From Incoherence to Harmony

A small plane runs out of fuel and attempts a landing on a busy freeway, the drivers in the freeway flow see the plane descending and open up a space for it to land.  As the wind shifts, shifting the plane’s imminent point of ground contact, the organizing of the opening in the vehicle collective shifts, leaving an impression akin to that of an eagle herding cats, a phenomenon ‘half seen’ and ‘half felt’ as the ‘cat’s paw’ is to the sailor, an approaching ‘dark patch’ on the water that warns of imminent engaging with an invisible gyre of air turbulence.

We live in a dynamic space and our actions/behaviours in the unfolding present are naturally orchestrated by the continually transforming spatial relations we are uniquely, situationally included in.  We experience the world as a ceaselessly, innovatively unfolding spatial-relational dynamic.  Everything is in flux, and within the evolving flux, certain forms gather, persist for some time (we call this a ‘life-cycle’) and are re-gathered into the flux.

An observer who sees the plane land safely will report that; …  “the drivers on the freeway moved aside so as to ‘clear a path’ for the plane to land”, … making the driver’s action sound very ‘rational’ and ‘deliberate’ as if the organization immanent in their collective behaviour had been calculated and executed by them, rather than being a manifestation of their; … “putting their behaviour in the service of sustaining spatial-relational harmony in the continually unfolding now”.    

If one wishes to understand ‘organization’ in the social dynamic and/or in nature in general, one must acknowledge two different interpretations of the ‘source of organization’ in this unfolding where the freeway drivers opened up a clear space for the plane to land;

1. the drivers space-clearing behaviour was intellect and purpose directed,  to avoid injury to themselves and/or to the pilot of the airplane.

2. the unfolding spatial-relations the drivers found themselves situationally included in orchestrated their motions as they sought to cultivate and sustain harmonious relations within the dynamic world-space. 

That is, in (1.),  we ‘model’ this same event in terms of the actions of people as individuals; i.e. ‘local systems with their own locally originating, intellect and purpose-directed behaviour’.  The source of the ‘organization’ in this case, is seen as originating within the individuals, in their ‘knowledge of what to do’ in such situations.  This is the Aristotelian ‘intrinsic final cause’ interpretation of organization, often expressed by the metaphor of ‘acorn-to-oak-tree’ (producer-product, purposeful-system) development, where the ‘genesis’ of what unfolds purportedly derives from ‘coded information’ (coded ‘know-how’) that resides within the ‘system’, without being influenced (other than through sensory perception and intellection) by the spatial dynamic the masculine-assertive, genetic-blossoming/inflating is included in.

Nietzsche claims that this notion of ‘purpose’ or ‘intention’ is bogus.  He further claims that we get this notion of ‘purposeful systems’ from our own ego as in the thought; ‘I did it.  I am responsible for this result.’.  This is the simple cause-and-effect model that we have built our mainstream science on, and because we have taken it from our ego, our inflated view of our own powers (it is a God-like power that is capable of local first cause creation of development), Nietzsche calls science ‘anthropomorphism’.  The behaviour of every atom, molecule, cell and organism, our science implies, is locally originating; i.e. we start with nature as a dynamic unity, and we break it up into atoms, molecules, cells, organisms etc., and we impute to each of them this same model that we impute to ourselves, an egotist model that claims full and sole responsibility for ‘our own behaviour’ (as if the flux we emerge from and are regathered into is ‘secondary’ to our ‘existence’).  In other words, we model all of those pieces that we have, by our definitions and labels (intellectual abstractions), as ‘local systems with their own local agency’.   In the case of ‘animate forms of life’, we impute to them ‘locally originating, knowledge-and-purpose-directed behaviour’.

It is easy to see that this view, in which human behaviour derives entirely from within the human organism, forces us to interpret invents like plane landing on the freeway, in terms of the actions of the individual organisms.  This spontaneously unfolding organization, constituted by the opening of a clearing for the plane to land, is, by this way of thinking, traceable back to the KNOWLEDGE AND PURPOSE of the individuals involved.

This view of dynamics as in (1.) would also have us explain why humans rise up where the morning sun is sweeping over the earth and recline where the setting sun recedes over the horizon.  There can be no other explanation for this global social organization other than it being ‘knowledge-and-purpose directed’ because of the way in which we have ‘modeled’ ourselves and the world in (1.); i.e. we impute ‘independent existence’ to the human organism, splitting him out of the world-flux, and re-animate him in our mental modeling, by imputing that his behaviour is fully locally originating (is directed by his intellection-and-purpose).

