the banished goddess 'djinn'


 

This overview is a companion piece to the following essay, ‘There is Neither Past Nor Future: The Tao is Now’ which summarizes in non-technical language, the gist of that essay, which brings into connective confluence, a diverse multiplicity of understandings which, when brought together, [are designed to] deliver a holonic understanding that transcends ‘the component understandings’.

 ‘Time’ is a concept we use to reduce our experience of inclusion in a world where many things are happening ‘at the same time’ [i.e. ‘in the same space’].  In fact there are so many different activities going on at the same time which are in general influencing one another and which are included in the overall activity continuum we call ‘the universe’ or ‘nature’, that it is impossible for any human mind to capture it all.  Nevertheless, it all adds up to the world we live in, … the world of our sensory experience.

 In order to deal with this seemingly infinite complexity, science and rationality simplify things with the help of noun-and-verb [Indo-European] language-and-grammar in combination with absolute space.  That is, by imagining space as a fixed frame extending out to infinity in three dimensions and by imputing ‘independent thing-in-itself-existence’ to the visible forms we observe, we can come up with a ‘snapshot’ or ‘framed view’ of the world.   By adding the dimension of ‘time’, we can capture ‘movement’ and ‘change’ in terms of a succession of these ‘frames’, as in a ‘motion picture’.  The motion picture, being a linear succession of ‘states of the world’ gives the impression of a ‘past’ and a ‘future’.   In fact, this impression is very strong when we focus on forms seen as ‘things-in-themselves’ as we watch ‘what these things-in-themselves do’ over time.

 Of course, we could be filming this picture in the ballroom of the Titanic, a thought that reminds us that any local space-frame we impose as a ‘fixed stage’ for inquiry into what the inhabitants of that space are doing, is, IN PHYSICAL REALITY, included in a larger, relational space.  In other words, by splitting apart our experience of inclusion in a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational space which is the ‘mother of’ the relational forms within it [and the observer], and imputing independent-existence to those forms, their development and their movement now [in our language-conditioned mind] becomes ‘their own’ in the sense that their internal components and processes are responsible, in a local, jumpstart manner, for their development and behaviour, both of which are now seen as happening relative to, … NOT their relations with the world in which they are included,… but to an abstract ‘absolute space’ and ‘absolute time’ reference frame come ‘operating theatre’..

 The idea of ‘one world’, the ‘unity of nature’ is lost here as the relational forms in the relational space are re-cast as independently-existing things-in-themselves.  That is, as discussed in the essay, not only our inclusional experience but also modern physics understands our world as a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum inhabited by relational forms.   But as just described, our scientific and rational thinking has managed to invert the world dynamic and re-cast it in the notional terms of ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves with their own internal process driven and directed behaviours which act/interact in an absolute space and absolute time reference frame-seen as their ‘theatre of operations’.   

 What is wrong with this picture, interpreted in our standard terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’?  The sailor can exercise his free will and choose to dance a jig as his ship is going under.  He feels he is ‘in control’ and he can prove it by bringing out the prisoners on deck and executing them one after the other, even while the ship is sinking.

 What is wrong is that our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar has made us captive of the impression that dynamics,  in terms of ‘what things do’, are ‘real’.

They are not ‘real’ according to modern physics and they are not real to speakers of indigenous aboriginal languages.  I am not saying that the sailor did NOT dance a jig, but I am saying that actions are NOT constituted by ‘things’ and ‘what they do’.   Instead, actions are constituted by relational spatial transformation’.  This means that we can understand the sailor’s actions in the deeper context of the relational space or ‘suprasystem’ that he is included in, that is the orchestrator of his coming and going.  His system-suprasystem relation is like that of the storm-cell to the relational space of the atmosphere, or like the ‘university’ to the relational space of the community which not only orchestrates its continuing dynamic but which induced its emergence.  This relational-spatial source of emergence, development and behaviour of the relational form is ‘timeless’.

In the aboriginal languages, there is no past and future.  In  “Science and Linguistics” , Benjamin Whorf describes the “Contrast between a “temporal” language (English,) and a “timeless” language (Hopi). What are to English differences of time are to Hopi differences in the kind of validity.”

Instead of ‘past’ and ‘future’, one assumes an activity continuum so that ‘everything is in motion’. As Whorf says, in Nootka [the language of the Nootkas], a ‘house’ is ‘something that occurs’ (it is captured as a development within the transforming relational spatial plenum) and NOT a ‘thing-in-itself’;

“In the Hopi language, ‘lightning, wave, flame, meteor, puff of smoke, pulsation’ are verbs — events of necessarily brief duration cannot be anything but verbs. ‘Cloud’ and ‘storm’ are at about the lower limit of duration for nouns. Hopi, you see, actually has a classification of events (or linguistic isolates) by duration type, something strange to our modes of thought. On the other hand, in Nootka, a language of Vancouver Island, all words seem to us to be verbs, but really there are no classes 1 and 2; we have, as it were, a monistic view of nature that gives us only one class of word for all kinds of events. ‘A house occurs’ or ‘it houses’ is the way of saying ‘house,’ exactly like ‘a flame occurs’ or ‘it burns.’ These terms seem to us like verbs because they are inflected for durational and temporal nuances, so that the suffixes of the word for house event make it mean longlasting house, temporary house, future house, house that used to be, what started out to be a house, and so on.” —Whorf, ‘Science and Linguistics’

The trick to get into the timeless view of the indigenous aboriginal is, more precisely, the trick to liberate our habituated minds from the noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar pseudo-world of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what they do’.   The trick is, for example, if we can see the boat, like the house, as a relational-spatial rearrangement of trees and hemp plants and rock [glass, concrete] that will dissipate and rearrange into things in a continuing process of transformation, … rather than as a ‘thing-in-itself’, and a fish as something that forms as a relational rearranging of smaller fish and plankton and phytoplankton [that synthesize matter from sunbeams] as happens in the continually-transforming-in-the-now ecosystemic space of an ocean or aquarium, and likewise for all relational forms including the sailor, then we can suspend the notional ‘jumpstarting’ of action from ‘things-in-themselves’, which as mentioned, is a mental artefact of noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar.

