As the title of this essay is meant to suggest, the physical world of our actual experience is ‘relational’ but the relational view is obfuscated by semantic constructions depicting the world as a world of independent things-in-themselves that are the imputed authors of the world dynamic, among which; ‘Western humans’, Western nations and Western corporations.  This essay exposes the deception in this Western scientific-materialist, thing-based world view and shows how individual and collective ‘ego’ continues to block the restoring of ‘relations’ to their natural primacy over scientific materialism/dualism.

 

 

[1.] Everything is in continuous relational flux.

 

 

“The real facts bear witness that humans are not at the top of some self-conceived food chain that we ourselves dominate because we have imagined it as such, but that we exist in what is referred to as a food web, wherein all forms of life are interconnected and thus subject to a variety of codependencies which are necessary for the possibility of life on earth as we know it.” — JJD77, UPEI 

 

Relations are all there is, … relational forms are relational activities within the transforming relational continuum.

 

Everything is in flux, and relational forms and relational flow are a nonduality; i.e. field and matter are a nonduality.

 

“By the principle of Occam’s razor, physicists and philosophers prefer ideas that can explain the same phenomena with the fewest assumptions. In this case you can construct a perfectly valid theory by positing the existence of certain relations without additionally assuming individual things. So proponents of ontic structural realism say we might as well dispense with things and assume that the world is made of [relational-spatial] structures, or nets of relations.” – Meinard Kuhlmann, ‘What is Real’, Scientific American, August 2013

 

 

[2.] Relational forms are mutually supporting [mutually dependent] ‘vents’ that transmit influences from the nonlocal to the local

 

 

 

Vents are like tourbillons’ i.e. they not ‘things-in-themselves’ or ‘doers of deeds’ ‘with their own local agency’ but are ‘relational activities’ that transmit influences from the nonlocal to the local.  Emerson describes man in this way, in ‘The Method of Nature’;

 

“Whilst a necessity so great caused the man to exist, his health and erectness consist in the fidelity with which he transmits influences from the vast and universal to the point on which his genius can act. The ends are momentary: they are vents for the current of inward life which increases as it is spent. A man’s wisdom is to know that all ends are momentary, that the best end must be superseded by a better. But there is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and rest in his acts: the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The Method of Nature’

 

What Emerson is describing is a being-less relational form which could be captured as a verb [as it is in indigenous aboriginal languages and in the ‘rheomode’ language of David Bohm].  We might use the signifier ‘inner-outering’ as in a convection cell which ‘appears’ to be a local thing-in-itself, but is instead relational activity within a transforming relational continuum; i.e. an ‘innering-outering’ without local ‘being’, rather than a local system-in-itself with its own local agency that is the source of its ‘inputting’ and ‘outputting’.

 

 

[3.] The Sailboater and Powerboater View of Self: –how noun-and-verb language has allowed the powerboater view to hijack the sailboater view.

 

Man as a ‘vent’ or ‘innering-outering’; i.e. a relational activity within the transforming relational continuum, is like a sailboater in that he derives his power and direction from the relational dynamics he is included in.  However, he is prone to thinking of that power and direction as ‘coming from his own ‘local agency’ and thus thinking of himself as a ‘powerboater’.

 

This ‘depiction’ of himself as a powerboater is supported by noun-and-verb language, and the semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) that is made possible by noun-and-verb language.

 

‘Science itself’ is made possible by noun-and-verb language whose building blocks are local things-in-themselves notionally endowed with their own local being and local agency; e.g. In the biological sciences, the forms in nature [relational activities within the transforming relational continuum] are reduced to local, independently-existing biological systems-in-themselves, local ‘powerboaters’ who are imagined as having their own local agency that is sourcing their actions and deeds.

 

This hijacking of the sailboater view of Self by the powerboater view of Self is an ego-driven language game, as Nietzsche points out;

 

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

Seeing the human as an Emersonian ‘vent’ or ‘inner-outering’ is like seeing a tornado as belonging to a larger relational dynamic in which it is included.  However, the use of noun-and-verb language affords a convenient means of reducing such relational complexity and delivering ‘economy of thought’ [Mach] wherein the relational form [the innering-outering] is semantically endowed with ‘local being’ or ‘thing-in-itselfness’ which becomes the notional ‘powerboater’ author of inputs and outputs.  This, as Nietzsche points out, is a ‘double error of grammar’.

