A One-Page Progress Report on My Intellectual Journey

One starts off in pursuit of understanding a single issue, following a single-issue path of inquiry so to speak, and after doing this many times with many issues, the paths criss-cross, connecting here and there and what emerges is a view of the overall landscape one is covering with one’s explorations.   What then stands out are ‘deeper orientations’ that were not initially apparent in the A to B single issue paths of inquiry.

For example, on one road we see a change in the shrubbery and on another, a change in the forestry; there is a slight rise in elevation on this road and a slight drop in elevation in another and when we look at all of our criss-crossing paths of inquiry in connected context, we see, with extreme clarity, the gentle ‘S’ shape of a subsurface fault making itself known in all kinds of different ways on the surface that are ‘lateral’ to our single issue pursuits.   Only then when we recognize such common underlying connections can we go back to the single issue roads, scrape away some of the ‘topsoil’ of detailed particulars, and verify that there is something deeper and ‘in common’ that is simultaneously influencing what we thought were a multiplicity of independent  ‘single issues’.

This ‘all-on-the-same-page’ note is an attempt to describe a major below-the-surface source of division, that brings into connection, a multitude of contentious divisions of opinion on a diverse array of particular ‘single issues’, exposing the fact the ‘division’ in these different issues derives from a deeper, below-the-surface source  which is being obscured by the surficial single-issue ‘particulars’. 

I will  tell you ‘upfront’ what this deeper, underlying division that commonly impacts single issue debates without our noticing it is.  Let’s call it;

THE DEEPER SOURCE OF DIVISION THAT LIES BENEATH THE SURFACE OF A DIVERSE COLLECTION OF CONTENTIOUS ISSUES

Any dynamic phenomena that we can observe and/or experience must ‘come from somewhere’.  There are two choices; the dynamic derives from space (it is ‘spatially-forced’) or the dynamic derives from local ‘causal agencies’ (it is ‘locally-forced’).   Not only do some people sometimes put ‘spatial-forcing’ in precedence over ‘local forcing’ while others put ‘local forcing’ in precedence over ‘spatial forcing’ in their attempts to understand (‘give meaning to’) dynamic phenomena, the same people, at different times, do flip-flops on the order of precedence of ‘spatial-forcing’ and ‘local-forcing’.

Example.  We are watching the social dynamics of people in a confined space.  Some of them, recognizable by the way they dress, are becoming very agitated to the point that one of them (and more follow) get violent with others who are dressed differently than them and seem to be the controllers of the social dynamic.

There are two ways of ‘giving meaning to’ this dynamic;

Local-forcing (the mode of understanding that takes precedence in our Western culture): – The violence derives from internal processes in those people who become violent; e.g. from their biochemistry or from their trained neural networks, or from ‘evil’ that takes over their senses.   Whatever the source, our Western system of justice, which assumes ‘local-forcing’, holds them fully and solely responsible for their violent actions and will punish them according to the ‘damage they have caused’.

Spatial-forcing (the mode of understanding that takes precedence in, for example, Amerindian traditions): – When space is assumed to be the parent of all things and the source of all behaviours, the dynamics of space are understood as ‘first cause’ and the dynamics of the figures within the space are understood as ‘second cause’ (as with the relation between a storm-cell and the atmospheric spatial flow).  An analogy that conveys the different way of understanding is, where everyone is included in a sauna where the thermal field is intensifying and those people who are in control of  the thermostat are wearing air-conditioned ‘space’-suits which buffer them from variances in the ambient spatial-forcing influence.

In the summer of 1789, people became agitated in the streets of Paris and turned violent.   France was one of the richest and most powerful nations in Europe at the time, but the onerous taxes on the people were disastrous for those ‘at the bottom’ whenever there was a recession.  Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were fine regardless, buffered from the spatial pressures that associated with living in a confined and regulated space by the ‘protective shell’ of their enormous personal wealth and power.   Spatial-fields (pressure, thermal, gravity, electromagnetic) are themselves invisible.  We intuit that they ‘have been’ there when the earthquake (spatial-tension relieving) dynamic ‘happens’ or the pressure-cooker explodes.   The French Courts of Justice did not and still do not assume ‘spatial-forcing’ where the dynamics of energy-charged space are the ‘first cause’ and the dynamics of ‘local inhabitants’ of that space are ‘second cause’.  The assumption of the courts is that the behaviour of the individual derives from the internal processes and purposes of the individual; i.e. that ‘first cause’ originates within the individual.  History records that the ‘controlling heads-of-state’ were mistaken in their insistence that  ‘local-forcing’ was in precedence over ‘spatial-forcing’ (whereby it follows that eliminating agitators will solve the problem) with the result  was that those incorrectly-thinking heads were removed, figuratively and literally.

One of the ‘messages’ associated with this is that when we observe the people in the sauna getting agitated as ‘the heat is turned up on them’, if we fail to take into account the air-conditioned space-suits we, who also have primary control over the thermostat, are wearing, we are going to assume that the agitation and violent behaviour they manifest derives from internal processes within them, perhaps its ‘the violence gene’ or ‘biochemical imbalance’ or ‘eviil purpose’ that has possessed their central processing unit aka ‘brain’ so as to make them agitated and violent.