If we can liberate our minds from the noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar FICTIONAL world, then we will see, for example;

1. When we move into a beautiful new location, we destroy it by moving into it.  We destroy forest and meadow at the same time we construct our house.  It was not the case that one thing [given by the word ‘person’] moved into another thing [given by the word ‘cove’]; i.e. it was instead the case that space is a fullness so that something must ‘give way’ in or order for something to ‘take its place’.  ‘Construction and destruction are conjugate aspects of the one dynamic of transformation [of relational space].

2. McLuhan’s ‘medium is the message’ point is that while we say we are ‘building a factory’, the space we are building it in is already a full space, and more than that, it is a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational space and the relationships in that space must give way in order for the factory to join the space.  All of the relations in the valley/village between/amongst one another and the common living space must transform in order to give birth to the factory.  It is common for us to identify ‘the person/agency that made it happen’, that ‘built the factory’, but this presentation of activity in cause-and-effect, doer-deed terms is ‘words’, it is not reality.  The reality is that ‘it takes a whole community to raise a factory’.  Relational transformation is ‘all there is in a continually transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum.

3. The earth’s biosphere is a finite space within which new forms are continually emerging [we describe this as ‘speciation’, mutations, growths in population] and older forms going out [extinctions, declines in population].  The space of the biosphere is ‘fluid’ and it is always full.  It does not get bigger when human population grows; i.e. in a full space something must ‘give way’ in order for something new to come in.  The relational space of the biosphere is the ‘mother’ of this continual ‘incoming’ and ‘outgoing’.  ‘Incoming’ (creation) and ‘outgoing’ (destruction) are not real processes in themselves, they are conjugate aspects of the one dynamic of transformation [relational spatial transformation].

4. We say that ‘farmer John produces wheat’ but farmer John is included in a relational space that can be nurturing or impoverishing (in cycles).  Farmer John can wither away and die along with his plants, if the relational space that contains him becomes too impoverishing [he, too, is a relational feature in a relational space].   Thus, the language construct ‘farmer John produces wheat’, which pictures things in terms of ‘what things do’ out of the context of the relational suprasystem dynamic they are included in, misrepresents what is really physically going on.  Farmer John is an ‘agent of transformation’; i.e. a relational form within a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum, … he is NOT a jumpstart doer-of-deeds in an absolute space and absolute time ‘operating theatre’ as our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar portrays him.  

5. A tornado or hurricane or, in general, a ‘convection cell’ is the conjugate relation of outside-inward, many-to-one, female/yin convergent [sink] influx and inside-outward, one-to-many, male/yang divergent [source] outflux.   These cells start off as ‘circulations’ in the atmosphere and oceans as thermal energy from solar irradiance builds up in irregular spatial-relational concentrations.  The circulating cells are induced by the spatial-relational imbalance in thermal energy holdings, to restore spatial relational balance.  The ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ associated with these systems do not belong to the ‘systems’, they belong to the relational suprasystem the systems are included in.   Furthermore, the ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ are not separate processes in themselves but are conjugate aspects of the one dynamic of ‘transformation’ [relational spatial transformation] of the relational suprasystem.  Every system is included in a relational suprasystem and it’s not only the case that the relational suprasystem shapes the development and behaviour of the system, it also creates it.  [Systems sciences’ Russell Ackoff  uses the example ‘university’ (system) and ‘community’ (suprasystem) to illustrate this physical reality that we common allow our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar to ‘over-ride’ in our mental logic.)].

This shift in worldview is general.  The noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar base RE-presentation of our observations in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things do’ is just that, a language-based RE-presentation, and it occludes and obscures the relational-spatial nature of dynamics.  The language game based view is the view used by science and rationality.  It achieves, as Mach observed, ‘economy of thought’.

Our ‘un-reduced experience’ is in terms of a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum.

“Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves.” — David Bohm

Understood in this un-reduced manner, we ourselves are ‘agents of transformation’ in the manner of the storm-cell in the atmosphere, rather than simple doers-of-deeds.  As Emerson says, we ‘transmit influences from the vast and universal to the point on which our genius can act’.

Our growing environmental problems have clearly been the result of seeing ourselves as simple ‘doers-of-deeds’, … ‘independently-existing things-in-ourselves with our own free will and the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to own and develop land’.   That is, not recognizing ourselves as relational forms in a relational space; i.e. as ‘agents of transformation’ whose actions are transforming the relational space we are included in, is a recipe letting our ‘agent of transformation’ powers ‘flap around like a loose sheet in the wind’.

Economists now have a term for our continuing ‘overlooking’ of the transformational aspect of our actions that goes beyond our simplistic ‘doer-deed’ standard interpretation and it is the after-the-fact fix, ‘externalities’, formulated by Joseph Stiglitz in his work in economic theory for which he won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2003.

Actions do not ‘jumpstart’ from our local, material selves; instead, we are amongst the relational forms through which the activity continuum aka ‘universe’ expresses itself.  Consciousness is a ‘unum’ that we tap into incompletely [as in a house of mirrors as Erwin Schroedinger puts it] through our own unique because uniquely, relationally situated, … inclusion in space.