This choice of models, (1.), which splits apart the ‘inhabitant’ and the ‘habitat’ is the default choice of our culture, but it is not the default choice of all cultures nor of all people within the culture.  Nevertheless, for our ‘Western’ culture, which is dominant on the earth, our sense of ‘organization’ derives from the knowledge-and-purpose directed behaviour of local human organisms.  The institutions in our culture that are responsible for sustaining order in our social dynamic are thus based on deliberate knowledge-and-purpose DIRECTION of individual and collective behaviours.

And when we talk about social dynamics or about any aspect of the world dynamic, the culturally anointed terms for discussing dynamics is (1.), wherein we see ourselves as ‘local systems with our own locally originating, knowledge-and-purpose-directed behaviour, who move about and interact with like others, in an absolute fixed and empty space’.  (The ‘empty space’ aspect falls out from investing the source of dynamics in material bodies and their interaction.  When we do this, the ‘habitat’ becomes an ‘emptiness’ that is inhabited by a diverse multiplicity of local material systems.

 * * *

What about alternative views as in (2.), the views of other cultures and of some the ‘dissidents’ within the prevailing culture.  Well, Nietzsche ‘put down’ science as ‘anthropomorphism’ which had taken our egotist view of self as ‘local systems with our own locally originating, internal knowledge and purpose-directed behaviour’.   He was ‘anti-Darwinist’ in that he did not believe in the Aristotelian acorn-to-oak-tree model in Darwinism, supporting instead the views of the many anti-Darwinists in his era such as William Rolph, wherein that the unfolding (evolutionary) dynamic of our life experience was better compared to a conjugate endosmosis-exosmosis relation.   In other words, the human organism could be seen as being like the storm-cell in the atmosphere, a conjugate habitat-inhabitant dynamic relation.

While the view in (1.) orients entirely to visible material forms, this view in (2.) opens the door to the conjecture , that the deeper source of the unfolding world dynamic is ‘invisible’ and ‘nonlocal’ (‘energy-field-flow’), as in the example of the storm-cell in the flow of the atmosphere.  That is, the visible, local, material forms are secondary aspects rather than primary sources of the world dynamic.

There is plenty of support from modern physics that this is a more realistic way of viewing the dynamic world we are included in.  David Bohm says, for example:

“The idea, then, is that space is mostly full, and that matter is a small ripple on it. You can make a very strong case for that according to modern physics.  Similarly, we could say that whatever is behind the mind — the consciousness, or whatever you want to call it — is a vast stream; and on the surface are ripples which are thought. This seems to be an analogy.  Even when we talk of things being ‘here’, they are REALLY small ripples on some vast energy which is circulating. The only reason that this energy doesn’t show up is because matter and light go right through it without deflecting. What we experience is empty space. BUt it may also be regarded as the fullness of space, which is the ground of all existence. Matter is, then, a small variation on this ground.”

This view, wherein the source of both visible ‘local matter’ and thus ‘visible local dynamics’ is ‘invisible’ and ‘nonlocal’ as in the example of the hurricanes in the atmosphere, is better supported by the science of modern physics than by the assumptions of popular mainstream science which Nietzsche termed ‘anthropomorphism’ because of our imputing of  “I caused it to happen” egotist powers of local origination of behaviour to ‘living material’ such as ‘cells’, ‘organisms’.

The case for our ego being the basis for this ‘powerboating’ model of the material ‘life-form’ seems strong.  And, while it may be difficult to assimilate the notion of the self as a hurricane or ‘conjugate endosmosis-exosmosis relation’ (i.e. a conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation), it is easily seen that the ‘sailboater’ model of the self is more ‘honest’ than the ‘powerboating’ model of the self.  That is, if we are in a sailboat in a storm, our notion that our behaviour originates from within ourselves no longer holds up.  We understanding, in this case, that our drive power and steerage derive from the fluid dynamical space we are included in.  There is no longer any ‘absolute space reference ground’ to support our claim that our behaviour originates fully from within ourselves. 