Putting ‘local forcing’ in precedence ‘truncates the inquiry’ by taking the inquiry into the central interior of the accused ‘causal agency’ and finding whatever is internally available, a simple correlation of chemical flows or etc. that will serve to satisfy the inquiry.  The local-forcing ‘mindset’ is thus that ‘dynamic phenomena’ derive from ‘LOCAL, VISIBLE, MATERIAL AGENCY’ and it is usually the case that those of that mindset ‘mock’ the notion that ‘dynamic phenomena’ originate from ‘NONLOCAL, INVISIBLE, NON-MATERIAL SPATIAL FIELD AGENCY’.

In a tensioned space, as in earthquake phenomena, there will be a locale which ‘breaks first’ to relieve the tension, after which our language implies that the disturbance is coming from this particular ‘locale’ or ‘epicentre’ as if the local behaviour is ‘first cause’ rather than ‘second cause’.  Similarly, in the tensioned space of a classroom where the pressures on children to be attentive have been continually rising, some local participants will ‘break’ to relieve the tension before others, at which point mainstream science, which puts ‘local-forcing’ into an unnatural precedence over ‘spatial-forcing’ will regard the agitated behaviour of the child that moves to relieve tension, as coming from within the child.  And psychology and neurology and biochemistry are sciences that seek to understand things in terms of ‘local-forcing’, they will come up with explanations in terms of local internal processes, psychological and/or biochemical, and they will find them since there may well be differences in the individual who is among the first to ‘break ranks’ and move to relieve the nonlocal, invisible, non-material spatial field based tensions.   Of course, the ‘first cause’ of this dynamic is the system that sets up spatial tensions, as in the example of pre-revolution France.

As an indication of how pervasive this ‘division’ in people’s thinking is on the relative precedence of ‘spatial-forcing’ and ‘local-forcing’, Erwin Schroedinger, the originator of the ‘wavefield’ version of ‘quantum mechanics’, maintained to his dying day that Max Born, Einstein and the rest had formulated quantum theory using an inverted precedence.  Schroedinger maintained that the waves were ‘real’ and that matter was ‘schaumkommen’ (appearances) while Born, Bohr, Einstein et al had kept the ‘material particle’ as ‘primary’, using the kluge of probability to synthetically blur its ‘local existence’ and ‘local agency’ (i.e. its supposed to be there somewhere, we just don’t know where until we look for it and it appears as if by our command).

The above is the basic premise; i.e. that there is a division in people that crosses many debated issues, that derives from our choice of whether to put into precedence in our understanding, the ‘nonlocal, invisible, non-material, spatial-field agency’ (‘spatial-forcing’) or the ‘local, visible, material agency’.   A technical-philosophical footnote to this premise, concerning ‘free-will’, is appended.

* * *

I have engaged with many people who are interested in such things on my intellectual journey and one of the things that most whom I have met have in common is a desire to have a trustworthy mental modeling scheme that will serve ourselves and our living space well (sustain health and harmony).  We judge the efficacy of our models against our experience of what is unfolding in the common space we all live in (i.e. the space that is given by our experience that we call ‘home’, ‘society’, ‘the earth’, the ‘universe’ etc.).

Religious belief gives rise to divisions in people that are nominally ‘single issue’ (relating to local particulars) such as how we see ourselves in relation to ‘the world’.  Some believe, as in some parts of the Bible, that humans have a God-given right to ‘have dominion over earth’.  So what this group means by ‘ourselves’, the object of our objective of cultivating and sustaining ‘health and harmony’ is ‘anthropocentric society’.

The second ‘orientation’ is with those who view the health and harmony of ourselves as being inextricably tied up with the health of the space we live in.  For the first group, man is the ‘main course’ of the Creation and the rest is garnish, while for the second group, man is bundled into the interdependent Creational package that we call ‘Nature’.

This ‘split’ leads to different notion of ‘community’; (a) a dynamically relating human collective, and (b) a conjugate habitat-inhabitant relational dynamic where the habitat is the persisting parenting agency for its emergent (human and other) features.   As in Lamarckism, the latter view is in terms of  “une force excitatrice’ in space that is the first cause source of emergent forms such as organisms.   The former view, as in Darwinism, essentially ‘takes for granted’ that organisms exist independently, equipped with the own internally-driven agency, so that community is the product of the internal purpose of a multiplicity of local organisms, space being a passive incidental.

Since these are just mental modeling schemes, an individual can use more than one scheme and can flip from one scheme to another when it is convenient etc.  This is why it is more appropriate to call these propensities to put either ‘spatial-forcing’ or ‘local forcing’ into precedence over the other ‘orientations’ rather than ‘groups’ but ‘groups’ do form based on these orientations which then lead to particular patterns of individual and collective behaviour.  That is, while we are not ‘hard-wired’ to support one or the other ‘precedence’, the one may be deeply and solidly infused into us by social acculturation.  Such is the case with ‘local-forcing’ (local, visible, material agency) over ‘spatial-forcing’ (nonlocal, invisible, non-material spatial agency) in our mainstream Western religions and cultures.

The second major division, besides ‘religion’, that splits us into ‘mutually differing orientations’ comes with what we understand by ‘resilience’ since resilience is a prerequisite for sustaining ‘health and harmony’ in our community.  Less common is the view given by the analogy of mountain climbers connected by ropes so that those who are on solid footing can support those who are on weak footing, thus giving more resilience to the group than is available to the individual.  This peer-to-peer networking of people might be called a ‘destiny-sharing’ model.

