

‘Sabotage’ is another word that rains on the ‘ego’s parade’.   Its originally-intended meaning of ‘ploddingly’ brings to the fore the manner in which the reader will assimilate the concepts in this essay (if at all).  That’s why I have titled it ‘Anarchy for Saboteurs’ (Anarchy for ‘plodders’ like many of us ‘westerners’ have become re philosophical issues such as these).  This lacks the drama of the popular culturally conditioned connotation of these words.  Hopefully this will not ‘disappoint!’

* * *

destination-oriented birds are equipped for speed, not comfort

Knowledge of ‘how to make something happen’ is non-controversial for many simple tasks, but not so for more complex tasks.  For example, the knowledge of ‘how to ride a bicycle’ is not something that can be imparted in terms of written or spoken concepts/instructions since it is not in that class of dynamic processes that can be decomposed into ‘what one does’.  It is instead in the class of ‘resonant behaviours’ wherein one must let one’s actions be orchestrated so as to sustain a dynamic balance. It is akin to the ‘V’ flight of wildgeese where the spatial relationships one is included in (co-stimulating), one must allow to ‘take the helm’.

The general principle here is that no amount of detailed, visual observation-based ‘knowledge’ of a person riding a bicycle will inform one as to ‘how they are doing it’ because it is not as if ‘they are doing it’ in the positivist sense that they are the full and sole causal agents.   They are included in a dynamic that is ‘bigger than them’, like the sailboat or surfer in the storm, the driver in the busy flow of freeway traffic and their positivist, ‘make-it-happen’, destination orientation must take second place to ‘sustaining balance/harmony’ with/in the flow.

What would happen if we made the student (who had never actually ridden a bicycle) who scored highest in the written and orally delivered (concept-based) bicycle riding course, immediately upon his graduation, the leader of an important (large scale) corporate initiative which depended upon his bicycle riding and on his ability to teach others as he had been taught?

It would be a fiasco.  He and his associates would quickly realize that ‘riding a bicycle’ could not be captured in a simple, positivist set of ‘here’s how you do it’ instructions.

This bicycle example may be too simple to be realistic, but the basic situation itself is not unrealistic due to what is called the ‘fly-by-wire’ nature of control systems.  In the beginning, pilots flew by ‘feel’ much like the bicycle rider.  The relative resistance of the controls informed the pilot how much stress the wings and flaps were under.  The pilot let his actions be orchestrated by the spatial dynamics he was included in; i.e. ‘flying’ was initially ‘flying-by-feel’ but in scaling up the system, his feeling-tuned movement of the controls was replaced by hydraulic servo-mechanisms (like ‘power steering’) which make the controlling actions 100% positivistic.  In the ‘fly-by-feel’ system, if there were some obstacle, a ‘mechanic’ perhaps, interfering with the movements of parts of the apparatus when he moved the controls, he would feel it and ‘back off’ and investigate.  But in the ‘fly-by-wire’ system, something that is in the wrong place at the wrong time (a stowaway in the landing gear compartment) is likely to become ‘yesterday’s pizza’ without the pilot even realizing it.

When the apparatus we are ‘flying’ is in the form of a hierarchical human organization, moving too far towards the ‘fly-by-wire’ mode where everybody is very obedient, doesn’t ask questions, and ‘follows orders’ literally, the man at the controls can put a lot of stress on the ‘parts’ (the leader-follower cascading of orders is the equivalent of ‘mechanical advantage’ and the leverage can be very powerful by the time the positivist commands get to where the rubber meets the road.

Highly knowledgeable (top-scoring) graduates recruited from the best universities were termed ‘humilityless twits’ in a wellspring interview with retired managers that I conducted back in 1996.  A ‘wellspring’ interview is one in which the interviewee share a handful of the most significant (good and/or bad) experiential unfoldings that have shaped one’s life and understanding.  These managers (American) had gone right into officers training  on graduating (during WWII) from university in Oklahoma.  One received his M.Sc in Geology and a few months later was an officer on a warship in the Pacific that was torpedoed and sunk six months later.  Because of his bravery ‘under fire’ he was promoted and made Captain of his own ship (he had never been on a ship until his navy assignment).

The point is that this ‘generation’ of ‘pilots of industry’ was of a different mindset than the new graduates; i.e. they embraced the (a) worldview while the new graduates embraced the (b) worldview;

(a) “Life is something that happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”

(b)“You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”

While one tends to think of the military as a fly-by-wire operation where the ‘top brass’ will pull so hard on the stick to get to their desired destination that the wings will drop off in the process (the foot soldiers will be yesterday’s pizza)., it is, at the same time, an excellent training ground that imparts an understanding of what is wrong with ‘fly-by-wire’ systems and why you would only want to use them in extreme emergencies and if everyone involved supported the approach.

The new sought-after graduates (their knowledge ‘is’ valuable), as part of their negotiated terms of employment, moved quickly into ‘management  [piloting] positions’, eager to operationalize their ‘make-it-happen’ knowledge in the ‘fly-by-wire’ mode that is the default structure in a modern hierarchical corporate operation.  The rank-and-file employees constituted the ‘compliant parts’ of the fly-by-wire apparatus and were therefore in for some rough rides when 100% positivist ‘make-it-happen’ as it should pilots were at the controls.

One can’t really blame the graduates for what was/is happening.  The educational system encouraged them to ‘use their knowledge to make things happen’, to ‘create a desirable future’.  The root of the problem is instead ‘cultural’, in the popular belief in the ‘causal model’ and the ‘purposive system’ models, both of which are unrealistically ‘positivist’ in that they fail to acknowledge the primary influence of spatial relationships in nature’s dynamics.

As Nietzsche contended, these positivist models stem from our ‘ego’.  We see ourselves as ‘purposive systems’ in the sense that the relationship between our ‘self’ and ‘what becomes of us’ is understood in the way we (occidentals) understand that an acorn has within it the encoded knowledge and the purpose to become an oak tree.  Such a view (which is cemented in place by Darwinism) excludes extrinsic spatial shaping influence and is incompatible with the understanding that ‘life is something that happens to us while we’re busy making other plans’.

This ‘occidental’ view that the world dynamic can be understood in terms of the causal and purposive systems models has a history that goes back to Aristotle and which was reinforced by Newton.  It is worth a short diversion to review how Newton reinforced it..

When Newton tried to go from ‘two body’ dynamic to ‘three body’ dynamics he ran into a fundamental mathematic unresolvability in that where three or more bodies moved under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence, there was no way to impute ownership of the joint behaviour explicitly to each of participants; i.e. the joint behaviour could not be decomposed into the behaviours of the participating parts.  This became known as ‘the three body problem’.  One way to look at this is to recognize that we normally capture what we call ‘the behaviour of a particular local object/organism/system by referencing the local entity to a euclidian reference space frame (x,y,z,t frame).  With two bodies, this still works but with three bodies, their spatial relations take over as the reference frame; i.e. they move relative to their joint movement.  The self-referentiality in this situation invokes the use of non-euclidian space geometry.

In relativity, this problem is viewed differently in that the notion of simultaneous mutual influence of multiple bodies derives from ‘gravitation’ or ‘the gravity field’ which is ‘everywhere at the same time’.  By equivalencing mass and energy as in relativity, it can be seen that the shape of the field is the source not only of the movement of the multiple bodies, but also for their being there.

Accepting that shaping influences in nature can be ‘nonlocal’ takes one into the realm of ‘nonlinear dynamics’, ‘complexity’ etc. where one is forced to go to develop an understanding of earthquakes, avalanches, hurricanes etc. where spatial (relational) energy charging and discharging is the source of movement and change rather than a local ‘causal agent’ or a local ‘purposive system’; i.e. this takes one out of the view where the present depends only on causal/purposive agents acting on the immediate past and into the view where remote regions of space and time can directly influence the present (e.g. the stresses that build up gradually in a building sand pile/dune and release aperiodically).

Newton put in a warning in the Author’s Preface in Principia to the effect that he was unable to identify and incorporate this source of dynamics in his laws of motion;

“I wish we could derive the rest of the pheaenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles ; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other ;” which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy.” . . . Isaac Newton (’Authors Preface’ to ‘Principia.

Now, in order to avoid dealing with three or more bodies moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence, Newton invented the euclidian-space based ‘vector field’ which reduced the nonlocal shaping of dynamics to local causal origins.  That is, instead of solving the problem of motion wherein everything was influencing everything else at the same time (as in the gravitational field being everywhere at the same time), Newton used the concept of a ‘local force’ which could be calculated at any point in space at a time ‘t’ based on the spatial configuration of mass at time ‘t’..  This force is expressed in terms of ‘unit mass’ and is now called ‘the Newton’ (the force needed to acceleration a mass of one kilogram one meter per second per second).

One can make the time steps as small as one likes so as to recalculate the change in the mass distribution over small intervals of time and thus get fine-grain estimates of the changing force that will be influencing the movement of some object in question.

But apart from all the math and physics gyrations, the point is that Newton reduced what is essentially a nonlocal sourcing of dynamics to a local causal sourcing of dynamics.  Non-homogeneities in the gravity field have been pulling on themselves as is the view in the three body case, but this is then inverted by the invention of a notional ‘vector force field’ where the movement seems (in our mental models) to start locally, from a locally applied force.  This is what comes to us by imposing an absolute euclidian space frame that allows us to reference the movements of individual bodies to; i.e. though the three bodies (or nine planets) move relative to one another, by imposing the absolute space reference frame, we can ‘synthetically’ impute independent motion to each of them.

Now, if we know where everything is and what the forces are at every point in space, if we know this for one time ‘t’, then we can know the future condition of space at any future time ‘t’.  This gave rise to the notion of  ‘causal determinism’ articulated by Laplace as follows;

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” – Pierre Simon Laplace (1814).

This is not simply the musings of physicists following the ideas and mathematical devices of Newtonian physics, it is an ‘acculturated intuition’ that is widely prevalent in the world today.  If we have the intellect to know the current situation, then it follows that we can apply the necessary forces to construct the future we desire.

This worldview (the ‘American dream’ and the dream of purposive organizations such as governments and corporations) is a ‘positivist’, ‘make-it-happen’, ‘can-do’ worldview that launches many fly-by-wire initiatives.

We had a good look at it in the military fly-by-wire initiatives of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  When the commander in chief pulled on the controls, the servo-mechanism cascading down through the apparatus followed order in 100% positivist, ‘make-it-happen’ fashion and where some of the parts got between a rock and a hard place and were mercilessly crushed, that was accepted as ‘the way it is’.  In modern warfare, aerial strikes are used to ‘tenderize’ the path ahead so that there is less resisting back-pressure on the advancing fly-by-wire apparatus.

But corporations also launch fly-by-wire operations that chill the heart and shiver the spines of the old mom-and-pop organizations, and while corporations can drop a lot of advertising pamphlets on the ground they plan to advance over, to try to psychologically prepare the way, the brunt of the crush where the rubber meets the road will be endured by the staff that make up the fly-by-ware apparatus.

When Herb Kelleher was CEO of Southwest Airlines, whenever a new ‘genius plan’ hatched by ‘the bigshots’ at the top was being operationalized, when it was in the most difficult phase, Kelleher would invert the order of things and put the senior management out at the customer interface to revive the ‘fly-by-feel’ capability.

When a corporation becomes very large, ‘fly-by-wire’ initiatives can become powerful crushers of smaller others without even noticing they are crushing them.   The global economy is the epitome of a ‘fly-by-wire’ operation and it is correspondingly fed by fly-by-wire knowledge.

‘Knowledge’ is a degenerate type of understanding from which the spatial-relational particulars have been removed.   The knowledge required to put a Starbucks or a Walmart into a local community is, for the most part, ‘positivist’ or ‘make-it-happen’ knowledge that doesn’t need to know about the mom-and-pop infrastructure in place and how resonantly it coevolved with the community.  By installing major new flow-channels, the establishments left on the old highway are doomed and the old ports on the bypassed stretches of the river quickly become stagnant ponds.

The causal model and the purposive systems models, rooted in Aristotelian thinking and Newtonian logic that are taught in our educational system ‘work’; they ‘get the job done’.

They are based on the simplifying assumption that the present depends only on the immediate past.

This is just a ‘simplifying assumption’ that does not hold true in nature.  If it did hold true there would be no earthquakes, avalanches, hurricanes, forest fires, floods and all those phenomena (everything in nature, basically) that involve the accruing and release of energy stored in spatial relations (implying that the ‘kinetics’ that are visible to us, are secondary rather than primary)..  What is primary are ‘field’ dynamics; i.e. the transformation of the thermal/pressure field that, together with the gravity field, induces the flow of currents and winds in the ocean and atmosphere.

In pioneering communities where enterprise emerges in ‘fly-by-feel’ mode, the enterprise operators, in effect’, learn how to ‘ride a bicycle’; i.e. the let their actions be orchestrated by the dynamics of the space they are included in.  A naturally evolving community is inductively shaped by the dynamics of the ‘land’ it is situated in.  It is not there because some corporate CEO threw a dart at a map.  That comes later when fly-by-feel is overtaken by ‘fly-by-wire’, and when that arrives, literal, positivist ‘know-how-to-make-it-happen’ knowledge takes over the direction/pilotage.

If the present depends only on the immediate past then it must follow that the immediate future depends only on the present.  The combination of ‘knowledge’, of the ‘make-it-happen’ variety, plus energy/money are all that is required by a ‘fly-by-wire’ operation to construct the desired immediate future from the present.

Education has become largely about cultivating ‘knowledge’ of the ‘make-it-happen’ variety, to be used in ‘fly-by-wire’ operations.  The mom-and-pop entrepreneurs were like sailboaters, deriving their power and steerage from the dynamics of the community they were included in; i.e. ‘fly-by-feel’ operators who were keeping everything in balance on a first priority basis and keeping the destination orientation second.  The transnationals are like powerboaters, fly-by-wire operators that come to town with more than enough onboard power and steerage to take them directly to their destination.

The conceptual ‘knowledge’ that comes to one from education, however valuable, cannot teach one how to let ones movements be orchestrated by the spatial dynamics one is included in so as to cultivate and sustain resonances therein.   Yet with enough ‘backing’ it is possible to use that  knowledge in a fly-by-wire operation to construct the desired immediate future from the present, to act causally and purposively to go directly to one’s desired destination.

This ‘inversion’ of the simplifying assumptions built into Newtonian physics (the present depends only on the immediate past) and into Aristotelian teleology (the acorn contains the knowledge and purpose to push its development into an oak tree out of itself), which aim to construct a desired immediate future out of the present, drops out the same understanding in both directions, that beneath the visual observation based kinetic aspect of dynamics lies their deeper nonlocal field-based source.   We don’t see the spatial stress that comes out with the earthquake, and we don’t see the spatial stress that we infuse with our fly-by-wire operations.  All we see is physical change when and where it happens.

Some people would argue that the ‘loss’ we are talking about here is in the realm of ‘sentimentality’.  But philosophically and psychologically this issue goes back to the argument between Plato and Aristotle as to whether ‘extrinsic final cause’ (outside-in spatial receptacle sourcing of shape ) or ‘intrinsic final cause’ (inside-out-driving purposive sourcing of shape) prevailed in shaping the unfolding world dynamic that we experience inclusion in.  The three-body problem implied that the outside-inward inductive shaping influence and the inside-outward pushing shaping influence were ‘one dynamic’; i.e. one difficult-to-deal-with-mathematically dynamic.  Newton’s inventing of the absolute space based ‘vector field’ bypassed the extrinsic-shaping or intrinsic-shaping argument and allowed that we could always explain the shape of the unfolding by way of intrinsic local causal forces.   In other words, once things were moving, we had theory to cover the kinetics of change, but such theory did not address the whys and whens of the emergence of new organization; i.e. we had no theory for the behaviour of ‘fields’ wherein potentially energy is continually being stored in spatial relations.  Our theory starts giving us coverage only after the fact where potential energy is aperiodically discharged and ‘made visible’ by material change and kinetics.

The extrinsic/intrinsic issue crops up again, psychologically, where we have to choice to go either with; ‘life is something that happens to us while we’re busy making other plans’ (extrinsic final cause) or ‘we have the power and purpose within us to construct our personally desired future’ (intrinsic final cause).

If the former view is ‘sentimental’ (from ‘feeling’ as in ‘fly-by-feeling’- letting the sustaining of harmony in the journey have primary shaping power) then the latter view is ‘egotistical’ (from ‘purposive’ as in ‘fly-by-wire’- the 100% positivistic achieving of the desired destination)

Clearly, Plato and Aristotle’s argument is still alive and Aristotle viewpoint continues to hold sway on the popular preference.  Employment opportunity is deriving predominantly from positivist, purposive fly-by-wire initiatives which require fly-by-wire pilots who don’t need to know to ride a bicycle or pilot a fly-by-feel mom-and-pop enterprise because they will not be tested in their ability to let their movements be orchestrated by the sustaining of harmony in the spatial dynamics they are included in; i.e. their assignment will be 100% objectives/destination oriented.

* * *

design: does outer shape inner or inner shape outer?

If there is an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for achieving the highest number of different ways of exploring the same topic (‘self’ and ‘nature’ and how they relate), it feels as if I should be down there somewhere, on the list of ‘honourable mentions’.

I am not looking for a ‘prize’ but I would like to review where I’ve been to share my impression that investigative inquiry involves a ‘cocktail’ effect where, as you stir in each new bit of ‘evidence’, the concoctions that ‘result’ depend on the order in which the ingredients have been combined.   For example if you start with a ‘natural mix of ingredients’ (as in the body), add herb A and follow it with pharmaceutical B, you get a deadly mix, but if you stir in herb C between herb A and pharmaceutical B, the cocktail is innocuous.  We could call this ‘the law of non-commutativity’ of combining evidence in exploratory inquiry.

A + B + C ≠ A + C + B

examples: a solution B when added to A may convert the solution from a base to an acid, but not if C is added before B, or, Romeo finds Juliette dead and so he kills himself before opening the note that says that Juliette has taken a potion that makes her look dead. (combining the same ingredients in a different succession takes one through different cocktail effects),

In other words, the same evidence leads different people to different conclusions depending on how they combine the same evidence.

So, in the course of this inquiry into S&N, one runs into a lot of different concoctions, all based on the same evidence.

People who prefer particular ‘concoctions’ tend to ‘order’ the evidence in such a way that it produces the desired concoction.

Prosecutor: Jean Valjean, did you or did you not steal the loaf of bread?  (‘Yes, but…’)  Then there is no reason to waste the court’s time any further; stealing is a crime that must be punished.

Defense: Judge, I would ask you to consider, in this case, that ‘the law’ always follows justice, justice being the natural ways, moral and ethical, from which the generalizations called ‘laws’ are continually being precipitated, revised and extended.  In the name of ‘justice’, I accuse the heads of state of having rigged the legislative process so as to produce imbalances to favour the few, imbalances and injustice that the actions of Jean Valjean aimed to redress (under his breath; ‘the day will soon arrive when these same heads of state are no longer in place’.)

Judge: ‘Sir, you are out of order!’  This is a ‘court of law’, not a ‘court of justice’.

The problem here lies in different levels of ‘truth’.  The utility of ‘laws’ derives from their ability to generalize phenomena so that we can deal with many different (necessarily particular) phenomenal unfoldings with one set of laws.   This liberates us from having to go back to the drawing boards and solve each problem from scratch.  Laws therefore strip away the frilly detailed particulars and uniquenesses of our actual experience; they are used ‘to correct our experience’ as Poincaré notes, re-rendering our complex experience in terms of simple ‘truths’.

‘Is it true that you stole a loaf of bread?’  – ‘Yes’

‘Is it true, as Descartes argued, that; “A state is much better ruled when, having but very few laws, these are most strictly observed.”  – ‘Perhaps’

‘Is it true we live in a state which is, by agreement or by default, ruled by law?’  – ‘Yes’

‘Is it then true that there should be no hesitation, once lawbreaking has been established, to proceed with punishment?’  – ‘No’

One starts with a few simple laws that hope to be able to explain and address all manner of complex phenomena.   As ‘cases’ crop up, it is recognized that the law that is to be applied has been reduced to a level of simplicity that cannot address some situations, thus a new set of laws is introduced by revision and/or addition.  If the law is too simple to grapple with the complex particulars of an actual situation, some argue that it should be applied anyhow; i.e. that until revisions are formally incorporated, the law should be applied ‘as-is’.

The problem here is very basic.  Laws are formulated in terms of ‘what things do’ while ‘the condition of our living space’ is what we are really interested in.  If the condition of our living space was ‘really’ determined by ‘what things do’, law-based understanding and administration would work far better than it does.

The problem is, that the transformation of our living space cannot be predicted in terms of ‘what things do’.  Everything we do has transformative influence on the space we are included in.  This crops up all over the place in S&N investigations.   Marshall McLuhan articulated this by the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ (don’t focus on content such as ‘what people are doing’, open up your understanding to how our living space is being transformed as we do what we do).

“In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs.” . . . Marshall McLuhan, ‘Understanding Media’

Meanwhile, in spite of this very basic premise about S&N, and its emergence in so many different realms of investigation, it continues to be pretty much ignored in our acculturated habitual way of conducting ourselves.

In physics, it cropped up in the understanding that ‘Space is not Euclidian’ (Einstein).  He described the missing quality of space in our normal ‘Euclidian’ view of space a ‘reciprocal disposition.  If there is a swarm of ants on the surface of a sphere (a sphere has no fixed reference points), the sense of where an individual is, or where he is going, can only be referenced to the continually changing (spatial-relational) configuration of the collective.  When we ‘watch what some ants are doing’ this no longer makes any sense because in order for this to be meaningful, we would need a fixed reference frame to reference their locations and movements to, but all we have is the continually transforming spatial relations of the collective.  If we focus on one group of ants and start describing ‘what they are doing’ we are conveniently ignoring that, in the larger picture, they cannot do anything without transforming the space, the collective spatial-relations, they are included in.   You can put a cornflakes factory in a town in the country and talk about ‘it’ in great detail, as if it were a thing in itself, marking the commencement of construction, its completion, its staffing, the beginning of its production etc. but all the while, the living space in which it is situated is undergoing huge transformation that cannot be ‘separated’ from the dynamics of the factory that we are focusing in on and describing.