 

Nietzsche gives the example of ‘lightning’ which is an innering-outering [charging-discharging]; i.e. a relational activity within [inductively actualized by] the transforming relational continuum/plenum.  However, by endowing ‘thing-in-itself being’ to the word-name-label we assign to it, we convert it into a ‘being with its own local agency’  aka the noun-subject ‘lightning’ that is now deemed to be the local author of the ‘flash’. In perpetrating this semantic trickery, the physical source of this relational activity; i.e. the transforming relational continuum which is inductively actualizing it, disappears from our awareness.  In Nietzsche’s words;

 

“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

 

This semantically contrived view of the world in terms of a collection of ‘things-in-themselves’ with their own local agency we know as ‘the scientific worldview’ aka the ‘semantically constructed scientific reality’.

 

So the question arises; ‘where did all these ‘things-in-themselves’ come from?

 

One popular answer in Western civilization has been; ‘God created them’.

Western science and Western religion support the same ‘pseudo-reality’; i.e. the semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR), making the physically experienced intuitive reality wherein ‘forms’ are ‘relational forms’ in a transforming relational continuum, an in-effect ‘heresy’.

 

The Hijacking of PEIR  (intuitive reality) by SCSR (scientific reality)

 

As is typical of Western religions, man is seen as in the following description from the Catholic Catechism;

 

“Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.” – Vatican Archives, The Catholic Catechism.

 

The physically experienced intuitive reality (PEIR) has thus been dealt a ‘double whammy’ by the combination of Western religious beliefs and Western scientific beliefs, both of which affirm the ‘reality’ of ‘local things-in-themselves’ with ‘their own local agency’ that are fully and solely causally responsible for their own actions and deeds.   That is, Western religion and Western science [pre modern physics ‘mainstream’ science] affirm the ‘truth’ of ‘semantically constructed scientific reality’ (SCSR).

 

The ‘powerboater view of self’ is thus the preferred view of self of Western culture conditioned people and since this culture now blankets the globe thanks to Euro-American colonization, it has become the foundation of a global, semantically constructed ‘operative reality’.

 

[4.] “It Takes a Whole Community to Raise a Child [New Member of the Community]”

 

This heading reflects inhabitant-habitat nonduality.  One can imagine a community of storms [forms] that are conditioning the common flow so as to render the flow pregnant and deliver new storms [forms].  This method of evolution is not possible if one frames one’s observation using an absolute space and absolute time measuring/reference frame as is the standard convention of mainstream science, thanks to semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR).

 

 

 

 

In physically experienced intuitive reality (PEIR), it is the epigenetic influence immanent in the relational dynamics the individual is situationally included in that inductively actualizes and shapes emerging forms.  The child-soldier did not result from ‘child-soldier genes’.  Epigenetic influence is the over-riding influence on the development of relational forms, whether humans or cells.  Modern findings in biology recall the relational view of Lamarck in this respect;

 

“As is described by Nijhout, genes are “not self-emergent,” that is genes can not turn themselves on or off. If genes can’t control their own expression, how can they control the behavior of the cell? Nijhout further emphasizes that genes are regulated by “environmental signals.” Consequently, it is the environment that controls gene expression. Rather than endorsing the Primacy of DNA, we must acknowledge the Primacy of the Environment!” —Bruce Lipton, ‘The New Biology’

 

The understanding that ‘relations are all there is’ leads us away from the ‘misunderstanding’ [illusion] that the forms in nature are ‘things-in-themselves’ as in Darwinism and ‘genetics’.   It is the cocktail of epigenetic influences that inductively actualizes ‘genetic expression’; i.e. ‘genetic expression’ is not actualized by local ‘genetic agency’ as in the idealizations of scientific dualism.