As Kepler said, it is the habit of science to ‘choose not that which is most true but that which is most easy’, and as Poincaré adds, absolute space is the simplest of all geometries of space.  In fact, our modern understanding of space makes this egotist view of organisms as ‘local systems with their own local agency’, a model which makes space a non-participant in physical dynamics, has been convincingly obsoleted by modern physics;

‘Space is not Euclidian’ … “Space is a participant in physical phenomena” … “Space not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.”, … “the recognition of the fact that ‘empty space’ in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials g(μ,ν), has, I think finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty.”…”Relativity forces us to analyze the role played by geometry in the description of the physical world.” . . . “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” —Einstein.

 “Space is another framework we impose upon the world” . . . ” . . . here the mind may affirm because it lays down its own laws; but let us clearly understand that while these laws are imposed on our science, which otherwise could not exist, they are not imposed on Nature.” . . . “Euclidian geometry is . . . the simplest, . . . just as the polynomial of the first degree is simpler than a polynomial of the second degree.” . . . “the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry.” . . . Henri Poincaré,  ’Science and Hypothesis’.”

Nevertheless, in the biological and social sciences, this outdated but persisting-in-popularity anthropomorphist science (Darwinism, genetics, local material-organism-driven organization [Statism, authoritarian hierarchy etc.]) continues to be the foundation for our acculturated view of ‘reality’.

One must conclude that (2.), the ‘flow’ view wherein the origin of dynamics (and matter) is invisible and nonlocal energy-field-flow, is a more realistic understanding of world-and-self.   In this view (2.) the relationship between the habitat and the inhabitants starts from the fullness of space, and is given by Mach’s principle; “The dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat.”

Since we continue to ‘deny’ this greater reality, there must be some kind of ‘psychological cop-out’ going on, which must be supported by mainstream psychologists and ‘social scientists’, since it is too ‘obvious’.  That is to say, we certainly know about the implications of modern physics wherein the origins of dynamics are invisible, nonlocal and ‘pre-material’, so it must be the case that ‘psychologists’ and others that are the gatekeepers for what are ‘reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’ ways of understanding the world and ourselves, have found a way to perpetuate keeping the ‘old materialist view’, Darwinism, authoritarianism, Statism etc. as the primary view of reality.

The ‘psychology’ that supports the obsoleted-by-modern-physics view of self and the world can be examined by comparing the Amerindian and Western world views, noting that the two are in basic disagreement as (2.) is to (1.).

The problem begins with notion of ‘local existence’ as is foundational to the default materialist view of our culture (1.).   ‘Local existence’, the imputing of ‘local identity’ to material forms, is based on geometric axioms that are unprovable;

“So [since the problem of certainty in identity such as A=A is handled, in Euclidian geometry, by invoking the notion of invariable solids] “objects” are implicitly assumed to be invariable bodies.  Therefore the axioms of geometry already contain an irreducible assumption which does not follow from the axioms themselves. Axiomatic systems provide us with “faulty definitions” of objects, definitions that are grounded not in formal logic but in a hypothesis — a “prejudice” as Hans-Georg Gadamer might say — that is prior to logic.  As a corollary, our logic of identity cannot be said to be necessary and universally valid. “Such axioms,” says Poincaré, “would be utterly meaningless to a being living in a world in which there are only fluids.”  — Vladimir Tasic, ‘Poststructuralism and Deconstruction: A Mathematical History’ (2001)

The notion of a ‘locally existing material body’ or a ‘locally existing system’ (cell, organism) denoted by ‘A’, depends on the notion of a ‘bounding line and/or surface’ that separates the ‘inside of A’ from the ‘outside of A’ so that A ≠ not.A, or in other words; so that ‘inhabitant’ ≠ ‘habitat’.   In a world where ‘space is full’ as is the view of modern physics, there can be no A that is ≠ not.A; i.e. A is always = not.A, as is captured in Mach’s principle (“The dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat.”.   This is the view we would have of four contemporaneous hurricanes, A, B, C, and D.  In spite of our having declared them to be distinct forms, they are each in a conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation and thus the continuing development of A is simultaneously influenced by the continuing development of B, C and D and vice versa in all cases, shattering the Aristotelian ‘intrinsic cause’ view and shattering the Darwinist view that is also based on this ‘acorn-to-oak-tree’ development model that assumes that the information necessary for development is encoded within the developing form; i.e. that the visible developing form is a ‘local system with its own locally originating, information-and-purpose-directed behaviour’.