Whether we are talking about ants on the surface of a sphere or a factory in a rural town, we cannot escape the fact that if focus on ‘content’ (what particular things are doing) we are missing out on ‘the transformation of the medium they are included in’.  The transformation of the medium is the ‘real message’, not the dynamics of the content (not ‘what things are doing’).

This same understanding crops up in philosophical essays such ‘The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance’ (Robert Pirsig).  When the normally creative english student get’s writers block re the assignment to describe the history of the United States, it turns out that this is because there are an infinity of events that happened over time and the job of causally connecting them and making sense of it is so overwhelming that she cannot even get started on it.   Phaedrus, Pirsig’s protagonist, slowly changes the perspective, reducing it to the state (Montana), then to the town (Boseman), then to a street in the town (main street), then to a brick in the wall of the old Opera House on main street.  She comes back with a great essay from the perspective of how changes in that space imply the changing history of the United Space, that is more than what the prof asked for.    This change in perspective is like bringing a God-like observer in the sky who has been looking down and voyeurizing ‘what things do’ in the space below him, and converting him into ‘the spirit of the Earth’ who is observing what is coming and going WITHIN his realm.  This is a conversion from a narrative ‘voice of voyeur observation’ of what things have been doing’ to the narrative ‘voice of experience’ of how ‘this place of ours has been changing’ (how little ones have kept coming into this place and old ones have been going out and how the transformation of this place speaks of their continuing influence).

So, these two perspectives always emerge in philosophical discussions, but there is no doubt that, as a culture (the western culture which dominates the globe), the message that we tend to ‘hear’ and that we ‘respond to’ is the content-based message; i.e. ‘what things do’.  As a result, we focus on what we are going to produce out of the context of how our living space will be transformed in the process.  We have designed the governments of sovereign states and the corporation with this content-focus built into their architectures.

So much for the ‘world’ or ‘nature’, how about the ‘self’?

Two different views of the ‘self’ crop up where our perspective is (a) the medium of our living space and how it is undergoing transformation, and (b) the content which is in terms of the ‘things’ in our living space and ‘what they they are doing’ (creating/producing etc.); i.e;

(a)    “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

(b) “You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”  [sometimes expressed; ‘if you don’t have a plan, you’re part of someone else’s plan’]

How to ‘carry your ‘self’’ in these two situations is very different;

(a)    In the first case, it is as if you are in the flow of crowded freeway or in the diversity of traffic in the streets of Calcutta.  It is too complex to understand the unfolding dynamic you are included in, in terms of ‘what things are doing’ so, instead, you let your behaviour be orchestrated by transformation of space, by putting your movements in the service of always restoring and sustaining harmony in the continuing flow.

(b)   In the second case, your view is that what is happening is determined by ‘what people are doing’ and that everyone is working on planning and bringing about their own personally-desired future.   Since what unfolds is the sum total of the efforts of all of the individuals and groups that are planning to bring about the ‘future of their dream’s, there are only two choices; i.e. you plan your own future or you do not..  Here’s where the fundamental principle of planning emerges; ‘In the case where you do not plan your own future, you must then be part of someone else’s plan’  That is, if you are not a ‘big wheel’ mover and shaker, you will be the little cog in the machinery that is being turned backwards as it furnishes power to the big wheel so that it can move forward in its desired direction.’.  That is you see your ‘self’ as a purposive system (after Aristotle’s imputing of an ‘intrinsic final cause’ drive inhabiting things in nature) competing with other purposive systems [the ‘Darwinist’ view of world and self].

Most of switch back and forth between these views of S&N unconsciously if not consciously.  The man who ‘drives friendly’ as in (a), in the flow of the busy freeway, may be the hard-driving head, as in (b) of a corporation who is determined to ‘make thing happen’ as in the plan published in their annual report.

Ok, let’s go back to the ‘law of non-commutativity’ of combining evidence.

‘Justice’ includes the ‘law’ but is not limited to it; i.e. ‘justice’ is natural law and other understandings from which ‘the law’ is precipitated.  Justice could be likened to ‘harmony and peace’, a condition of our living space that we would like to achieve and sustain.  Adhering to the law does not in itself determine harmonious flow in our living space (or in the flow of the freeway).  If someone breaks the law (e.g. by attempting to bluntly change into our lane where we have the right-of-way) then, if we are letting our movements be orchestrated by the sustaining of harmony, we may get out of their way and infringe on another car’s right of way (‘break the law’) in the process.  Meanwhile, the little girl whose bicycle had hit a rock so that she fell from the sidewalk into the curb lane would have been killed if everyone had ‘followed the rules’. Law-based (control-of what-things-do-oriented) systems are not ‘fault tolerant’ in more ways than one.

The laws of our ‘justice system’, because they seek to control ‘what things do’ rather than orienting the condition of spatial relations, allows the spatial-relational conditions of our living space to ‘flap in the breeze’ (to move into states of imbalance).

New and revised laws governing ‘what things do’ are not going to solve the problem.  The problem derives from what McLuhan and Pirsig and many others have brought up, that ‘what things do’ gives an over-simplified view of reality.  In order to sustain harmony within a busy flow, the better part of our actions are our ‘non-actions’, that which we do not do in order to sustain harmony, when we let our foot off the gas so that the guy in the lane to the right of us can get out of being trapped in the slow-moving right lane will have the space to move out into the faster lane.

Here, the evidence of ‘what we do’ is insufficient.  We are managing the shape of space, the opening of possibility-to-do on a first priority basis so that ‘what things do’ becomes secondary.  In fact, it is not that ‘we’ are managing it in the classic sense of management; we are doing what Mach’s principle state; we are conditioning the dynamics of space at the same time the dynamics of space are conditioning our dynamics.   The dynamics of space derive from moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence.  Where three or more players are involved, this cannot be solved to extract ‘what each individual’ does that ‘resuls’ in the movement that results (the classic ‘three body problem’).  The spatial openings that enable ‘what things do’ are composed not only of what things do but coordinated not-doing’ (one slowing down and another speeding up to open up possibility-to-do that allows passage of a third).

There is no way to explain our individual behaviour in terms of a purposive system in this case since we have given over the helm of our behaviour to ‘space’; i.e. to sustaining harmonious flow in the common spatial dynamic we share inclusion in, that unfolds in a manner that we cannot control so that we have to continually revise our plans.  We are in this sense like the ants on the surface of a sphere, ‘what we do’ is a relative thing since as we move we transform the reference space that is the sole provider of meaning of ‘what we do’.  ‘We’ as a collective open up to accommodate the movements of ourselves.  For every assertive movement there is an accommodating opening of possibility to move, and as we know from our driving experience, the opening of possibility, in other words ‘the condition of the space we share inclusion in’, is the accommodating (receptively here, resistantly there) enabler of ‘what we do’.

This is an old argument which goes back to Aristotle’s difference with Plato over the relative primacy of ‘extrinsic final cause’ (spatial-relations sourced behaviour shaping influence) and ‘intrinsic final cause’ (internal purpose directed behaviour shaping influence).  Plato preferred ‘extrinsic final cause’ while Aristotle preferred ‘intrinsic final cause’ and popularized it so well that it prevails today in our modern western culture.

In the case of Jean Valjean versus the Crown, Jean is coming from ‘the unjust/imbalanced condition of the living space’ while Javert is coming from a system of law that seeks to control ‘what things do’.  This is an eternal argument within our western society; i.e. should we work on improving the conditions of our living space so as to bring about a more just society, or should we work on improving the control-based management of ‘what things do’ (the law and order enforcement system)?

Here’s where the ‘law of non-commutativity’ of combining evidence comes into play.

The improvement of the law-and-order-system of control over what people do (A) leads to the incarcerating of more criminals for longer periods (B) which leads to fewer crimes being committed by those criminals.  Scientists used to add the phrase ‘ceteris paribus’ (all other things being the same) to such statements.

But there is another item of evidence which we may never get to if we draw conclusions based on A + B + C, in the same way that it is a moot point as to what would happen if  the patient who took the herb A followed by the drug B would also take herb C since he is dead after taking A followed by B.  Had he taken A followed by C he would be alive to take B.

Our conclusion-based actions are like cocktails.  The concluding that ‘crime reduction, B, follows from ‘improvement of law and order enforcement, A, makes a moot point out of the additional pieces of evidence that ‘the conditions of our living space influence the development of youth into criminals’, C, and ‘increasing the severity of our law-and-order enforcement system changes the conditions in our living space, D.  (e.g. putting more ‘dads’ in prison means more mothers prone to prostitution, alcohol/drugs and organized crime and more unguided youths fending for themselves with no-one assuming any developmental responsibility.)

The conclusion from the (evidence combining) concoction A + B is very different from the conclusion from the concoction, D + C + A + B.  In this latter concoction we not only have to address the removal of criminals from society, but we have to do so in a manner that does not transform the conditions of our living space in such a manner as to increase the engendering of new criminals.

Here again is an affirmation that orienting our understanding and actions to the dynamics of space is more realistic than orienting our understanding and actions to ‘what things do’.  Hidden therein is ‘what things don’t do’; i.e. the shaping influence of nonlocal spatial relational dynamics on their behaviour (actions that cannot be tied to ‘internal purpose’).

It is not surprising, since our western system of government manages ‘order’ in society using law-and-order enforcement systems (i.e. control of ‘what people do’ –based systems), that ‘single issues’ are debated.  Pro and con arguments are invited for such issues as ‘should we improve/intensify our law-and-order enforcement system?’ as if it ‘made sense’ to debate this as a single issue.

The notion that this ‘makes sense’ comes from the belief that what unfolds in the world derives from ‘what things do’; i.e. from ‘what we do’.

But as McLuhan observes, what matters is not the brand of law enforcement machinery that we implant in our communities, but how that transforms our relations with one another and with the dynamics of the living space we share inclusion in.

The ‘hole’ in the argument that ‘reducing criminals reduces crimes’ is easy to see.  It is the same hole that pervades classical science which reduces complex phenomena to component parts and to the behaviour of the parts; i.e. to ‘independent variables’ within an equation.  It ignores the interdependencies amongst the parts, hence ‘Y’ (crime) is some function of ‘X’ (criminals).  A simple linear relation would be Y = nX  (the number of crimes is proportional to the number of criminals).  But what if variable we haven’t even thought of come into play?   That is why there is this disclaimer in science’ ‘ceteris paribus’ (all other things being the same).  There are thousands of pharmaceutical drugs that people can take.  These are described in terms of ‘what drugs do’ or ‘what effects they produce’.  The problem with this is that the body is a dynamic space like the community we plunk a Cadillac or cornflakes factory into and the transformation of the spatial dynamic is the ‘bigger view’ of what is going on which is not encompassed by observing ‘what things do’.  Putting a car factory into a horse transportation based community plays hell with the blacksmith and horse-stabling trades which are health-supporting strands in the living web of activities that we call ‘community’.  So, what else will a ‘Selective-Serotonin-Reuptake-Inhibitor’ do to the ‘web-of-relationships’ that constitute the spatial dynamic, besides ‘alleviating depression and anxiety’?  How realistic is it to understand dynamics in terms of ‘what things do’?

That is, we miss it when we follow ‘things’ and ‘what they do’ with our camera lens, … the dynamic space they are in gets blurred as we drag the viewfield around to follow them.  As the population of criminals and police both grow, the condition of the living space (the dynamics of the web of relationships) is no longer what it used to be.  The ‘ceteris paribus’ does not ‘hold’.

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and their crony collective of supporters, the bourgeoisie,  that supported them, were not likely to let go of the simple ‘logical concoction’ supporting the ‘truth’ that ‘crimes are proportional to criminals on the loose’.  What’s missing?  The balance of non-police and non-criminals is reducing.  In the long term, the entire community could be split into two factions; ‘the good guys’ and ‘the bad guys’ and we wouldn’t have to worry about elusive questions such as ‘how does the condition of our living space contribute the transforming of youth into criminals?’  Why not simply; ‘there are good people and bad people’ (superior types and inferior types)?.  Why not; ‘criminals are born and not made?’ (it’s in their genes).  In this case, the finger can’t be pointed at ‘conditions’ in the living space, nor does there have to be any expensive ‘rehabilitation programs’; e.g. Carla Faye Tucker’s execution does not have to be stayed.

In its current rendering, our society has fully embraced the ‘control-of-what-things-do’ orientation.  It is built into our democratic system of government thanks to the notion of ‘sovereign state’ which controls ‘the territory’ and the behaviour of all that reside within it, using a ‘law and order enforcement system’. The same ‘control –of-what-things-do’ orientation has been architected into the ‘corporation’ using a ‘carrot-and-stick’ power drive.  While these systems continue to compete in the ‘plan or be planned for’ thinking tradition so as to become the ‘big wheels’ which get to move forward in ‘their’ desired direction thanks to the backward-turning cogs of others, the dynamic condition of our common living space undergoes transformation.

The ‘medium’ (the condition of our living space dynamic) is the ‘message’ but we are focused on the ‘what things do’ content as we try to understand what is going on, and we are attempting to control and manage ‘what things do’ as we try to ‘create the future of our dreams.’

The ‘logical concoctions’ that we propose and debate are typically of the ‘single issue’ type where we assume that ‘if we do this’ the result will be ‘that’, ‘ceteris paribus’ (e.g. if we increase law enforcement, crime will decrease).

The worse that things get (the greater the deterioration of the quality of our living space dynamic) the more we argue over ‘what should be done about it’.   In other words, we miss the point, that the ‘medium is the message’, not the content (i.e. not ‘what things do’).

The naturally evolved ‘pioneering community’ did not ‘have a what-things-do’ plan as a go-by.  They let their individual and collective behaviours be orchestrated by the dynamics of the living space they shared inclusion in.  Their dynamics can be seen in the same light as wildgeese flying in formation.  When their dynamics move into resonance with the dynamics of the space they are included, in, this resonance serves to guide their continuing actions.  This is where Plato with his extrinsic final cause was correct and Aristotle with his intrinsic final cause was wrong (sort of).

Aristotle was right in that we can indeed structure our society on the ‘yang’ assumption of purposive systems and thus ‘manage’ on the basis of ‘what things do’.    This ‘yang’ approach is what western society has built into their social dynamics ordering systems in government and commerce.  Plato is right in that, in nature, the unfolding is shaped by ‘extrinsic cause’ from the outside-in.  This ‘yin’ influence wherein the dynamics of our living space ‘shape what happens’ by opening up and closing down spatial ‘possibility-to-do’ is ‘on target’; .e.g. if the only paid work that opens up for mothers who have hungry babes to feed is ‘prostitution’, they will ‘go there’.  And since our society keys to ‘what things do’ and Aristotelian thought sees the ‘local organism’ as a purposive system powered by intrinsic final cause, these mothers will be held fully and solely responsible for their ‘unlawful acts’.  Those who are using extrinsic final cause as an over-riding spatially modulating envelope to shape ‘what things do’ will do so with impunity in a system that sees only the one side of dynamics, the ‘what things do’ side.

One would have to conclude that the one-sided focus on ‘what things do’ (intrinsic final cause) while ignoring ‘how space is transforming) (extrinsic final cause) is ‘over-simplification’ that is getting us into a lot of trouble.  Yes, it makes logical sense, but ‘logical sense’ is not ‘the wisdom that is immanent in nature’.

The ‘purposive’ ‘struggle for survival’ of an organism does not explain how he got there in the first place.  What we do know is that once he ‘is there’ he depends on an elaborate web of exchanges with others, far more than ‘predator-prey’ relations (e.g. the photoplankton are nourished by sunbeams and the plankton are nourished by plankton and fish are nourished by plankton and man is nourished by fish, thus man is a member of and supported by a complex web of interdependent relations.)

So, is the first thing he does when he emerges into being to sit around the negotiating table with his contemporaries and negotiate the complex webs of exchanges without which he could not survive.  Or is it more likely the web of spatial relations opens up a ‘niche’ which makes his emergence possible?  Darwin’s theory that one thing developed out of another by accident in the process of repeated replication demands a high level of credulity, which is starting to ‘collapse’.

Our human ego which has us believe that we are purposive systems who can ‘create the future of our dreams’ is holding the whole ‘house of cards’ together, but perhaps not for long.

So, as far as my S&N explorations have been going, That’s the ‘yin and the yang of it’.

* * *

It mostly goes back to a disagreement between Plato and Aristotle.  Plato believed that nature’s dynamics are characterized by ‘extrinsic final cause’ while Aristotle believed that nature’s dynamics are characterized by ‘intrinsic final cause’.

‘Extrinsic final cause’ corresponds with the gods shaping the development of things from space (the outside).  Geometrically, this elicits terms like ‘intelligent design’.  ‘Intrinsic final cause’ corresponds with the gods shaping the development of things from the inside.  Geometrically, this elicits terms like ‘purposive systems’.  An example is the ‘acorn’.  Aristotle believed that the development of the acorn into an oak tree was directed from the inside of the acorn.  That is, he believed that the organism or local system has ‘purpose’ within it that ‘directs’ its development.  Aristotle won out over Plato in the popularizing of this concept so that is what is entrenched in our western culture to this day (Of course Aristotle was wrong about a lot of stuff; e.g. that men have more teeth than women and that bodies fall to earth at a rate proportional to their weight.  Aristotle had such a powerful influence on popular understanding that these two things, that could have been easily dismissed by inspection, persisted, the latter for a thousand years until Galileo disproved it).

Intrinsic final cause (the acorn purposively pushing itself out into an oak tree) is even slower to fall, having been thoroughly woven into the cognitive fabric of western society.

Extrinsic final cause implies that the spatial receptacle is actively shaping the unfolding form of things and that its not simply what’s inside the system pushing from the inside out.  For example, the growth of a convection cell or hurricane is not simply ‘pushed out from the inside-outwards’, the spatial medium of the atmosphere is opening up for it (more receptively here and more resistively there) as it ‘seemingly’ pushes outward to its final form.  Relativity informs us that ‘extrinsic final cause’ (habitat-shaping-influence) and ‘intrinsic final cause’ (inhabitant-shaping-influence) are in a conjugate relation as given by Mach’s principle; “The dynamics of habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’.

Of course, western mental modeling likes to use absolute euclidian state which reduces the extrinsic-shaping-influence of space to no influence at all, synthetically forcing us to think in terms that intrinsic-shaping-influence is ‘all she wrote’.

The plot thickens here, as Nietzsche has pointed out, with his charge that western science is ‘anthropomorphism’..  His point is that our ego is tied up in this and that physics terms such as ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ derive from our human feelings and do not exist as pure mechanical forces.  That is ‘attraction’ is something we ‘feel’ that comes with our ‘intention’ to embrace and pull it in, and ‘repulsion’ is something we ‘feel’ that comes our ‘intention’ to ‘push something out and away’.

Since we western humans feel like what we do is ‘pushes out from our purpose’, we see ourselves as purposive systems, but it doesn’t stop there.  We impose this image of ourselves on every other ‘organism’ as well, so that all of the developing systems in nature, we conceive of as purposive systems if they are ‘living/animate’ and ‘causal systems’ if they are non-living/inanimate’.

So, ‘relativity’ would support Plato’s view that there is extrinsic final cause (the habitat side of things) influencing the shape of the developing system, as in the strand-in-the-web-of-life view of Amerindians and other cultures; i.e. Mach’s principle applies (‘The dynamics of the web condition the dynamics of the strands at the same time as the dynamics of the dynamics of the strands are conditioning the dynamics of the web).  That is, the extrinsic shaping influence is in conjugate relation with the intrinsic shaping influence.  This situation has been confirmed in experiments with the cultivation of multi-species microbial communities and it is called ‘bidirectional innovation’ (Douglas E. Caldwell et al).

Ok, here’s where the problems start.  Pure extrinsic final cause (shaping by an outside hand) corresponds to ‘Intelligent Design’ (God did it).  But a conjugate relation between extrinsic shaping force and intrinsic shaping force is a description of a ‘relative’ or ‘fluid dynamic system’  Fluid dynamics work like a ‘French kiss’ the tongue with its probing purpose and the receiving mouth that opens spatial receptive possibilities are conjugate aspects of one dynamic.  In Caldwell’s multispecies community evolution, the community dynamic opens up shaped spatial possibility AT THE SAME TIME AS IT elicits the blossoming of assertive potentialities.   If we live in a community and a job for a dishwasher opens up, if we have two hands on the end of two arms (i.e. if we are ‘genetically equipped’), our development into a dishwasher may be induced.  Becoming a dishwasher was not a ‘purpose’ (intrinsic final cause) within us that directed our development.  ‘Stem cells’ are genetically equipped to be many things, depending on how the environmental dynamics they are included in turns on or off the assertive potentialities that reside there (when genes express themselves as combinations, in response to the environmental dynamic, it is call ‘epigenetics’).

In any case, Aristotle’s one-sided choice of ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘organisms as purposive systems’ is so deeply infused into western science (by ‘anthropomorphism’) that it is not going to be easy to move on with concepts such as ‘bidirectional innovation’ (although the experiments confirm this and the results are published in peer-reviewed microbiology  journals).   Nevertheless, those scientists such as Caldwell, if they don’t get tainted with ‘Intelligent Design’ get accused of the ‘heresy’ of denying ‘natural selection’.

Natural selection is what one has to invoke to explain the persisting of a purposive system (a system that already has inbuilt intrinsic final cause; i.e. it knows from infancy what it wants to develop into) in a passive space (a space without any extrinsic-shaping-influence).  Of course, if the shape of the developing organism is elicited by the co-evolving spatial niche that is opening up for it, then ‘natural selection’ is an  ‘idea’ or ‘device’ that is no longer needed to keep the ‘purposive system model of Aristotle ‘hanging together’.

Can you imagine a plethora of diverse organisms hanging about, all with intrinsic-shaping-influence sufficient to direct their ultimate final form ‘built in’, without any codevelopmental assistance from extrinsic shaping influence.  They won’t be answering any calls to take their place in the natural scheme of things.  They will instead be competing with one another for sustainable employment in a purely positivist sense (extrinsic-shaping-influence-free sense).   ‘Natural selection’ is a kind of Deus ex Machina’ (God out of a box) ‘fix’ to explain why certain forms persist.   There is no thought here that the community dynamic (extrinsic-shaping-influence) is continuously opening up spatial niche possibilities the codevelop the incumbent by eliciting the blossoming of its assertive potentialities.