On the other hand, central-control systems such as governments, banks, corporations, which are made possible by the full collective who supply the system ‘sustenance’ by way of  taxes, interest, profit use ‘finance’ as the interconnection, and if an individual finds themselves on slippery footing (e.g. a farmer experiences crop failure), the central control system’s resilience derives from cutting the rope and letting the individual fall away, after confiscating his back-pack (foreclosing on his property).  The central control system starts off with a ‘peers-as-equals’ political pitch, but it deals with environmental difficulty using a survival-of-the-fattest approach.  Peers ‘in trouble’ become ballast that must be cut free whenever the bubble bursts and the system starts to ‘lose altitude’.

In order to keep this ‘brief’, there is enough ‘on the table’ here to impute to these differences in religious and resilience models, a more general ‘philosophical’ pattern (like a deeper, underlying [subsurface] dividing ‘fault’) implicit in the thinking that gives rise to them; i.e. the deeper difference lies in whether the unfolding world dynamic is driven or ‘forced’ FIRSTLY from local point sources, or whether it is driven or ‘forced’ FIRSTLY from space (from the resonant-energy-charged spacetime continuum).

For example, the notion that a human being’s actions derive from his internal processes and purpose is the ‘locally-forced’ mode of thinking while the notion that a human being’s actions derive from the dynamics of the space he is included in is the ‘spatially-forced’ mode of thinking.  An example and a picture may be appropriate here.

As with the example of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who presided over one of the richest and most powerful central-control systems in Europe of their era.  Taxes on those ‘at the bottom’ of the control hierarchy were onerous and in bad times disastrous, we have the recent incident  where a disgruntled man flew his plane into the IRS office building in Austin, Texas.  This can be interpreted according to the ‘local forcing’ model in which case the finger points to something wrong with the man’s ‘internal purpose’ that is deemed the source of his behaviour.  This thinking is where we get the notion of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ residing at sourcing point of locally-forced behaviour.   On the other hand, the spatially-forced view corresponds to earthquake and avalanche theory and suggests that tensions/pressures in the resonant-energy-charged space we all live in, are the basic source of all dynamic behaviours (e.g. the raising of mountains and the slumping of mountains are like wave crests filling wave troughs with a mind to put everything in balance.).

Acknowledging that spatial-forcing is in a natural primacy over local-forcing says nothing about ‘morality’. It just says that when things are exposed to spatially-forced tensions for some time, somewhere, something is going to ‘break’ and ‘go postal’ (this is where there is a violent release of accumulated potential energy by way of its transformation into kinetic energy). This serves to relieve the tensions.  But if the mechanism for the relief of tensions fails to keep up with the rising of tensions, the tensions may continue to build to the point that such tectonics intensify and we have a period of ‘revolution’.  In plate tectonic terms, what is below may overthrust what is on top and invert the top and below ordering (e.g. in drilling down into the earth one sometimes encounters sequences of beds that go from older to younger rather than younger to older indicating ‘over-thrusting’ or a ‘revolution’ of the previously established order (see how ‘revolution’ re-organizes ‘up-and-down-and-sideways’ plate-tectonics in diagram below).

Taking a purely moral stand (local-forcing view) and insisting that the problem begins with immoral purpose (or medical or psychological stand where the local-forcing is from biochemical dysfunction or whatever) IN THE INTERIOR OF THE INDIVIDUAL, will tend to block any inquiry into the spatial-forcing origins of the behaviour.  In fact, those who are satisfied with the completeness of the local-forcing mode of thinking that underlies the pure moral stance will tend to say to those who bring up the spatial-forcing view; ‘Don’t make excuses for criminals’ (or ‘terrorists’ etc.).

Most of western scientific thinking is rooted in ‘local-forcing’ (e.g. Newtonian physics, though relativity and quantum theory reverts to spatial-forcing).  Most of western religious thinking is rooted in ‘local-forcing’ (morality of purpose/intention that directs behaviour from the interior of the individual), thus there is solidarity between mainstream science and religion as to the notion of the primacy of ‘local-forcing’.

The following picture shows the relationship of multiple contemporary emergent features within a continuing spatial flow, arguably a general model for the relationship between the spatial-forcing of the habitat and the local-forcing of the inhabitants;

spatial forcing that animates that which it creates (NASA)

In a fluid-dynamic (and spacetime is considered to be, in general, a resonant-energy-charged fluid-dynamical continuum), the emergent features (hurricanes, organisms, cells etc.) move under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence.  There behaviour is not ‘locally-forced’.  As Mach’s principle says;’The dynamic ground-flow (space/habitat) conditions the dynamics of the emergent figures (inhabitants) at the same time as the dynamics of the emergent figures are conditioning the dynamics of the ground-flow’.  This matches our intuition as we look at the above photo of the four contemporary hurricanes in the flow.   But the nonlocal-spatial-forcing does not stop with the atmospheric flow since if the sun’s irradiation intensifies (the net caloric influence), this ‘pressures up’ the ocean and atmosphere so that the convecting ocean currents and convecting atmospheric storm-cells become more intense.  These celestial/spatial-forcing created the convecting cells in the ocean and the atmosphere in the first place.  All of this is occurring at once, in the continually unfolding now.