 

It is language and grammar as in semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) that RE-presents relational forms, reducing them to ‘things-in-themselves’ with ‘their own local agencies’ that notionally drive and direct ‘their own’ development and behaviour.   The imputed God-like generative agency of the ‘thing-in-itself’ of semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) has great appeal to the ego of the individual and to the collective ego of nationalism.   It is the underpinning of binary win/lose competition as in ‘war’. The relational worldview is instead rallied by harmony that resolves opposition.

 

Hodos ano kato (ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω), “the upward-downward path.” are simultaneous opposites, the source of “hidden harmony”. There is a harmony in the bending back (παλίντροπος palintropos) as in the case of the bow and the lyre. – from Heraclitus

 

If we examine the mutually supporting web of forms;

 

 

… and take into consideration, 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” – Mach’s principle

 

… then we can understand evolution in the same sense as Emerson in ‘The Method of Nature’; i.e. “It takes a whole community to raise a new member/species”.    That is, as niche needs develop within the relational dynamics of the transforming relational continuum, creative potentials are epigenetically/inductively actualized, orchestrated and shaped, blossoming forth into new participants.

 

This recalls the suggestion by physicists trying to explain the basic structure of the universe through the findings of quantum mechanics, where new entities are seen as being ‘bootstrapped’;

 

“”Bootstrapping” here refers to ‘pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps,’ as particles were surmised to be held together by forces consisting of exchanges of the particles themselves.”  — Wikipedia, The Bootstrap Model

 

The member forms of the community and the community are a nonduality in the sense that the community is a complex of relational influences which is inductively actualizing genetic expression [relational forms].  The relational forms and the complex of relational influences, like storm-cells in a pervading flow are a nonduality.

 

In looking at the ‘food web’ with its mutually supporting/mutually dependent innering-outerings [participants], the concept of ‘bootstrapping’ emerges intuitively [i.e. experience suggests that a cluster of storms will bootstrap more storms].

 

The assumption that ‘relations are all there is’ answers many questions that have resisted answering; e.g. where do ‘things’ come from? and ‘what is the source of their continuing animation’?  Are they complex designs from the head of a super-natural ‘Intelligent Designer’?  Is it not simpler to conjecture that they derive from the ‘all’ aka the ‘transforming relational continuum’ as proposed by Schroedinger, Nietzsche and others?

 

In the relational view, it is not necessary to explain how a multiplicity of independent things-in-themselves ‘co-operate’ [a difficult question in the case of plants] since the transforming relational continuum is inherently fully coordinated, unlike a collection of independent things-in-themselves.  The relational forms that are inductively actualized within the relational continuum are already coordinated [quantum entangled?] by being ‘part of’ an inherently connected and coordinated ‘flow’.  That is, the development of an ‘ecosystem’ in the relational view is seen arising from relational influences that inductively actualize, orchestrate and shape the developing forms in the ecosystem.  The forms do not ‘come to exist first’ as ‘independent things-in-themselves’ that deliberately choose to form a mutually supportive organization that will benefit all of the members.  As a matter of fact, ecosystem members could not even exist without the mutual aid, suggesting that relations [relational influences] are in precedence over ‘things’ in the web of relations.

 

However, ‘science’ sees ‘independent material things-in-themselves’ as being ‘first’ on the scene [as the primary movers and shapers] and then ‘constructing’ the ecosystem; i.e. becoming the ‘authors’ and ‘founders’ of a deliberately cooperative mutually support based organization.  This imputing of rational thought based cooperation to plants etc., In spite of how much this smells like ‘anthropomorphism’, is modern biological science’s explanation of ‘ecosystems’; i.e. in terms of ‘things’ that ‘cooperate’ in a ‘mutually supporting’ manner.

 

The human ‘brain’ (a relational form within a relational form within the transforming relational continuum) is seen as a ‘thing’ or ‘system-in-itself’ by science; i.e. a kind of ‘thinking machine’ that is separate from the body of the human form, which issues instructions to the limbs and organs of the human body so as to set the body up, in appearance, as another ‘system-in-itself’, a nesting structure that is like the Russian Matrewshka, where smaller figures-in-themselves nest within larger figures-in-themselves; atoms in molecules in cells in organs in organism in community; … a material structure-in-itself that science claims has no need of epigenetic inductively actualizing influence in its development and/or animation.