On the other hand, consider the ‘stem cell’ and its role in regenerative organs.  When cells die within a regenerative organ, or when the organ suffers an injury, there may be a particular piece missing or a particularly shaped ‘hole’ that needs ‘filling in’.  This requires ‘extrinsic shaping influence’ and not just ‘intrinsic shaping influence’ on the part of a cell is internally programmed to develop into something specifc..  These cells spring forth where and when they are needed in the right quantities; i.e. this development involves extrinsic shaping influence.

100% extrinsic shaping influence = ‘intelligent design’ aka ‘creationism’.

100% intrinsic shaping influence = purposive systems  in the organic realm, causal systems in the mechanical realm.

‘Bidirectional innovation’ involves a conjugate relation between extrinsic shaping influence and intrinsic shaping influence.

But LOOK OUT! … because if you go with this you will be accused of two ‘scientific heresies’ at the same time; ‘intelligent design/creationism and denial of natural selection.  That is what is going in today that is stirring the social scene that Kevin Miller, Ben Stein and Walt Rulof were trying to dig out and present.

But they were missing the Nietzsche connection and the were not informed on ‘bidirectional innovation’ wherein it is no longer an either/or choice between ‘intelligent design’ (100% extrinsic shaping influence) and ‘purposive systems’ (100% intrinsic shaping influence), but rather a conjugate relation between the two (bidirectional innovation).

In the case of Nietzsche’s contention that western science is infused with anthropomorphism; i.e. it starts from how we see ourselves either as having within us the wherewithal to determine our unfolding development, or whether our unfolding development will be determined (at least partly) by the opening of spatial possibility associated with our situational inclusion in the world dynamic.  These two different ‘self-images’ are usually associated with ‘East’ and ‘West’.

East: (as captured by John Lennon)

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — extrinsic shaping influence conjugate with intrinsic shaping influence

West: (as in ‘the American Dream’)

“You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.” — intrinsic shaping influence as in ‘purposive system’

That the Aristotelian preference for the ‘intrinsic final cause’ or ‘purposive system’ model  is a distinguishing feature of the western culture is illustrated in the following example, comparing the western view with the Amerindian view;

When the tide ebbs and the water recedes from the intertidal flats, people follow the tide out to pick clams and as as the tide floods and the water encroaches, the people withdraw to the shore.  If there are both ‘westerners’ and ‘Amerindians’ amongst the clam-diggers, if they are interviewed and asked why that are at this place at this time, the westerners will say that it is a good time to pick clams.  If asked why so many others gathered here at the same place at the same time, they will answer that it is because everyone has reasoned in the same way, that ‘great minds think alike’.  That is, they will couch their answers purely in intrinsic-behaviour-shaping-influence terms.   The Amerindians, when asked the same question, will say that their individual behaviour and the collective behaviour, are orchestrated by the dynamics of the habitat they are included in.  That is, they will couch their responses in terms of extrinsic-behaviour-shaping influence.

That this human image of self as a ‘purposive system’ has been infused into our model of organisms of all types in science can be seen in debate that periodically crops up in western medical research.  For example, Nobel laureate for medicine (1937), Albert Szent-Györgyi observed that streptococcus pneumonia bacteria, crowds of them, showed up at the same place and time inside of him.  He didn’t interview them as in the clam-digger (human) example, but he did question whether they were driven there by their own purpose (intrinsic behaviour-shaping influence).  His notion was that their congregating was the result of his illness rather than the cause of it; i.e. he reasoned that extrinsic behaviour-shaping influences were dominant, … that the conditions were fertile for the proliferation of streptococcus pneumoniae.  In his lab, he had been studying animals with scurvy which also got pneumonia.  He treated his pneumonia with large does of vitamin C and recovered very quickly.  His research on vitamin C won him the Nobel prize.

Szent-Györgyi’s contention that extrinsic behaviour-shaping influences dominated over intrinsic behaviour-shaping influences was basically a repeat of Pasteur’s deathbed concession to the contention of Antoine Béchamp that ‘le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout’ (the intrinsic behaviour-shaping influence is nothing, the extrinsic behaviour-shaping influence is everything.  None of this has been able to dislodge the prevailing western science modeling in terms of ‘Aristotle’s choice’ of intrinsic final cause (purposive systems) as the preferred model.

This resistance to dislodgement stems not from the particulars of scientific arguments (one can argue that bacteria cause illness and one can argue, as well, that illness is the body falling out of balance and so creating the conditions for bacteria to flourish).

The resistance to dislodgement hinges on the fact that a great many of us in the western culture, and particularly those currently in positions of power, embrace a self-image wherein we believe that “You can create the future of your dreams” while only a far smaller number believe that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

So long as the political machinery of western-style sovereign states convinces us that we should opt for the former self-image, and since we have implemented the corporation as a ‘purposive system’ that also encourages the former self-image, it is going to be very difficult to climb down off the Aristotelian ‘intrinsic final cause’ bandwagon and its created cohorts ‘natural selection’ and ‘corporate organisation’..

My hope is that Miller, Stein and Rulof will make the needed adjustments (acknowledge ‘bidirectional innovation’ rather than putting the spotlight on ‘extrinsic final cause’ as a substitute for intrinsic final cause, and point out how Nietzsche’s charge of science as anthropomorphism anchors in place the notion of ‘natural selection’ and ‘competition’) and come back for ‘another try’.

* * *

knowledge-informed purpose replacing resonance-seeking experience

I always intuited that ‘something was wrong’ with my uneducated grandparents and moderately educated parents to wish that their grandchildren would receive what they had missed out on; i.e. a ‘superior education’.

Education too often seemed to be a bypassing of life experience; the rich sort of life experience that they had had, for which education could never be a substitute.  That is, it was ‘education’ of ‘another kind’ as John Abbott indicates in the title of his book ‘Over-schooled and Under-educated’.

One thing is for sure, education imparts ‘knowledge’ or ‘know-how’ to its clients which changes their behaviour.

How does ‘education’ change one’s behaviour?

It would appear that ‘education’ involves the acquisition of ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge’ can be used to inform ‘purpose’ so as to render the achieving of purpose more efficient.

This seems to be the problem,  The way that education (often) changes the behaviour of the educated person is by making him over into a machine for ‘getting things done’; i.e. education facilitates purposive behaviour.

Fine, you say, ‘what’s wrong with that’?

When people are close to nature, their behaviours are shaped and orchestrated by the dynamics of the habitat they are included in.   The seasons orchestrate their actions, the light of day orchestrates their actions, the behaviour of soil brings out a tilling, planting and  harvesting behaviour in them.  The resonances in their habitat-inhabitant engagement orchestrate their individual and collective behaviour.  The wildgeese are induced by the fluid dynamic they are included in, to organize collectively into a ‘V’ formation and to let their wings flap so as to sustain the advantageous resonances (that allow them to fly faster and farther at less expenditure of energy than they could ever do in solo mode) that associate with the ‘V’.

Wildgeese do not move around in absolute fixed and empty Euclidian space as if they were local, independently-existing systems with their own locally originating, knowledge-informed purpose-driven behaviour.  Such a ‘positivist’ vision wherein the behaviour is seen as being fully driven out of interior of the individual (by knowledge-informed purpose) so that we say that the ‘V’ is a ‘cooperative effort’ as if it were purposeful on the part of the wildgeese, is the same old, same old Euclidian simplification we like to make in western science.  It is the same simplification we make when we say that a feather and a cannon ball will fall to earth at the same speed. .. in your dreams!  In your dreams where the objects are dropped in an absolute fixed and empty (Euclidian) space, a space that is unknown in nature.

The alleged ‘cooperation’ of the geese that purports to explain why the geese fly in a ‘V’ formation is ‘in your dreams’.  But one thing about it, it saves us from having to work with the messiness of the real world, where we are included in ‘habitat dynamics’ that are impossible to isolate from our ‘inhabitant dynamics’.  Which moves first wind or flag, as the Zen parable goes and the answer is that wind, flag and mind all move together.

Space is a participant in our dynamics.  The wildgeese are not ‘purposive systems’, they keep moving into temperate thermal space and the temperate thermal space moves from the north to south and then north again and stay keep themselves in it.  Outside observers will say that they ‘migrated’ from north to south to north, but it wasn’t them that ‘migrated’, it was the temperate thermal zone.  They do not have a ‘purpose’ to ‘migrate’, they have a ‘purpose’ to sustain a resonant relationship with the habitat dynamic they are included in.  The Nenets of the European and Siberian arctic do not have a ‘purpose’ to ‘migrate’; they go where the reindeer go.  The reindeer do not have a ‘purpose’ to ‘migrate’, they go where the exposed patches of lichen go.  The exposed patches of lichen do not have a ‘purpose’ to ‘migrate’, the lichens experience exposure where the zones of sunlight and sparser precipitation go.

While a ‘goose’ is not a purposive system, an airplane is.  An airplane is programmed with ‘knowledge’ that serves to direct its behaviour and it is ‘destination oriented’ while the wildgoose seeks to sustain resonance with the dynamic habitat it is included in (it is not the destination but the journey that orchestrates its behaviour.).  ‘Resonance’ is something that is ‘felt’ in the continuing ‘now’ and as in the wind-flag dynamic, it is not generated by something ‘one does’, it is a conjugate habitat-inhabitant dynamic relation.

That is where my ‘something is wrong’ intuition in ‘getting the education that my grandparents never had’ was coming from.  If you gave the wildgoose a university education, it might come back as a small feathered aircraft, now with locally originating, internal knowledge-informed purpose-directed behaviour.

“This is your captain speaking’, …’while we still fly, squawk and act like a goose, we now have onboard technology called ‘knowledge’ and ‘purpose’ to inform and direct our behaviour.  The knowledge has been cached in our memory system as a ‘how-to-do’ program which informs our destination-oriented purpose as it directs our flight.’  ‘Because there is no longer any need for it, our resonance sensing has been disabled and during the trip, you will notice that there will no longer be the banks to port and starboard to bask in warm patches or to be massaged by feather-ruffling turbulent zones.  Neither will there be any more of the indefinite stopovers that associated with relaxing ‘in the zone’; i.e. in the stalled migration of regional temperate weather zones.  Our analysts have captured our behavioural patterns of the past several years in terms of a space and time itinerary.  Now that we have reduced our behaviour to pure positivist terms of ‘what we wildgeese do’, we are able to use this ‘what wildgeese do knowledge’ to replicate our actions without the distraction of having to rely on our resonance-sensing capabilities.  The entire down and back flight itinerary has been programmed in terms of destination-oriented goals and objectives, a purpose-directed sequence that will be supported  by our ‘what wildgeese do’ knowledge archive. And if you look in the pouch in the seatback in front of you, you will find a complimentary copy of the ‘Educated Sex for Wildgeese’ by Mallard and Jackdaw, the suppliers of our flight technology, which will equip you with the knowledge to go efficiently and directly to your various destinations without having to drift about aimlessly ‘in the zone’ wherever the zone crops up and takes you.’

The point is, ‘knowledge-informed purpose’ is all there is in a worldview where space is an absolute fixed and empty container as was the simplifying assumption of Aristotle with his notions of teleology and the idea that the acorn archived within it, the encoded destination-oriented knowledge of how to become an oak tree (no habitat-inhabitant resonance allowed!), an unnatural idea that was copied and used by Darwin.

The observers of wildgeese and humans cannot see the habitat-inhabitant resonances, the in-the-zone’ feelings that orchestrate our individual and collective behaviour, and since they base their inquiry on visual observations, they leave the behaviour-shaping influence of resonance out of their theory and teachings.  ‘Feelings’ are not totally discarded but are reduced to one-sided positivist feelings that originate fully and solely with the individual because absolute Euclidian space cannot participate with humans or wildgeese in their dynamics.  The source of ‘feelings’ becomes purely internal in this case, and one must postulate some less visible internal positivist causal mechanism such as a biochemical process to substitute for ‘resonance’ where the individual is conceived of as inhabiting an absolute fixed and empty space.

As anyone can see and feel, however, fluids have characteristic responses to ‘intruders’ and thus the ‘intruder’ who is sensitive to these responses will be able to ‘feel’ when he is ‘in the zone’ of resonant engagement and thus able to penetrate more harmoniously and with less expenditure of energy.  The sailboat naturally moves within the trough that forms from the bow and stern wave, the potential energy well that forms from its habitat-inhabitant engaging.  The boat operator has the option to put on a big outboard and to put his ‘destination orientation’ into primacy over sustaining his ‘in-the-zone’ experience, but that is not the issue.  The issue is; given that behaviour can be ‘purposive’ (destination-oriented) and that it has a natural tendency for being shaped by habitat-inhabitant resonance, how does education ‘play into this’?

The answer is; scientific inquiry is by way of visual observation of the behaviour of things.  The visually observable movements of organisms can always be implied to be locally originating, purpose-directed behaviour (the behaviour shaping influence of habitat-inhabitant resonances can be ignored).  Education has and continues to be influenced by Aristotelian thinking such as Aristotle’s ‘teleology’ which imputes ‘purpose’ to be what is directing the behaviour of the individual, local, organism.  Therefore, our habit is to extract knowledge of behaviours in terms of ‘purposeful’ behaviours; the ‘know-how’ that is responsible for the achievement of a goal..

Thus, even though the movements of the wildgeese are shaped by the movements of the dynamic spatial conditions they are included in (e.g. the cycling transformation of the thermal field they are included in), our habit is to re-render this behaviour in terms of ‘time’ and’ location’, alleging that the wildgeese ‘know’ where to be at what time.of the year (i.e. that their behaviour is directed by a purposeful ‘migration plan’ with time-and-location objectives).  The origin and shaping of the dynamics thus shifts from actional experiential sensing of spatial-relational transformation to the purely notional time-and-space based knowledge-directed behaviour of local systems (i.e. ‘what local things do’, as if the ‘local things’ are acting/interacting in an absolute fixed and empty space)..

As already mentioned, this ‘knowledge-informed-purpose-directed’ view of behaviour ignores the role of ‘resonances’ in the shaping of behaviour, ‘resonances’ that originate neither from the ‘inhabitant’ nor from the ‘habitat’ but from ‘both’ at the same time, as in the ‘wind-and-flag’ parable.

In so far as education is permeated with Aristotelian logic, the knowledge that is passed on in the educational system is in the positivist terms of ‘purposive’ and/or ‘causal’ behaviour.  There is no room in Aristotelian knowledge for behaviour to arise from and be shaped in the ‘experiential now’ by ‘resonances’.  There is room to acknowledge that the ‘V’ flight formation of the wildgeese is more efficient, but Aristotelian logic would then say that the geese ‘cooperate’ with the purpose of achieving this greater efficiency.  This is backwards.  As the motorcyclist in a group of motorcyclists understands, everyone is enveloped in an invisible ‘V’ of air turbulence, which, as they interfere, do so more or less constructively or destructively.  If the bikers let their relative positions adjust like the wildgeese, they find that certain relative positions associate with lower rather than higher turbulence.  If they opt to move so as to sustain the lower turbulence, they are  then ‘tuning’ their habitat-inhabitant dynamic and letting this attuning orchestrate their individual and collective behaviour.

Should we say that they are doing this ‘intentionally’; i.e. that ‘they know what they are doing?’

As in the Mallards and Jackdaw sex manual, acquiring the knowledge of how to get to a given result/destination is certainly possible, but it does not reflect the dynamics of nature that take you there as an innocent on a voyage of discovery.   Similarly, ‘survival’ as a ‘purpose’ is where one sees ‘living’ as a difficult-to-achieve ‘destination’ where resonances are removed from their instructive primacy, an instructive primacy that is ever-prevalent when ‘living’ is a journey rather than a destination.

As in “An Inclusional World View’ and ‘Is Calculus Taking Science (And Us) on a Mad Joy-Ride?’, there is a problem with the notion of ‘purpose’ and ‘cause’ in that they reduce our habitat-inhabitant experience to a notional positivist dynamic that obfuscates the way our experience informs us that the world works.  Imputing ‘purposive drive’ to humans and ‘causal powers’ to material systems makes them ‘positivist’ and arbitrarily removes the participation of the dynamic space in which these organisms and systems are included.  By dismissing the participation of space we dismiss the experiencing of invisible habitat-inhabitant resonances.

The problem with ‘education’ then, is that where it is influenced by Aristotelian ‘teleology’, it deals in ‘knowledge’ that is cast in terms of what things do in ‘time’ and ‘space’.  For example, if several bathers who are treading water in a tidal current move in an unusual trajectory, an observer may ask them a question such as; ‘why did you go halfway across the channel and then come quickly back?’ … when the bathers were simply staying within a warm spot in flux of cold and warm waters.  Their behaviour, rather than being ‘purposive’ in a time-based sense was orchestrated by the transforming spatial field of thermal energy they were included.  And if many gather at the same time and same place, on the intertidal flats and are seen picking claims, the Aristotelian thinker may conclude that they their purpose has directed them to come there at that time.  But one could argue that the transformation of space has orchestrated their individual and collective behaviour.  The clam-pickers themselves may insist that the chose to come there, that they exercised their own free will.  But this doesn’t explain why so many came to the same place at the same time, unless one assumes that ‘great minds think alike’; i.e. that clam pickers are more or less alike.  Does that include the seagulls?’

Similarly, why does a huge crowd of streptococcus pneumonia bugs show up in the same body at the same time?   Are they all there with the purpose ‘to do mischief’?  Or was their arrival orchestrated by the dynamics of the space they are included in?  In the case where people have a vitamin C deficiency, these bugs often show up in crowds; because the spatial conditions are fertile for their proliferation.  The proliferation of bacteria is the result of illness (imbalance in the terrain) rather than the cause of it (‘cause’ implies ‘intention’ or ‘purpose’).

Pick any of your activities/behaviours that you like, … and like the clam-diggers you can argue that you are there out of your own free will, choice and purpose, that it was your pre-calculated goal to come and pick clams; i.e. that your behaviour is purposive and destination-oriented.  The world is your oyster, so you say (and believe).  On the other hand, your position may be that your behaviour is orchestrated by resonances in-the-now’ of your engaging with the habitat.  You don’t know what will unfold in the dynamic habitat that you inhabit but as it unfolds, your sensors are on the hunt for resonances and you let your movements and behaviour be orchestrated by these.

Some say that the product of education is ‘improved learning skills’ as could contribute to improving the hunt for resonances.

But, more popularly, the product of education seems to be ‘knowledge’ which allows the skilled ‘by rote’ replication of behaviours in a manner that bypasses the hunt for movement/behaviour-orchestrating resonances.  This converts you into a feathered metal bird with internally programmed purposive behaviour..

The ‘problem’ with ‘education’ is, in this sense, ‘knowledge’.  It starts from confusing the idealized Aristotelian notion of ‘teleology’ for ‘reality’.

* * *

What a difference a 'differential' makes!

Differential calculus plays an important role in the mathematical foundations of science.  The notion of ‘change’ as ‘difference’ not only shapes our scientific models and solutions, but seems to ‘bleed through’ and shape our social behaviours.

See this?  It’s called a ‘deviation’ or ‘difference’ in the measured behaviour of something (e.g. temperature, pressure etc.);

Mathematically, ‘differences’ come in two  ‘black and white’ types; i.e. the ‘amplitude’ of the property being monitored over time is EITHER ‘increasing’ OR ‘decreasing’ if the property is changing at al.  Another way to say this is that the ‘differential’ can have EITHER a positive OR negative sign.  There is no argument, when we ‘differentiate with respect to time’, as to when something is ‘going up’ or ‘going down’.  If its measured magnitude is greater at present than it was a moment earlier, then it is ‘increasing’ and if its measured magnitude is less at present than it was a moment earlier, then it is ‘decreasing’.  There is no ambiguity here because ‘time’ is a ‘convention’ that goes forward only, and not backward.  This simplifies things compared to ‘cyclic’ change (the ‘wave’ view of nature) where, when something increases (e.g. climatic temperature), we are never sure whether it might not be a ‘short cycle increase’ within a ‘longer cycle decrease’, or if a decrease, whether it might not be a ‘short cycle decrease’ within a ‘longer cycle’ increase.

[Note: When understood in terms of ‘space’, ‘change’ does not proceed ‘unidirectionally’.  When we understand things in terms of ‘space’ (continually transforming spatial relations, as in ‘field’ and/or ‘flow’), rejuvenation and degeneration are two sides of the same coin (things are continually gathering and regathering into new things) so that only if our attention clings to forms that have gathered (and refuses to let go) to the point that we block ourselves from seeing the simultaneous innovative regathering, does it appear to us as if change is advancing in one direction only, that we call ‘the forward march of time’.  ‘Time’ is not a primary property of the universe but rather an idealisation that forms in the mind when we think of ‘change’ in the ‘linear’ terms of ‘an absolute beginning’ and ‘an absolute end’, rather than in spatial-relational transformational terms; ‘the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself’. ].

But the very next question that follows our observation of ‘change’ as a simple ‘difference’ over ‘time’, is, ‘what is the source of this change’?   This is where science, and society, splits itself into two ways of understanding the source of change.  Popularly, we conceive of ‘change’ in our western acculturated society in the same way as it has been built into the foundations of (classical) Mathematical Physics, in terms that the present condition of things depends only on the immediate past.  Thus, if something has changed between now and a moment ago, we say that it is because of a local ‘causal mechanism’ acting on the way things were a moment ago, changing them into what we observe them to be in the present.  This is the familiar ‘causal’ model of ‘change’ that dominates in our modern society and it ties to the notion of  ‘change’ as ‘difference’ with respect to ‘time’.  This is captured in the familiar ‘derivative’ in Newton’s (and Leibnitz’) calculus which, arguably, already permeated our western way of mentally modeling the world dynamic prior to being formalized mathematically.

This ‘differential-based’ ‘causal model’ doesn’t explain things like ‘earthquakes’, ‘avalanches’, ‘glaciation’ and all those phenomena (ostensibly all phenomena, when we suspend making the above simplifying assumption that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’) that imply the natural precedence of ‘field’ over ‘matter’.  That is, ‘tensions’ can build continuously in a spatial-relational sense to ‘threshold’ levels where there is conversion (sometimes rapid and violent) of spatially accrued potential energy into kinetic energy (the energy of matter in motion).  In the case of earthquakes, the movement of the rocks is directed by the spatial-relational configuration of the tensional field.  In this case, the present depends on the remote past as well as the immediate past, so that the simple ‘causal model’ no longer works (it is too simple); i.e. in the case of ‘earthquakes’ we cannot ‘explain things’ in terms of LOCAL causal agents that act in the immediate past to bring about the present state of things.