It may be convenient for us to home in on these four simultaneous mutually influencing convection cells, Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, and to depict them as local systems with locally-originating (internal-process driven) behaviours, since we are interested in where ‘each of them’ is going and ‘what each of them is going to do’, but this mental modeling notion of their behaviour being ‘locally-forced’ cannot over-ride the reality of their being spatially-forced.  Similarly, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s argument that it was immoral for people to come out into the streets of Paris in the summer of 1789 and fire the first shot at their country’s finest, the men of the military and the police who bear arms and give their lives in the service of their country, in the service of all of the people of the country (of course, this being through instructions provided by ‘those in power’ who maintain that they are stewarding the best interests of all of the people.).

When the first murderous revolutionary is caught, he will be examined by a priest using the moral (local-forcing) model and determining that his morals have been corrupted (he has been possessed by evil) and that he must repent.  The psychologist will examine him using the (local-forcing) model of psychology and determine that his behaviour has been sourced by disturbing events in his childhood, perhaps sexual abuse which his memory has suppressed.  The psychiatrist will examine him using the (local-forcing) model of psychiatry and determine that he is prone to biochemical imbalances which bring on violent mood swings and suppress normal mechanisms for controlling his rage.  The geneticist will examine him using the (local-forcing) model of genetics and determine that there is a ‘violence gene’ present in his DNA which is also present in others with a propensity for violence.

Of course, the only thing they will have established with their ‘local forcing’ theory is that some organisms are going to ‘go postal’ before others as the spatial-forcing tensions they are included in continue to build.   The same is true in nature, while the tensions build in space (e.g. in the manner of a mountain which is a warehouse of potential energy tensioned spatial relations with a desire to ‘slump’ into the valley), spatially experienced, tension-releasing violent ‘breaks’ occur in zones of relative weakness.  The San Francisco earthquake was not really ‘locally-forced’ by the San Andreas fault, it was sourced by the opening of ocean basins and the pressing upon one another of continental and oceanic plates, which are, in the longer-than-human attention spans of geologic time, a fluid dynamic; i.e. mutually opposing circulations of convections cells celestially-forced by solar irradiance;

spatially-forced 'continental drift'

‘Celestial-forcing’ is a scientific term used in ‘climate science’ and the current argument on ‘global warming’ is between those who believe that climate change is ‘spatially-force’ and those that believe it is ‘locally-forced’ (by greenhouse gas concentration variations).  Most Russian scientists put ‘spatial-forcing’ (aka ‘celestial forcing’) in primacy over ‘local-forcing’.   Having undergone a recent ‘revolution’, Russians no doubt clearly remember and reject the view of Russian psychiatrists that ‘dissident behaviour’ was locally-forced by dysfunction in the internal neural control systems of the dissident individuals (thus it was logical to put dissidents into the ‘gulag archipelago’ and treat them with heavy anti-psychotic drugs).  In any case, historical retrospect suggests that the tensions in the living space (spatial-forcing) were instead responsible for the emergence of ‘dissidents’.

Westerners with rabid belief in their own ‘gloriously successful’ socio-political systems (not the ones whose umbilicals get cut and their backpacks confiscated, to be sure) maintain that our behaviours are locally-forced, that we are each fully and solely responsible for our ‘success’ and/or our ‘failure’, that space is neutral ground, a level playing field, and that the emergence of ‘most-favoured races’ or ‘most-favoured nations’ is ‘nature’s way’ (Darwinism is a local-forcing based theory, while Lamarckism, which is making a come-back, is a spatial-forcing based theory (see ‘God is Under Review’).

‘Space’ in our western culture, has been regarded as a non-participating theatre of operations wherein dynamics are fully and solely ‘local-forcing based’.   Newton provided a ‘local-forcing’ theory using the ad hoc notion of ‘locally applied force’ which allows us to understand hurricanes and organisms as locally-forced dynamic forms.  This greatly simplifies inquiry by having it stop in the interior of the dynamic form.  Hence ‘criminal behaviour’ is seen to originate in the interior of the individual.  By this early truncation of our path of inquiry, we save ourselves having to examine the ‘spatially-forced’ tensions of ghetto living etc.  This is an intellectual head-game that often prevails in society, but it can be overcome by lopping off the head, as is what transpired in France in 1789, to those at the top who were managing the forced roll-out of that head-game.  The rise of people going postal and attacking the ‘heads of global society’ (terrorist attacks on the alliance of most powerful nations) with an aim to ‘lop them off’ suggests that we should re-examine this question of precedence between ‘spatial-forcing’ and ‘local-forcing’.  Once we put ‘local-forcing’ in first priority, we usually intensify the ‘spatial-forcing’ so as to spawn more of what we, using the local-forcing theory, are trying to eliminate.  This is the situation in the world today where the ‘heads of state’ of the most powerful and affluent nations (who all believe that their success is locally-forced), the one’s wearing the space suits and controlling the thermostat in the global sauna, are not ‘experiencing’ what their non-space-suit wearing brothers and sisters are feeling.  They are relying on their visual sensing, and what they see is people (their own citizens included) increasingly becoming violent and attacking them for no visible reason.  Which is, of course, because spatial forcing is invisible (as well as nonlocal and non-material) and with a way of understanding that puts visible ‘local-forcing’ in unnatural precedence over invisible ‘spatial forcing’, we have launched ourselves into an intensifying spiral of self-abuse (shooting ourselves in the global collective foot).

