INTRODUCTION: Systems Sciences Pioneer Kenneth Boulding is the source of the statement; ‘The Name of the Devil is Suboptimization’.  This refers to the reality that we live within a world of relational interdependencies that our WESTERN CULTURE has turned a blind eye to in our anthropocentric suboptimization where we shut off acknowledging the essential reality of ‘all is related’.

NAMING plays a key role in this abstract anthropocentric ‘declaration of independence’.   That is, NAMING is a language based DECLARATION of the LOCAL, INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE of the NAMED phenomenon, no matter how NONLOCAL and INTERDEPENDENT it may be.  Suboptimization is encouraged by NAMING a ‘system’ that is NOT REALLY a LOCAL, INDEPENDENT SYSTEM-IN-ITSELF but is in fact a resonance-sustained confluence of relational interdependencies  Suboptimization, because it MISTAKENLY assumes the INDEPENDENCE of the subsystem being optimized, can induce the degeneration of overall systemic resonance into dissonance, the price paid for ‘suboptimizing’ an assumed-independent-system which is, in reality, relationally interdependent.  Shakespeare’s metaphor of the ‘POUND OF FLESH’ in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is a kind of ‘archetype’ for the WESTERN CULTURE practice of ‘suboptimization’ as in monocultural agriculture, where we carve a square plot out of a complex mutually supporting ecosystemic landscape, inserting in its place a geometric, monocultural wheat-field.  We may even kill the diversity with herbicide to make way for the monoculture.

Such suboptimization is a radical departure from multiculture-diversity-sustaining development characteristic of nature, and from the land cultivating approach of indigenous peoples which acknowledges that natural life lives in the intersecting confluence of mutually-supportive relational diversity.  F. David Peat, modern physics co-researcher with David Bohm, in his book Blackfoot Physics, points out how indigenous cultures acknowledged that ‘everything is relationally dependent’ (‘mitakuye oyasin’), employing agriculture in a multicultural approach; e.g. the Mohawk people’s cultivating of the Three Sisters; beans, squash and corn in acknowledgement of the importance of relational synergy deriving from diversity.

Suboptimization assumes that it is possible to split FIGURE (subsystem) and GROUND (system) into TWO, however, in Nature, FIGURE (subsystem) and GROUND (system) are only ONE, and so it is also in the Wave-field understanding, SELF-and-OTHER (SUBJECT and OBJECT) are only ONE, which implies that sub-optimizing environmental supportive conditions for our wrongly-presumed ‘independent’ (mono-cultural ‘human’) self, creates problems for our ‘real self’ which is inextricably, relationally included in the overall Wave-dynamic aka the Tao.  The understanding that the relational dynamic of Nature does NOT split into separate and independent subsystems as NAMING and GRAMMAR so easily portray it, is foundational in Boulding’s aphorism; ‘The Name of the Devil is Suboptimization’.  Suboptimization is an abstract concept that we have given a foundational role to in our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT social dynamic, leading to psychological confusion that manifests in ‘anthropocentrism’ and ‘racism’.

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you… This could be compared to the ‘source-receiver duality in Newtonian physics.  It’s what we come up with in language and grammar based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO (i.e. SELF-OTHER-as-TWO)

Taken literally, it is an IMPLICIT way of infusing belief in an abstract binary structure of reality. It is like ‘forgiveness’ which is a back-handed way of reducing NONLOCAL relational dissonance to LOCAL SOURCING of PATHOLOGICAL actions and development.

In the reality of our sensory experience, FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE as in modern physics (i.e. SUBJECT-and-OBJECT-are-ONE, … and SELF-and-OTHER-are ONE).

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” – Erwin Schroedinger

Therefore, the behavioural ethic becomes, … move within the transforming relational continuum so as to cultivate relational harmony (move so as to dissolve the cultivating of relational dissonance).   We do this in the flow of freeway traffic when the traffic is heavy and the relative moving of vehicles becomes our fluid guide rather than the fixed guide-lines painted on the ‘roadway’.  We can sustain harmony in this relative fluid sense whether driving in a fleet of dune-buggies over the desert or wherever.

In general, our moves can only be relative.  Therefore, we do not ‘have your own moves’ and there is only the NONLOCAL while LOCAL has no meaning.   This NONLOCALITY which is the ‘real reality’ is not capturable ‘as-is’ in language (language makes use of LOCAL concepts which fall innately short of capturing the NONLOCAL).  That is, the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL can be REDUCED and made language-effable using the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR where NAMING is used to establish LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING and GRAMMAR is used to impute the LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

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