Supposedly, it is animated, so science says, by a mysterious force called ‘life’ that is incredibly rare in the universe although there is quite an abundance of it on the third rock out from the sun.  [Indigenous aboriginals along with Mach, Nietzsche, Bohm, Schroedinger [What is Life?’] as well as Lamarck, hold the relational view wherein ‘field’ is the inductive actualizer and animator of genetic expression, so there is no need to have to come up with a notional internal genetic agency to explain the animating source of biological forms.  There is no need in the relational worldview, to divide the universe up into ‘living/organic’ and ‘dead/inorganic’ realms.  This division arises from assuming the existence of independent things-in-themselves and then having to explain why some things-in-themselves are animated from the inside while others are only animated from the outside.  In the relational view, the primary animation is ‘field’ while material forms are secondary phenomena.

 

So, instead of understanding an ecosystem as a group of relational forms that are inductively actualized by the relational dynamics they are situationally included in, science portrays the ecosystem as a group of ‘independently-existing organisms-in-themselves’ with rational minds that deliberately cooperate in a mutually supportive way.  In the case of the ‘human’, scientists reckon that this deliberate cooperating strategy is hatched within the brain and put into action by the brain’s instructions through the central nervous system to the body parts.

 

Of course, this architecture composed of ‘independent parts’ with rational minds that cooperate to organize as an ecosystem is easier to postulate for humans and the anthropomorphic ‘organismic forms’ which have features such as ‘brains’ and ‘central nervous systems’ that help the scientific reassembly logic to appear to hang together.   Meanwhile, it is more of a struggle to fit plants into science’s schema whereby the independent parts in an ecosystem deliberately cooperate in a mutually supporting manner, since plants have no brain or central nervous system that can be tagged as the means for interpreting what needs to be done and for executing relevant and appropriate cooperative actions.

 

David Suzuki in ‘The Nature of Things’ shows how scientists are scratching their heads over their own scientific reality (SCSR) ecosystem architecture in an episode called ‘Smarty Plants’ where the scientists anthropomorphize plants that science purports to be ‘independent biological systems in themselves’, ‘rational participants’ in ecosystemic mutually supportive cooperation.  The viewer of ‘Smarty Plants’ is asked to ‘swallow’ the following claims by biological science as to the behaviour of ‘plants’ participating in ecosystems;

 

  • Did you know that all plants forage for food in much the same way as a bear or a squirrel?
  • Did you know that plants that can “talk”?
  • Did you know that plants, like animals, can sense when they’re under attack and can actually defend themselves?
  • Did you know that some plants can “tag” insects for predation?
  • Did you know that the roots of an Eastern European invader called Spotted Knapweed can capture and hold territory by waging chemical war on other plants?
  • Did you know that there’s a parasitic plant that can actually identify and choose between two different plant hosts by sniffing out their chemical IDs?
  • Did you know that a plant that grows on the shores of the Great Lakes can identify its relatives and even help them out?
  • Did you know that some plants can tell which insect is eating it by the chemicals in the insect’s saliva?
  • Did you know that plants emit a chemical scream for help when they’re under stress, and that other plants can listen in on their SOS messages?
  • Did you know that “mother” trees can actually nurture their young?

 

These ‘anthropomorphisms’ are forced upon the scientists by the demands of their semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) which puts ‘things-in-themselves’ into an unnatural primacy over ‘relations’.    This ‘kluge’ is not necessary where relations are acknowledged to be in a natural primacy over material things-in-themselves.

 

One might observe that the desire to hold on to the semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) with its dualism and being-based assumptions must be a very committed one, to give scientists the gall to overtly anthropomorphize plants in this manner in order to ‘keep it afloat’ and resist the understanding coming from our physically experienced intuitive reality (PEIR) wherein ‘everything is in flux’ and ‘relations are primary’.

 

 

[5.] The ‘Awakening’ to Nonduality in ‘Psychiatry’

 

Psychiatry has been another stronghold of the view of the ‘human’ as an ‘independently existing biological-system-in-itself’, so much so that it has continued to see ‘breakdowns’ in humans as deriving from internal malfunction, even when waves of people undergo breakdowns in proximity to catastrophes such as 9/11 suggesting an epigenetic inductive sourcing influence.

