An inclusional worldview
Ted’s Blog
Genius, or just Talent?
0November 28, 2009
by ted lumley
in Ted's Blog
Nature makes human beings and human beings make more human beings.
When nature stops making human beings, human beings will not be able to make more human beings.
So, why do we always talk as if man is in control of ‘populating the earth’? This sounds a lot like the ‘megalomania’ that the Amerindian accused his European colonizers (Western man) of; i.e. Western man’s belief that he is in charge of the interdependent web-of-life rather than being merely a strand within it.
Do we really believe, like we teach our children, that babies come from two humans, a male and female, by their coming together in the ‘reproductive act’ and, voila,- a new little human being. In this self-congratulation for our claimed, amazing powers of creation, aren’t we forgetting something? Aren’t we forgetting that Nature decided that humans would be here and will decide when there is no longer any need for them? Shouldn’t we be understanding that it is not really ‘us’, the local man and woman, that is making the babies?
Emerson discusses how we western humans tend to confuse ‘talent’ for ‘genius’. (more…)
“Organisation” : What is it?
0November 27, 2009
by ted lumley
in Ted's Blog
Nine hundred people committing suicide in one place at the same time would appear to be a ‘highly organised’ occurrence (Jonestown Guyana, November 18, 1978). On the other hand, it is ‘organisation’ that is somehow different than the organisation we see in the fall where the northern skies are filled with birds, flying southward, in formation.
I would say that ‘organisation’ differs by whether it is ‘grounded’ in what’s going on in the space it is included in, or not; i.e. whether the organisation concerns only ‘what thing do’ or whether it comprehends, at the same time, the dynamic relations of things and the dynamics of the space they are included in.
For example, when groups of people organise, it is often due to their ‘knowledge’ so that the organising is internally driven from out of the individual organisms. This sort of organisation is ‘ungrounded’ in the dynamics of space in which it is included.
Consider three groups of people who come together at the same place and at the same time, but at different times for each of the three groups. (more…)
Nature ‘versus’ Nurture
3November 26, 2009
by ted lumley
in Ted's Blog
The arguments over apportioning which of those aspects of a person derive from ‘nature’ (genetics) and which aspects derive from ‘nurture’ (environmental influence) is a bullshit argument (so, thank you very much, ‘sciences’ of ‘biology’ and ‘psychology’). Just because we can take a picture of a DNA string and define and label it, doesn’t endow it with local existence and life-creating powers in its own right. For christ’s sake, when you get right down to it, there isn’t any such thing as ‘local-material structure’, the ‘atomic particles’ that were the supposed ‘building blocks’ are now recognized to be resonances in the energy-field-flow. Space and matter have a wave structure. And, in any case, As Barry Commoner observes, ‘DNA didn’t create life, life created DNA!
In the energy-field-flow continuum of nature, the organism is the environment, the inhabitant is the habitat, there are no absolute ‘local existing objects’ and the relationship between energy-loaded space and the ‘illogic’ of what ‘APPEAR’ (Schroedinger’s ‘schaumkommen’) to be ‘LOCAL’ ‘material bodies’ is ‘explained away’ by Ernst Mach’s principle of space-matter relativity; “The dynamics of the habitat condition the dynamics of the inhabitant/s AT THE SAME TIME as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat’. That is, space-and-matter are a conjugate dynamic unity, … organism-and-environment are a conjugate dynamic unity, inhabitant-and-habitat are a conjugate dynamic unity. There is no ‘dual sourcing’ of what goes on with one purported source BEING INTERNAL ‘genetic building blocks’ and the other purported source BEING EXTERNAL ‘environmental influences’. This artificial ‘split’ in the sourcing of creative dynamics, which comes from the ‘idealisations’ that science imposes on nature’s dynamic, is where this bogus ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox comes from.