In conclusion, most of the contentious difference in views and thus in social behaviour in the world today, can be better understood via two alternative modes of inquiry/understanding being employed; i.e. whether one puts ‘spatial-forcing’ into its natural precedence over ‘local-forcing’ or vice versa.  Environmentalism is one of the (backlash) symptoms of organizing community in an anthropocentric (local-forcing) manner.  It recognizes the greater reality of thinking in terms of socio-natural systems of community.  It implies a rejection of the view that the community-dynamic is simply ‘locally-forced’ by the people in the community; e.g. farmers really do experience ‘celestially-forced’ crop failures and from their slippery financial footing, put a pull on the peer-to-peer umbilical cord connections in the community, and those who attribute the slippery footing of the farmer to the farmer (incompetent local-forcing) will cut the cord so that the failing farmer falls away (his back-pack confiscated in the process, the value of which will be added back in to the common pot most accessible to those at the top of the pack, thus ratcheting up tensions that associate with the ‘have’ – ‘have-not’ split.).

The situation is similar in the case of ‘terrorism’ and ‘criminality’; i.e. the response uses the ‘local-forcing’ theory whereby if one eliminates terrorists, one eliminates the problem of terrorism since terrorist behaviour is seen to be ‘locally-forced’ from the interior of the individual.  As was mentioned above, this approach is likely to exacerbate the spatial-forcing conditions which are the primary source of terrorist behaviour (the ‘local-forcing’ fundamentalists, meanwhile, will continue to impute ‘evil-hearts’ to be the source).   Such issues are being discussed in regard to Afghanistan, where it is fairly broadly acknowledged that if the western military initiative conditions the space such that it fails to win over the hearts of the locals living in that space, it will grow the ranks of the enemy.  Unfortunately, the western Afghan mission started from the notion of eliminating terrorists rather than from the notion of improving the global spatial conditions so that Afganistan (or Dubai or Iraq or wherever) would not serve as a breeding ground for terrorism (although there was some lip-service to this effect).   The Iraq war appears to have conditioned the world in the direction of making it a more prolific breeding ground for terrorism, the draconian security measures and racial profiling compounding this spatial conditioning, so that the terrorism problem has become more intensively chronic, making the public, through political and media fear mongering, more susceptible to the notion that we must first conquer the terrorists and talk about restoring health and society to our global living space afterwards (should first and reflect on what’s going on later), … an insane strategy if one acknowledges that spatial-forcing is in a natural primacy over ‘local-forcing’.

The catch 22 is that our sovereign state nations are all employing central control system based mental models like that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, where resilience is seen to derive from eliminating those who are ‘pulling our chains’ and taking over (confiscating or colonizing) their property (source of power).   That is, there is ‘local-forcing based self-similarity between our (inverted) systems of sovereign state government, banking and corporations, and our (inverted) approach to cultivating and sustaining global health and harmony.  History shows that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s model for resilience, cutting those on the bottom loose and taking over their property, did not ‘succeed’, since going to battle against the disgruntled (rather than improving spatial conditions) worsened the spatial tensions so that they spawned increases in the number of disgruntled and in the intensity of their disgruntlement.

To close this progress report on my intellectual journey, my conclusion to date is that the unnatural precedence we are giving to visible ‘local-forcing’ over invisible ‘spatial-forcing’ is playing a foundational role in breeding and intensifying contention in today’s major socio-political dialogues.   In simple terms, our senses allow us to BOTH ‘see and understand the world dynamic in terms of ‘LOCAL, VISIBLE, MATERIAL AGENCY’ (aka ‘local-forcing’), .. AND, …to see and understand the world dynamic in terms of ‘NONLOCAL, INVISIBLE, NON-MATERIAL SPATIAL FIELD AGENCY’ (aka ‘spatial-forcing’).  There question of ‘sourcing precedence’  or ‘primary reality’ that must be resolved here and our Western culture popularly opts ‘for the wrong (unnatural) precedence.  As has been mentioned,  putting ‘local forcing’ in precedence bypasses ‘spatial-forcing’ and  ‘truncates the inquiry’ by taking the inquiry into the central interior of the accused ‘causal agency’ and finding whatever is internally available, a simple correlation of chemical flows or etc. that will serve to satisfy the inquiry.

On a ‘historical note’, this ‘division’ that arises from how we assign primary-sourcing and secondary-sourcing to; i.e.  to ‘spatial-forcing’ or to  ‘local-sourcing’ has a long history and created a split in the formalizing of early Christian beliefs.  That is, it has been a divisive ‘religious’ issues that arises in association with  inconsistencies (in religious writings) concerning God’s intention as to the ‘equality’ of ‘female’ and ‘male’,  or not (and if not, which precedes which).

“In an effort to explain inconsistencies in the Old Testament, there developed in Jewish literature a complex interpretive system called the midrash which attempts to reconcile biblical contradictions and bring new meaning to scriptural text [unsuccessfully as far as the ‘popular take’ was concerned].   Employing both a philological method and often an ingenious imagination, midrashic writings, which reached their height in the 2nd century CE, influenced later Christian interpretations of the Bible.  Inconsistencies in the story of Genesis, especially the two separate accounts of creation, received particular attention.  Later, beginning in the 13th century CE, such questions were also taken up in Jewish mystical literature known as the Kabbalah.  According to midrashic literature, Adam’s first wife was not Eve but a woman named Lilith, who was created in the first Genesis account.  Only when Lilith rebelled and abandoned Adam did God create Eve, in the second account, as a replacement. “

The rebellion was to do with Adam expecting submission from Lilith as discussed in the Kabbalah text Sefer ha-Zohar.    Lilith is demonized (seen as evil) due to her insubordination to her husband Adam;

“It is her independence from Adam, her position beyond the control of a male, that makes her ‘evil’. … She is disobedient and like Eve, and indeed all women who are willful, she is perceived as posing a constant threat to the divinely ordered state of affairs defined by men.”