 

Many books have been written by ‘dissenters’ in the ranks of psychiatry who reject the ‘biological machine’ model of the human; e.g. Thomas Szasz, ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’, R. D. Laing, ‘Politics and Experience’, Peter Breggin ‘Toxic Psychiatry’, Raymond Cochrane, ‘The Social Origins of Mental Illness’, Kelly Brogan, ‘A Mind of Your Own’ etc.

 

All of these books allude to a larger view of the issues wherein the epigenetic influence of the relational dynamics one is situationally included in, is the inductive actualizer of the genetic expression of emotional distress that is wrongly assumed to be originating from within the individual.  While changes in neuro-transmitter activity can be correlated with psychosis, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the neurotransmitter disruption is symptom rather than source; i.e. relational stresses can build and accumulate to the point of breakdown as in avalanche and earthquake phenomena [nonlinear dynamics, self-organized criticality].  As Jill Astbury writes in ‘Crazy for You’, in interpreting the World Health Organization finding that women are twice as likely to suffer from ‘affective disorders’ [depression, bipolar disorder etc.] as men, what we have going on is an ignoring of sensitive ‘miner’s canaries’ that are sending us signals of an ambient toxicity in the social relational dynamic we are included in.

 

In understanding self-and-other in terms of inhabitant-habitat nonduality, it is impossible for anything manifesting in the behaviour of the individual to be coming fully and solely from the individual.   That would be like blaming the behaviour of  a tornado (relational form) on the tornado; i.e. on the word-noun-subject ‘tornado’ since there is no ‘thing-in-itself’ to blame actions and deeds on.  The child-soldier, the rebel, the criminal, the terrorist, … are words that we use as if they design things-in-themselves rather than relational activities within the transforming relational continuum.  The relational worldview sees people as vents that transmit influences from the nonlocal to the local, but the biological machine model wherein we attribute actions and deeds that manifest through an individual, to the individual as a ‘thing-in-itself’, is something very different and comes from simplifications-of-convenience built into noun-and-verb language-and-grammar.

 

In the case of ‘miner’s canaries that become distressed, we need not look inside the canary for the source of its distress, but instead investigate the relational tensions in the environment that are inducing emotional distress in the canaries [e.g. presence of methane or lack of oxygen].    That is the way it must be in all inhabitant-habitat nondualist situations.  The violent figurehead in the community IS NOT A FOUNTAINHEAD.  It is merely venting relational tensions that others [the community] may have brewed up.  Thus the community ‘scapegoats’ the miner’s canaries [the ‘child-soldier’, the ‘mentally ill’, ‘rebels’, ‘terrorists’].   That is, the community denies that everyone in the community, including the aforementioned, is participating in a relational dynamic that is inductively actualizing ‘breakdowns’ in some individuals according to their particular situational inclusion in the relational dynamic.

 

The person who ‘vents’ community-brewed relational tensions, is being scape-goated as being the full and sole source of his own ‘breakdown’ such that the general membership of the community is held ‘totally innocent’ [with zero causal responsibility] and the relational tensions that are being brewed by the relational dynamics of the community are left unaddressed.

 

For those with a relational/nondualist worldview such as indigenous aboriginals with traditionalist beliefs, the entire community steps forward to acknowledge responsibility for eruptions of violence/distress within the community, as vent through ‘the mentally ill’, ‘child-soldiers’, ‘rebels’ and ‘terrorists’.   There is no analysis of causal responsibility because causal responsibility does not exist in the relational view.  It is an artefact of the semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR).  [Venters of violence have to be dealt with by those coming from an ethic of restoring, cultivating and sustaining of balance and harmony, but they do not have to be scape-goated by a community that denies that “it takes a whole community to raise a rebel” on the grounds that every person is an ‘independently-existing biological system-in-itself’.]

 

Kelly Brogan points out that the sourcing origin of emotional distress termed ‘mental illness’ is ‘the world we live in’; i.e. relational tensions brewing and accruing in the relational dynamics we are situationally included in.

