you hold your models very confidently and that’s great. the (bipolar) stuff in the middle is all up for grabs as far as i can see, so i wouldn’t quibble about the middle stuff, if there is scope for us to come to the same understanding.

the triadic relation, we have in common, and i don’t ‘mind’ how you are describing it, although your use of ‘mind’ seems somewhat ambiguous. i would use ‘awareness’ for the whole ball of wax and that would go deeper than our ‘conscious thought’ (e.g. as when we sleep and dream etc.).

i agree that ‘thought’ comes in two flavours which seem to be in opposition, and that our inclusion in the ether is ‘more primary’ than either of the two forms of thought. in my view, these two forms of thought differ by the positioning of the virtual ‘centre of intention’ that directs behaviour. we can put it in ‘the whole mess’ as in the Gaia hypothesis (holism) or we can put it in ‘the local organism’ (parts-based logic). similarly we can put it in the genes inside of cells or we can put it in the collective of cells we call the organism (leading to ambiguity whether the selfish genes are the primary driver or the selfish organism is the primary driver). socialism corresponds to the gaia hypothesis (the self-interest of the whole collective is seen as naturally prevailing. while capitalism corresponds to seeing the self-interest of the individual member of the collective as naturally prevailing). these two views set up opposition between their respective (socialist, capitalist) advocacy groups.

a storm-cell collective gives some insight into the three views. if there are multiple storm-cells ‘visible’, then we could invert our view of the dynamics and start with the notion that the storm-cell is a local system with its own local agency (capitalism) and it is the actions/interactions of such storm-cells (stronger and weaker ones) that produces the overall dynamic (the still spaces in the atmosphere appear passive and neutral and ‘pushed around’ by the active storm-cells. the socialists have this intuition that everything is related so that the strong drain energy from the weak and the weak can be strengthened when they are supported by the strong, so that the health of the whole collective should be the starting/primary orientation. the capitalists have the darwinist view which says that the strong should survive and we should ‘let go of’ the weak, as it would be against nature’s way (evolution) to artificially support the weak.

the socialist will say that the weak ‘are that way’ because they have been ‘disopportunized’ while the capitalists claim that the strong ‘make their own opportunities’.

it is clear that without space as the primary medium, there is no way to refute the capitalist argument, so that the socialist argument is supported only by arm-waving and the socialists will support the weak even if the weak take advantage of this support; e.g. the weak may have a chip on their shoulder whereby they believe that it is ‘their turn’ to live off the labour of others. that is, if there are only ‘causal agents’ in the world view, then these are the only options; i.e. that some people are doing all the work while others are doing less, and that the ‘strong’ get there because they cheat while the weak have to work for pittance while the strong amass all the riches and live like kings.

this is the way to explain the visual appeareances without having ‘space’ as the parenting medium in the model.

but, if we make space ‘primary’; i.e. if we make the opening of spatial possibility primary, then the blossoming of assertive potentials (in storm-cells or men) is conjugate to the opening of spatial-possibility (this is how it must be within a ‘fluid’ [energy-flow] dynamic). instead of the strong ones become strong from something ‘internal’ (their ‘genes’ or their inherent ‘moxie’ etc.), they become strong because of their unique situational inclusion in the unfolding spatial-relational dynamic whereby spatial possibility opens up for them (e.g. as when they move from an amsterdam ghetto to rich open fertile plains in california).

the head-butting conflict/paradox between socialism and capitalism ‘dissolves’ when we allow space to be primary in our modeling. in the storm-cell model we can see that the flow is primary and that the multiple flow-forms, strong and weak, are secondary and that they are features within the flow, thus they are inherently ‘interdependent’ via the dynamics of the medium. Ernst Mach captured this for all space and matter in his principle of space-matter relativity which can be paraphrased; “the dynamics of the habitat (space, atmosphere)condition the dynamics of the inhabitants (material bodies, storm-cells) at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants (material bodies, storm-cells) are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat (space, atmosphere)”.