All of these revised understandings are ‘accessible to us’ if we are able to suspend the pictures that our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar puts into our generations-long conditioned European mind, although this is not so easy to do, as Wittgenstein observed;

“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

But the more we can suspend language [from making its automatic impressions on our mental modeling] and reflect on it, the more readily we can see the error of picturing the world in terms of ‘things-in-themselves with their own internal process driven and directed behaviours’ which splits out relational forms from the relational flow.   The sailboater who acknowledges that he derives his power and steerage from the relational space he is situationally included in, and orients his moves to FIRSTLY sustaining balance and harmony with the suprasystem dynamics he is included in, and SECONDLY thinks about ‘destination’,… may purchase a powerful engine and invert these natural priorities, FIRSTLY orienting to his destination and only SECONDLY concerning himself with the orchestrating signals from the suprasystem when they become so large that he, now rendered environmentally insensitive by his new found powers, can’t ride roughshod over/through them.   But even the men in the Titanic did not win the battle with the suprasystem dynamic, so the worldview in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what they do’ out of the context of the relational suprasystem space they are included in, is an oversimplified view that fails to capture physical reality.

These same ‘reflections’ which picture the world as a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum show up in more places than in the indigenous aboriginal belief tradition; e.g. they show up in Taoism;

As the Taoists say, the manifest [the yang, asserting aspect] is only the lesser half of it while the non-manifest [the yin, accommodating/orchestrating aspect] is the greater half [the two being conjugate aspects of the one yin/yang transformational dynamic]. The banishing of the yin or djinn is the theme of the lead-in picture in both this essay and the ‘There is Neither Past Nor Future: The Tao is Now’ essay.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;

 – – – Lao Tzu

 “The spirit of the valley never dies.

This is called the mysterious woman.

The gateway of the mysterious woman

Is called the root of heaven and earth

Dimly visible, it seems as it if were there,

Yet use will never drain it. (VI)

‘Know the male

But keep the role of the female

And be ravine to the Empire

Then the constant virtue will not desert you

And you will again return to being a babe.”

(Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching  XXVIII)

The ‘return to being a babe’ allusion is also found in Heraclitus’ Πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei) worldview or ‘everything is in flux’ worldview.  The notion is that since we are transforming relational features in a transforming relational space, we must accept being continually ‘reborn’ [transcending ourselves] to sustain harmonious relations with the continually ‘reborn’ relational space we share inclusion in [and in which we are agents of transformation];

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Joseph Campbell’s research into myth delivers the same idea;

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” … “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” — Joseph Campbell

 

 * * *

If we accept, for the moment at least, that the world is a continuously transforming relational space in which we are relational forms in the transforming flow, … we can move on to explore some of the implications as to how our individual and collective behaviour will be differently shaped from that which comes from picturing the world in noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar based terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things do’.

1.  The subsumation of binary polar opposites with circularities.

In the transformational view, ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ no longer make any sense because there are no ‘things-in-themselves’ to ‘own’ the inputs and outputs.  Instead, ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ are conjugate aspects of the one dynamic of transformation, as in the hurricane.  The hurricane is a manifest expression of transformation [of the relational space that engenders it].    The relational space of the atmosphere/ocean transforms with infusions of thermal energy.  The hurricane is an ‘agent of transformation’.  It is not REALLY a thing-in-itself with its own development and behaviour as our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar portray it; e.g. ‘Katrina is intensifying and growing larger’,… ‘Katrina is moving northwest towards the Gulf Coast’, … ‘Katrina is ravaging New Orleans’, … ‘Katrina is dissipating’. 

‘Upstream’ from Katrina as the source of her development and behaviour is the continuously transforming relational suprasystem that not only inhabits her but creates her.

In a transforming relational space, this subsumation of binary polar opposites is general and complete.  There are NO binary polar opposites left standing in a relational space [the physically real space of our experience].  In other words, in all cases, binary polar opposites are resolved by relational transformation.  As with ‘construction’ and ‘destruction’ [in order to construct a new house we must, at the same time, as if our action were a double edged sword, destroy forest and meadow; i.e. where space is understood as a relational spatial plenum, these two ‘yang actions’ are re-interpreted as one ‘yin/yang’ dynamic aka ‘transformation’], … so it is also with ALL binary polar opposites such as;

(a) Growth and decline: in an ecosystemic relation, as in the relational space of the earth’s biosphere, if we see something growing, we can count on a reciprocal decline of other things.  This is inevitable in a relational spatial plenum.  What is manifest to us is the yang aspect, the assertive growth (e.g. of human population) and/or the yang destruction and annihilation of things [the flip side of which is the accommodating or opening of passageways for new assertive growth], however, while our visual sense orients the manifest yang events, the plenum of the earth’s biosphere undergoes continual transformation which is general in the universe and is captured in Mach’s principle which describes the ‘mediating medium’ role of relational space;

“the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.” — Mach’s principle

Clearly, the manifest aspect of dynamics, which we pick up with our visual sensing, is NOT the whole story.  in fact, the primary influence in a field dynamic or fluid dynamic is the non-manifest (yin), non-local, non-visible and non-material as with gravitational field influence which is ‘everywhere-at-the-same-time’, while the manifest (yang) influence, which is local, visible and material is ‘secondary’.  However, both are bound together in conjugate (yin/yang) relation. 