What comes out of such inquiry is two models of ‘change’, one more simple than the other in a particular way. The (simplified) model depends on a ‘LOCAL causal agent’ (LOCALLY originating behaviour) that operates on the present ‘state of things’ to construct the immediate future.  The (un-simplified) model depends on a ‘NONLOCAL non-visible causal agency’ or spatial influence (‘field’) that is continually charging and discharging allowing, the remote past to directly influence the present (e.g. stress builds spatially to the point that ‘movement’ arises spontaneously as stress-relieving spatial-relational reorganization).  Once things are in motion, the simple model serves us well once again, but it does not address when, where and how invisible stress becomes the nonlocal source of (stress-relieving) reorganization.

The ’simplified reality’ of the sort that is implicitly built into ‘differential calculus’ seems to be taking us on a joyride by allowing us to mistake ourselves for causal agents capable of ‘making a difference’, notionally infusing us with the power of constructing from the present, the immediate future we desire (ignoring the invisible stresses that are continually reorganizing the habitat that we inhabit).

Sure, we can be practitioners of ‘the ends justify the causal means to get there’, but there is always a price to pay in terms of the stresses we infuse in the process, stresses that are busy sourcing reorganization (if not revolution) as we persist in our ‘its the destination not the journey’ undertaking.  Will we ‘make’ our five-year plan, or will ‘mutiny’ reorganize our carefully architected machinery for us?

***

How does this all play out in practice?  That is, on what basis do we use one or the other of these two notions of change; one simplified by the assumption that the present depends only on the immediate past and the other which accepts that the present depends on the remote past (spatial stress fields that are charging and discharging).  This ‘split’ in our choice of models not only divides science into two different fields of inquiry (the simplified standard , and ‘nonlinear dynamics’), but crops up in the ‘social psyche’ as well, fuelling much debate and even physical ‘conflict’.

The ‘law’ makes the same simplifying assumption as classical mathematical physics does; i.e. that the present depends only on the immediate past, so that in our inquiry into a ‘disturbance’,  we can expect to find a local causal mechanism that acts on the immediate past so as to transform it into the observed present.  The ‘long arm of the law’, as an adjunct to the justice system, was developed to respond to ‘undesired change’ or ‘disturbance’ (activity contrary to the ‘National spirit’) by identifying and dealing with the ‘causal mechanism’ responsible for the ‘undesired change’. In pre-revolution France, the law identified, as a ‘disturber’, one ‘Jean Valjean’ (one of two central characters in Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’) who ‘caused’ a disturbance by robbing a bakery, because, he said, ‘he could no longer bear to hear starving children crying’.   Thus, according to the scientific models embraced by the justice system, the ‘disturbance’ (the ‘departure from the peaceful ‘norm’) was due to a ‘causal mechanism’ and that ‘causal mechanism’ originated with and/or within, this fellow, Jean Valjean.  Inspector Javert was the second central character who embraced the bare-bones (simple/causal) model of justice.  Javert was committed to finding ‘causal agents’ responsible for disrupting those activities representative of ‘the spirit of the people’ (‘normal operation’ of a society) and bringing the ‘disturbers of the peace’ ‘to justice’.

Not having psychiatrists and psychologists available to the courts at that time, they were unable to ‘push the causal model deeper down into the individual’, as we tend to do today (as part of rehabilitation), continuing downward and inward to the ‘ultimate internal sourcing’ of the disturbance; i.e. biochemical imbalance and/or memory of some trauma experienced in infancy etc. etc., ostensibly the deeper ‘local, internally-originating’ source of the offensive ‘abnormal’ behaviour.   In fact, the ‘science’ of ‘jurisprudence’ in that era (and even in our era) was not completely free from theory that, amongst the ‘local causal mechanisms’ to choose from in explaining the ‘departure from the norm’, was ‘evil’, a local root cause source(ry), that, purportedly, can  lurk invisibly in the interior of some of our brothers (as were previously called ‘witches’, ‘warlocks’, ‘the possessed’ etc.);

“. . this is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based on this — Thomas Aquinas, on ‘Natural Law’

It is evident, then, that this simple ‘causal model’, which derives from the simplified reality (the present depends only on the immediate past) deployed in mainstream science, blocks our inquiry into the deeper and more primary source of ‘change’ which originates in the remote past; i.e. the accruing/intensifying spatial relational ‘tensions’ that reach thresholds where the accrued energy is often suddenly, violently released and thus constitutes a nonlocal source of spatial-relational reorganization (earthquakes, avalanches, riots etc.).  There is no way of predicting either the timing of these ‘eruptions’ or their magnitude.  Common experience recognizes these ‘nonlinear dynamics’ in such aphorisms as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.  The fact that we presently lack adequate theory for such ‘complexity’ does not impinge on the ‘reality’ of it.

The point is, that we ‘flip-flop’ between understanding ‘change’ in one or the other of these two ways; (a) the causal model that assumes that the present depends only on the immediate past, and (b) the ‘un-simplified’ model of ‘change’ wherein we acknowledge that the present may be directly influenced by the remote past.  We refer to the latter (b) in science,  using such labels as ‘nonlinear dynamics’, ‘complexity science’, ‘chaos theory’ and ‘self-organized criticality’.  None of these modes of inquiry are ‘mainstream’ in the scientific thinking of the general public though they are intuitively pervasive (the dog is blamed for biting the innocent person but the person is blamed that repetitively taunts the dog and ultimately gets bitten), and none are comprehended in inquiry that seeks to address social complexity; e.g. in systems of law, though they are implied in the understandings of ‘justice’ which precede law;

“The justice which in itself is natural and universal, is otherwise and more nobly ordered, than that other justice, which is special, national, and constrained to the ends of government. …There cannot a worse state of things be imagined, than where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes with the magistrate’s permission, the cloak of virtue . . . . The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato, is where that which is unjust, should be reputed for just.” – Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), lawyer, magistrate, mayor (Bordeaux) who said ‘The journey not the arrival matters.’

Historically, in our western social dynamic, politics embraced the simple causal model perhaps because there is an implication that if local causal agents can convert the immediate past into the present, then it follows that we can be the causal agents that create the immediate future from the present. If we look at the causal model in reverse, it suggests that the immediate future depends only on the present and given the value we place on bringing about ‘the future that we desire’, it can convert us into proponents of ‘the end justifies the means’.  Such an approach will be at the cost of infusing major tensions into the system (our operating/living space) during the passage from the present to the immediate (desired) future so that the philosophy effectively inverts to; ‘The arrival not the journey matters’.  This can in turn lead to putting our natural ‘lives-in-the-now’ and those of our children and grandchildren ‘on hold’ as we enslave ourselves, individually and collectively, to the desired future that we have committed to bring about.  Our society applauds those heroic efforts where the carefully laid plans of man, threatened by unruly winds of change, are rescued (often at huge ‘cost’) by a tenaciously committed determinism

Machiavelli’s following comment exemplifies this simple way of thinking;

“fortune is a woman and it is necessary if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.” —  Machiavelli

Of course  there is but one ‘fortune’ and her suitors are many though she can occupy herself with only one at a time, a situation that can lead to considerable conflict.

Meanwhile, if the present depends only on the immediate past then the immediate future depends only on the present, and in light of this way of thinking it is not hard to understand why Marie Antoinette and ‘those in power’ (the self-appointed ‘masters of fortune’) would interpret the increasingly frequent ‘eruptions’ of ‘disturbance’ in the social dynamic in the simple causal model terms where the present depends only on the immediate past, a view wherein it is a foregone conclusion that a local causal agent is responsible for the ‘outburst’ (is where the buck starts and stops), and thus to impute full and sole (first cause) responsibility for the disturbance to Jean Valjean and/or his internal processes and drivers.   To portray him as an ‘evil’ man because he has no respect for the laws of the land is to invite ourselves to believe in ‘invisible/occult causal forces’ that are LOCAL in character  (inhabiting his interior).  Meanwhile, to portray the land as being permeated by rising (oppressive) tensions that spontaneously source stress-relieving spatial reorganization is to invite ourselves to believe in ‘invisible/occult causal forces’ that are NON-LOCAL in character.

What is our preference?  We must choose our preferred flavour of occultism.   LOCAL causal agencies that operate on the immediate past to produce the present state of affairs (or operate in the present to produce the immediate future), … or,… NON-LOCAL  invisible causal agency deriving from the remote past and directly influencing the present?

Obviously, if one is amongst those ‘in power’, like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and thus trying to operate the simple causal model in reverse, Machiavellian style, believing that the ‘immediate future’ depends only on applying causal agency in the present (the ends justify the means) then invisible tensions may well build.  But rather than blaming the continuously rising tensions for the increasingly frequent ‘violent eruptions’ as in ‘nonlinear dynamics’, those in power will impute local sourcing to the disturbances; i.e. the ‘evil causal agency’ that inhabits the interior of those such as Jean Valjean.  However, if you live on the other side of the tracks, in the slums that surround the Palais de Versailles where you are under the thumb of the rising tensions of oppression that invisibly inhabit the social space, you will opt for the un-simplified model of disturbance and acknowledge that nonlocal invisible causal agency (rising tensions) deriving from the remote past is directly influencing the present..

After all, the assumption that the present depends only on the immediate past was a deliberate assumption that was consciously built into the foundations of science (mathematical physics) to simplify reality, notionally dividing real-world dynamics up into small, local differences, so that problems formulated using the simplified reality would be more amenable to solution.   That is, the solutions would apply to the simplified reality rather than to the actual reality, and thus there would be agreement between predicted solutions and results since everything would be envisaged to take place within the simplified reality.  That is, the whole formulation of the problem, the solution and the experimental validation would all ‘use’ the ‘simplified reality’ so that the whole process of inquiry would be a kind of ‘petitio principii’ into which the ‘real’, ‘un-simplified world’ remained outside of the entire exercise.

For example, Nobel laureate in Medicine (1937) Albert Szent-Györgyi, while suffering from ‘pneumonia’, reasoned, as in the situation with Jean Valjean, that the disturbing agents (bacteria) were not the ‘cause’ of the illness but rather the ‘result’ of the ‘illness’, the ‘illness’ being seen by Szent-Gyorgyi as ‘imbalance’ in the system.  There are over 100 different ‘gangs’ of potential disturbance-makers (bacteria and viruses) that can be found in this pathogen attack or that pathogen attack  ‘holding the smoking gun’ when the patient succumbs to pneumonia and while the ‘pathogenic bacteria’ will be listed as ‘the cause of death’, Szent-Györgi reasoned that the primary cause was imbalance which incited (provided fertile ground for) the proliferation of one or other of these ‘disturbance-makers’.  He took large doses of vitamin C, recovered, researched the role of vitamin C in the body, and received a Nobel prize for his work.  If his research orientation had been anti-biotics (a severe law and order enforcing system), he might have stayed with the simple causal model which implies that the disturbances originated with the ‘pathogen’ (pathogen: – ‘an agent that causes disease’).   This being the model, it follows that the solution is to eliminate the pathogens.  The validity of this theory can be tested by developing and administering a remedy (an ‘anti-biotic’) that will kill the pathogens to see if this stops the illness.  If the illness ceases following the administering of the anti-biotic, it may be assumed that the theoretical (causal) model is correct, but it might also be that the system was all the while striving to regain balance and that the eliminating of the trouble-makers took an energy-draining load off the system so that it was better able to restore its own balance.

Here we have the familiar split in ‘political’ view between those who would seek to ‘keep the peace’ by alleviating tension-creating imbalances and those who would seek to ‘keep the peace’ by implementing a strong law-and-order capability.   As in the case of pneumonia where there are over 100 different gangs of disturbers that may become active when/as imbalances arise, the ‘imbalance’ provides the parenting medium (fertile conditions) for the proliferation of the disturbers.  Restoring of health equates to the restoring of balance which nature (the body) must do.  The squelching of the current disturbance may contribute to the restoring of balance, but it is not the ‘equivalent’ of ‘restoring balance’.

The law-and-order approach, as well,  increase the tensions and imbalances in the system (i.e. courses of antibiotics can debalance the body and open the door to other ‘opportunistic’ infections/disturbances).  If one holds unflinchingly to the law and order model, as more and different gangs of disturbers come into play, the view will continue to fail to acknowledge the primary role of tensions associated with imbalance, and one will proceed on the basis that pathogenic force originates locally, with the pathogenic causal agents, so that the action deemed appropriate will be to increase the severity and thoroughness of application of the law and order system.

In the ‘simplified world view’, dealing with causal agencies is ‘all she wrote’, but in the ‘un-simplified world view’, the agents of disturbance are the ‘result’ rather than the ‘cause’ of the ‘dis-ease’, the ‘cause’ being non-local tensions associated with systemic imbalance..

To recap, the simplified reality that is used by Mathematical Physics, and which is the popular reality of choice for ‘mainstream’ scientific inquiry, is the reality described by Poincaré in ‘Science and Hypothesis’ where we assume that local visible material bodies and their movements are ‘what the world dynamic is made of’.  Following Newton, we assume that material objects are ‘locally existing’ and that their motion derives either from externally applied ‘forces’ and/or from internally sourced  forces (e.g. from chemical or biochemical processes or atomic reactions).  The key point in this simplified reality is that ‘motion’ must have a ‘local source’, meaning ‘local’ in both time and space.

“It is therefore, thanks to the approximate homogeneity of the matter studied by physicists, that mathematical physics came into existence.  In the natural sciences the following conditions are no longer to be found: homogeneity, relative independence of remote parts, simplicity of the elementary fact; and that is why the naturalist is compelled to have recourse to other modes of generalisation.” – Henri Poincaré

Mathematical physics, with its simplified reality wherein the present depends only on the immediate past works fine for ‘local mechanical systems’, but is inherently inadequate for addressing ‘natural complexity’.

What has been happening in our modern society is that this simplified model of reality, as built into Mathematical Physics, has become so familiar it is being used as a matter of habit and applied to natural complexity that it is unable to deal with.  For example, in the example of Les Miserables which is used as a ‘reference template’ throughout this essay, the primary source of the ‘disturbance’ involving Jean Valjean is the persisting tensions in the living space which reach threshold levels where something ‘snaps’ in order to relieve the tensions (Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread).  If we are constrained to the ‘simplified reality’ then we are constrained to the assumption that the source of the disturbance is ‘local’ and originates within Jean Valjean.  In the unsimplified reality of our natural experience, we understand that human beings in a spatial situation where tensions continue to build, are not unlike rocks in a spatial situation where tensions continue to build; i.e. a threshold is reached where ‘something gives’ in order to relieve those tensions.  That is, there is no reason to assume that social dynamics, which are ‘as complex as it gets’, should not manifest nonlinear dynamics of the type where the present is NOT solely dependent on the immediate past (the simplified reality), but is also directly effected by the remote past (the spatial-relational accruing of potential energy associated with tensions).

Our experience validates that this type of nonlinear behaviour where spatial imbalances/tensions are the nonlocal sources of spontaneous spatial reorganization, does indeed manifest in social dynamics.  The fact that we do not yet have ‘competent theory’ to explain it does not mean that ‘it does not happen’.  When Erwin Schroedinger is suggesting that a ‘living cell’ is an ‘aperiodic crystal’ and that there is just one physics (not yet fully developed) that re-unifies the inanimate and animate realms, when ‘quantum entanglement’ has been proven, and when relativity is saying that fields are the fundamental medium from which material is hatched (suggesting that the web-of-life of the Amerindian belief tradition is ‘on target’), then a new understanding of ‘the human organism’ is overdue since it makes no sense to continue to ‘render’ humans in the simplified reality that portrays them (us) as ‘local, independently-existing material systems with our own locally originating, internal biochemical process-driven and internal knowledge and purpose-directed behaviour (i.e. virtual local automatons that act/interact in absolute fixed and empty [euclidian] space).  At a minimum we must acknowledge that we evolved within and are born into a ‘web’ of relations where, for example, we eat fish which eat plankton which eat phytoplankton which eat sunbeams etc. etc.  We can’t just ignore this elaborate ecosystemic web of interrelations that we are included in by using the jargon that comes with local  mechanical systems models; i.e. statements like ‘humans eat and excrete’ (local systems have inputs and outputs).  But we do because our habit is “choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy.” (Kepler).

Nonlinear dynamics such as earthquakes and avalanches (and individuals who cannot extricate themselves from stressful situations ‘going postal’) are not subject to the simplification-driven constraints of Mathematical Physics (the present depends only on the immediate past).  For example, spatially non-homogeneous tensional fields can develop so that motion of matter arises when friction or other bonds holding things ‘together’ reach a threshold breaking stress (this is ‘nonlocal causation’).  Once the matter is in motion, the laws of motion developed for the simplified reality apply, so that the phenomena can once again be addressed within the simplified reality where causation derives from local material objects governed by externally applied or internally-originating forces.  But fullblown, un-simplified ‘reality’ includes earthquakes and avalanches and many other ‘nonlinear dynamic phenomena’ as well, and their workings do not reveal themselves to inquiry that is conducted by starry eyed researchers who, when they look out into the unsimplified reality, see the simplified reality that is so much more accommodating to them in the manner it delivers understanding to them and eases the formulation of problems and devising of solutions.

The long and short of it is that;… the identifying and dealing with Jean Valjean as the ‘first cause’ source of the disturbance would only be appropriate if the simplified reality that associates with the causal model is valid..  If the reality is, as we intuit it is, that the root-source of the disruptions is invisible NONLOCAL (spatially-distributed) tensions accruing over the remote past and directly influencing the present, then Louis and Marie’s use of the simple causal model and the single-minded remedial tool of ‘law-and-order’ may be seen as the problem rather than the solution (may exacerbate the tensions that are the truly primary source of the eruptions).

Ok, those are the choices in the social sphere, but how about for those working within science itself?  The same Machiavellian option applies.  There is science (applications of science) that simplify reality so that it is easier to find solutions to problems formulated in terms of the simplified reality;

“fortune is a woman and it is necessary if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.” —  Machiavelli

By making simplifying assumptions, we domesticate nature and as with a domesticated woman, we confuse the more complex unsimplified reality for the simplified reality.  (Of course, beneath her seemingly compliant behaviour is a wild woman who ‘runs with the wolves’).

For those who would like to believe that the ‘unfolding world dynamic can be ‘conquered by force’, there is ‘mainstream science’ with its linearizing assumption that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’.   But as with the example of Louis and Marie, operationalizing these simple solutions based on a simplified model of reality does not happen in the simplified reality since THERE IS NO OTHER SPACE FOR OPERATIONALIZING SOLUTIONS BUT THE SPACE OF THE ONLY REALITY AVAILABLE TO US, THE UN-SIMPLIFIED NATURAL REALITY, and in this un-simplified reality, such operationalizing of solutions based on a simplified reality may spawn more problems than it is resolving.  For example, a program to eliminate the increasing numbers of Jean Valjeans, may bring on a revolution; i.e. a situation  where increasingly frequent ‘disruptions’ (‘departures from the norm’) ensue in proportion to efforts to eliminate ‘disruptions’.

‘Differences’ — FROM THE NORM —- don’t have to be directly attacked and eliminated, they can also be addressed by adjusting the ‘norm’ so as to reduce the tensions and imbalances that engender disruptions.  After all, ‘the norm’ is a probability and statistics based ‘mathematical device’ that launders out ‘NONLOCAL’ influences (in time and space) so that we can see things simply in terms of LOCAL differences.  E.g. the averaging of the earth’s surface temperature curve gives us a norm that allows us to say, on a LOCAL basis, whether things are currently (locally in time and space) ‘warming’ or ‘cooling’.  By shrinking/extending the averaging window, we are generally able to change ‘warming’ to ‘cooling’ and vice versa.

Similarly, the averaging of the kinetic energy of molecules gives us a norm for ‘thermal energy’ that allows us to specify ‘how hot it is LOCALLY’ and thus dispense with the NONLOCAL influence of ‘thermal field’ (e.g. the hurricane is spontaneous spatial reorganisation deriving from ‘tensions’ (pressures) associated with imbalances in a continuous thermal field, an energy-charging/discharging field which is more intense in the equatorial regions and less intense in the polar regions (the spontaneous spatial reorganization starts here, not in the interior of the storm-cell/hurricane).

NONLOCAL differences are otherwise known as ‘field configuration’ which is the source of spontaneous spatial reorganization.  By reducing NONLOCAL spatial-relational sourcing to LOCAL causal sourcing by ‘taking local differences’, we make it appear as if ‘change’ is locally perpetrated by way of ‘what things do’ when the fact is that it can be more generally seen as being nonlocally sourced by spontaneous spatial reorganization.   We, all of us, are inextricably included in this spontaneous spatial reorganization.

John Lennon has put it this way;

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

But many continue to see things in terms of the ‘simplified reality’ of ‘differential calculus’ and put it this way;

“You can create the future of your dreams. This may seem far fetched for most people, but what they do not seem to realize is that their present is the future they created by their past actions or inaction. You are where you are today because of the decisions and actions you took yesterday.”

These different understanding as to the nature of change lead to very different world views and to very different social dynamics, as will continue to be explored in this essay.

* * * * * * * *

Examining Physics, Biology, Medicine, Psychology and Geology/Climate in the context of;

The ’simplified reality’ that is implicitly built into ‘differential calculus’ seems to be taking us on a joyride by allowing us to mistake ourselves for causal agents capable of constructing from the present, the immediate future we desire.

PHYSICS

The evolution of physics requires special attention since it contains within it, the story of how we have created ‘two realities’ out of one (the original and a derivative); the ‘derivative’ being a simplified reality based on local sourcing of dynamics which is a mathematical reduction (thanks to calculus) of the un-simplified dynamics of nature where the primary sourcing of dynamics is non-visible, non-local and non-material (energy-field based).  Thus, in this section, the brief development of the ‘two realities’ in the introduction will be put in context with the evolution of physics and the role that mathematics came to play in ‘simplifying the complex reality’ of nature in order to facilitate formulating ‘easier questions’ that were resolved with ‘easier answers’.

Physicists, starting with Kepler and Newton, ‘hit the wall’ in their attempts to explicitly (logically/mathematically) describe nature’s dynamics.  Their response was to ‘back off’ trying to describe the full-blown interdependent complexity of nature and to describe, instead, the secondary, visual aspects.