Well, what else ‘poses a constant threat to the divinely ordered state of affairs of men’?   How about ‘spatial-forcing’… NONLOCAL, INVISIBLE, NON-MATERIAL SPATIAL FIELD AGENCY’ ?, as associates, for example, with the spatial tension sourcing and release of energy known as an earthquake/tsunami which regathers all of the sand castles and ordered ‘LOCAL, VISIBLE, MATERIAL, AGENCY’ based structures that constitute ‘the divinely ordered state of affairs defined by men’.  Our long term experience informs us that these structures only have the appearance of being fixed but were actually, all the while, being continuously regathered into the dynamic space that includes all such things; i.e. ‘Nature’ as a spatial-forcing dynamic includes all things and excludes no thing.  We simply rearrange the hairs on the back of the continuously evolving beast, like the farmer who gathers plants from the prairies and forests and puts them in long straight rows within a rectangular fenced off area he calls ‘his own property’ and claims he has produced the crops.

The confusing of the visible dynamic for reality (maya) is the wild hare in these modes of thinking.  If we are a fly on the shirt of Jean Valjean (Les Miserables) who stole a loaf of bread because he couldn’t bear to hear children cry, we accept that behaviours can be ‘spatially-forced’ by invisible tensions.  Such spatially-forced behaviours can be, at the same time, moral and unlawful.  And if we are a fly on the shirt of Inspector Javert whose moral duty is to ensure that the law, which understands things in ‘local-forcing’ terms, must be upheld, is caught in the conundrum where his duty obliges him to perform an immoral act, to put Valjean in prison (Javert cannot reconcile his internal conflict and commits suicide).

The conundum is resolved if we let go of our confusing of ‘local forcing’ (visible material dynamics) for ‘reality’.  Visual reality, where we focus on ‘what things do’, is a ‘secondary’ reality that can be used in a supporting role in our search for understanding.    Our feeling-sensing of spatial-forcing (the spatial tensions that orchestrate our behaviour) associates with ‘primary reality’ and if we give it priority, we can use our visual-sensing in a support role.    Our justice system puts ‘visual reality’ or ‘local-forcing’ first.    If we restore ‘spatial-forcing’ (invisible field sensing reality) to its natural precedence, the justice system would then orient to relieving spatial-relational tensions; i.e. it would split off from the ‘policing’ system which would still seek to ‘keep the peace’ and to arrest ‘disturbers of the peace’ and do whatever was needed on that count, but without imputing ‘internal evil’ to the disturbers of the peace (it is possible to kill and incarcerate [whatever is necessary to sustain peace and harmony] without imputing ‘evil’ or ‘local internal direction’ as the ‘local source’ of the disturbance.

There is a thin line between what we call ‘insane behaviour’ and ‘criminal behaviour’.  When criminal behaviour gets really bizarre (e.g. the man who beheaded another passenger on a Greyhound bus and was eating his body parts so that he never be a threat again), we tend to call it insane.  Saying that ‘we heard a voice that we had to obey’ is a figurative way of explaining criminal behaviour as well as insane behaviour.  [[Revenge is an emotion that goes hand-in-hand with the assumption that a violent behaviour is locally-forced (derives from the internal make-up of the person).  Today, relatives want ‘closure’ for murdered loved one’s by insane assassins which does NOT mean they want to drain the tensioned up social swamp the assassin came from but that they want to kill and dismember him since, in their mind, the actions started from him.  Revenge can be all the more vicious because in mistaking ‘maya’ for reality, the avengers see themselves as defined by their visible actions and likewise the assassins, which elicits the notion that they are the pure and wonderful salt of the earth while the assassin is of the pustulent dregs; i.e. vengeance has been most vicious where a black slave is accused of a crime against a white person.   It is bad enough that a black man should even cast his eyes on a white woman, but to rape or murder her (being ‘retarded’ or  insane is no excuse), is the most disgusting and impure acts imaginable.  Spatial tensions never come into it because the local-forcing model does not accommodate them.

Besides, ‘spatial-forcing’, the NONLOCAL, INVISIBLE, NON-MATERIAL SPATIAL FIELD AGENCY’ is, to many, a ‘dark force’ that Western culture ‘banished’ and ‘demonized’; i.e;

“Although it has been suggested that the association [of Lilith, succubus, spatial-forcing agency] with night stems from a similarity between the Sumero-Babylonian demon Lilitu and the Hebrew word ‘laylah’ meaning ‘night’, Lilith nonetheless seems to have been otherwise associated with darkness and night as a time of fear, vulnerability, and evil.”