Psychologically, our western understanding of material bodies-as-local-existences which establishes the A ≠ not.A concept of ‘mutual exclusion’ (inhabitant ≠ habitat) is ingrained in us by our addiction to geometric abstraction.  For example, in the following graphic, we get the impression of a ‘local existence’ in the form of a triangular area, just by the ‘power of suggestion’;

When we start talking about ‘sovereign states’, we are talking about abstractions that do not really exist.  The rivers and winds and birds and insects pay no attention to these abstractions called ‘sovereign states’ that live entirely within our mind, as is the case with the Kanizsa triangle. 

The Amerindian does not buy into the ‘local existence’ of ‘Canada’ and the ‘United States’.  Anyone could pick three landmarks on Turtle Island and declare that the triangular area they ‘delineated’ was the ‘sovereign state of Kanizsa (or whatever)’.  Such illusion is based on nothing other than ‘common belief’ yet it is fully supported by psychologists and sociologists and is sustained by having those people who reside within the ‘boundaries’ of such areas swearing an oath of loyalty to the ‘local existence’ and committing bear arms and give one’s life, if necessary, to ensure the persistence of belief in this ‘illusion’.

If we were to, right now, arbitrarily specify half a dozen such triangles in North America, giving them each a name, and we could then construct ‘spreadsheets’ of how many people were moving into and out of these areas over the next twelve months and speak of ‘their population rising or falling’.  Spreadsheets could also be used to tabulate the incomes of each of the people residing within a particular triangle, so that one could speak in terms of ‘the national economy’ and how it was faring.

In fact, we can ‘run spreadsheets’ on any one of these suggested triangular areas to show the national demographics, racial mixes, resources, arable lands and everything else that gives ‘credibility’ to the reality of the abstraction (‘secularized theological concept’) of the ‘sovereign state’.  The only other thing that is needed is a ‘national government’ and a ‘military’ to defend the notional ‘local existence’ of the triangle.

That this illusion of a ‘local existence’, given credibility by ‘spreadsheeting the notional local closed form’ is abstraction, is exposed when climate changes transform the natural reality that they are superimposed on; e.g. the dustbowl conditions that made Oklahoma into a desert.  The bounded area of the sovereign states are based on absolute Euclidian reference space, anchored to the sun and stars, so that if climate change were to raise sea levels, some of the sovereign states might be ‘under water’ and others would have deserts on them where lush fertile valleys used to be, and vice versa.  (Neighbouring states were not necessarily eager to receive the ‘Okie’s’ who were being mobilized by the climatic shift).   That is, it is the ‘dynamics of nature-space’ that are the primary orchestrator of individual and collective behaviour; i.e. the fertile valley induces the settling of nomadic peoples and it inspires the development of certain skills in them (e.g. agricultural) that are resonantly attuned to the local floral and faunal growth patterns. 

The pre-sovereign state mode of organizing of the social dynamic was one in which the ‘opening of natural spatial-possibility’ and the ‘blossoming of creative/productive potentialities’ were in conjugate relation.   Man was in his sailboating mode in that case, understanding that his power and steerage derived from the dynamic living space he was situationally included in.  With the advent of the sovereign state came the view of ‘the land’ as a kind of passive ‘possession’ that men could ‘exploit’; i.e. the direction of the action inverted and instead of the dynamics of the land orchestrating man’s behaviour, the primary dynamic was seen as coming from man who ‘worked the land’ to GET IT TO PRODUCE.

Continued spreadsheeting of our half-a-dozen triangular areas will continue to show their rising and falling fortunes in population, demographics, agricultural production, mining and other industries, and the overall health of the ‘national economies’ for each of the ‘triangular state’.   We can use the spread sheets for comparison purposes and speak of their ‘competitive performance’.   It is all smoke and mirrors that rests dependently on nothing other than ‘common belief’.  Local existences are not ‘reality’ but we make them into the official ‘reality’ that started off from violent military based land-grabs and continue to be supported by police and military.  The ‘land’ ‘within’ the sovereign state has been ‘de-consecrated’ and been declared a commodity that can be bought and sold.  Productive land that inspired men to settle in it and to let it orchestrate their behaviours, is now seen as a passive resource to be worked over and exploited by man.

The Amerindian continues to see this default ‘reality’ of our modern Western-thinking world as ‘hallucination’ but he is not in a position to wrest this pseudo-reality from its default primacy position, and neither are other minorities.