if we have this view, it follows that we suspend the notion of ‘i’ and replace it with ‘we’ as in the amerindian understanding; i.e. we think of ourself as a strand in the web-of-life or as a ‘storm-cell’ in the flow of the atmosphere wherein we are included in the overall dynamic as the overall dynamic is included in us.

how should we then ‘behave’? we would not behave as a capitalist, pursuing our own self-interest as if were were all ‘local independent productive agents’ act/interacting on our own in an empty (except for the full collection of local independent agents) operating theatre. and, we would not behave as a socialist, re-allocating strength from strong to weak as if the source of the dynamic originated fully and solely from the collective and its members.

we should behave like the wildgeese who realize that there are resonances in the conjugate habitat-inhabitant dynamic relation that can be cultivated and sustained, and which allow everyone to ‘fly farther and faster for less expenditure of energy than flying solo’. this approach shifts the ‘direction’ of behaviour away from both ‘the individual’ as in capitalism and away from ‘the collective’ as in socialism, by acknowledging that we are all ‘included’ in something that is ‘more primary’ than either us as individuals or we as a collective.

that is, the capitalist will elogize the goose at the head of the ‘V’ claiming that this strong goose is the natural leader whose ground-breaking drive opens the way for weaker followers. the socialist will argue that cooperation amongst all of the members is what is responsible for the success of the geese, and that everyone has leadership qualities within them that can be brought out if they are given an ‘opportunity’.

in other words, neither the socialist nor the capitalist brings the fluid-dynamic the collective is included in, into the picture. all results are invested in the local causal agents, one way or another; i.e. by the leaders and followers (strong and weak) view of the capitalists and/or by the cooperative teamwork view of the socialists. in both of these cases, the causal agents are viewed as ‘driving through’ whatever they are included in; i.e. they are active agents while the environment is something the resists their passage, that they must push their way through.

both of these opposing views are euclidian space based views.

these are what i would call ‘top-down’, the strongest to weakest performer/producer hierarchical view of the capitalist, and ‘bottom-up’, the whole collective or whole interdependent ecosystem-as-producer view of the socialist. the socialist view seeks to answer the issue of ‘interdependence’ while constraining the model to ‘local agents’ (without acknowledging that space is primary and matter secondary).

if you like to model this using the terms ‘logos’ where i am using ‘capitalist’ (differentiation) and ‘mythos’ where i am using ‘socialist’ (integration), i have no problem, and as you too say; “plug in whatever bipolar model you prefer”.

meanwhile, where you say that this dual mode ‘mind’ is; “just the system we evolved to deal with the great mysterious” (ether), i don’t believe that ‘man evolved’ (rather, ‘space evolves’) since he, like the storm-cell (where we make the same mistake and say that ‘the storm evolves’), continues to be in conjugate relation with the unfolding habitat and thus we revert to using a ‘short cut’ to speak of the individual as having evolved something (his own local dual processing thinking system).

notwithstanding our different habits of switching from short-cuts to full context, it seems that we are pretty much in agreement.

ted

We’re about to cage this particular cat. Hold your ground, don’t let it get away.
Mythology ain’t real. The ether is real. (That’s what Plato called the great mysterious). IE neither mythos nor logos is the ether, but merely shadows of the ether. I got in this same argument with Bro. Max in high school. He thought I was crazy too, talking about two minds. Using Plato’s model, inside the skull we have a logos mind and a mythos mind, outside the skull is the ether. (or plug in whatever bipolar model you prefer). There is no notationally infusing, or ascribing to or anything of that nature. THAT IS JUST THE WAY THE MINDS WORK. It’s as simple as that. Just the system we evolved to deal with the great mysterious, or ether, or big hoochie koochie, or cosmic standing wave, or God whatever. We developed two cognizant minds working in tandem, one fast and precise, the other slow and thorough. Whether you choose logos/mythos, Yang/yin, top down/bottom up, serial/parallel, father eagle/mother earth, binary/boolean is TOTALLY dependent on your worldview (imprinting plus what you learn that doesn’t conflict with imprinting.) It’s all the same thing.
There’s a lot less cats than is apparent. walt

you bring up some interesting points in regard to the word ‘mythology’. i was using the word ‘mythological’ in the sense that ancient civilizations used to explain things in terms of what might be called a ‘Soap Opera of the Gods’. that is, the cause of whatever unfolded could be explained by making up a story in which the gods (as many as needed, families of gods, sons and lovers etc) were the causal agents. what we have done is to notionally infuse god-like powers into ourselves (man) so that our world view is mythology.