The invisible conjugate aspect of ‘self’ (the ‘soul’ of the ‘self’) is the continuously unfolding continuum of nature in which the material conjugate aspect of the ‘self’ is uniquely, situationally included. By ignoring the habitat-inhabitant conjugate unity and one-sidedly reducing our notion of ‘self’ to that of a local, independently-existing organism with its own ‘local, internally originating behaviour’ is to intellectually ‘exorcise’ the ‘soul’ aspect. So, would our educational institutes please stop brainwashing our children by treating this ‘nature versus nurture’ paradox as if it were ‘real’, and admit that it arises from our own over-simplified definitions? Where does one complain about this? Will the next cultural pandemic hatch out of the blogosphere? (;-}
DNA, like all forms, is the 'result' NOT 'source' of creative dynamics
Talking-the-Walk
0November 18, 2009
by ted lumley
in Ted's Blog
Well, it is not everyone that wants to philosophically probe the depths of our ‘mind’ where the production system lives that brings us our everyday view of the world, but it usually happens that those who do want to, have an energy for doing so that is intense and persisting. So it was with the wife of the son of an old friend visiting these parts when they stayed with me over the past few days. Our discussions started each morning and lasted for hours, recommencing in the afternoon when we came back in, got the fire going in the woodstove and poured a glass of wine.
There are always points of agreement (and disagreement) in these discussions, as might be expected, and in this case, there was lots of agreement but it was curious that one of the points of strong agreement turned out to have, within it, a point of disagreement. That is, we both acknowledged that the action that ‘actually happens’ is the combination of the male assertive aspect and the female opening of possibility aspect, as in examples like the throwing of a cigarette into the forest, and the example of Hitler’s inflammatory rhetoric and the tensions in Germany relative to the European powers (the couple are from Holland).
Ok, we both agreed that things don’t happen without the opening of spatial possibility, and that our culture tends to commonly, mistakenly attribute all of ‘what happens’ to a purported ‘causal agent’; i.e. to say ‘the careless smoker caused this’ (a burnt out forest) and/or ‘the aggression of hitler’s nazi regime was the cause of WWII’. That is, the real situation is more as Pasteur and Béchamp put it, “le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout’ (the purported causal agent is nothing, the opening of spatial possibility is everything). If the forest is not dry and ready to go, tossing a cigarette into will do nothing, and, similarly, the intended ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ of the politician, will not take ignite the populace if the accrued potentials are not ‘in place’.
The subtle point of ‘disagreement’ was, (more…)
Can we, together, build a better world?
1November 13, 2009
by ted lumley
in Ted's Blog
My experience is that many people interpret ‘working together to build a better world’ in the sense of ‘acting out of our ‘free will’ guided by the ‘universal knowledge of good’; i.e. out of our ‘purported’ moral and ethical knowledge.
This notion of joining together to make a better world seems to raise in us a feeling of ‘come on, people, we can do it, let’s get on with it’.
But there are spoilsports like myself, who will say things like; ‘Do you really believe in ‘free will’?’ and ‘How do you know what’s ‘good’ and what’s ‘bad’?
At this point, I tend to start getting those nasty ‘what the hell is he going on about’ looks, that if they were utterances, would say; ‘if you are not with us, you are against us.’ (more…)
Remembrance
0November 11, 2009
by ted lumley
in Ted's Blog
Today, in Canada, is ‘Remembrance Day’ (November 11th) but my fear is that it MAY be serving more to bring about ’selective forgetfulness’.
I do not believe it ‘subtracts’ from the respectful intentions of our remembrance to ‘add’ to our ‘remembrances’.
Should we forget the mothers and sisters of those young German boys who couldn’t bear to see their mother starving or their sisters turning to prostitution, humiliated indirectly or directly by the insensitivity of the people ‘in power’ in the world, having been made ‘the latter’s prisoners’ by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI?
Their mothers and sisters know that their love and caring for their families made them prey to radical calls to action against those powerful others, a calling which saw many of them pay the ultimate price, their own young lives. Their mothers and sisters know that they were ‘the collateral damage’ of retribution aimed at their fathers. Everyone knew, at the time of the Treaty of Versailles, that the ‘innocents’ were going to pay the price. Journalists of the era captured this overt injustice in cartoons such as the following;
'evil nazis' - result?, or cause? ... of global dissonance?
Harold Nicolson, a British delegate at Versailles, declared the treaties ‘neither just nor wise’, and called the delegates ‘very stupid men’. But Winston Churchill believed that the treaty was the best that could be achieved, and that (more…)
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