Currently, and in spite of rising incoherence in the world dynamic, there seems to be relatively little interest in examining our foundational assumptions from which we derive our impression of ‘reality’; i.e. the ‘true’ nature of self and world.  Our primary orientation is towards correcting dissonance using the causal model (anthropomorphist science) wherein we identify and remove the causal ‘local existences’ that are responsible for the dissonance.  Meanwhile, the true source of the dissonance is rooted in our delusionary view of self and world, deriving from idealization (‘local existences’) that we confuse for ‘reality’.

Summary;

Discussions of the current ‘state of the world’ are inevitably in terms of visible, physical, material dynamics attributable to locally existing individuals, states, and organizations.  There are plenty of people who feel that the world social dynamic is dysfunctional and the common approach is to inquire into the cause of the dysfunction in a ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’ manner.  Counter to our acculturated thinking, the rational approach at solving incoherence is nothing other than the source of the incoherence.  Responding as the cat responds to the eagle or as the humans respond to the airplane or as the sailboater responds to the rogue wave is not ‘rational’, it is spatial-relational and it is delusion to make it out to be ‘rational’; e.g. as if the cat’s (person’s) behaviour were directed by its internal intellection, knowledge, beliefs, instincts and purpose (e.g. Darwinian self-preservation).   This delusion is a distinguishing feature of our dominating Western culture and it serves to, psychologically, split apart the ‘inhabitant’ from the ‘habitat’.   No, we can’t legitimately argue that the movements of the sailboater tossed about in the storm are explainable in terms of seeing him as a ‘local system with its own locally originating, intellect, knowledge, beliefs and purpose-directed behaviour’, as if he were situated within an absolute fixed and empty space.  When the sea moves, it does not `interactively`negotiate with him nor does he `temporally adapt`to its movement; he moves within its fluid-dynamic.  The experienced sailboater understands that ‘the sailor belongs to the ocean rather than  ‘the ocean belongs to the sailor’, … a reminder that, in general,  ‘man belongs to the earth’, ‘the earth does not belong to man’.   

The sailor does not operate within a ‘fixed reference frame’, whatever he does is relative to the spatial dynamics he is situationally included in.  That is, the ‘real’ ‘reference frame’ for his behaviour is the continually unfolding spatial-relational dynamic he is situationally included in.   This is true of man (inhabitant) and the world (habitat) in general; i.e. in the reality of our experiencing of our living space dynamic, the two are in ‘conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation’, but science, as Kepler observes, tends to “choose not that which is most true but that which is most easy”.  So, instead of acknowledging that a ‘fixed reference frame’ is an abstraction that we impose, that does not exist in the natural universe, we condition ourselves, psychologically, so as to believe in the pseudo-reality based on space as an absolute reference frame.  This pseudo-reality has us think of the world dynamic in terms of the dynamics of local existences (`local systems`) and their local behavioural dynamics, removing, psychologically, the fullness of space from our awareness; space as a spatial-relationally transforming resonant-energy-charged fullness, the ‘dynamic unity’ that constitutes the world that we experience.   The tautological ‘antidote’ for removing the continuity immanent in the fullness of space, space which, like the fluid ocean, explains the dynamic behaviour of the sailboats within it, is this notion of the human self as a ‘local system with its own locally originating, intellection, beliefs, instincts and purpose-directed behaviour’.  Without this belief (psychological acceptance) in an absolute space that serves as an absolute reference frame for the evolution of form, behaviour and organization, the notion of our ‘self’ as a local system with its own locally originating, intellection, belief and purpose-directed behaviour’ would not be possible.   Our popular view of ourselves, of ‘organization’, of the world dynamic (in terms of such local systems) depends on our belief in this abstraction, that space is an absolute fixed and empty reference frame.  Only when we psychologically accept `the fullness of space`can we understand things on Emerson`s terms where, as he observes in `The Method of Nature`, the genius of nature not only inhabits the organism, it creates the organism.

What we have done and continue to do (‘we’ being ourselves as acculturated members of the dominant-in-the-world Western culture) is, as Emerson says, ‘let the tool run away with the workman’, the tool being the world view of scientific rationality that “is not that which is most true but that which is most easy”.   This confusing of intellect-based simplification (science as anthropomorphism) which has us deny the fullness of space and mentally re-render the world dynamic to ourselves in the illusionary terms of a diverse collection of local systems with their own local agency that move about and interact within an absolute fixed and empty space. 

Our cats-and-eagle mode of behaviour may go ‘missing’ if the freeway fills with drivers who are internally directed by cruise control and GPS and time-/appointment-schedules which do not allow for ‘traffic jams’.  And after all, the fuelling error was the pilot’s, not ours, and/or the refugees in the boat that want to make landing, and this opening of space for them is ‘not our moral responsibility’. 