This ‘dark force’ sound very much like the tensions in the classroom where fear of being humiliated in front of one’s friends is the primary, spatially-forced source of ‘studious behaviour’.   A western education encourages us to be believe that our ‘academic achievements’ are ‘locally-forced’ from our own internal purpose, which keeps the myth alive, in spite of it being obvious to free-thinking anthropologists (Jules Henry) and psychiatrists (Ronald Lang);

“It is Henry’s contention that in practice education has never been an instrument to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind them. We think we want creative children, but what do we want them to create? — ‘If all through school the young were provoked to question the Ten Commandments, the sanctity of revealed religion, the foundations of patriotism, the profit motive, the two party system, monogamy, the laws of incest, and so on … — there would be such creativity that society would not know where to turn. …  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.”

Putting ‘all of this’ ‘on the same page’ is to show, or suggest, that ‘spatial-forcing’ has been very effectively ‘demonized’ in our culture; i.e. maya (the illusion of local-forcing) has been been made into ‘the preferred reality’ of our culture leaving ‘spatial-forcing’ in the lurch.

How do we change this and restore ‘spatial-forcing’ to its natural precedence over ‘local-forcing’?   Good question!

The good news is that we do not appear to be ‘hard-wired’ into this upside-down mode of understanding.  The bad news is, as in the example of the sauna where those wearing air conditioned space-suits are in control of the thermostat, the belief in ‘local-forcing’ that fails to acknowledge invisible spatial forcing fields (thermal in this case) imputes emergent agitated and violent behaviour as having ‘first cause’ origination in the internal processes and purpose of the individual.  A singular response by those in control of the thermostat, to forcibly subdue the agitators, sends a message of ‘put up and shut up, or else’ to those ‘feeling the heat’ which tends to make the un-space-suited ones ever more agitated and more desperate.   The situation may recall an Edgar Alan Poe ‘Pit and the Pendulum’ nightmare scenario where there seems to be no escape from spiraling humiliation and degradation and the progressively encroaching burning hot walls are suggesting that we may as well dive into the dark pit of degeneracy.  Having the chance of becoming a suicide bomber may seem like a light and bright  ‘way out’, in this case.

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Footnote: Technical-Philosophical Comment on ‘Free Will’.

One of the simplifying assumptions in the foundations of rational thought is that “the present depends only on the immediate past”.  This simplifying concept is one of the underpinnings of mathematical physics, and it pervades our popular, everyday, scientific thinking.  Henri Poincaré put is as follows;

“We recognise at the outset that the efforts of scientists have always tended to resolve the complex phenomenon given directly by our experience into a large number of elementary phenomena. And to do this in three different ways : first, with respect to time. Instead of taking into account the progressive development of a phenomenon as a whole, we simply seek to connect each moment with the one immediately preceding. We assert that the present state of the world depends only on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the memory of a more distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying directly the whole succession of phenomena, we may confine ourselves to writing down “its differential equation” ; for the laws of Kepler, we substitute the laws of Newton.”  —  Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Ch. ‘Hypotheses in Physics’, subsection “Origin of Mathematical Physics”

If we, as voyeur excluded observers,  apply this principle that ‘the present depends only on the immediate past’ to the ‘sauna scenario’ where with space-suits who control the intensity of the thermal energy field drive up the intensity of the thermal field to a threshold level where there is a violent release of energy directed to the relieving the spatial-forcing pressure/tension, what our visual inquiry will be attracted to is the outbreaks of agitation and violence and we will ‘rewind the film’ to get to the very earliest origins of the emergent dynamics in terms of ‘what things are doing’; i.e. what the ‘local material forms’ with their own ‘local agency’ are doing.  Our unspoken (implicit) assumption is that space is homogenous and a non-participant in these dynamics.   We will find the ‘smoking guns’ who ‘started the trouble’ because we are looking for them, and when we have found them, we will presume that our inquiry has been satisfied, that the ‘first cause’ source of the agitation and violence has been identified and that it lies in the interior of the agitated and violent inhabitants of the homogeneous, passive space.  In the situation in France, the court judges would be amongst those wearing the ‘space suits’ and ‘cooly’ observing the dynamics as voyeur excluded observers.

It is contended that the actions of those who become agitated and violent is ‘second cause’ rather than first cause.  Their ‘free will’ is thus put in a more insightful context; i.e. human organisms are emergent forms which derive from spatial flow-fields, and, like the storm-cells in the above photograph, never ‘get out of’ the spatial flow-fields they are included in (they emerge within them, they live within them and they are reclaimed within them).

If global temperature rise, one may shuffle about looking for a shady spot, but there is no escaping from gravity fields, thermal energy fields, electromagnetic fields etc.  There is NO CHOICE as to our inclusion in spatial fields.  There is only choice in the sense of how we are going to adapt to them.  Adaptation is ‘second cause’ while variations in the spatial fields are ‘first cause’.  When flocks of wildgeese (or human ‘snowbirds’) head south for the winter, we may see this in terms that ‘they chose to’, which implies that their behaviour is ‘locally forced’ from their own internally-directed ‘local agency’ which makes it appear as if it is ‘first cause’ when it is in fact, ‘second cause’.

The fact is that the ambient spatial conditions in the continuously unfolding present orchestrate both individual and collective (migration) behaviours.  It is no coincidence that so many head south in cyclic phase lock with the season weather conditions.  It is because these migrations are ‘spatially-forced’ rather than ‘locally-forced’.