we (mainstream science) impute a god-like (absolute) source of creative origination of ideas and behaviours to the interior of each of us. we call it ‘life’ and we say that this absolute (‘first-cause’) creative power resides within a local centre (of regulation of the internals and intention of engaging with the external world). if the dynamics do not unfold as the complement to our assertive intention-driven actions, we ‘blame’ this on ‘random chance’. this is the ‘guts’ of darwinism, and it is also the guts of our mainstream scientific understanding of dynamics (i say mainstream since relativity subsumes this local material object based view of dynamics).

newtonian physics starts with ‘local material objects/organisms/systems’ and explains dynamics in terms of externally applied ‘forces’ and/or internally sourced (e.g. biochemical) inside-outward forces. the key point here is that ‘dynamics’ in this view can be ‘traced back’ to the movement of local, independently existing material objects.

this provides a scientific basis for our ‘mythological view’ of the dynamics we ‘see out there’. it is like the ‘creation myth’ of many ancient cultures except we modern westerners have ‘moved the Gods from the heavens into the interior of ‘local material systems’.

note that the more fundamental sourcing from ‘field’ (energy-charged space in continual transformation; i.e. the source of continual ‘becoming’) is ‘not needed’ when we build our world view from ‘local material systems’ and their actions/interactions in an implicit absolute fixed and empty euclidian space (when one imputes local material existence, one imputes at the same time, absolute space).

so, that is what i intend by ‘mythological’; – the notion that the sourcing of dynamics can originate within a local material system, such as the west characterizes human ‘beings’, so that we then have to re-render the dynamics we see in terms of a ‘soap opera of the local-system-gods’. in so doing, we deny that the deeper sourcing is from resonant-energy charged spatial flow (‘field’), the stuff that is the mother of the transient energy concentrations (standing wave flow-features) we call ‘matter’.

so, we take the ‘great mysterious source’ of all dynamics out of space (the continuously unfolding energy-flow) and we notionally re-install it inside of visible flow-features which we declare to be absolutely locally existing material systems.

what this does, is to give us a system of understanding which is architected to explain visible observations, but it is a system which fails to acknowledge the deeper, ‘more primary’ role of energy flow. thus, when four hurricanes emerge in the atlantic/carribean, even though they are inherently the offspring of nonlocal, non-material, invisible energy transformation (solar irradiance bringing the atmosphere towards the ‘boil’ and thus inducing thermal-energy-balance-seeking ‘cells’), we apply our ‘calculus’ of ‘differentiation’ and describe them in such terms as if they were ‘local, material systems’ that exist and move about ‘in-their-own-right’, … leaving behind the ‘truly natural’ (nonlocal, non-material, non-visible) sourcing that, as Emerson observes in ‘The Method of Nature’, not only inhabits them (and animates them) but creates them.

now, it is my impression that a good mathematician could make the mapping between what i am saying here and the comments you brought up about the rational/irrational and Plato going with cubes and linear structure and giving short shrift to the sphere (e.g. lines have ‘slope’ in euclidian space (which is ‘rectangular’) but the slope of the space on the surface of a sphere (the tangent to the sphere) is everywhere different; i.e. it is elusive and only has meaning ‘at infinity’ but not in the ‘real world’ of our experience. spherical space (i.e. ‘curved space’ which has no persisting slope/ratio) is, of course, needed to convey relativity, the ‘non-absoluteness’ that characterizes the natural world we live in.