 

“The reason that conventional psychiatry – whether pharmaceutical or psychoanalytic – is powerless to substantially help the vast majority of patients is that it does not, and cannot, recognize the wrongness of the world we live in.”

Psychiatry says something is wrong with you – your genes, your chemistry, your perceptions, your behavior. You are broken and you need Pharma-fixing. It has never been more clear to me that the Guild of Psychiatry is one of the greatest threats to a soul’s journey, perhaps simply because there is no acknowledgement of the soul. This is why I believe that avoiding and coming off of psychiatric medications is the greatest form of initiation to self that exists in the West today.” – Kelly Brogan, psychiatrist.

 

Raymond Cochrane similarly points out that psychiatry typically starts its investigation of ‘mental illness’ by looking into the ‘mentally ill’, therefore eliminating even as a possibility that the origin of the ‘mental distress’ is the relational social dynamics in which one is situationally included; i.e. one would have to study ‘mental health’ rather than ‘mental illness’ to discover how epigenetic influences inductively actualize ‘mental illness’.  As many psychiatric patients have observed, they are declared ‘cured’ while they are in the hospital and surrounded by empathic others, but once they return to the highly-stressed rat-race they were in, the epigenetic influences that inductively actualized the genetic expression [mental breakdown] are experienced once again.

 

“From the outset it will be clear that most of the research in this field has followed the conventional epidemiological or medical paradigm by focusing on mental ill health as the dependent variable. It is, therefore, not surprising that there is a lack of empirically grounded research on mental well-being or the psychological resilience and survival of minority groups in this country” — R. Cochrane (University of Birmingham) and S. P. Sashidharan (North Birmingham Mental Health Trust) in ‘Mental Health and Ethnic Minorities’

 

Conclusions

 

Both Western religions and Western science support a semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR).  This is a worldview featuring the actions and deeds of humans seen as biological machines, notionally with their own internal local agency driven and directed [powerboater style] actions and deeds.

 

Waiting in the wings is an alternative worldview, employed by indigenous aboriginal traditionalists, followers of Buddhism and Avaita Vedanta and affirmed in modern physics by Mach, Bohm Schroedinger and other ‘relationists’.  The relational worldview is also affirmed in our own physically experienced intuitive reality (PEIR), wherein relations are all there is and ‘things’ are relational forms or ‘appearances’ as in a storm-and-flow, inhabitant-habitat nonduality.

 

Adoption of this alternative worldview leads to the superseding of ‘moral judgement of good and evil’ with the ethic of restoring, cultivating and sustaining balance and harmony [as in ‘restorative justice’], and to an understanding that ‘cooperation’ and ‘mutual support’ is built into nature and does not have to be deliberately, rationally and morally enacted by way of ‘humans’, ‘nations’, ‘corporations’ seen notionally in scientific reality (SCSR) as ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves, notionally with their own ‘local agency’ that drives and directs their actions and deeds.  In the relational view, naturally unfolding need is an epigenetic influence that inductively actualizes, orchestrates and shapes restorative actions.

While the semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) is illusion that departs radically from our physically experienced intuitive reality (PEIR), it is an illusion that Western culture dominated society has been steadily working towards, wherein everything is deliberate and rationally controlled so that humanity can continue to ‘improve’ the natural world [the savage wilderness] as God or our penchant for control willed us to;

 

“God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man, … to subdue the earth; i.e., improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour.  He that in obedience to this commandment of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him” – John Locke, 1690.

 

The scientific world view is a semantically constructed scientific reality (SCSR) whose centrepiece is an individual ‘human’ seen as an ‘independent individual with his own logical agency who is fully and solely causally responsible for his own actions and accomplishments.   The resistance to this world view being superseded by a more realistic relational worldview (PEIR), as noted by Nietzsche, is because man’s ego is heavily invested in this belief that his good deeds are fully and solely attributable to him and the bad deeds of others are fully and solely attributable to those others.  In this individualistic accounting, there is no place for those who intuit that ‘it takes a whole community to raise a child’ nor for the ‘restorative justice’ which follows from it.

 

The ego’s investment in social status and retributive grudges is continuing to stall an awakening to the (PEIR) reality and inhabitant-habitat nonduality wherein ‘relations are all there is’.