The simple scientific model of a human organism is as a local centrally-controlled processing unit or ‘cybernetic system’ which ‘senses, interprets, decides, and acts’.  While this model can give a trivial explanation of the migration in terms of a gradient-seeking capability, we can’t take the ‘gradient’ for granted since it represents the NON-HOMOGENEITY OF SPACE that serves as the orchestrating force.  That is, spatial forcing is the ‘first cause’ provider of gradients that orchestrate individual and collective behaviour.   The gradient-directing capability or ‘local-forcing’ is ‘second-cause’.

‘Free will’ corresponds to one’s awareness of one’s ‘sense-interpret-decide-act’ capability, but this does not dethrone spatial-forcing as the primary orchestrator of dynamic behaviour.  As Alexander Pope expresses it in his ‘Essay on Man’, the non-homogeneity of space in which we are included and which is ‘forcing’ our behaviour is unpredictably unfolding in the continuing present.   We would be foolish to think that our ‘free will’ takes priority of this. We can take great pride in our ability to ‘sense, interpret, decide and act’ and the apparent ‘free will’ that we associate with this, our ‘local-forcing’ behaviour, but we would be very foolish to put this on a higher pedestal than the spatial-forcing of our behaviour;

Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;

“In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies.”

— Alexander Pope, … Essay on Man

Of course, the pride of which Pope speaks is infused into the thinking of our Western culture and many of those who fly south for the winter would claim that it is because they, being people endowed with ‘free will’, analyzed the situation with its pros and cons, reflected on the different choices, and chose/decided to act upon their intelligent reckoning and fly south.   The organizing powers of space (spatial-forcing) are nowhere to be seen in this kind of self-centred dialogue.   Man’s pride and ego have banished the Goddess, ‘space’ (the nonhomogeneous space of the continuously unfolding now, that we are inextricably included in), and re-rendered the world dynamic in the inverted terms of ‘local forcing’ allegedly perpetrated by local objects/organisms/systems, notionally endowed with their own ‘local agency’.  Space is thus notionally reduced to a homogeneous, non-participating theatre of operations serving as a ‘passive container’ for the visible actions and interactions of the ‘local material agent’ collective.

In conclusion, ‘free-will’ is ‘second cause’, deriving from confusing ‘local visual imagery’ for ‘reality’.  Based on local visible material dynamics, we develop self-awareness of our rational function, which narcissism can make us (falsely) believe, is ‘first cause’.

But our ‘mind’ can engage with more all-encompassing questions than whether an individual has ‘free-will’ and this page is getting too long to continue such exploration at this time.  Suffice it to say that we are deeply aware that we are more than ‘intelligent computing machines’; i.e. that we somehow ‘are’ the continuously unfolding spatial-relational ‘now’ that we are included in.  As Erwin Schroedinger observes in regard to the ‘oneness of mind’;

“There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of the minds or consciousnesses.  Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind.  This is the doctrine of the Upanishads.  And not only of the Upanishads. The mystically experienced union with God regularly entails this attitude unless it is opposed by strong existing prejudices; this means that it is less easily accepted in the West than in the East.

… I should say; the overall number of minds is just one.  I venture to call it indestructible since it has a peculiar timetable, namely mind is always now.  There is really no before and after for mind.  There is only a now that includes memories and expectations.  But I grant that our language is not quite adequate to express this, and I also grant, should anyone wish to state it, that I am now talking religion, not science.

… The world is given but once.  Nothing is reflected.  The original and the mirror image are identical.  The world extended in space and time is but our representation (Vorstellung).  Experience does not give us the slightest clue of its being anything besides that—as Berkeley was well aware.

Sherrington says: “Man’s mind is a recent product of our planet’s side.”

I agree, naturally.  If the first word (man’s) were left out, I would not.  It would seem queer, not to say ridiculous, to think that the contemplating, conscious mind that alone reflects the becoming of the world should have made its appearance only at some time in the course of this “becoming” should have appeared contingently, associated with the very special biological contraption which, in itself, quite obviously discharges the task of facilitating certain forms of life in maintaining themselves, thus favoring their preservation and propagation: forms of life that were latecomers and have been preceded by many others that maintained themselves without that particular contraption (a brain).  Only a small fraction of them (if you count by species) have embarked on ‘getting themselves a brain.’  And before that happened, should it all have been a performance to empty stalls?  Nay, may we call a world that nobody contemplates even that?  When an archeologist reconstructs a city or a culture long bygone, he is interested in human life in the past, in actions, sensations, thoughts, feelings, in joy and sorrow of humans, displayed there and then.  But a world, existing for many millions of years without any mind being aware of it, contemplating it, is it anything at all?  Has it existed?  For do not let us forget: to say, as we did, that the becoming of the world is reflected in a conscious mind is but a cliché, a phrase, a metaphor that has become familiar to us.  The world is given but once.  Nothing is reflected.  The original and the mirror image are identical.  The world extended in space and time is but our representation (Vorstellung).  Experience does not give us the slightest clue of its being anything besides that—as Berkeley was well aware.

… Most painful is the absolute silence of all our scientific investigations toward our questions concerning the meaning and scope of the whole display [the physical world picture].  The more attentively we watch it, the more aimless and foolish it appears to be.  The show that is going on obviously acquires a meaning only in regard to the mind that contemplates it.  But what science tells us about this relationship is patently absurd: as if mind had only been produced by that very display that it is now watching and would pass away with it when the sun finally cools down and the earth has been turned into a desert of ice and snow.”

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