Since this is a key point which brings out the fact that physical phenomena transcend the simplistic reduction to language-based terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’, it deserves a bit of elaboration so that one can keep it in mind as a general case.  This is not ‘something new’, but has been an acknowledged aspect of ‘field’ dynamics.  The general idea is given by Einstein and Infeld in the following comment;

“We cannot build physics on the basis of the matter-concept alone. But the division into matter and field is, after the recognition of the equivalence of mass and energy, something artificial and not clearly defined. Could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. In this way a new philosophical background could be created. Its final aim would be the explanation of all events in nature by structure laws valid always and everywhere. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone. There would be no place, in our new physics, for both field and matter, field being the only reality. This new view is suggested by the great achievements of field physics, by our success in expressing the laws of electricity, magnetism, gravitation in the form of structure laws, and finally by the equivalence of mass and energy.”  — Einstein and Infeld, ‘The Evolution of Physics’

In this view, the physical phenomenon is that of a relational form in the transforming relational space, but what is manifest to our visual sense, we capture in our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar in terms of ‘a thing-in-itself’ [a stone] and ‘what it does’ [flies through the air], ignoring the non-local, non-visible and non-material influence that associates with the transformation of an energy-charged relational space.

So, it is not just ‘language’ that ‘speaks’.  Experience/experiment also speaks, as illustrated in the following excerpt from Michael Gorman’s ‘Transforming Nature’;

“Like Kepler’s discovery of the planetary laws, Michael Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic fields played a key role in a scientific revolution. Oddly enough, it was a revolution that countered an important feature of the Newtonian synthesis. Gravity was a force that acted in a straight line and was transmitted instantaneously over the space between bodies; this phenomenon was referred to as ‘action at a distance’. Kepler would have been horrified by the idea; he thought in terms of a real force emanating from the sun, contacting the planets like light and sweeping them around their orbits.
.
Newton‘s gravity became one model for how forces might operate in other domains. By the late eighteenth century, it was clear that the attraction and repulsion of electrical charges followed an inverse square law. Perhaps electricity was another instance of action at a distance.
.
This viewpoint had its critics, among them Michael Faraday, who rejected both the primacy of matter and the notion that electricity operated ‘at a distance’. The examples of Faraday’s problem-solving processes described in this section are distilled from detailed, fine-grained cognitive studies by Tweney (R. D. Tweney, ‘A Framework for the Cognitive Psychology of Science’) and Gooding (‘Experiment and the Making of Meaning: Human Agency in Scientific Observation and Experiment’). “For him [Faraday], fields of force were the primary reality, and ‘matter’ a secondary or derived phenomenon. To understand his creative life, then, we must acknowledge his position as a revolutionary, as someone who demonstrates the practicality of a world view completely different from the prevailing one, and who does this, not by metaphysical argument, but by a series of compelling experimental demonstrations of such conceptual force that they could not be ignored” (R. D. Tweney, ‘Fields of Enterprise: On Michael Faraday’s Thought’)

 

Evidently, what constitutes ‘physical reality’ can be validated directly by our intuition through ‘experimental demonstration’, and the following understanding was accepted ‘by demonstration’;

“fields of force are the primary reality, and ‘matter’ a secondary or derived phenomenon” —Faraday

Faraday drew a diagram showing a simple ‘experimental demonstration’ and mailed it out to a lot of scientists. The recipient could easily reconstruct the experiment and in this way; i.e. by experimental demonstration, Faraday DISCRIMINATED between PHYSICAL REALITY AND NOT PHYSICAL REALITY: i.e. Faraday demonstrated that as far as electricity and magnetism was concerned, the magnetic influence and the electrical influence were not authored by ‘matter’ which would have had to have influenced things ‘at a distance’ which was intuitively ‘just not right’ [it does not ‘fit’ when we bring a diverse multiplicity of our experiences of nature into connective confluence].

This validation or refutation of a logical proposition formulated in noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar by experimental demonstration is something very different from a purely LOGICAL tour de force such as that of Parmenides who showed that there were only two possibilities EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’, or Descarte’s famous ‘I think therefore I am’ [which Nietzsche poked holes in by mapping it into the real physical world and showing that we use language to synthetically impose subjecthood and ‘intention’ on an activity to break it out of the activity continuum].

This subsumation of binary polar opposites with ‘transformation’ [of relational space] is completely general and applies ‘throughout the universe’ [see footnote in the main essay; an article in the August 2013 Scientific American by Meinard Kulhmann entitled ‘What is Real’.

How many other ‘binary polar opposites’ do we frequently use as if the two opposing poles are real, where such thinking shapes our behaviour very differently from what it would be if we assumed ‘transformation’ in its place?

There are a large number of them, as discussed by Heraclitus, who came up with this same understanding that binary polar opposites are resolved by transformation; e.g. the flame is light in the dark; the flame is transformation. The tension of opposites associated with the tensioned string on the lyre is resolved by harmony (wave dynamics).  That is, the oscillation of a tensioned string, like a pendulum, is an exchange between potential energy and kinetic energy while the sum of the two are preserved; i.e. potential energy and kinetic energy are conjugate aspects of the dynamic of energy-in-transformation, leading us back to the statements of Einstein/Infeld and Faraday;

“energy in transformation [field dynamics] is the primary reality, and the local, visibly manifest material dynamic, a secondary or derived phenomenon’.

Additional binary polar opposites where ‘misinterpretation’ arising from our capture of the manifest-only (yang aspect) using our noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar include;

‘Good’ and ‘Evil’.

This is worth some discussion since it leads to major behaviour-shaping differences in the world’s social dynamic. 