This ‘full-blown complexity’ stemmed from the fact that everything seemed to move under the influence of everything else. Kepler expressed this in the terms that space was characterized by ‘harmony’ that was beyond ‘the harmony of one thing moved with other things’ and said that it was more as if the spatial harmony was a ‘volume of unity’ (‘Harmonies of the World’, 1619), attributing this to God.  Newton made much the same observation, also attributing the simultaneous mutual influence of all of the celestial bodies (as in ‘gravity is everywhere at the same time’) to God and taking care to warn the reader of ‘Principia’ that the laws of physics that he had formulated described features that had established themselves within the overall harmonious flow, but which in no way addressed the continuous unfolding of these dynamics and how things gathered into patterns such as the orbital patterns of the earth and mars, and/or were regathered into new persisting dynamic patterns.

Newton commented specifically on ‘hitting the wall’ with respect to being not only unable to describe the movement of bodies moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence when the number of such bodies rose to ‘three or more’, he stated that “an exact solution to the problem of three bodies exceeds, if I am not mistaken, the force of any human mind.”.  Meanwhile, he objected to the notion of ‘action at a distance’ as was suggested by this mutual interdependence in the celestial motion, calling it ‘absurd’ and leaving the door open to the notion of ‘ether’ and/or ‘field’ as the primary ‘substrate’ of the universe.  The interim approach in physics, was thus to reduce the inherent ‘NONLOCAL orchestrating of nature’s dynamics’ to mathematical descriptions that employed a notional LOCAL direction.  The ad hoc notion of ‘force’ was invented to facilitate breaking out local ‘dynamic features’, explaining them in terms of ‘local, externally-applied forces and/or ‘local internally-originating forces’.  In this manner it is possible to explain a convection cell such as a hurricane in terms of local external and internally originating forces without going back to its origins as the atmosphere is heated by solar irradiance and begins to come towards the boil, a story that implies the orchestration of the entire interdependent celestial dynamic.

Later on, Faraday’s solution to the description of electromagnetic fields which in turn opened the way for Maxwell’s equations, restated the natural precedence of ‘field’ over ‘matter’, implying that the source of orchestration started with the field (nonlocal influence) rather than with ‘local forces’ originating in ‘charged particles’ (the charged particles themselves being condensations or ‘flow-features’ in the field).

Relativity with its ‘energy-matter equivalence’ did with the ‘gravitational field’ what Faraday had done with the electromagnetic field; i.e. it put the nonlocal influence of field into sourcing/orchestrating precedence over ‘local’ material body dynamics.  As Einstein and Infeld explain in ‘The Evolution of Physics’, the material bodies can be understood as ‘secondary features’ rather than primary ‘movers and shakers’; i.e. they can be understood as local concentrations of energy within the flow of the field.

How the mathematics was deployed to reduce the ‘nonlocal’ orchestrating of dynamics in nature to ‘local’ sourcing is nicely described by Henri Poincaré in ‘Science and Hypothesis’, in the chapter ‘Hypotheses in Physics’, in the section entitled ‘Origin of Mathematical Physics’ (three and a half pages in length).  Poincaré notes that dynamics that are ‘nonlocal’ with respect to ‘time’ are forced to seem as if they are local in time by mathematically ‘building in’ the assumption that the present depends only on the immediate past (the ‘causal’ model’).  Thus, for example, if the ambient temperature ‘goes up’ from what it was a moment ago to a higher level, the assumption is that there will be a ‘causal mechanism’ to explain why this happened.  But it could be that a sheet of ice deposited many years ago has finally finished melting and that it was all the while keeping the temperature down.  This is a case where something that occurred in the remote past ‘reaches out from the remote past’ to directly influence the present.  If we believe in the causal model, we will be searching for the local-in-time culprit who did the dirty work, as if it originated locally-in-time.

If we find a correlation between a rise in CO2 levels and the rise in temperature, we may conclude that the increase in CO2 concentration is the ‘cause’ of the increase in temperature and, starting from this ‘conclusion’, go back and make up some piecemeal story as to how the CO2 causes the temperature to rise (e.g. by enabling the air to hold more of the sun’s heat).  This local sourcing explanation ‘keeps the causal model ‘whole’’ (i.e. it satisfies the mathematics-imposed condition that the present depends only on the immediate past) while ignoring the real nonlocal-in-time origins of the phenomena (the unsimplified reality that the present is directly influenced by the remote past; i.e. because great lumps of ice were deposited a long time ago, our temperatures have been moderated by the ice-box effect, but when the ice finally melts the temperature, the ice box temperature will rise in accordance with the ice-deposition-and-melting cycle and NOT because of some present causal mechanism).

But going back to the notion the ‘greenhouse gases capture and hold more heat, … what are our assumptions in regard to the dynamics of ‘heat’?

As Poincaré shows in the same discussion as referenced above, ‘heat’ is another phenomena we use mathematics to ‘localize’; i.e. we say it is the activity of the molecules.  But elsewhere (in physics) we have said that molecules are expressions of fields and in modern research such as Quantum Loop Gravity, we find that all there are, at the base of it all, are ‘fields’, so ‘whats with this description of ‘heat’ as local activity of the molecules’?   As Poincaré points out, the assumptions of symmetry and the ‘law of large numbers’ ensures that we ‘cover our tracks’ in this mathematical ‘spatial-localizing’ of ‘heat’ that is the same sort of mathematical simplification as the ‘time-localizing’ of the ‘temperature anomaly.   (We might therefore attribute the mathematical simplifying of reality not only to differential calculus which launders out nonlocal-in-time influence but in its partnership with statistics which (by way of the ‘law of averages/large numbers) launders out nonlocal-in-space influence).

The fact is, the atmosphere heats up in a non-uniform fashion and it is the nonlocal differences that induce the emergence of convection cells, so why not understand this in terms of a ‘thermal energy field’ that orchestrates the movement of the molecules, rather than explaining ‘heat’ as a ‘local thing’; i.e. as the local excitedness (kinetic energizing) of the molecules.  This is like the situation Newton referred to; i.e. the ‘laws’ of ‘thermal dynamics’ that govern the ‘local excitedness’ of the molecules in no way explain how the ‘local excitedness’ came to be there.

At the end of this discussion of how we use mathematics to localize the sourcing of dynamics in both time and space, Poincaré makes the astounding conclusion that this approach taken by mathematical physics is fine for mechanical applications but it too over-simplified for general use in our inquiry into nature!  He says;

“It is therefore, thanks to the approximate homogeneity of the matter studied by physicists, that mathematical physics came into existence.  In the natural sciences the following conditions are no longer to be found: homogeneity, relative independence of remote parts, simplicity of the elementary fact; and that is why the naturalist is compelled to have recourse to other modes of generalisation.”

There is nothing ‘homogeneous’ about ‘field’ and there is no ‘relative independence of remote parts, nor simplicity of the elementary phenomenon.  All of these attributes, which enable a notional ‘local sourcing’ of dynamics are available to our mental modeling only when we shift our grounding reference from the nonlocal, non-visible, non-material realm of ‘field’ to the local, visible, material realm.  Since we can see ourselves like the notional ‘local causal agents’ of our mathematically simplified science (mathematical physics) as being the cause of what happens in the local, visible, material realm (the ‘secondary aspect’ of the world that we/science notionally promote to ‘primary’status), we open the door to this ‘causal agent management style’.  It is a simplified reality, but it appeals to Louis and Marie because it puts them in control of the flow of wealth and power.  In this simplified reality, material causal agents are deemed responsible for the changes in a present that depends only on the immediate past, full stop (full story).  Thus, the source of the emergent disturbance surrounding the robbery of the bakery is Jean Valjean and/or his internal processes and purpose, full stop (full story).

The message is; those that see themselves as ‘causal agents’, truly responsible for the changes for the good (‘good results of their causal actions’) in the land, see only ‘causal agents’ as being responsible for whatever changes unfold in the universe.  The notion of nonlocal, non-visible, non-material ‘fields’ as the orchestrating source of change is not even on the radar screen.  That’s not to say that Louis and Marie didn’t ‘get it’ (deny the reality of oppressive tensions in one’s living space), but it is to say that it was (initially, prior to the revolution) more convenient for them to ignore it in order to continue to live in the lavish and privileged manner in which they had become accustomed to living.  Having persuaded many of their cohorts and some of the people as well as themselves, that they were deserving causal agents that were personally responsible for much good in the land (France was then one of the most wealthy and powerful nations in Europe).   Strangely enough (or not so strangely), when Louis and Marie were removed as heads-of-state; i.e. when the heads of the heads of state were removed, the wealth and the power of the nation did not disappear along with the causal agents notionally responsible for them.

The suggestion was that instead of France being understood as a local machine whose present condition depends only on its immediate past (that its behaviour was animated by the unflagging activity of its local causal agents), it could be more realistically understood in the terms that it’s present was directly influenced out of the remote past, in the same sort of manner that the storm-cell is the result of currents that gather in the extended space that it is included in, so that the emerging turbine/power-house ‘takes over centre stage’ and becomes the ‘star attraction’, giving the impression that ‘it is its own local/self-contained ‘source’ of its dynamism (even though the parenting medium or ‘flow-field’ it emerges from is never left behind, but continues to permeate this child it created as it engenders more yet from recycled others.).  This ‘field’ medium view of space seems to parallel the Amerindian/aboriginal view, being made of one’s ancestors who are the flow they form in, coming out of the dark fluid background (backstage) to take a whirl at being a centre-stage attraction for a while before returning to the dark fluid background..

To conclude this section on Physics, in the context of our having developed ‘two realities’, one of which is simplified mathematically (by differential calculus which launders out the nonlocal-in-time influence, in cahoots with statistics which launders out the nonlocal-in-space influence), it seems evident that people who believe in the simplified reality can identify themselves with the ‘local causal agents’ that this simplified reality purports to be responsible for ‘change’.

In the unsimplified reality, the unfolding present is directly shaped by influences that originate remotely in time and space, the cycles of solar flares, the wobbles in the earth’s orbits and the ice ages, the meteor collision and ensuing volcanics.  The dynamics of the universe condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the universe (Mach’s Principle of space-matter relativity).  Thus ‘fortune’ is primary while local causal results are secondary, in the manner that the sailboat derives its power and steerage from the dynamic habitat it is included in and that while the sailboater can talk about successively achieving his arrival at his ‘planned destination’, the implicit proviso is that he has had to extract his power and steerage from the habitat-dynamic he is included in (i.e. his ultimate source of power and direction is intrinsically ‘nonlocal’).

So, the source of power and motive direction does not ‘really’ originate in the central regulating authority or in the centre of the storm-cell.  This is an impression that arises when the nonlocal, non-visible, non-material dynamic sourcing of nature is simplified so that we imagine the present to depend only on the immediate past and the immediate spatial ‘locale’.

The would be believer in the simplified reality who sees himself as a ‘causal agent’ that is responsible for determining the unfolding present is thus implicitly prone to the political ideas of Machiavelli.  Note that the familiar proponent of the self as a local causal agent claims that walking this talk is ‘nature’s way’.  But in Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, where ‘fortune’ is seen as a ‘woman’ that ‘must be taken by force’, ‘cruelty’ to others is the recipe for doing this since cruelty breeds fear and fear becomes the instrument of control; i.e. backing off the cruelty feels as if a favour is being given (the carrot and the stick are dual faces of the same coin).  Even in a democracy, freedom is defined as a ‘privilege’ granted to those who are willing to follow the rules of the state. The state ‘speaks softly but carries a big stick’.

Again, the source of power and motive direction does not ‘really’ originate in the central regulating authority or in the centre of the storm-cell, but in the simplified model of reality that is supported by the mathematics of differential calculus and statistics, the primary nonlocal, non-visible, non-material source of dynamics is ‘laundered out’ and replaced (in the simplified reality) by ‘causal mechanisms’ that are ‘local’ in time and space.

The evolution of physics is being relived in the evolution of our social dynamic with the possible difference that we are forgetting that the simplified reality is a practical device for formulating easier questions which enable easier solutions.  Newton and Kepler held God in reserve, as an answer to the non-local, non-visible, non-material sourcing influence that their scientific formulations based on local causal mechanisms could not address.   However, modern man, in seeing himself as a ‘local causal agent’ that acts in the present to construct a desired state of the immediate future, is ascribing to himself God-like powers.  This belief that he has God-like powers of local causation capable of over-powering ‘dame fortune’ is otherwise known as ‘ego’.  Ego has appropriately been said to be an acronym for ‘edging god out’.

Bishop Berkeley was on target with his criticism of calculus in his treatise – ‘The analyst: or a discourse addressed to an infidel mathematician’;

“And what are these fluxions [derivatives]? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them ghosts of departed quantities?”

The ‘present-that-depends-only-on-the-immediate-past’, the simplified version of that which was parented by the continuously unfolding-enfolding non-local, non-visible, non-material mysterious spacetime-continuum of nature, by being rendered ‘local’ thanks to the ‘differentiation’ operation, has undergone the evacuation of ‘the great mystery’ and is then in need of ‘local Gods’ aka ‘local causal mechanisms’ to take responsibility for its creation.  ‘E/M’ has been quick to step up to the plate and claim paternity; (’E/M’ should not be confused with ‘electromagnetic field’ (e/m); it stands for ‘Egotistical Man’)

* * *

BIOLOGY

If ‘PHYSICS’ is a special field of inquiry due to it being the prototype for developing the tools of inquiry that would later be applied to all sciences, ‘BIOLOGY’ is a special field of inquiry due to it being the prototype for developing an understand of ‘ourselves’, the biological organism we call ‘man’.

Herein lurks the danger that the approximations associated with the ‘simplifying of reality’ in the development of tools of inquiry within physics, are finding their way into our impressions of ourselves.

For example, Newton ‘kept separate’ in his understanding, the un-simplified dynamics of the universe with its manifest harmonies, a dynamic unity which Newton claimed was divinely ordained, and which his laws could describe only in a piecemeal fashion, as the following quotes from his ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ make clear;

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

“… and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explained ; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws.”

“I wish we could derive the rest of the phaenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from physical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they all may depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain;”

The ‘physicists’, in evolving their tools of inquiry, used mathematics to reduce nonlocal phenomena to local.  The ‘simultaneous mutual influence’ manifest in the ‘harmonies of the world’ of Kepler and Newton suggested that the world was ‘one beast’ with many ‘limbs’, much as in the more recent ‘Gaia Hypothesis’.  ‘The ‘new physics’ of relativity and quantum wave dynamics provides a solution in the terms that the universe is fundamentally composed of ‘fields’ (e.g. Quantum Loop Gravity) while the moving matter we see is secondary to the ‘field flow’.

Be that as it may, the differential calculus developed in mathematical physics, to simplify the world dynamic by repositioning the sourcing of dynamics from the nonlocal expanse of space, to notional ‘local systems’ has us convert the ‘single beast’ of the atmosphere-skin of the earth with its ‘summer boils’ (hurricanes) that originate nonlocally from non-uniform thermal field flow with the purpose to restore thermal balance, … to notional local, independent systems, notionally equipped with their own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviours.   Ignoring the fact that these ‘boils’ are the children of a persisting dynamic medium ‘seems reasonable’ to us because we can ‘see’ the hurricanes but we cannot ‘see’ the medium per se.  Thus, the simplifying of these nonlocally sourced dynamics is transformed mathematically, to local sourcing thanks to simplifying assumptions (unrealistic as they may be) that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’ (the effective simplification of a time-derivative) and the assumption that the elementary phenomena is spatially localized (e.g. ‘heat’ is assumed to be the local energizing of molecules rather than a property of a nonlocal ‘field’ that is, like gravity and electromagnetism ‘everywhere at the same time’ [Any presence of spatial trends or ‘spatial frequencies’ in ‘heat’ is ‘laundered out’ by the ‘law of large numbers’ aka ‘the law of averages’].

Thus, in physics, the mathematical tools we use to simplify the reality and thus simplify the formulation of questions and answers, opens the door to establishing ‘sets’ of multiple instances of the same thing (e.g. ‘hurricanes’) and thus to do away with the nonlocal parenting medium (the flow of the atmosphere) without which, the ‘local systems’ would not exist.  The ‘genus’ of local systems and the associated membership qualifications is established by lifting the multiple instances of VISUAL FLOW-FEATURES out of the parenting flow and generalizing their parts and properties.using differential calculus that localizes dynamics in time and probability and statistics which localizes dynamics in space.  Voila, a ‘hurricane’ that is now a ‘local system in its own right’ with its own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviour (implicitly moving within and behaving relative to a notional absolute space, rather than relative to a continually transforming medium).  No longer does it emerge and head north from the equatorial regions to the polar regions to rebalance induced imbalance in thermal energy distribution, that for which it was called into existence by its parenting medium, but it is instead given a name and a generalized definition based on its local parts and properties, and reconceived of as a ‘local system in its own right’.

Well, we know that this is over-simplification and as Newton would say, … the equations which describe local dynamic phenomena and drop out the nonlocal/global interdependence are not ‘reality’.  The fullblown reality of Nature is a sacred space that “could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

What’s at stake here is not simply a religious belief in God or not, it is whether or not we  ‘go with’ the simplified reality of ‘local systems with their own local internally-originating behaviour’ as ‘all she wrote’, or whether we continue to acknowledge the un-simplified reality where dynamic phenomena are non-local, non-visible and non-material (‘field-based’) in origin.

In BIOLOGY, what’s at stake here is our impression of ‘ourselves’.  Are we the sailboater whose power and steerage derives from the dynamic medium we are included in (as in the unsimplified reality), or are we, really, the powerboater who is equipped with his own onboard power and steerage?

Evidently, BIOLOGY is popularly equating ‘the simplified reality’ with ‘reality’ (the natural world) and insisting that ‘that’s all she wrote’ (e.g. Richard Dawkins is ‘preaching’ that God is Delusion; i.e. that the parenting medium is delusion, and that cells and organisms really are local systems with their own local internally driven and directed agency.

‘Houston, we have a problem!’

When the current edition of ‘Western Civilization’ passes into the geological record, I am sure that future generations will be incredulous when they read that Darwin’s theory of evolution, which absolutely ignored the influence of ‘fields’ on evolution, could ever have survived for 150 years and more.  And perhaps because the pro-Darwinists were able to popularize a joke about Lamarck’s notion that a giraffe, originally with a neck like a gazelle, when he stretched his neck to nibble on the higher leaves in the trees, would not only retain his stretched neck, but pass it on to his children and grandchildren.

Whatever the reason, Lamarck’s very reasonable notion that fields (‘les fluides incontenables’ [fluids that can contain but cannot themselves be contained’] played a fundamental role in evolution was eclipsed by Darwin’s mathematical notion that the wonderful forms in nature are local, independently existing systems that arrive ‘mechanically’,  by ‘random chance variation’.  Allegedly, those random variants that ‘happened to fit well’ in the environment are the ones that proliferate and persist due to their superior ‘fitness’.

Darwin’s theory, or something mechanical like it, is where one has to go if one equates the simplified reality deriving from the mathematical tools of inquiry of physics, with ‘reality’ (nature).

Due to the popular ‘confusion’ on that point, t’was not to be that Lamarck’s core theory would prevail; i.e. his proposition that there was only ‘one physics’ (‘one method of nature’) that applied to all things (so that the world did not need to be split into ‘the inanimate’ and ‘the animate’).

Reflecting on it today, what comes to mind is that ‘ego’ and ‘racial supremacism’ (incorporated in the notion of the ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ hierarchy of Augustine of Hippo and others, God, Angels, Man, superior animals, inferior animals, plants, minerals)  were already popular stage-setting ideas in the nineteenth century and furnished a  ‘socket’ for Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ to plug into; i.e. the thinking of the time was that  ‘it is natural for wealth and business to rule since the ability to accumulate wealth in a competitive environment is the best evidence of being fit to rule’.   That is, this ‘selection of the fittest’ process was already accepted and was being supported by arguments that it was ‘nature’s way’ (propagated mostly by the ‘superior classes’ and the ‘superior races’ who were also the gatekeepers of knowledge [intellectual beliefs] and education.).

‘Rags-to-riches’ was an idea that many people in the ‘inferior ranks’ dreamed would come true for them.  If it did, the differential calculus where ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’ would inevitably (mentally) come into play, even if the riches derived from an inheritance from one’s grandfather who had got it from his grandfather.  The ‘selection process’, meanwhile, was more realistically based on ‘culture’ where  wealth, violence and membership-or-not in the exclusive privileged classes constituted the ‘selection process’.

Also foundational to Darwinism is the notion that the universe is largely ‘dead’ (inanimate) and spottily infected with ‘life’ (the animate realm) which arrived late on the evolutionary scene; i.e. the evolution of the inanimate world went on for a long time, it was said (biology continues to insist on it) before the lightning bolt hit some muddy inorganic soup and ‘life commenced’.  As far as ‘how life began’, ‘the check is in the mail’ say the biologists; i.e. ‘we are working on it; we are very close to the ultimate answer, and we shall be presenting the solution in the very near future’ (or, ‘its just a matter of time’).

Physicists such as Erwin Schroedinger (the formulator of quantum wave dynamics) have suggested that resonant-energy-charged space (‘field’) is more basic than ‘matter’ which Schroedinger calls ‘schaumkommen’ (appearances based on our visual sense which orients to ‘local features’ and discards the experience of ‘resonance’ which, as in acoustic wavefields is ‘everywhere at the same time’).  Schroedinger called the ‘gene’ an ‘aperiodic crystal’ (a resonance-based crystal that keep searching for wave-dynamical stability or standing-wave status without getting there);

“In the light of present knowledge, the mechanism of heredity is closely related to, nay, founded on, the very basis of quantum theory.” – Erwin Schroedinger, ‘What is Life’.(1944).

The check is in the mail for something else; the reconciliation of physics, chemistry and biology.  Schroedinger was jumping the gun a bit, in trying to render ‘life’ in terms of ‘resonance’ (cells as aperiodic crystals) but his published essay ‘What is Life’ was credited by Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of ‘the double helix structure of DNA’,  as providing a theoretical description of ‘what biologists should be looking for in their search for genetic material’.  And his co-discoverer, James Watson, changed his professional ambition from ornithology to genetics after reading “What is Life” in 1946.