so, to build our world view on a foundation of ‘local material objects/organisms/systems’ would appear to ‘equivalence’ to making ‘lines’ (rational elements) foundational, rather than acknowledging the natural primacy of the ‘irrational’ (non-ratio-able habitat), as in ‘relativity’. as mathematicians note, rectangular space is a ‘special case’ of curved space, so that acknowledging the primacy of the ‘irrational’ does not ‘exclude’ the ‘rational’ but instead ‘includes the rational’ as a special (degenerate, in mathematical jargon) case. however, when we start from ‘rational’ and make it foundational to our world view, then we exclude from our understanding, the ‘truly natural’ foundation, otherwise known as ‘the irrational’.

there is a correspondence here with ‘matter’ (local, independently-existing material bodies) and ‘space’ (energy-field-flow). i.e. if we assume that energy-field-flow is primary and that ‘local material systems’ are a special (degenerate) case, then we can understand that the visible movements of things are a secondary phenomena, but if we assume that ‘matter’ (locally existing material systems/organisms/objects) are ‘primary/foundational’, then we are screwed because we can no longer explain stuff like spatially-extended harmonies or ‘interdependence at a distance’ as is implied in ‘gravity’ which is ‘everywhere at the same time’ (Newton said of those harmonies in the celestial dynamic, that they came straight from God’s hand).

so, my use of ‘mythology’ is where we impute god-like powers to a centre of intention that we notionally impute to reside within the ‘local, independently-existing material system’, be it the corporation or whatever. in the corporation, we call it ‘the CEO’ and we ante up based on our mythological belief by paying the bastard a thousand times what the average worker gets because, we say, ‘he is where the buck starts/stops’; i.e. if the corporation makes a huge profit, he gets credit for it. is this not a ‘mythology’ of the same time as the ancients used to explain the unfolding world dynamic? there is no mention here of the swirling flowing spatial-relational dynamics, that open up spatial possibility that sucks the products out of his factories, … the fluid social dynamic in which the very notion of his business was once just a twinkle in the eye of society and which pulled his business into existence and which continues to inhabit it. as Ackoff has said, the university was a system spawned by the suprasystem of the social dynamic and to understand it, one cannot simply regard it as a ‘local system’ but one must understand it as ‘flow-feature’ in the fluid-suprasystem-dynamic (the continuously innovatively unfolding social/environmental dynamic. but once one describes a university in terms of its apparently ‘local’ physical/material structures (buildings, grounds) and its departments and faculties and processes etc., (applies differential calculus) and then integrates the processes and how they relate to explain it as some kind of local organisation, then one forgets that this whole differential/integrative analysis is a mere subsystem in something inherently ‘larger’ which is in a condition of ‘continual becoming’ so that there are no measuring/reference sticks to be found there, yet it is the parenting flow of the university. the expedient reference frame that we typically use for the differential/integrative inquiry into the university-as-a-local-system is, IMPLICITLY, ‘absolute fixed and empty euclidian space’. this gives us the impression that the university president is ‘where the buck starts/stops’ while the reality is that the university is like the sand-rose that forms in the desert, as grains shift/flow in the confluence of wind, gravity and e/m fields.

the mythology arises when we start believing that that the university president, the nation’s president, the corporate CEO, the human self-CEO, is ‘where the buck starts/stops’, so that we build a ‘soap opera of the local powerboating selves’ and get rid of the mysterious field-substrate as the parenting source of dynamics.

ted

Allowing for that, I think you have an overly optimistic view of the situation. I have a more gothic view. Civilizations collapse, always have, always will. It’s not a gradual upward trend, but a sawtooth, which collapses when resources are exausted. This ALWAYS happens because society is organized for optimization of wealth for the hyper-males rather than a more holistic, all encompassing view of the world. (a mythological/balanced view). Our technology has allowed us to stripmine the earth in a manner such that survival may be at stake for man. When this one collapses, the resources will not be available for another industrial society (or maybe even an aboriginal existance) until the tectonic plates recycle. (that’s a long time)

The baby the midwife is to deliver may be stillborn.

walt