If the language being used were Hopi or Nootka, the binary poles of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ would be understood NOT as real, but as verbs.  As in electrical phenomena, polarization is primary and it can induce ‘opposing poles’ but one cannot assume that the ‘poles’ are the source of the ‘zapping’ that goes on between the poles [the buck does not start and stop with the poles], … the conflict of opposing poles is secondary to the ‘polarizing influence’ associated with relational spatial transformation.  This leads indigenous aboriginals to a system of justice that is ‘restorative’; i.e. it assumes that conflict arises from the relations amongst inhabitants and habitat; ‘it takes a whole community to raise a ‘criminal’’, … so that the community, as a relational collective, must assume responsibility for the polarizing source that underlies the manifest ‘eruption’ of conflict, in the same manner that relational tensions in the earth underlie the manifest ‘eruption’ of earthquakes where the Pacific plate head-butts with the North American plate etc.  The buck does not start and stop with the head-butting plates but derives from the polarizing tensions.

The community dynamic is not simply the manifest aspect; i.e. in a relational space, the collective membership of the community are all inherently and inevitably involved in a manner given by Mach’s principle;

“the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.”

The European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar, meanwhile, has embraced a view [termed ‘Enlightenment’] of the world wherein man is seen as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-himself with his own internal process driven and [intellect-and-purpose] directed behaviour.

“… the Enlightenment held that human beings are rational creatures who exist independently of any metaphysical force, such as God. Ernst Cassirer argues that in the eighteenth century, power could be understood in terms of a single word: reason. Reason represented the central, unifying point for eighteenth century European thought; it was all that the Enlightenment longed for and all that it achieved. This is certainly not far from the truth. Reason was certainly one of the most important characteristics of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. And the concept of rational autonomy that is implied by this belief in universal reason was equally crucial: it profoundly influenced the shape of Enlightened science and politics, and it was the subject of a sustained critique by Nietzsche.

… Human rationality also implies for Enlightened thinkers an attempt to gain knowledge and understanding of the natural world. … the Enlightened thinkers were generally confident in their belief that they could use rational principles to solve problems of social interaction, just as they used rationality to understand and control the natural world. This belief lead to the Enlightened faith in social progress and a corresponding optimism that the ideals of the Enlightenment would eventually culminate in a utopian society. Hampson refers to this as an “unprecedented optimism concerning the nature of man and his ability to shape his material and social environment to his own convenience.” … Nietzsche opposed this Enlightened faith in progress as naive” — Lewis Call

Of course, the reason-based understanding of the natural world is also in this noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar based [over-simplified, ‘economy-of-thought’ based] terms of ‘what independently-existing things-in-themselves do’.  The notion that man’s rationality was capable of ‘controlling the natural world’ has been grossly mistaken in the manner that the language-construct ‘farmer John produces wheat’ is grossly mistaken; i.e. all of farmer John’s rational competencies and technologies cannot overcome the fact that he is included with a relational suprasystem whose nurturing phase produces both plants and humans and whose variances that range between nurturing and impoverishing are inherently beyond man’s control; i.e. the relational form in the relational space [e.g. the storm-cell in the relational space of the atmosphere] is an expression of the continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum; it cannot ‘invert the process’; i.e. the storm-cells cannot drive the atmospheric flow they are included in, which the flow ‘hatched’ as part of its continuing-in-the-now transformational dynamic; i.e. to kinetically restore balance and harmony in the presence of mounting potential energy differentials [the storm-cells emerge to unload the spring-loading that sources tensions; i.e. to relieve tensions].

The European system of ‘retributive justice’ is based on the understanding that the binary opposite poles of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are ‘real’, rather than secondary artefacts of polarizing influence in the relational space we all share inclusion in.  Because the Enlightenment thinking of the European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar pictures man as a reason-driven automaton, there is no other place to attribute violent behaviour to, but to the reason-driven automaton and his internal process driven and [intellection and purpose] directed behaviour.  Given this understanding of the social dynamic, it follows logically that ‘keeping the peace’ equates to ‘eliminating disturbers of the peace’ since it is understood that the ‘buck starts and stops’ with respect to violent actions, in the interior of the manifest doer-of-the-deed.

As we have seen, violent actions taken to eliminate the imputed jumpstart sources of violent actions are apt to generate more imputed jumpstart sources of violent actions since these arise from ‘tensions/friction’ within the relational webs of the continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum, in the manner of sparks erupting sporadically from the relational dynamics when things are rubbed against one another.  The things that are rubbed together are related by the common field they share inclusion in which ‘doesn’t like’ the building of polarizing tensions and inherently seeks resolution through discharging, … ‘discharging’ and ‘charging’ being conjugate aspects of the one dynamic of transformation [the continually-transformation-in-the-now of the relational spatial plenum].

The Enlightenment view of men as ‘reason-driven automatons’ leaves no other option but to attribute manifest violence to the individuals through whom it manifests.  Whereas, in the indigenous aboriginal view; i.e. the view of man as a relational form in a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum, “it takes a whole community to raise a violent individual”.

The ‘talking circle’ or ‘learning circle’ derives from an acknowledging of the diffuse relational roots of violence; i.e. through tensions that build in the web of relations, thus it is used to resolve the eruptions of violence ‘at the source’ which means, in the webs of relations in the community and the land.  Of course, the troubled individual who, because of his unique situational inclusion in the relational web, is a frequent instrument of ‘discharge’ of the tensions, may have to be ‘eliminated’ to limit the damage, although in an indigenous aboriginal community, this does not equate to judging such an individual as the jumpstart source where the buck starts and stops in regard to the eruptions of violence.

 * * *

As is evident, the global social dynamic is currently dominated by Enlightenment thinking in which binary opposing poles are deemed to be ‘real’, thus we are currently on the fast track with ‘the war on terrorism’ towards mutual annihilation of opposing sides that both believe in the ‘reality’ of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ but with mutually opposing interpretations of who is ‘good’ and who is ‘evil’.