There is nothing ‘local’ about ‘resonance’. The source of resonance is ‘blowing in the wind’, just listen to a wind-harp.  The nonlocal phenomena called ‘wind’ (the child of the parenting pressure-field medium) blows on through while the melody lingers on..  Resonance orchestrates matter, not the other way around. Flow orchestrates convection cells, not the other way round.  The nonlocal orchestrates the local.  Field orchestrates matter since ‘field’ is the parenting medium in which matter emerges and moves so as to satisfy imbalances in ‘field’.  For example, resonances in turbulent airflow orchestrate the flight of wildgeese and bring them into an efficient ‘V’ flying formation (the organisation and movement of the material bodies is secondary to the flow-dynamic).  This is not an ‘either/or’ statement.  As Mach’s principle of space-matter relativity would put it; ‘The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’.

At the bottom of it, the fields within which resonances emerge are spatial-relational (non-local, non-visible, non-material).  To Schroedinger, then, there was no ‘local God-like causal mechanism’ hiding in the interior of a ‘living cell’ as the central regulatory authority of the sovereign state of Deoxyribonia.

Moving along, what do biologists mean when they say that the conditions ‘on earth’ were/are ‘perfectly suited’ for the emergence of life?   In a biological theory that conceives of ‘life’ coming along after the inorganic baby’s nursery has been prepared and decorated, how could you go wrong in suggesting the ‘the conditions were perfect’?  Are there planets sitting around with their ‘baby nurseries’ all decorated and outfitted, patiently awaiting the ‘new arrival’ called ‘life’?  What if ‘life’ emerged out of the substance of the planet before the planet was ready for it?  That would be embarrassing

Biology (today’s popular version) claims that ‘life’ is a ‘local causal mechanism’, the source of the locally originating behaviour that characterizes a ‘living cell’.  It is the ‘sovereign state’ notion all over again, which we bring into ‘local being’ by way of a ‘declaration of independence’ and the appointment of a central regulatory authority. (As John Stuart Mill observed; “Every definition implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the existence of the object defined’).  The notional local sovereign entity, as law historians say, is a ‘secularized theological concept’ that depends on ‘common belief’.   Biology’s notion of a ‘living cell’ pretty much follows the same sort of idealizing, though how many might be inclined to think of the cell as an ‘aperiodic crystal’ that arises from non-local, non-visible, non-material ‘resonant energy charged space’ is not easily discovered since biology ‘polices’ its foundational notions such as the ‘animate’ – ‘inanimate’ split very diligently.  Such reconciling of physics and biology is beyond the allowed scope of inquiry in peer-reviewed biological publications.  Meanwhile, ‘fields’ and their influence on cell development are occasionally coming into the limelight;.

Recently, “biomedical researchers have found that exposure to the microgravity environment of space causes men and women of all ages to lose up to 1% of their bone mass per month due to disuse atrophy, a condition similar to osteoporosis. It is not yet clear whether losses in bone mass will continue as long as a person remains in the microgravity environment or level off in time.  The mystery, for the moment, is what signals permit bone tissue to adapt to a weightless or an Earth (1 g) environment.”

http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGeneralArchives/weakKnees.htm

Now, if the cell were conceived of as an ‘aperiodic crystal’; i.e. made of energy-field resonances, then the gravity field intensity would be automatically incorporated in the ‘crystal resonance’ and we wouldn’t have a ‘mystery’ in regard to how ‘gravity’ signals to the central intelligence agency within the cell, to back off with the calcium.  However, in the extant biological model, there is this notional tiny central intelligence agency/regulatory authority or ‘brain’ in the cell that receives information signals from the environment and processes and interprets them so that it can decide what it needs to be.  Sure, … I would put such bullshit down as an answer on an exam paper too, if the stakes were that my family would have food, shelter and clothing, … or not.

I recall one of my high school biology labs where we looked at fern spores under a microscope.  They looked pretty dried up and ‘dead’ to me.  Without water they would apparently stay that way for ever,  Water seems to play an amazing and important role in ‘life’ even though it is relegated to that inferior class called ‘inorganic minerals’ that are servants and slaves to the ‘organic life-forms’ (what kind of prejudice is that?).  Then, when drop a drop of water lands near them, they’ve got this arcuate clicker/snapping structure on them and the humidity gradient orchestrates their alignment up the gradient and the snapping structure has them move ‘upstream’ like spawning salmon.  In biology, these things are imputed to have ‘chemical gradient sensing’ and ‘chemotaxis’ capabilities.  This implies that this ‘cell’ is a ‘local, independently existing’ system with its own locally originating, internal process driven and internal purpose-directed behaviour that acts/interacts in an absolute space (otherwise its movement would be ‘relative’ rather than ‘absolute’)  Water, what credit does it get?  Well, biology proposes that without water there could be no life, so ‘water’ is said to be one of those things that brings other things to life but which cannot itself be brought to life.  That sounds surprising like the Russell paradox form of Goedel’s theorem of the incompleteness of all finite systems of mathematics; The barber that cuts the hair of all those who cannot cut their own hair, cannot cut his own hair.  Goedel’s theorem proves that there is flaw in our popular ‘mathematical’ way of thinking.  Water gets short shrift from biology. The living human body, at birth, is about 75% water but water is still considered to be an ‘outsider’ as far as ‘life’ goes.  When water with its electrically-bipolar makeup is present, the notional local animator of the mix of  water and minerals called ‘life’ is able to do its thing, apparently.  No-one has ever actually seen this local animator called ‘life’, we can only imply its local internal presence where we see matter-in-motion in a characteristic ‘living dynamic’ (all of the parts moving as a whole).  There are only two choices for the source of such whole-and-part animation, inside or outside, unless one admits to ‘field’ that is everywhere at the same time, then inside and outside are just two aspects of the same thing (i.e. ‘field’ or ‘flow’).

Ok, the local internal positioning of the causal agency called ‘life’ fits the ‘simplified reality’ wherein the present depends only on the immediate past; i.e. the difference between the immediate past and the present condition of the ‘local organism’ is therefore due to its own local causal agency.  We thus close the tautological loop in our definitions.

But to tell the truth, the fern spores looked a lot like little sailboats to me.  When a blast of wind comes up (in this case a blast of humidity), the sailboats, when left to themselves, turn promptly up into the wind like weather-vanes.  Their orientation is a ‘map’ of the flowlines (gradient) of the flow-field.   Resonance comes into play here, as with the wildgeese ‘V’ formation and the orchestrating source of the behaviour is ‘nonlocal’.

Now, the sailboat derives its power and steerage from the flow/field it is included in, but we say that the spore is a local independent organic-being, a ‘living cell’ with its own local internally-originating behaviour; i.e. it has its own local, internal process based power-drive (chemotaxis) and its own local, internal centre of direction (chemical gradient-sensing intelligence and regulatory capability).  I don’t know about you, but I feel sure that Schroedinger would be calling ‘bullshit’ at this point re all this stress on ‘schaumkommen’ which inevitably implies ‘localness’..

Again, in physics it is standard practice to say ‘the earth rotates’ (this implies that the earth’s movement is ‘its own’ and that it moves relative to absolute space) and ‘the earth moves in an ellipse around the sun’ (an ellipse is a planar figure but the movement of the planets are like silk worms spinning a cocoon).  When we articulate this sort of local geometric imagery in physics, we know that we are talking about simplified models of reality.  But when we speak in these same ‘simplified reality’ terms in biology; i.e. when speaking of ‘life’ and ‘organisms’, we are evidently prone to thinking; ‘hmmm, since I am an organism, these biological models of organisms are describing ‘who I am’.  They are telling me that I am a local, independently-existing machine, equipped with its own locally originating, internal power driven and internal purpose directed behaviour.

This imputes to the believer, his own absolute creative power, like a God.  This gives the believer one helluvan ego.  When I plant and harvest a crop of corn, I know that the present result depends only on the immediate past, and the difference between the two is a ‘causal agent’.  I am the causal agent responsible for the production of corn, so I say.  The Amerindian believes he is only a strand in an interdependent web of life, like the sailboater, someone whose power and steerage derives from the spatial flow he is included in.  To him, the corn is ‘his sister’. He sings and dances to celebrate her.

To conclude this section on ‘biology’, the dominance of the ‘simplified reality’ is alive and well in biology.  The ‘living cell’ is distinguished from the ‘crystal’ not by its aperiodic resonance, but by a local causal agent that inhabits it called ‘life’.  Darwin’s theory insists that the individual limbs and organs of organisms evolve by ‘random chance’ variations (a mathematical concept from probability and statistics).   The random chance variance of ‘wings’ has been the good fortune of several different phyla, … who would think? (i.e. ‘what are the odds’)?  As critics have noted, pigs do not yet fly, but according to Darwinism, it is not too late.  It could happen by and by.  There certainly is a resonant relation between ‘wings’ and the flow of the atmosphere but there is no room in Darwinism for the dynamics of the habitat influencing the unfolding shape of  its inhabitants, … not this side of ‘relativity’, in any case.   The source of new features on the ‘old models’ must come from inside the ‘lineage’as it moves forward with the ‘march of time, reproducing itself in forms garnished with random chance variation, with natural selection allowing those lineages that have suffered ‘fortuitous accidents’ like ‘the spontaneous random chance development of wings’ to persist.

Many wouldn’t believe this stuff, but like most scientific knowledge, ‘it works’ in a kind of internally consistent tautological looping way..  Biologists explain the flock-flying of birds and the school-swimming of fish in terms of locally originating, internal purpose-directed behaviours of these ‘organisms’.  It would not be allowed to propose that the dynamics of space orchestrate the dynamics of the inhabitants of space, as in Mach’s principle (the new physics).   Some biologists have proposed this to deal with what is called ‘irreducible complexity’ wherein the overall dynamic cannot be deduced from the dynamics of the parts, meaning that the parts could not develop by way of Darwinian evolution since the overall dynamic of multiple parts imposes itself backwards to orchestrate the dynamics of the individual parts.  Those who propose it tend to be  ‘accused’ of being ‘creationists’-disguising-themselves-as-scientists and kicked out (an increasingly common occurrence that prompted the making of the Ben Stein film ‘Expelled’).

The same assumptions as have been made in physics, the localizing of the source of change in both time and space (the ‘simplified reality’), also permeates the foundational models of biology; i.e. the ‘living cell’ and ‘the living organism’.   Whereas in physics, the models are used mainly to ‘understand something mechanical’ and to ‘do something mechanical’, in biology they tend to reflect back and suggest to us (catastrophically) ‘who we are’ and ‘how we should conduct ourselves’..

When biology and physics are eventually ‘reconciled’, there will be no way to preserve the notion of first cause origination of behaviour in the organism, not if the (inherently spatial-relational) concept of ‘resonance’ as something more fundamental than matter makes it through the reconciliation.

* * *

PSYCHOLOGY

Inquiry into mental attitudes and behaviours is implicit in the birth of this treatise.  It examines the influence on mental attitudes of the mathematical concept of ‘the derivative’ (the present depends only on the immediate past) which has been infused into scientific understanding of the world; i.e. into scientific understanding of ‘life’ and ‘living’and thus into ‘biological forms’ known as ‘organisms’, including ‘the human organism’. Thus, ‘psychological inquiry’ describes ‘where this essay is coming from.

The discussions of Physics and Biology etc. are thus not simply in terms of ‘what they are’ and ‘how they have evolved’ but beyond that, how they are affecting our current or mental attitudes and behaviours.

The distinction I would like to make here is that while the structure of this essay and its headings makes it appear as if Psychology is a ‘discipline’ or ‘subject area’ that can be studied as the third in a series of subjects (objects of interest), mental attitudes and behaviour are at work throughout everything we do; i.e. ‘psychology’ is like one of those ‘fluides incontenables’ (Lamarck), the stuff that can contain but which cannot be contained (aka ‘field’).  Mental attitude and behaviour is the source of these serial words being laid down in this treatise.  In reality, ‘psychology’ is ‘subject-and-object’ at the same time.  In the simplified reality where the present depends only on the immediate past, ‘psychology’ is reduced to inquiry into ‘behaviour’ and ‘what mental attitudes behaviour comes from’.

There is no way to understand ‘earthquake’ like phenomena if we reduce psychology to ‘behavioural dynamics’ and ‘mental attitudes’ that motivate behaviour.

My experience is that I am included in a spatial ‘field’ of tensions and every word and sentence that comes from the tip of my tongue, … or rather from the tips of my fingers as they tap-dance over the keyboard, is a little ‘earthquake’ that speaks of the field of tensions I am included in.  My behaviour is not coming from a little ‘ghost-man’ called ‘the psyche’ inside of me telling me how to behaviour, it is coming from the spatial field of tensions I am included in.  To be sure, that field of tensions is not separate from me.  As Mach’s principle says, it conditions me at the same time as I am conditioning it, but it is ‘bigger than me’; i.e. something bigger than me is the source of my attitude and behaviour.  I agree with Schroedinger that ‘there is just one consciousness’, but that goes farther than where I want to go at the moment.  Yes, I seem to have ‘choice’ with respect to what I call ‘my behaviour’, but that’s only when I, you, we, … assume that there is such as thing as ‘I’ which is capable of sourcing its own behaviour.   I can speak of hurricane Katrina as if she is a thing that is capable of sourcing her own behaviour (‘Katrina is strengthening’, ‘Katrina is moving north’, ‘Katrina is wreaking destruction’, ‘Katrina is weakening’, ‘Katrina has passed away’).

By pointing to something commonly visible, name-labelling and defining it, we ‘create’ a synthetic ‘locally existing entity’ by way of common belief.   The unsimplified reality is that the flow-feature we call ‘Katrina’ is like an ‘earthquake’.  The atmosphere is continually under tension from the gravity field and it is under more tension still from its non-uniform exposure to solar thermal energy.  The ‘convection cell’ is the unleashing of accruing tensions/pressures in the atmosphere, just like the ‘earthquake’ is the unleashing of accruing tensions/pressures in the lithosphere and the ‘tsunami’ is the unleashing of accruing tensions/pressures in the hydrosphere.

The popular brand of ‘psychology’ uses name-labels and definitions to ‘go backwards’ from ‘behaviour’ (action, movement) to explain it ‘causally’ and because the ‘non-simplified reality’ of a field of tension which is non-local, non-visible and non-material is too complex, we simplify the situation and assume that ‘because behaviour as a visible feature is local’, why not assume that the ‘motivating/causal force’ is ‘local’.  Once we make the motivating force ‘local’, we have to come up with all sorts of spooky ideas, about ‘what lurks in this little ghost-like man with the ‘attitude’ called ‘the psyche’ that inhabits our local material selves and is the creator, producer and director of ‘our behaviour’ (don’t forget, is there really something ‘local’ called ‘katrina’ that has ‘its own locally originating behaviour’?  — Sure, by common belief, there is, but since our experience is that spatial-relational change is, in non-simplified reality, the only persisting dynamic, there is no way to break the ‘behaviour of a local entity’ out of the fluid-dynamic continuum of the ‘Nature’ of our experience.

This is what Emerson talks about in his essay ‘The Method of Nature’ wherein he conceives of the local flow-form aka ‘organism’ as not only inhabited by the spatial-relational dynamic of the continuum, but created by it.

All I am saying is that the dynamics of our non-simplified experience are spatial-relational in origin; i.e. by all evidence, as the example of ‘Katrina’ shows, the dynamics of our non-simplified, experience-based reality derive from non-local, non-visible, non-material agency (‘field’).  By ‘common belief’ we simplify and reduce this reality to a pseudo-reality based on notional ‘local objects/organisms/systems suggested by word-labels and definitions, that are notionally equipped with their own locally originating, internal motivation driven behaviour that notionally act/interact in an absolute space (if we didn’t impose the absolute space then they couldn’t possible have ‘their own behaviours’).

I will immediately acknowledge the difficulty in talking about you and I and us and our behaviours and motivations if we assume that we are not ‘locally existing’ entities.  But I would suggest that this difficulty derives from ‘the limitations of language’ and not from the limitations of our understanding.

In any case, if ‘fields’ are fundamental in Nature (the world we share inclusion in) then we are going to have to deal with the fact that, since fields are like fluids before there are any ‘local lumps’ in them, there are no ‘locally existing objects/organisms/system’ in a fluid-dynamic;

“So [since the problem of certainty in identity such as A=A is handled, in Euclidian geometry, by invoking the notion of invariable solids] “objects” are implicitly assumed to be invariable bodies.  Therefore the axioms of geometry already contain an irreducible assumption which does not follow from the axioms themselves. Axiomatic systems provide us with “faulty definitions” of objects, definitions that are grounded not in formal logic but in a hypothesis — a “prejudice” as Hans-Georg Gadamer might say — that is prior to logic.  As a corollary, our logic of identity cannot be said to be necessary and universally valid. “Such axioms,” says Poincaré, “would be utterly meaningless to a being living in a world in which there are only fluids.”  — Vladimir Tasic

Is it impossible to conceive ourselves starting from ‘features in a flow’ instead of starting from ‘local material object’?  As Emerson discovered, they will call you a ‘transcendentalist’ if you contend, as he does in ‘The Method of Nature’ that there is firstly ‘the flow of Nature’ which not only inhabits organisms but which creates them.

This doesn’t say that we should not construct a reality by pretending as if the flow features are local objects in an absolute space, it only says that we should NOT FORGET that this reality based on words and definitions which are based on ‘nothing other than common belief’ is a ‘simplified reality’ that must not be confused for ‘reality’ the ‘field’ or ‘fluid-dynamical reality’ that is the persisting parenting medium that gathers and regathers itself into visible flow-features’.

Just as the ‘new physics’ shows us, a lot more of our experience becomes understandable when we suspend starting from a world view in terms of local objects with locally originating behaviour.

So, ‘motivation’ by a little ghost-man psyche inside of us is ‘not it’.  Who can say that they did not feel that their behaviour was shaped, in their elementary school days, by a ‘tensional field’ aka ‘fear’?   As anthropologist Jules Henry observes in ‘Culture Against Man’, little Boris is taught to ‘fear failure’.  His classroom is permeated with ‘fear-field’ and the behaviours of the kids are like little earthquakes erupting from and shaped by the ‘field of fear’.  If they resist being shaped by the fear-field, they are diagnosed as having an ‘attention deficit disorder’ by those who are ‘expert in psychology’.

So, ‘Psychology’, the ‘learned scientific discipline’ also, implicitly, embraces the assumption that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’.  That is, psychology STARTS from ‘visible behaviour’ and its inquiry goes backwards in time to try to determine ‘the causal mechanism’ in the immediate past.  Well, the cover-all-cases arm-waving answer to that is ‘motivation’.  ‘Motivation’ is a not a real thing, it is a ‘fill-the-gap’ concept to ‘keep hanging together’, the model of the organism as a local, independently-existing material system with its own locally originating behaviour.  ‘Motivation’ and/or purpose (fed by knowledge and a dual-lobed intelligent central processing unit) serve to direct the behaviour that becomes visible and ‘visible observations’ thus provides a commonly agreed upon, ‘factual’ data base.

Nobody actually ‘sees’ Boris’ fear of failure, the ‘fear field’ that Boris and the other students live in while in school, the fear-field that shapes his behaviour and without which he and the other children would be ‘doing their own thing’ at which point the fear field would be intensified by bringing in their parents and claiming that the child was ‘mentally ill’ and had an ‘attention deficit disorder’ which would require him/her to talk ‘calming drugs’ to numb his sensing of the fear-field, the basic tool of the western educational system.

“School is an institution for drilling children in cultural  orientation. …American classrooms, like educational institutions anywhere express the values, preoccupations,and fears found in the culture as a whole. School has no choice; it must train the children to fit the culture as it is. …Since education is always against some things and for others, it bears the burden of the cultural obsessions. …It thus comes about that most educational systems are imbued with anxiety and hostility, that they are against as many things as they are for. … The function of education has never been to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind them…acquiescence, not originality. …Schools are the central conserving force of the culture.”  – Jules Henry, Culture Against Man

Who amongst us would claim that the ‘fear-field’ is not a real influence on us?  Who would claim that our behaviour could be reasonably well explained by a positive force within us called ‘motivation’?

‘Motivation’ is ‘ad hoc’ to keep the assumption that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’ looking viable.  ‘Motivation’ plays the same role in psychology as the the ad hoc notion of ‘force’ played in Newtonian physics; i.e. it allows visible features in the flow to be synthetically ‘broken out of the flow’..

Question: ‘Why did Katrina move as she did?’   Answer: ‘She was directed to do so by her internal motive processes’.

The pattern is evident, once we have declared the flow-feature to be a local object with its own local internally driven and directed behaviour;

Question: ‘Why did he move as he did?’ Answer; ‘He was directed to do so by his local internal motivation’.

In other words; ‘He heard a voice and he obeyed the voice’.

Sound like ‘schizophrenia to you?  It does to me.

‘Motivation’ is an ‘internal voice’ that we listen to and obey, according to ‘psychologists’. It is one of the pieces of the puzzle that explains how local, independently existing material systems called organisms, equipped with their own inboard power and steerage, behave the way they do.

In this ‘mechanical model’ of the ‘human’ that breaks him out of the flow and treats him as self-standing, self-driven machine.  ‘Psychology’ even conceives him as having several gears in  his driven train/transmission.

The motivational gears are; (1st) physical needs, (2nd) safety and security, (3^rd) loving and belonging, (4th) self-esteem, (5th) self-actualization. (-Abraham Maslow)

This is, of course, if there really is a little ghost-driver-man inside of us called ‘motivation’ who is shifting these gears for us.  And if there is, there is no need to even mention the alleged ‘primacy of fields’.

As far as I am concerned, this five-gear transmission is as phony as the local powerboat-machine with its local inboard engine and steering, that this drive-train/transmission is supposed to be part of.

But this is what they teach in ‘psychology’ and if they share at all what Jules Henry had to say about education, they give it short shrift.

That is, most people come out of an education in ‘psychology’ believing in ‘motivation’ as something ‘real’ and ‘fear-fields’ as abstraction.

Some of see it in the inverted orientation, where the tensional fields are ‘real’ and the notion of ‘motivation’ is abstraction.  The more one gathers power and influence, however, the more one believes that ‘my motivation was responsible for ‘my success’ and ‘personal achievements’ (there are no ‘personal achievements’ in a fluid-dynamic world, the dynamic space we are included in conditions us as our dynamic conditions it and the twain are one in the manner that convection cells and parenting flow are one).

