Aboriginal Physics Newsletter

Theuth, the chameleon-God, is the ‘/’ between death/life, light/dark, logos/mythos

[N.B.  For reading either before or after reading this essay, see the broader context-giving introduction. ]

The source of global social dysfunction, that is pointed to by all of my investigations, lies in our interpretation of this ‘/’, this ‘back-stretched connexion’ wherein we give meaning to conjugate relations such as habitat/inhabitant.   That is, we can understand the ‘/’ in two different ways (a) simple something/nothing binary opposites, and/or, (b) spatially nested inclusion. (more…)

belousov-zhabotinski reaction (simulated) where chaos and order meet

Our society, in answering the question ‘What is Life?’ has chosen to see ‘human being’ as a biological machine; a ‘local system with its own locally-originating, internal-process-driven behaviour’ that interacts with other such biological machines.   We have been steadily building this bogus view of ‘What Life is’ into our systems of governance, justice, education and very man other things.

This is crazy.  But, as my fellow inquirers who have come to the same or very similar conclusions note, the problem is not in defining ‘what is wrong’ with how we, as a social collective, have been answering the question ‘What is Life?’, but in getting others to consider it, since the path back to sanity (to a sane brotherhood) is through everyone coming to a common understanding on this.  And here we have the problem that is often compared to the need to change the tires on a car while your driving it at 80 mph in the flow of the freeway. (more…)

the human body (hourglass form) as toroidal energy flow

I am not a mathematician, which is not to say that mathematics does not intrigue me, because it does.  Women may intrigue a man without there having to be any correlation between deepening intrigue and ‘deepening understanding’.  The deeper one goes in, the more confounded one can become.  What you thought you already knew slips away from you in your attempt to grasp it more firmly (isn’t this what has happened in particle physics?)..  The explicit being and interactions of numerical arithmetic dissolves into a phantom-filled fog of tacit relationship in algebra, and sharply-etched delineations of geometric form melt like Salvadore Dali clocks as one lets go of the rigidity ‘of being’ and moves to the relational invariants of ‘becoming’ in topology (how would you create a representation of what was invariant in your own human body going from infancy through to old age?  The orifices are distinctive invariants, and the animated graphic above is the way that some ancient thinkers pictured the ‘continuous becoming’ of a human.  The flesh is secondary, like a ‘biofilm’ that gather in the energy flow, as with the tubular shells of tubeworms that form in the flow of clouds of bacteria precipitating in the hydro-thermal ambiance of volcanic vents deep in the ocean.

Before getting lost in the maze, the point of this post is to open up a place for discussion on ‘symmetry’ and how it relates to ‘understanding’. (more…)

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Overview: The following article, ‘Anarchy and Order’ and subsequent discussion was published on the Anarchistnews.org website on July 20, 2010 and includes comments and discussion through to July 27, 2010.  The last comment posted at that time was ‘Makes sense! Thanks’ by Squee on July 25, 2010.

This overview is to provide some contextual perspective (the article and discussion is copied ‘as is’ without edits) of where the author of the article is ‘coming from’ since the reader may otherwise ‘come in’ to the reading employing one or other of the very different definitions of ‘anarchism’ that are ‘out there’ in the mainstream media and/or in the intellectual writers forums.

To the author of the article, ‘anarchism’ may be compared directly with ‘decolonization’, a term used by indigenous peoples of North America (‘Amerindians’).  The ‘decolonization’ movement (e.g. see Taiaiake Alfred’s video presentation at http://vimeo.com/4650972 ) [taiaiake starts speaking at the 10 min. 22 sec. mark]) orients to ‘the resurgence of traditional ways of being’.  It has this in common with the ‘de-westernization’ that is implicit in ‘anarchism’.  That is, the quest is for a way of life that is indicated by the Lakota words ‘Mitakuye oyasin’ (‘we are all related’, not just humans but.everything in Nature).  This way of life is ‘backwards’ from our western urbanized or government organized way of life in that the organization is ‘extrinsically shaped’ by the dynamics of the space we are included in.  For example, if one is in a sailboat in a storm, or driving a small car or motorcycle in the flow of the freeway, the spatial-relational dynamics we are included in extrinsically shape or individual and collective behaviour; i.e. ‘how we are organized’ is orchestrated from the outside-inward.  By contrast, if one is on the Titanic and/or if one is in a semi-trailer or tank in the flow of the freeway, the organization is ‘intrinsic’ (directed from this inside-outward) and is deliberate intention/purpose driven.

In the west, since Aristotlelian ‘telos’ became dominantly popular; i.e. the belief that dynamics in nature are governed by ‘intrinsic final cause’ (e.g. the acorn is directed by its inner ‘purpose’ to become an oak tree), western intellectual/scientific man has conceived of himself as a ‘purposeful system’ (i.e. as having locally originating, internal purpose directed behaviour).  This Aristotelian notion of the organism as a purposeful system has been built into western biology and into Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  The ‘purposeful system’ view of humans and organisms is ‘over-simplied’ in that it ignores the extrinsic shaping influence that we experience in the dynamic space of nature.  Nature, as we experience it in ‘real-life’, is ‘purposeless’ (anarchic); i.e. it is a ceaselessly innovative unfolding field of spatial-relationships in which we are each uniquely situationally included.  In its entirety, there is no ‘encoding of what Nature is going to become, nor is there any ‘local internal purpose’ directing its unfolding (Nature is not one ‘giant acorn’ knowledgeably pushing out of itself on its way to becoming a ‘giant oak tree’).  But western intellectual scientific thinking (the mainstream or popular variety which we build into our institutions::education, governance, justice) has locked-on to the purposeful system model of Aristotle, and imposes it on the individual ‘members’ of the ‘organization’ (the state, corporation, membership club etc.)   The social ramifications are huge.  As McLuhan pointed out, the purposeful system orientation blinds us to what is really going on.  While we purposefully focus on constructing a factory in a small town (where ‘labour’ and ‘materials/resources’, the ‘factors of purposeful production’ are available), it matters little whether this purposeful system makes “Cadillacs or cornflakes”, what matters is how our relationships with one another and with the land are transformed.  It’s not that we shouldn’t have technology, its just whether we should put ‘Mitakuye oyasin’ first as the orchestrator of our behaviours, or whether we should ignore it as is the current western way; i.e. our ‘western ethic’ is to focus purposefully on achieving our self-interested objectives/destinations.  ‘Decolonization’ and ‘anarchism’ are both to do with ‘restoring to its natural primacy, the ethic of Mitakuye oyasin’.  ‘Decolonization’ and ‘anarchism’ implicitly represent the resurgence of natural ways of being, the ‘reconnecting’ in the wake of western ‘disconnecting’.  The traditional ‘connected way’ can still be found in the ‘spandrels’, those spaces which form ‘in between’ the arches and supportive beams of a deliberate and purposeful architecture, but as purposeful structures increasingly ‘take over’, the last of the  spandrels in which the practitioners of Mitakuye oyasin can ‘breathe easy’ are being eliminated.

* * * Start of ‘Anarchy and Order’ Article * * * (more…)