This brings up another related instance where binary polar opposites are [mis]taken to be ‘real’; i.e. ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.

There is nowhere in our experience where we can discover an absolute demarcation/boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, however it is on this basis that the European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar has constructed the concept of a ‘sovereign state’; a concept which law historians refer to as a ‘secularized theological concept’. 

The secularized theological concept of the ‘independently-existing’ sovereign state is constructed using this notion of the absolute, mutually exclusive ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.

What we get is another ‘reason-based automaton’ [a global collective of 193 of them] that emulates the Enlightenment model of man and which claims all of the same ‘equal rights’ to own property and to its own pursuit of happiness which involves ‘developing and improving its owned property’ in whatever manner it chooses.   As Historians of Law such as Peter D’Errico (law professor emeritus at the University of Massachussetts) note;

Sovereignty became “the dominant concept in the field of … political assumptions. … the essential qualification for full membership [in] the international community.”  The concept of “sovereignty” provided state power with an “inside” and an “outside.” [Jens Bartelson, ‘A Genealogy of Sovereigntism’]. States claimed supreme power inside what they called their “domestic” realms and defined other states’ realms as “outside.” — Peter D’Errico

State sovereignty “is a ‘religion’ and a faith.” —Mark Owen Lombardi, “Third-World Problem-Solving and the ‘Religion’ of Sovereignty: Trends and Prospects.”

“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts, not only because of their historical development … but also because of their systematic structure.” — Jens Bartelson, ‘A Genealogy of Sovereignty.’

“Western political thinking itself is grounded in theological concepts of “Christian nationalism.” 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.” —R. B. J. Walker and Saul H. Mendlovitz, “Interrogating State Sovereignty.”

In this manner, the Enlightenment European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar creates another level of ‘reason-driven automatons’ whose notional ‘operating theatre’ is absolute space and absolute time, rather than a continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum.

Now we impose a soccer ball like segmentation over the globe where each segment allegedly marks the location of an ‘independently-existing sovereign state’.  The Enlightenment European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar may ‘buy into this’ ‘secularized theological concept’ but the animals, birds, insects, winds and rivers are not ‘buying in’ and neither are ‘indigenous aboriginals’ even though the superior force of Enlightenment Europeans that is imposed on them to ‘make believers out of them’ [e.g. ‘residential schools’] is something they must as least give deference to or be imprisoned or shot.

“The skillfully drawn borders that cartographers have provided for us are … spiritual and philosophical abstractions representative of a form of quasi-belief. They are … not detached maps of reality as proponents would have us believe. These geographies reflect an ardent desire to make (or impose) sovereignty a physical reality as natural as the mountains, rivers and lakes….” — Mark Owen Lombardi, “Third-World Problem-Solving and the ‘Religion’ of Sovereignty: Trends and Prospects.”

If we suspend, for a moment, the organization of the surface of the globe perpetrated by the ‘reason-driven automatons’ of European Enlightenment, and reflect on how relational forms might organize, we might return to this question of inverting ‘who owns the inputs and outputs’.

Supposing we observe an algal matte like network of anthills cloaking the surface of the planet, and reflect on the quantum physics notion that ‘relations are all there is’; i.e. the relational activities are more fundamental than the things/communities in the web of relations. We can think of this in terms of ants swarming all over the surface of a sphere [the surface of a sphere has no fixed reference points and is thus a ‘relational space’]. As the ants continue to swarm all over this purely relational space, clusters gather, which are ‘made of swarming ants’ so that the picture is now that we have a matrix of communities connected by ‘highways’, so that our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar wants to give the name ‘community’ to the cluster and make it primary, and talk about ‘communities’ that are relationally connected. This is the inverted view of our Western civilization which puts ‘things’ before ‘relations’ and imputes to ‘things’ their own local, internal process driven and directed behaviours.   The incomings and outgoings into and out of the communities are not, in the relational space view, interpreted as inputs and outputs belonging to the local community-system.  At this point, we have forgotten that the relational space suprasystem in which these relational forms called ‘communities’ develop is primary while the community-system-things-in-themselves are secondary.

We ‘forget’ because we have substituted noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar to recast these continuing relational spatial dynamics in terms of ‘local system-things-in-themselves’ and ‘what system-things do’.

When Oases ‘spring up’ [they also dry up] they attract desert nomads like honey pots attract swarms of ants.  The outside-inward orchestrating/shaping influence of relational space on individual and collective behaviour is a ‘yin’ force [implies a yin/yang dynamic] which is impossible when one models the social dynamic in terms of reason-driven automatons moving about in an absolute space and absolute time ‘operating theatre’.  The Enlightenment European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar will explain the formation of Oasis communities in the only terms they allow, in the all-yang-no-yin terms of the reason-driven actions of the participants.  

There are thus two ways of understanding ‘community’ (a) in the yin/yang terms wherein a relational space outside-inwardly orchestrates/shapes inside-outward asserting individual and collective behaviours, and (b) in the all-yang-no-yin European Enlightenment terms of community as a rational structure deliberately determined by reason-driven automatons.

Of course, the Enlightenment European chooses the (b) model and he will always be right in his own mind because his noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar gets rid of the relational aspect of space by imposing an implicit, notional ‘absolute space and absolute time’ reference frame as ‘operating theatre’.  It is this absolute reference framing that allows one to think in terms of ‘independently-existing things’; i.e. the two concepts are mutually complementary.  In other words, they are a tautology.  This view re-casts change in terms of what happens to things over the course of time [from past to future] thus obscuring the physical reality of a continually transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum   And, in addition, denying/ignoring Mach’s principle;

“the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.” 