Our living space is NOT REALLY an empty space other than where it is ‘occupied’ by some local material system, space is full; it is a resonant-energy charged space that is undergoing ceaselessly innovative spatial relational transformation, in which case, letting our behaviours be orchestrated by the cultivating and sustaining of harmony as in the cats-and-eagle behaviour makes ‘natural sense’.  Insofar as we insist on coming from a model of ourselves as ‘local systems with our own locally originating, intellection, beliefs and purpose-directed behaviour (insofar as we have to intellectually reason whether we shall move so as to clear a landing path for the plane), we shut down our natural ability to let our behaviours be orchestrated by the cultivating of harmony in the dynamic living space in which we share inclusion.  Incoherence is the result of this inversion that puts the simplified scientific model of ourselves in an unnatural primacy over our natural experiencing-in-the-unfolding-present based behaviour.

As this ‘tool running away with the workman’ aberration intensifies and incoherence commensurately grows, seeking relief by way of the simplified scientific model of ourselves can only exacerbate the incoherence and put us into a spiralling degeneracy.

Meanwhile, modern day politics is all about dissecting the internals of the anthropomorphist scientist model of the human organism (and/or the state).  When the social dynamic becomes incoherent and dysfunctional, we look inside this bogus model of the self as ‘local system with its own locally originating, internal process directed behaviour’, at all of its imputed internal ‘behavioural directors’.  We look at  the quality of the intellection direction, the breadth and correctness of the internally archived knowledge-direction, the truth of the belief-direction, the quality and feasibility of the mission, vision, strategies, goals and objectives of the purpose-direction, and also the ‘morality’ embodied in that purpose-direction.   Politics is all about revising and correcting these notional ‘components’ that, in our acculturated condition, we contend, direct our behaviour from the inside-outwards (as if our operating theatre is an absolute fixed and empty space occupied by a great diverse multiplicity of ‘other local existences’ ).

There is no solution to incoherence in the social dynamic on this delusional basis.  There is no problem in using anthropomorphist science as a simple ‘go-by’ for purposes of predicting the trajectories of notional ‘local systems’.  In calm seas (simple spatial-relational situations), the sailboater will steer by his compass.   But in turbulent seas (complex spatial-relational situations), the inside-outward originating of form, behaviour and organization is exposed as a simplified special case (approximation to a more complex general case), and one must acknowledge the conjugate extrinsic-intrinsic relational aspect of dynamics (the relativity in physical dynamics) that is the originating source of form, behaviour and organization, as in Nietzsche’s anti-Darwinism, which eschews the Aristotelian acorn-to-oak-tree, inside-outward directed driver of final cause, and acknowledges that the shaper of form behaviour and organization is, instead, a conjugate endosmotic-exosmotic relation which, in effect, subsumes the ‘will-to-self-preservation/propagation’ with ‘the-will-to-power’ (the will to transcend oneself without ‘squandering’ oneself).  In this, Nietzsche shared the views of William Rolph, one of several ‘anti-Darwinists’ in the era of Nietzsche and Darwin, whose ideas dropped out of circulation, not by want of legitimacy, but by the ‘politicizing of science’ of the sort that we currently see in regard to ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’ (AMG).  Those who establish the scientific preference of society are not scientists but politicians, and politicians in the Nietzsche-Darwin era were in the process of cultivating an intensified popularism of the pursuit of self-interest, the likes of which the world have never before experienced; i.e. the massive polarizations and slaughters that characterize ‘twentieth century civilization’. 

The anthropocentrism we have built into our cultural thinking  and the anthropomorphism in our science have together led down the garden path of believing that ‘the answers’ (to ‘incoherence’) that will restore ‘harmony’ in the social dynamics of our global human collective, originate in our ‘behaviour’; e.g;

“The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a social environment in which we shall live productive and creative lives and do so without jeopardizing the chances that those who follow us will be able to do the same.” – B. F. Skinner

Here we go again, splitting ourselves as inhabitants out of the habitat and modeling ourselves as powerboaters rather than sailboaters, whereby ‘the sea belongs to us’, rather than ‘we belong to the sea’. 