Louis and Marie are not only convinced that their internal motivation is responsible for the wealth and power in France, they listen to this internal voice called ‘motivation’ and give it more credence than the angry crowds in the courtyard, complaining that they have nothing to eat.  If the world is seen as a dynamic determined by local internal power-driven machines with their own internal voices directing them, then where do we look to make changes when the world dynamic is going nuts?  We look to the ‘little ghost-like motivation’ fellow inside of us, we listen to him and obey him. The voice tells us that we must blame the problems in the world on those who do not have our work ethic and intelligence, who are not motivated as we are, and thus cannot get out of first or second gear, (physical needs and safety and security needs) and get into ‘loving and belonging’ and beyond.

Of course, if we wanted to go with ‘the new physics’ we would assume that ‘the universe is friendly’, that is a world of thingless connectedness as quantum physics would suggest and that we start off in ‘top gear’ and instead of behaviour being ‘driven from within’, it is invited from without.  What meaning would there be in ‘our behaviour’ if we were not included in natural context that gives it meaning?. How would motivation direct our behaviour in the absolute fixed and empty space that we use as a reference frame to create the notion of ‘local individual behaviour’, if we were there in empty space all by our lonesome?  Sure, we can conceive of having a rocket pack strapped on our ass, but that is just a mechanical sense of motive-drive which has no meaning unless it is ‘conjugated’ with a ‘habitat’.  Behaviour, in order to have meaning, must be in terms of a conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation.  Jules Henry spent years observing classroom dynamics.  The following came from one of his observing sessions;

“Boris had trouble reducing ‘12/16′ to the lowest terms, and could only get as far as ‘6/8′. The teacher asked him quietly if that was as far as he could reduce it. She suggested he ‘think’. Much heaving up and down and waving of hands by the other children, all frantic to correct him. Boris pretty unhappy, probably mentally paralysed. The teacher, quiet, patient, ignores the others and concentrates with look and voice on Boris. She says, ‘Is there a bigger number than two you can divide into the two parts of the fraction? After a minute or two, she becomes more urgent, but there is no response from Boris. She then turns to the class and says, ‘Well, who can tell Boris what the number is?’ A forest of hands appears, and the teacher calls Peggy. Peggy says that four may be divided into the numerator and the denominator.

Thus Boris’ failure has made it possible for Peggy to succeed; his depression is the price of her exhilaration; his misery the occasion for her rejoicing. This is the standard condition of the American elementary school, and is why so many of us feel a contraction of the heart even if someone we never knew succeeds merely at garnering plankton in the Thames: because so often somebody’s success has been bought at the cost of our failure. To a Zuni, Hopi or Dakota Indian, Peggy’s performance would seem cruel beyond belief, for competition, the wringing of success from somebody’s failure, is a form of torture foreign to those non-competitive redskins. Yet Peggy’s action seems natural to us; and so it is. How else would you run our world? And since all but the brightest children have the constant experience that others succeed at their expense they cannot but develop an inherent tendency to hate, to hate others who are successful, and to be determined to prevent it. Along with this, naturally, goes the hope that others will fail. This hatred masquerades under the euphemistic name of ‘envy’.”– Jules Henry, ‘Culture Against Man’

You don’t hear Jules Henry’s name too much today.  He wrote this back in the sixties when psychologists were trying to break out of their narrow self-imposed inquiry framework.  Henry’s Chapter 9 ‘Pathways to Madness: Families of psychotic children’ suggests that ‘upstream’ from the ‘little-ghost-man’ called ‘motivation’ that allegedly directs behaviour is the spatial-relational (‘field’) dynamic called ‘culture’.  This implies that the present is directly influenced from the remote past.  As Henry says;

“Psychosis is the final outcome of all that is wrong with a culture.  Coming to intense focus in the parents, the culturally ills are transmitted to their children, laying the foundation for insanity.”

[Henry footnotes this comment with a statement where he explains that “there is no question of blame, but rather of fundamental causation.”]

My own observation is this.  By imputing this little ghost-like feller called ‘motivation’ to reside inside of the notional ‘local organism’ and to be one of the components of the local powerboating machine (the ‘steering component’) we ‘truncate’ our inquiry into the originating or causal sourcing of behaviour.  We say, ‘there’s a defect in the steering component’ which means, of course, that ‘there’s a defect in the organism where the organisms is seen as a local, independently existing machine with its own locally-originating behaviour’.  Since this defect is not in all machines we say that machine ‘has a weakness’ in it, … a ‘tendency to break under stress’.

But what comes BEFORE ‘breaking under stress’?

How about ‘compliance’? … ‘compliance’ that is visible and is otherwise known as ‘behaviour’.

Only if we employ the reality-simplifying assumption that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’ do we conclude that ‘motivation’ is the causal mechanism responsible for ‘behaviour’.

In the reality of our multitude of Boris-like experiences, we acknowledge (if we are honest) that our behaviour derives from ‘compliance’ with the stress-fields we are included in.  Why do we abandon our innate way of engaging with the world that derives from our unique situational (spatial-relational) inclusion in it (e.g. Mary-Jane’s braid is continually dropping down onto my desktop and narrowly missing my ink well, … perhaps I could improve its aim).  R.D. Laing, another psychologist/psychiatrist commenting on Henry’s findings, answers the question this way;

“Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiousity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that. Love is the path through permissiveness to discipline; and through discipline, only too often, to betrayal of self.”

But Henry’s argument is that behaviour is shaped by fields of tension; e.g. in nature by thermal fields that induce us to migrate towards the equator in winter and towards the poles in summer, and in culture by fear-fields.  It would seem as if our Western culture has the habit of using fear-fields to shape individual and collective behaviours within the culture, while imputing the source of behaviour to be ‘motivation’ that resides internally within you.  I can remember, as a child, whenever I capitulated to pressure and became compliant and won a track and field race or scored a high mark in an examine, others would explain this in terms of my ‘motivation’, my ‘desire to win’, to become whatever I wanted to become.

There was no effing way that I was going to be left to my own devices to answer the call of nature inviting me to take my place in the scheme of things.  Just as in the track and field events, the crowds lined up so as to form the channel or gauntlet that you were to run. The hotdog stand was way over there, through the crowd and they would make it impossible for you to run to it, unless you first ran their gauntlet and collected a blue ribbon.

My behaviour in the present did not depend only on the immediate past, the notional ‘causal-agency-for-all-seasons’ called ‘motivation’, I was being directly influenced in the present from out of the remote past, by the fields of tension that form and transform and that are the ‘field’ based underpinnings of ‘culture’.

Like Boris, I didn’t attend ‘Fairfield Elementary’, we both attended ‘Fearfield Elementary’ and our graduation report card that explained our good marks in terms of ‘being strongly motivated’ was that same old cultural dodge, since they knew very well that our good marks came from ‘being highly compliant’, having realized that our natural rebellion against having to sit all day in these fear-fields was futile at our young age.

In refusing to be overt about our behaviour being compliant rather than motivated, the acculturated adults that had been through this before us were ‘playing a game’.  As Laing said;

“They are playing a game.  They are playing at not playing a game.  If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”  – R.D. Laing

This ‘game’ that Laing speaks of is the game of pretending that the ‘simplified reality’ wherein the present depends only on the immediate past’ is ‘the true reality’ rather than a human invention developed for our own convenience which obscures the real ‘field-based’, non-visible, non-local, non-material origins of behaviour, and thus opens the door to manipulation via these fields whose behaviour-inducing/shaping powers we deny and/or ignore.

The imbalances in thermal field intensity in the atmosphere is the source of convection currents we call hurricanes.  The field continues to inhabit that which it has created during the visible life-cycle of the field-flow-feature.  But it is more convenient to portray the the hurricane as a ‘local system in itself’ whose present behaviour depends only on its immediate past.  This is achieved by ‘differentiation’ which splits the cell out of the flow and imputes it to have its own local existence and its own locally originating, internal motive power driven behaviour.

Though it is simply complying with the tensions in the thermal field, we instead impute to it its own ‘motivation’ and then contend that it is fully and solely responsible for its own behaviour.

This is the general psychological game-play in the western culture.  We are not content to allow children to comply with natural fields of influence they are each uniquely situationally included in (which fractally shape their flow-feature emergent selves).  Culture is a device by which we as collectives develop our own behaviour-shaping fields that pull children away from answering the call to take their place in the natural scheme of things.

We are thus induced, by the love of our parents and of our culture, to NOT answer the call, the sort of call that induces the convection cell to do what it was born to do, to cultivate and sustain harmony in the natural spatial dynamic we are included in.  Instead, we are pressured by fear-fields (withdrawal-of-love-fields) to ‘be motivated’ to ‘do good deeds’ according to our culture, to become one of the icons of our culture like the founding fathers, who managed plantations and who were fair to their slaves, embracing them and even conceiving children with them who would grow up to be fine highly motivated slaves thanks to the blessed infusion of white genes.

If slaves (or members of an ‘inferior class’) can be ‘highly motivated’, it must surely be within a narrow gauntlet whose constraining limits are meanwhile, most of the time, ‘invisible’.  The situation is similar that of a dog with an electric collar that has to ‘run the electric gauntlet wherein he is given a jolt whenever he gets too close to the invisible constraining limits.   By and by we start talking about him in the same old terms of his behaviour being driven by his internal motivation, ignoring the fact that, upstream in the origination of ‘what he does’ is his compliance with a culturally-contrived tensional field that is shaping his behaviour.  In this case, he cannot let his behaviour be orchestrated by the tensional fields that call him to take his place in the natural scheme of things.  By reverting to the model where his behaviour is understood to depend only on the immediate past; i.e. on the ‘internal driver called motivation’, we can hold the slave or the member of an ‘inferior class’fully and solely responsible for his own behaviour.

We, in the western culture, all start out like Boris, and/or like the slave, caught between a rock and a hard place.  In order to be seen as ‘highly motivated’ and ‘a high achiever’, we must first be ‘compliant’ and let our behaviour be shaped by the ‘fear-field’.  If we feel the ‘call to take our place in the natural scheme of things’ too strongly so that it interferes with our fear-field compliance, psychologists will diagnose us with a ‘mental illness’ such as Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disorder (ADHD) and administer drugs to subdue our natural curiosity and render us more compliant to cultural fear-of-failure field behaviour shaping.  Before we know it, the stress-relieving convenience of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ takes over and we become ‘celebrity-worshipping flag-suckers’ who wish to emulate the ‘ascent’ of the successful icons of the culture.

Life-long internal conflicts are clearly likely here where we feel that ‘something is missing’ in our culturally-shaped lives.  Our achievements in terms of cultural values may diminish in value to us, over time, and we may thus feel a hollowness that recalls Bishop Berkeley’s description of the ‘derivative’; i.e. that achievement in the sense of motivation-driven behaviour (present behaviour driven by the immediate past) is like the ‘ghost of a departed quantity’.  The ‘departed quantity’ being the flow that we are included in, that beckons us ‘in the now’ of our experience to acknowledge our conjugate habtitat-inhabitant relation’.  The antidote to the ‘despair’ that associates with this belated understanding would seem to be a good dose of ADHD, natural imagination and curiousity, as described by Mary Oliver;

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.  — Mary Oliver, ‘Wildgeese’

In conclusion, ‘PSYCHOLOGY’ is a word that points to inquiry into how we understand our own attitudes and behaviours and those of others.  Such inquiry not only ‘inhabits’ this essay, but has created it.  That is, ‘psychology’ is one of those ‘fluides incontenables’ (‘fields’) that can contain objects in it, but which cannot itself be contained.

Insofar as we ignore ‘field’ by imputing behaviour to originate from invisible voices (‘motivation’, ‘purpose’, ‘instinct’) within field-flow-features reduced to ‘local objects/organisms’, we promote ‘schizophrenia’ as a general cultural madness.  That is, we promote the development of an internal God-like voice that tells us ‘what to do’ and who ‘cannot be disobeyed’ since it is called ‘motivation’ and it is the source of our behaviour (how, then, could it be disobeyed?  So long as we have ‘behaviour’, motivation is deemed to be the cause of it.).

To be ‘highly motivated’ results in being ‘a high achiever’, and not one of those ADHD types that co-cultivate APPARENT chaos and disorder by “Not giving up their innate imagination, curiousity, dreaminess, which translates into NOT responding to the love of parents and culture, and NOT melting in the love so as to walk the path out of permissiveness into discipline, and through discipline, to betrayal of self.”

[Of course, such 'disorder' is the same sort of organisation as seen in a rain-forest ecology or, as we say, 'in the wild'.  To call it 'disorder' while we call pulling individual plants out of their mutually supportive dynamics in an ecosystem and planting the same varieties side-by-side in linear rows in a rectangular tilled field 'order', invites us to revisit our acculturated way of valuing different forms of organisation.]

The ‘simplified reality’ based the assumption that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’(and only on the immediately neighbouring space), when confused for ‘reality’ (the unsimplified experience), amounts to ‘insanity’, does it not?

When will psychology, the accredited practitioners of which have written a Bible called the DSM, put this in their ‘teachings’?  The ‘S’ in DSM stands for ‘statistics’, a type of mathematics which allows us to reduce phenomena that are ‘nonlocal’ to ‘local’.  Nonlocal thermal fields that induce energized activity are thus replaced by the excited behaviour of local molecule collectives with a spread of behaviours ranging from extremely excited to calm and whose statistical average provides a local ‘norm’ against which the behavioural departures can be measured.  In the way, the original spatial-relational shape of the thermal energy field, the true nonlocal source of influence, is laundered out by ‘the law of large numbers’ (law of averages) so that the phenomenon now APPEARS to be ‘local’.  Once it is ‘local’, we can make the assumption that this local behaviour depends only on the immediate past and only on the immediate neighbouring molecules.  The reality of culturally cultivated fields of tension, wherein the present is directly influenced by the remote past, is thus entirely avoided by mathematics-based ‘localizing’ of phenomena, which engenders concepts such as ‘motivation’ which are presented as if real and infused  in the mental attitudes of people that shape their behaviour, … by the discipline of ‘psychology’.

If you are seen as ‘crazy’ in the view of a psychologist and his mathematics-based reference tests, be thankful for it; you well may be sane in a natural sense.  And if he tells you that you are ‘normal’, … that is the time to get worried.

* * *

MEDICINE

Could ‘medicine’ be suffering from the use of the ‘simplified reality’ where we assume, as in differential calculus, that the present depends only on the immediate past?

Allopathic medicine is based on this same assumption that is foundational to differential calculus.  As was the case with the regime of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, when there are deficiencies in the ‘living space’, trouble breaks out as attempts are made to restore balance.  The ‘pathogens’ or ‘criminals’ holding the smoking gun in the immediate wake of the disturbance are identified as the ‘causal mechanism’ of the disturbance.  The unsimplified reality is that the imbalance-engendered stresses in the living space set the stage for the ‘earthquake-like’ disturbances, impact the present from the remote past.  This is quietly acknowledged in both the socio-political sphere and in medicine, but stress is non-local, non-visible and non-material and does not present the commonly accepted ‘grounds’ for action in the western mental attitudes.  That is ‘seeing is believing’ in the west and stress from rising imbalance is not visible until a disturbance arises in the direction of resolving the imbalance.

That the proliferation of pathogens is the result of imbalance in the system rather than the cause of it is only occasionally acknowledged (Pasteur, on his deathbed conceded that Antoine Béchamp had been right and that ‘le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout’ (the microbe is not the cause of health and/or disease, the condition of the terrain is).

More popular is the notion that the bacteria have ‘locally originating, internal purpose-directed behaviour’ (bacteria can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’); that ‘bad bacteria’ or ‘bad people’ like Jean Valjean are ‘attacking the established system’.

The logic here is expressed in terms of the actions/interactions of local objects; i.e. the condition of the ‘living space’ (such as stresses of imbalance therein) does not come into this brand of logic, the same brand as in Newtonian physics where space is a non-participant (space becomes not only a participant, but the primary active medium in ‘the new physics’ of relativity, quantum wave dynamics).

The logical response, in the latter ‘allopathic’ case, is to smoke out and eliminate the ‘causal mechanisms’ that are deemed responsible for the disturbance, full stop.  That is, the primary orientation of western medicine (not to mention politicians) is to ‘go to war’ against the causal agents responsible for disturbing ‘normal behaviour’.  ‘Behaviour’ implies visible movement but change is not constrained to visible movement.  The grains of popping corn just sit there quietly as the temperature continues to rise, appearing unchanged on the basis of visible appearance, but they are changed by the thermal energy field they are situated in and the stresses it is inducing within them.  And by the time that one of them ‘explodes’ and makes a disturbance, the rest are not far behind.  Unless the non-visible, nonlocal, non-material conditions of space are addressed that are upstream from the disturbances, the disturbances, however expeditiously/efficiently addressed, are going to escalate, perhaps to the point of revolution where the new majority will be white and puffy and the hard yellow ones that used to dominate will be the new ‘minority’.

A minority of scientists ‘inside’ of the medical profession have long argued for the mental modeling ‘flip’ that this requires; i.e. to acknowledge that the causal model is a simplified reality and the re-ground medicine in the primary reality wherein the present is directly influenced by the remote past.  One of these was Nobel Prize laureate for medicine (for his work on ascorbic acid (vitamic C)) Albert Szent-Györgyi.

Szent-Györgyi believed that medicine was dysfunctionally orienting to fixing symptoms, symptoms which were being continually engendered by something which was going wrong ‘upstream of those symptoms’.  In this sense, he saw doctors behaving like Louis and Marie’s police force, dealing with the Jean Valjeans who would never have become a disturbance, if the living space had not become oppressive.  Szent-Györgyi’s personal experience was as follows;

“The discoverer of vitamic C, Albert Szent-Györgyi, who received the Nobel prize for his work, said that instead of being sold in drugstores by the milligram, vitamin C should be sold in grocery stores by the pound.   Some years previously he had developed pneumonia and was dying despite receiving the best medical care.  Thinking about his plight, he realized he was exhibiting many of the same symptoms as his laboratory animals that had scurvy.  He had always taken 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C every day, but with the stress of his illness, it was obviously not enough.  He immediately increased his intake to 8,000 milligrams, and within three days, he was well and back working in his laboratory.  Szent-Györgyi believed that if he had not increased his vitamin C intake, he would have died.  He was certain that his death certificate would have listed  his cause of death as pneumonia, when in reality it would have been scurvy, with pneumonia merely being an opportunistic infection.”  —  O.T. Bonnett M.D. ‘Why Healing Happens’

Szent-Györgyi’s view was that deficiencies of nutrients ‘debalanced’ mutually supportive/interdependent processes and engendered conditions favourable for the unbalanced proliferation of processes that were normally kept in balance.  It is recognized that there are over 100 different bacteria and viruses that can lead to pneumonia; i.e. there are over 100 ways to cause disturbances in a living space that is ‘out of balance’. Disturbances can create crisis situations and in a crisis situation, it may be necessary to ‘go to war’ against the causal agents of the disturbance, but in order to suspend the engendering of disturbances, it is necessary to address the spatial imbalances.

Western medicine embraces the ‘causal model’ wherein it is assumed that the present depends only on the immediate past.  If a person has pneumonia, the film footage (observations of visible movement) will be slowly backed up to search for the ‘causal mechanism’ that should be standing there, holding the smoking gun.  When the causal mechanism is identified, the medical response is to eliminate it.  That is, if one eliminates the cause, if follows that one will eliminate the effect.  But if the cause is not primary but secondary, as in the case of a system deficient in vitamin C, many different causal agents may be apprehended and eliminated without bringing an end to the outbursts.  Researchers looking at the same ‘facts’ seek to fit the facts to their models of ‘what is ‘really’ going on’..  Szent-Györgyi interpreted the same facts in a less ‘simple’ way than most.  Feeling that his model was ‘more general’, his advocacy was for medicine to shift to this non-simplified reality wherein the present condition was being directly influenced from the remote past (a model wherein ‘le terrain est tout.’)

He undoubtedly knew that medicine’s orientation to the allopathic model (which assumes that present disturbances depend only on the actions of causal agents in the immediate past) was deeply entrenched and that the needed ‘flip’ was unlikely (his peak of influence was in 1937 and it hasn’t happened yet).  While his advocacy and his difficult-to-spell-and-pronounce name are largely forgotten, his quote on how research is where we see the same facts in a new light has remained;

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought” — Albert Szent-Györgyi

The phrase ‘the terrain is everything’ invites us to revisit the age-old argument of the origin of life since both life and health seem to be bound up in the condition of the terrain. We haven’t left the argument behind, that life did and continues to arise from inorganic dynamics.  Erwin Schroedinger, the discoverer of quantum wave dynamics, is not stupid, and he suggests that life is an aperiodic crystal (crystals form in many different shapes).  All of the ingredients are in the very basics of the universe, ‘resonant energy-charged space’ that is capable of precipitating matter.

The notion of ‘life’ as a phantom force that has spottily (very sparsely) ‘infected’ some of the dynamic systems in the universe, has always sounded a bit like superstition.  It recalls the ‘deux ex machina’ in the story/play.  Something that is just made up to make the story hang together.  Schroedinger doesn’t buy and neither did Lamarck and others.  The ‘aperiodic crystal’ seems more plausible.  Sure, we all believe in the ‘independent existence’ of the sovereign state and its ‘locally originating, internal process-driven and internal knowledge and purpose directed behavour’, and the imaginary line boundaries that give it grounding, but as law historians point out, the ‘independent organism’ known as the ‘sovereign state’ is a ‘secularized theological concept’.   It’s ‘reality’ depends on nothing other than ‘common belief’.  Anyone can create one anywhere.  All that is needed is to gather together enough believers in the project with enough power to do violence, to make believers out of others who refuse to buy in.  As we know, in the overt colonizing era, the device for doing this was to offer an interest in the ‘real estate action’ (sovereign states claim absolute ownership of the land within the imaginary-line boundaries they have invented) to desperate people (“your [the world’s] tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”) in exchange for them swearing an oath to bear arms and give their lives, if necessary, to sustain belief in this imaginary construct.  Not all of the people within the boundaries of the colonies have ‘bought in’; i.e. many of the indigenous Amerindians who live on the ‘border’ between Canada and the U.S. continue to say ‘the border crossed us’, we do not ‘cross the border’.

‘Health’ and thus ‘medicine’ takes on a different complexion when we suspend the notion that ‘life’ is a ‘ghost in the machine’ as western medicine and western biology would have it.