By ignoring Mach’s principle, we ignore that our actions constitute transformation [that we are ‘agents of transformation’ as we must be in a relational space rather than ‘doers-of-deeds’ (reason-driven automatons) as is the reduced form of man viewed in absolute space and absolute time].  The repercussions are not limited to environment-insensitive behaviours, but include those of retributive justice where ‘peace’, instead of being seen as the sustaining of balance and harmony in relational webs, is instead seen as the suppression/elimination of disturbance-causing, reason-driven automatons.

For the final discussion in this essay which is intended to be complementary to the ‘There is Neither Past Nor Future, the Tao is Now’ essay, the way we understand ‘the economy’ is very much impacted by this ‘European Enlightenment’ view in which humans, sovereign states and corporations are all seen as ‘reason-driven automatons’ operating in an absolute space and time ‘operating theatre’.

If the soccer ball segmentation of the surface of the globe is insufficient to over-ride the inherent relational spatial [physically real] dynamics, then the simple noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar based ‘declarations of independence’, while orchestrating the individual and collective behaviours of ‘believers’ and others forced to believe or to humour the believers whose laws and enforcement agencies have plenty of power to ‘make believers’ out of infidels like the indigenous aboriginals, … is not going to do it.  In other words, there is no such thing as a ‘national economy’.  European colonizers could overlay a transparent template on the ‘Terra Nullius’ of pre-colonized spaces and calculate what sort of ‘GDP’ (gross domestic product) any area of any shape might deliver.   The same is true in civil wars where each side battles to secure boundaries in which mines and oilfields are retained or captured.  If the boundaries of a nation are changed, or nations merge and/or split into smaller separate nations, their ‘GDP’ can be recalculated by re-running a spreadsheet using the new boundaries.

Thus, it is nonsense to argue that the sovereign state is an engine with its own inputs and outputs.  The inputs and outputs belong to the relational space it is included in, which persists even if everyone were to give up on the idea of ‘sovereign states’ and revert to the sort of relational balancing act of tribes in pre-colonized territory.

Slowly, Enlightenment Europeans are coming around to acknowledging that the economy is a global economy.  This is not simply due to advances in transportation, global financing and transnational corporate activity.  This is due to the fact that the soccer ball segmenting of the surface dynamics on the globe, which purportedly divided the world in ‘independent sovereign states’ by affirming an absolute ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to each state, subjectively determined by those who reside within the particular borders who consider the insides of their neighbour states to be ‘outside’ while those residing in the neighbour states consider that same space to be ‘inside’ and that which their neighbours called ‘inside’ to be ‘outside’.  In other words, the notion of independent sovereign states is a language game.  However, it is a very serious language game because the believers in the ‘independence’ of their ‘sovereign state’ are very serious about it.  As the video clip in the associated essay ‘There is Neither Past nor Future: The Tao is Now’ shows, not everyone buys into this noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar construct aka ‘secularized theological concept’ known as ‘the sovereign state’.

What does this mean in regard to how we conceive of ‘the global economy’.  

What it means is that the unbounded dynamics of the relational space on the surface of the globe corresponds to physical reality while the notion of the sovereign state as an ‘independently-existing-thing-in-itself with its own internal process driven and directed behaviour’ [which owns its own inputs and outputs] is a language-game fiction. 

The argument of terra nullius persists as the primary justification for colonized land holdings in international law.  North America was considered ‘terra nullius’, an empty and unclaimed land.   During colonization, certain imaginary line bounded tracts were ‘reserved’ for indigenous aboriginals.  But what does ‘reserved’ mean?  ‘Native lands’ have ‘low GDPs’ yet they are suffering from pollution and also resource depletion from faster paced economies ‘all around them’ that have straws into oil fields and mineral deposits on these lands and are dumping radioactive wastes into their ‘open spaces’ and criss-crossing them with oil and gas pipelines etc., partly by agreement and partly by Federal edict.  In any case, those who would choose to preserve more for their descendent generations have a tough time doing so due to the poor protection offered by imaginary boundary lines; i.e. the relational processes that characterize physically real space seem to predominate.

What is true for ‘native lands’ within the colonizer sovereign states serves as a parallel model for developing nations in the overall relational space of the global plenum.   If your activity pace is slower than that of others in the global activity continuum, your imaginary line boundaries and your declarations of independence, will be poor protection from the dynamics of the relational space in which you are included.

“It takes a whole global community to raise a third world state”.  

That is, the ‘underperforming’ third world state or ‘native reserve’ seen as a ‘reason-driven automaton’, a ‘productive machine’ with ‘its own inputs and outputs’ is an ‘anthropomorphism’ born of the Enlightenment European mind conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar.  That is, those inputs and outputs belong to the relational space the ‘state’ is included in, as it is with the storm-cell in the relational space of the atmosphere.  European nomads swarmed into the honey pots of Turtle Island where they prospered, and then declared that ‘they had achieved it all themselves, as a reason-based automaton competing with other reason-based automatons inside of an absolute space and absolute time operating theatre, … in the same manner that farmer John achieved his wheat production as a reason-based automaton.  It may be worth recalling that;

“… the Enlightenment held that human beings are rational creatures who exist independently of any metaphysical force, such as God. Ernst Cassirer argues that in the eighteenth century, power could be understood in terms of a single word: reason. Reason represented the central, unifying point for eighteenth century European thought; it was all that the Enlightenment longed for and all that it achieved.