Many ancient and modern thinkers have pointed the finger to ‘education’ as the problem, infusing into innocent, malleable minds, as it does, basic tools for understanding self and other, inhabitant and habitat.  As Skinner further says;

“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him before he has tasted freedom.”  – B. F. Skinner

So the question then becomes a political question; which tools shall we select to infuse into the innocent malleable child so as to ensure that he will have ‘the right stuff’ in his interior to direct his behaviour, as is appropriate to his status as a ‘local system with its own locally originating, intellection, knowledge, beliefs and purpose-directed behaviour.’   That is, society must equip him early on with good powers of intellection, a quality archive of knowledge, beliefs that are free from falsehoods, and a mission, vision, strategies goals and objectives imbued with moral purpose.  The theory is that all of this quality in the internal processes that direct a man’s behaviour must be cultivated at an early age, if we are to subsume incoherence with harmony in our global social dynamic.

But all of this blinds us to the reality that the harmonies of the world derive from things moving under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence, as in the eagle-herding-cats situation where the plane wants to land on the freeway.   We have the nature-inbuilt capability to let our individual and collective behaviours be orchestrated by the unpredictable, unfolding spatial-relational dynamics we are included in.   This behaviour is NOT locally originating, intellect, knowledge, belief and purpose-directed behaviour.   It is not ‘our behaviour’ in a split-apart self-other sense (split-apart habitat-inhabitant sense).  It is conjugate self-other behaviour.  It is the behaviour seen in a space-is-full sense, in the context of relativity and quantum physics which human beings are not granted exemption from by way of permissions signed by God.  We are all included in this full space, this resonant energy-charged space where the source of the continuing transformation is invisible and nonlocal (‘field-flow’) and where the visible material forms are secondary, and made primary only by our imposing abstract notions of ‘local existence’.  By imposing a notional absolute space, we give the ‘local existences’ an operating theatre or stage, and create the necessary ingredients to re-render ourselves as ‘local systems with our own locally originating, intellect, knowledge, beliefs, and purpose directed behaviour’ that move about and interact with other such ‘local systems’ within the absolute space that we notionally provide to make this synthetic illusional system ‘hang together’.

Again, the problem of incoherence does not arise from this simplified, illusional reality ‘per se’, it arises from our confusing it for reality; i.e. for allowing this ‘tool’ (anthropomorphist science) to ‘run away with the workman’.  By infusing our human egotist view of self into science, we infuse it into all ‘local systems’, the basic building blocks of science; i.e. we infuse it into the cell, the organism, the sovereign state, the corporation, the organization (organization which begins as spatial-relational coherence thus becomes a `locally existing object/system), and in each case, we psychologically convince ourselves of the ‘local-system’ – ‘operating space’ (A ≠ not.A) split otherwise known as the ego-invented ‘self-other split’ and/or the ‘organism-environment split’ and/or the ‘habitat-inhabitant split’, all of these ‘splits’ leading us into models that seek to restore the innate conjugate dynamic relations (as with hurricane to atmosphere-flow) that we have synethically removed, by way of fix-it-back-up concepts of inner-outer  ‘interaction’ and ‘adaptation’, the sort of stuff that ‘Darwinism is made of’.

One could then say, that incoherence will not be subsumed by harmony until mental concepts such as Darwinism are popularly and overtly dismissed in the manner of Nietzsche’s dismissal of them, restoring to  natural primacy in our psychological conceptualizing, the un-split-apart self-other relationship; i.e. the conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation wherein ‘man belongs to the earth’ rather than ‘the earth belongs to man’. 

The problem is not with the quality of the internal processes that direct our behaviour, the problem is in the thought that internal processes direct our behaviour.  Thus, trying to modify the behaviour of the individual and/or the state is itself the source of incoherence.  As the ‘sailboater’ understands, the behaviour of the individual, in reality, is not ‘locally originating, internal process directed behaviour’, the behaviour of the individual is orchestrated by the dynamics of the space he is included in.  The individual may instead be understood as a ‘conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation’ whose animating dynamics are, at their deepest level, invisible and nonlocal (as in the case of the hurricane in the flow of the atmosphere).  In this (‘beyond good and evil moral purpose’) case, it is ‘natural’ for the individual (as is the case with the sailboater in the storm) to put one’s behaviour in the service of cultivating and sustaining harmony with the spatial dynamics he is situationally included in.  Whenever ‘judgement’ of  ‘whose intellection, knowledge, beliefs, and moral purposes are better than whose’ takes over (a notion that embodies the self-other split), we move back again into the incoherence spawned by egotism-charged anthropomorphist scientific thinking.

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