The debate was alive in France in Pasteur and Béchamp’s era and the questions they were struggling with have still not been resolved by science.  The following excerpts from the book ‘Béchamp or Pasteur? – A lost chapter in the history of biology’ by E. Douglas Hume (1923) gives the flavour of these continuing questions;

“It was nothing to them [the general public] that among the learned reports of the Academy of Science, treatises were to be found, by a professor working at Montpellier, that clearly explained the why and the wherefore of the intricate chemical changes that go by the name of fermentation.  But, on the contrary, more or less everyone had heard, so widely had the subject been ventilated, of the controversy as to whether life, in its lesser forms, sprang invariably from antecedent life, or whether chemical combinations could produce life independently of parents.”

“But to pause for an instant and consider his [Pasteur’s] noted lecture at the Sorbonne— what after all was there in it?  He had  merely ascribed to the germs of the air a mysterious quality—life—that he denied to the component parts of more complicated animal and vegetable beings.  For the origin, the source of his atmospheric germs, he provided no explanation, neither has any since been found by his innumerable followers, for whom the description ‘life is a germ and a germ is life’ was soon to evolve into ‘disease is a germ and a germ is disease’, and infinitely more lugubrious axiom.”

The debate within medicine in Pasteur’s era and continuing on into the early twentieth century was between those who thought, as Darwin had, that ‘present life’ had to engendered by ‘previous life’ (life in the immediate past) and others such as Béchamp (and in his final days) Pasteur, that life was continually rising up out of the inorganic ground via ‘chemical changes’ and that the ‘more complicated forms’ depended on the basic chemical processes, being interdependent ecosystemic networks of them.

The fact that the basic forms of life persisted (the bacteria and smaller-sized forms that arguably came from inorganic chemical changes) was seen by some as supporting the idea that the more complex forms where like complex crystal growths based on them; e.g;

“We may, therefore, well recognise that the lower the forms of life—the nearer they are to their source—the greater is likely to have been the similarity among those that have been produced in different age, just as the lowest forms are now practically similar in all regions of the earth.  How, otherwise, consistently with the doctrine of evolution, are we to account for the fact that different kinds of bacilli and micrococci have been found in animal and vegetable remains in the Triassic and Permian strata, in Carboniferous limestone and even as low as the Upper Devonian strata?  Is it conceivable that with mere lineal descent such variable living things could retain the same primitive forms through all these changing ages?  Is it not far simpler and more probable to suppose, especially in the light of the experimental evidence now adduced, that instead of having to do with unbroken descent from ancestors through aeons of time as Darwin taught, and is commonly believed, we have to do, in the case of Bacteria and their allies, with successive new births of such organisms throughout these ages as primordial forms of life, compelled by their different but constantly recurring molecular constitutions to take such and such recurring forms and properties, just as would be the case with successive new births of different kinds of crystals?”  — H. Charles Bastian M.A. M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S.,  ‘The Origins of Life’.

The argument in itself appears strong.  That is, why insist that living forms must have antecedents of living forms that can be traced back in a lineage all the way to the ‘primordial living forms’ that emerged one hot, lightning-stimulated summer day about one billion years after ‘the earth formed’?  Why not assume that bacteria are continually being born from inorganic chemical changes, and that more complex forms such as humans derive from eco-networking of these lower-level ‘aperiod crystals’ as Schroedinger calls them in his essay ‘What is life’?

That sounds crazy, right?  But that is what was being proposed by scientists in Pasteur’s era and supported still in 1923 when the above book was written and the scientist-proponents were willing to junk Darwin’s theory in the process (heredity would still be fully covered by the manner in which the smaller cellular forms were ‘networked’)

So, does that ‘sound too crazy to believe’ because (a) our acculturation/education won’t allow it, or (b) it just doesn’t fit the full collection of scientific evidence?

In the modern era, scientists are trying to understand the rapid ‘Phoenix-like’ rising up of ‘life’ around deep sea volcanic vents.  Some of the ‘life-forms’ that live around the vents thrive in temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees centigrade (115 – 140 degrees Fahrenheit).  Photosynthesis is not involved.  The process from which the basic life forms around vents is termed chemosynthetic.  The facts, still being gathered include the following;

“The 1993 Alvin expedition to the East Pacific Rise was one in a series of dives to the area. The site was first visited in 1989, and scientists observed vent organisms thriving there. But when Alvin returned in April 1991, its flabbergasted occupants witnessed the birth of a hydrothermal vent. A recent volcanic eruption had spread glassy lava across the ocean floor, and the researchers measured temperatures up to 403 C – the hottest ever recorded at a hydrothermal vent. The scientists dubbed the site Tube Worm Barbecue, because the worms they brought back to their ship had charred flesh.

“The most spectacular sight down there was this massive blinding snowstorm of bacteria,” says Rich Lutz, a marine ecologist at Rutgers University, who led the expedition. On the ocean floor, the bacteria formed mats several inches thick, but the scientists saw no other living things.  Since the eruption, scientists have been able to watch several stages of colonization at the site. When they returned in March 1992, only a few bacterial mats remained. In their place were colonies of Jericho worms and a variety of small crustaceans. The scientists named the area Phoenix, because new life had arisen from the ashes of the eruption. The scientists first observed the giant tube worms at Phoenix in December 1993.” —‘The Creatures of the Thermal Vents’

http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/ps_vents.html

The arguments over whether ‘life’ has to have an antecedent of life in the immediate past (i.e. In Darwin’s theory, life can come only from life, except in the singular instance of the ‘original exceptional creative moment of origination of ‘life-on-earth’, all else being ‘heredity’), or, whether ‘life’ derives directly from inorganic dynamics with complex forms being ecosystemic networks of the more basic inorganic forms, … [these arguments] have not gone away.

How, scientists puzzle, does the large variety of more complex forms discover and populate these needle-in-a-haystack seafloor vents?    It is very difficult to comprehend how they could be roaming the inhospitable expanses of the ocean floor and finding the vents so quickly.

If it weren’t for our being so thoroughly brainwashed with Darwinism, we might be able to give fair and open-minded consideration to the idea of Béchamp, and Lamarck (and Schroedinger’s ‘aperiodic crystals’),  that life is continuously sourced from inorganic ‘chemical change’ at the lower levels (bacteria) and that more complex forms build as ecosystemic networks. In this case, we can avoid the seemingly arbitrary split between the ‘inanimate world’ and the ‘animate world’ and having to have two different ‘physics’, one for each world (the ‘second physics’ being called ‘biology, wherein ‘fields’ have no influence on biological evolution (CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT???, ..even though astronauts in a microgravity-field environment lose 1% of bone mass per month and strange life-forms develop in the thermal fields around deep sea vents).

Masses of bacteria quickly appear around the vents, ‘chemosynthetic bacteria’ which don’t need ‘living antecedents’, but what about the more complex forms, how do they ‘get there so quickly’, i.e;

“Compared to the surrounding sea floor, however, hydrothermal vent zones have a density of organisms 10,000 to 100,000 times greater.

Hydrothermal vent communities are able to sustain such vast amounts of life because vent organisms depend on chemosynthetic bacteria for food. The water that comes out of the hydrothermal vent is rich in dissolved minerals and supports a large population of chemo-autotrophic bacteria. These bacteria use sulfur compounds, particularly hydrogen sulfide, a chemical highly toxic to most known organisms, to produce organic material through the process of chemosynthesis.

The ecosystem so formed is reliant upon the continued existence of the hydrothermal vent field as the primary source of energy, which differs from most surface life on Earth which is based on solar energy. … The chemosynthetic bacteria grow into a thick mat which attracts other organisms such as amphipods and copepods which graze upon the bacteria directly. Larger organisms such as snails, shrimp, crabs, tube worms, fish and octopuses from a food chain of predator and prey relationships above the primary consumers. The main families of organisms found around seafloor vents are annelids, pogonohorans, gastropods, and crustaceans with large bivalves, vestimentiferan worms,

… Some theories indicate that life originated at hydrothermal vents from inorganic precursors.” — Wikipedia

Elsewhere there is discussion as to how the recognizable forms discovered the bacteria to feed and thrive on them and there are theories that these familiar forms may have arisen locally in situ (without genetic antecedents) as is the acknowledged case with the bacteria (confirming the hypothesis of Béchamp et al in the late 19^th century).

At a minimum, it is acknowledged that some of these forms seem to have formed directly from the chemosynethic bacteria; i.e. the worms are like ‘biofilms’;

“Tube worms form an important part of the community around a hydrothermal vent. The tube worms, like parasitic worms, absorb nutrients directly into their tissues. This is because tube worms have no mouth or even a digestive tract, so the bacteria live inside them. There are approximately 285 billion bacteria per ounce of tubeworm tissue. Tubeworms have red plumes which contain hemoglobin.  Hemoglobin combines hydrogen sulfide and transfers it to the bacteria living inside the worm. In return the bacteria nourish the worm with carbon compounds.” —Wikipedia

Ok, this has been a lot of discussion about ‘the origin of life’ which questions the Darwinian view but what does this have to do with ‘medicine’ and ‘health’.

The point is that Darwinian notion that a life-form must have an antecedent life form; (that heredity is first cause, rather than second cause) is the same ‘differential calculus-like’ assumption coming up all over again.  Darwin’s argument goes; ‘the present organism depends only on (the actions of causal agent organisms in) the immediate past’.

Are there any ‘loopholes’ in this ‘same old’, ‘same old’, calculus-like logical argument?

Is it not like the argument that found Jean Valjean fully and solely responsible for a disturbance; i.e. ‘the present disturbance depends only on the immediate past’?

‘Complexity’ is another approach to scientific understanding where we let go of the ‘causal mechanisms’ and employ ‘geometric mechanisms’ instead.  Poincaré had to develop ‘topology’ in order to describe the dynamics of the solar system and the weather.  Could ‘life’ not be as complex as ‘the weather’?  In the case of the weather, we do not have to insist that the ‘present depends only on the immediate past’, as the ‘butterfly effect’ attests, so why should we have to hang on to it in ‘evolutionary biology’?  I am not arguing to get rid of ‘heredity’, just to explore how it might be ‘second cause’ rather than ‘first cause’ as was the case with Jean Valjean’s disturbance.

‘Topologically’, the ‘worm’ is like a toroidal biofilm through which chemical nutrients flow.  Since ‘flow’ is more fundamental than the structures that form from it, we could say that the worm is a ‘flow feature’.

We accept that hurricanes are flow-features so that their shape and behaviour is ‘second cause’ rather than ‘locally originating first cause’, but how about the worm.  The ‘chemosynthetic bacteria’ derive from the ‘flow’ so how about the toroidal structure?  Electromagnetic fields have toroidal structure (the magnetic field wraps around the electrical flow like pastry around a sausage on a sausage roll.  Could Lamarck have a point where he claims that biological structure is inductively shaped by ‘les fluides incontenables’ the flow of that which can contain but which cannot itself be contained; i.e. ‘fields’.

If so, humans are topologically toroidal too; i.e. the digestive tract is a long flow-hole around which biomatting can form.  This flow-hole or toroidal topology could be seen as primary and the development of organs and limbs could be ‘disturbances’ that are ‘second cause’ in nature, rather than ‘first cause’.

After all, what is an ‘arm’ other a part we have broken out of the overall ‘gestalt’ of the human form and given a name and a definition to.  To say that ‘an arm develops’ or that ‘a wing develops’ is nonsense in the same sense as Poincaré said that ‘the earth rotates’ is nonsense.  Both of these statements depend on our imposing a notional ‘absolute space’ which we know is ‘idealisation’ rather than ‘natural unsimplified reality’.

The human embryo is not like a little adult with all its organs and limbs in place that simply grows larger in gestation and infancy.  Thus, the differential model where the present depends only on the immediate past ‘doesn’t work’.  The embryo undergoes ‘metamorphosis’ where there is no centre of responsibility for ‘arm production’ any more than there is a centre of responsibility for ‘gill slit production’.  The development of the human organism seems to be filling in a virtual form such that the form in the immediate present DOES NOT DEPEND on the form in the immediate past, but depends on a virtual form that is waiting to be ‘fleshed out’.  That’s why Plato came up with his notion of ‘ideal forms’, but Aristotle unfortunately trashed that one, insisting that ‘forms and particulars don’t exist separately; “all particular acorns possess the form of the oak tree”.

So, according to Aristotle and Western medicine, the image of the finished product lurks within the seed-core of the developing ‘life-form’.

“Aristotle argues for the priority in substance of actuality over potentiality in two ways. (a) The first argument makes use of his notion of final causality. Things that come to be move toward an end (telos) — the boy becomes a man, the acorn becomes an oak — and “the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired … animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see … matter exists in a potential state, just because it may come to its form; and when it exists actually, then it is in its form” (1050a9-17). Form or actuality is the end toward which natural processes are directed. Actuality is therefore a cause in more than one sense of a thing’s realizing its potential. As we noted in Section 11, one and the same thing may be the final, formal, and efficient cause of another. Suppose an acorn realizes its potential to become an oak tree. The efficient cause here is the actual oak tree that produced the acorn; the formal cause is the logos defining that actuality; the final cause is the telos toward which the acorn develops — an actual (mature) oak tree.” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Western science mocks Plato and supports Aristotle. That’s interesting, because there’s no suggestion there that the evolution of forms will be shaped by the fluid dynamics of the space they develop within.  Some biologists call forests the ‘lungs of the planet’ and they call trees ‘the fountains of the forest’; i.e. the spatially-sourced niche need that is inductively pulling them into shape, according to ‘relativity’, would be‘primary’ rather than any ‘information’ encoded in their ‘genetics’.  Sure we can claim that ‘the internal genetic code is responsible for the ‘final product’’, but that sort of logic comes from the principle of ‘causality’ which has a fundamental flaw in it, the familiar articulation of which is known as ‘Rubin Causality’ after Donald Rubin (Harvard School of Medicine);

“The fundamental dilemma of causality, according to Rubin, is that, if we use an experimental unit (a bacterium, e.g. ) to show that “X causes Y,” we cannot use that same unit to show that some “non-X does not cause Y.” We solve this dilemma [statistically] by assuming that all units are more or less the same.”

There is another fundamental flaw in causality that associates with the experimental set-up.  We have to be sure that the environment is not influencing the results.

This fundamental dilemma is that, when we repeat the experiment to validate that it is always true that ‘X causes Y’, things don’t usually start off or end up ‘exactly’ the same.  E.g. if we replicate the experiment of dropping sandgrains on a sandpile, most of the time ‘X’ will cause ‘Y’ but not always.  Sometimes there is an avalanche.  In the real world, there is no way to keep the space the experiment is carried out in, from influencing the experiment and there is no way to ascertain the initial conditions exactly nor the ‘results’ exactly. There can be a ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ (‘butterfly effect’, ‘self-organized criticality’).  We solve this dilemma [statistically] by assuming that if we repeat the experiment a sufficient number of times, environmental influences will average out.

We could summarize these difficulties with ‘X causes Y’ in the terms that, while we must replicate the experiment to show that the relation is generally true, we can’t be certain that the initial conditions are the same, nor that the conditions at the end of the experiment are the same, neither can we assume that the materials used in the experiment behave the same way.

The assumption that the present depends only on the immediate past (foundational to mathematical physics) so that we can deduce what operated on the immediate past to bring about the present is a fine idea, though it is not practically realizable.  If we rely on this, we discover that the real world is not really like that; e.g. when we predict that the gust of wind ‘X’ will bend the airplane wing ‘Y’, the wing drops off due to metal fatigue; when we predict that taking the drug X will change the mood to Y, the patient dies because he already had the drugs P and Q in his bloodstream (this is called the ‘cocktail effect’ and it is unpredictable).  In general, the present is directly influenced by the more distant past and the local is directly influenced by the nonlocal (e.g. gravity, electromagnetic/thermal fields are ‘everywhere at the same time’.).

In other words, the ‘derivative’ in calculus only works by assuming that nature is more simple than it really is. The derivative ties to the causal model and when we ‘model’ with it, we take ourselves into an ‘over-simplified reality’; i.e. we make ourselves over into shadow-boxers.

Using differential equations we can split the hurricane out of the atmospheric flow it is included in and describe it as a local causal agent, an ‘X’ that causes ‘Y’.

Though our life experience is always in the continuing present and the unfolding present never pauses, we like to represent it by a time sequence of visual images (film, video) that can either be interpreted in terms of ‘life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans’ or as a cast of characters who are busily creating their own desired futures, … or both.  If a tsunami comes along and carries the cast of characters off as they are in the middle of an intricate ego-driven social intrigue then we have no choice but to give precedence to the john lennon outlook and demote to secondary relevance  the ‘American dream’ where we maintain that we can become whatever we desire to become.

So, how ‘do we’ extract particular features out of something continuous like the spontaneous spatial reorganizing that we are included in and re-render them as if they were stand-alone entities?

Statistics is a mathematical device for ‘localizing’ that which is inherently ‘nonlocal’ such as a thermal field.   We just average our measurements over a large region, e.g. of a ‘thermal field’ and re-present the measurements as ‘departures from a reference datum’.   ‘Hot spots’ are now local anomalies when they started off nonlocal ‘field’ configuration.  The ‘boil’ that is a spontaneous spatial reorganization nonlocally induced by nature’s innate balance-seeking agenda becomes a local vortex that we reference to ‘its own centre’.    ‘Set theory’ then gives us the ability to collect together and generalize, on the basis of their similar differences, a collection of vortices (hurricanes, storm cells), creating a notional genus along with membership qualifications, and pretty soon we have reduce one to many and removed-from-view the nonlocal field of influence that remains the parenting medium into which these purportedly ‘local features’ will be re-assimilated, …. no, … NOT ‘re’-assimilated since they never REALLY dis-assimilated, except in our mathematical treatment of them.

It is, of course, easier to talk about ‘hurricanes’ (but our noun and verb language is inherently limited in its architecture which deals in ‘fixed identity objects’) and what they do, as if they were ‘local, independently-existing systems with their own locally-originating internal process driven/directed behaviours that act/interact in absolute space, and speak about them as if a particular ‘X’ was causally responsible for ‘Y’.  As Kepler said, in science, we are in the habit of “choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy”.

If primary cause is attributed to space (field stimulated spontaneous spatial reorganizing), as in the non-simplified reality of our experience, then every X is unique and its uniqueness derives from its unique situational inclusion in the ceaselessly innovative spatial-relational unfolding continuum we know as ‘nature’.  In which case, the ‘causal principle’ breaks down since we can no longer assume that the X’s are ‘more or less the same’, as enables us to construct the genus ‘hurricane’ and describe membership in terms of commonalities amongst a multiplicity of unique flow-features.  Some people ‘believe’ that hurricanes as local system are ‘real’ while others believe they are ‘idealisations’.  According to Poincaré, the former (Cantorian realists) are screwing up while the latter ‘pragmatic idealists’ understanding is consistent with our real-life experience (wherein the nonlocal sourcing of spatial reorganization is primary). [Henri Poincaré, ‘Dernieres Pensées’ Ch V. Mathematics and Logic]

In any case, the causal model is what prevails today in popular applications of reasoning and so we are stuck with accepting all kinds of related ‘simplifications’, including ‘Darwinism’ wherein the influence of space is no longer ‘primary’ and ‘heredity’ based on Aristotelian ‘telos’ takes over, in our mental models, as ‘primary cause’.  As was noted in the book ‘Béchamp or Pasteur’, scientists become popular with the people and it is their popularity that sways what people believe rather than diligent inquiry into the popular scientist’s reasoning.  Once the popularity of the ideas has a foothold in the general population, it is infused into the politicians as well and the science becomes ‘politicized’ so that scientists themselves cannot dislodge flawed models.

Our mental models of ‘Health’ and ‘Medicine’ pivot from whether or not we hold the differential calculus-like causal model to be ‘primary’ or whether we acknowledge the natural primacy of spatial-relational influence.  Is health that which Hippocratus held it be, being in balance with the dynamics of the space (nature) that we are situationally included in (different for the worms around the deep sea vent than for the worms on the earth’s surface), or is health the ‘state of normality’ and ‘illness’ the ‘departure from the norm’ due to some ‘causal mechanism’ such as ‘the attack of a pathogen’?

We can’t resolve ‘what is health’ without, in a consistent way, resolving ‘what is life’.  Western science claims that ‘the acorn’ possesses within it, knowledge of the form of the potential oak tree.  This is the notion that ’X causes Y’ which underpins ‘genetics’; i.e. which gives ‘heredity’ first cause status, so that for every new life form there must be an immediately preceding antecedent which ‘caused it’ (Darwinism borrows from the abstractions of probability and statistics and throws in a bit of random chance to try to make it better fit ‘reality’)..  On the other hand, if relativity and spatial field based influence are given their proper (primary parenting medium) due, there is no need to assume that the knowledge of Y is contained in X.  In fact, there is no need to consider X to be ‘real’.  The feature in the flow is a visible image that is not ‘primary’as in ‘real’ but is idealisation that is formalized by the mathematical tool of probability and statistics (all Xs are more or less equal) which allows us to define the genus X and to define the membership in the genus X in terms of common features, arms, legs, head, etc. or ‘leaves’, ‘branches’, ‘boughs’ and ‘trunk’ in the ‘fountain of the forest’ (the toroidal flow of water from earth to sky that attracts a biofilm to clothe it).  There are many different trees but they all have this same ‘fountain of the forest’ geometry, which relativity and quantum theory would say is ‘primary’, rather than the ‘acorn’ that allegedly contained the encoded information of the potential form of the tree and the ‘purpose’ or self-actualizing power to causally it achieve it.

Since my livelihood is not dependent upon maintaining my ‘membership’ in the medical discipline, I can say, with relative impunity, that WESTERN MEDICINE as a belief system, has its head up its arse (Crazies can still do a lot of good, whether its M.D. crazy or M.M. crazy (Medicine Man)).  Of course there many alternative medical practitioners who would echo that, and also M.D.s in good standing like O.T. Bonnett, not to mention researchers like Szent-Györgyi, however, the power in our society is in the hands of the politicians who are in partnership with ‘industry’ and what is nourished with money is what ‘survives’ and fluorishes, and science and its theories is no exception.

I will give one final example that illustrates that, in spite of the good that medicine achieves, how it screws up unnecessarily.

Clostridium Difficile is a bacterium whic