… Human rationality also implies for Enlightened thinkers an attempt to gain knowledge and understanding of the natural world. … the Enlightened thinkers were generally confident in their belief that they could use rational principles to solve problems of social interaction, just as they used rationality to understand and control the natural world. “— Lewis Call

This is not to say, for example, that the Germans are not great industrialists and have the capability of making canoes faster and ‘cheaper’ than indigenous aboriginals of Turtle Island.  This is still the ‘manifest’ aspect of the world dynamic.  The continuously transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum [of the global sociosphere] has an outside-inward ‘accommodating’ aspect that orchestrates and shapes the inside-outward asserting ‘productive dynamic’.  

If Al Capone navigates passage in a crowded street, the crowd opens for him and ‘accommodates’ his movement in a manner analogous to the opening of the waters of the Red sea for Moses.   It is the European habit to credit that progress to Al Capone.  As for Joe Blow who makes one tenth the progress of Capone, we attribute to him his ‘inferior performance’.   This is because our habit is to reduce our experiencing of dynamics, with the help of our noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar, by re-casting dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’ as if in an absolute space and absolute time ‘operating theatre’. 

What follows is an ‘exploration’ of how to interpret what is going on in the global economy if one acknowledges the yin/yang nature of dynamics.

 * * * Begin exploration  * * *

Imagine that the colonized peoples of the world evolved to where they were disaccommodating the European colonizers.  The ‘superior performance’ of the colonizers would be substantially attenuated, just as Capone’s ‘superior performance’ would be attenuated if the crowd had evolved to where they were able to resist his advance.  By brute force, European colonizers and the alliances they formed, broke down the resistance [disaccommodating influence] of colonized peoples and have ‘co-opted’ many of them in order to rape the lands in which they live.  Or if ‘rape’ is too strong, to ‘give them a deal that they could not refuse’ which they mostly accepted in order to preserve a relative measure of freedom [under puppet governments endorsed and militarily backed by the colonial powers] rather than being ‘taken as slaves.’   Colonization is not ‘in the past’, it persists in the continually-transforming-in-the-now relational spatial plenum [of the global sociosphere].

The Enlightenment European model is one of a competition amongst reason-driven automatons where the ‘asserting’ – ‘accommodating’ dipole is understood in terms of supply and demand and the fight for ‘market share’.  The all-yang-no-yin anthropomorphism of the productive performance of the reason-driven automaton (individual, state, corporation) being fully and solely attributable to the individual, state, corporation being maintained.

Long abandoned is the era where the labours of men were enfolded in their Oasis-communities, as bemoaned by John Locke in his 1690 ‘Two Treatises of Government’ where he noted that the invention of money which had enabled the concept of ‘wage-labour’ had made it possible for one man [or one company or one state] to control far more land than an individual [person, company or state] naturally could.   This ‘unravelling’ of labour-enfolded-community has evolved communities described as ‘people living in the same spot’, people whose labours may be supporting activities on the other side of the globe from where they are living.  In this situation, local assemblages of people called ‘communities’ are able to plug into a global system of veins (outputs) and arteries (inputs) that allows their formerly local organs to be globally dispersed, kind of like a patient in an iron lung, or worse, having a liver over there and kidneys over there, lungs over there and heart over there, but being connected by a network of inputs and outputs as recommended by economists who insist that it is to everyone’s benefit to let the free market optimize where it is best to do things.

Of course, the problem is that local communities have given up their heart, lungs and ‘spiritual gestalt or soul’?  to the global economy and no longer have the local skills and wherewithal to re-organ-ize themselves if something ‘pulls the plug’ on the global supply system.

But what about this other ‘accommodating’ – ‘asserting’ ‘apparent dipole’ that comes with colonization?

We don’t speak of that.  The G8 pretends that everyone is equal and the playing field is level and that the G8 are the ‘advanced civilizations’ as measured by their ‘superior performance’ which is claimed to be fully and solely attributable to their innate skills and operating know-how.  There is, of course, no mention of this being amplified by the accommodating quality of a colonized world.

But what if the ‘accommodating quality’ of the colonized world is declining.  Is it not intuitively clear that the ‘performance of the colonial powers’ should ‘take a hit’ [the system should move towards a reduction of performance differentials], just as would occur if the people on the crowded street that Al Capone is navigating passage on grow ‘less malleable’, ‘less accommodating’?  

But economists don’t include this kind of thing in their models.  The sustained performance of the still-top-performing colonial powers and their alliances is ensured by a ‘healthy economy’ which the economists say is due to sufficient spending to keep industry humming thus ensuring a strong return on capital investment.  

No-one wants the plug to be pulled because every state and community has evolved ‘outside dependencies’ since the community-enfolded labours have undergone centuries of ‘unravelling’.

If the colonizing powers were seeing their ‘performance’ decline as the accommodating influence of the global relational spatial dynamic that was giving them an ‘apparent’ performance boost was in decline, … then the only way to stem the tide to ‘keep them on top’ would be to sustain high levels of consumer spending which would require that they ‘printed more money’ to give themselves more ‘buying power’ to keep their industries humming.

  * * * end of exploration  * * *  

As a final note, I would bring to the foreground [my view of] the importance of the indigenous aboriginal tradition of ‘the learning circle’.  While this is a natural development within the aboriginal mind conditioned [unconditioned] by its flow-based language and grammar, it is a needed and necessary safety net for the current passing of the Enlightenment European mindset which sees the relational spatial sociosphere in terms of competing reason-driven automatons [individuals, sovereign states, corporations] and that [mistakenly] believes that rationality can tame nature and the global social dynamic.

 * * * end of essay commentary on ‘There is Neither Past Nor Future: The Tao is Now’ * * *