The Origins of ‘Decoupling’ (of wealth from production ‘etc’)

The model of the sovereign state is analogous to the model of the biological organism; i.e. a ‘local system with its own locally originating, internal process driven behaviour.

This is a ‘machine model’ and machine models are local, visible, material cause-and-effect systems that assume Euclidian space.  The ‘independence’ of the system derives from assuming that the operating space is infinite and thus that resources consumed (inputs) in the machine process and products and wastes produced discharged (outputs) do not simultaneously transform the habitat or ‘operating theatre’ in which the machine/organism is an ‘inhabitant’.  In a finite and unbounded space, such as on the surface of a sphere, this Euclidian assumption no longer holds and there is in this case, a conjugate relation between the habitat dynamic and the dynamics of the inhabitant/s per 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.”  In other words, separation of inhabitant and the habitat is purely conceptual [it depends on ‘infinity’] and equates to the imposing of Euclidian space on the model of the system, as has been traditional in the biological sciences and Newtonian physics views of ‘machines’.

A ‘picture’ that crudely captures the non-euclidian [Machean] space case, is where the inhabitants of a home/habitat are ripping out the flooring in their house and burning it in order to produce heat.  Mach’s principle applies in this case.  It will nevertheless be possible to measure their ‘gross domestic product’ (GDP) based on their home-heating enterprise, but the GDP for a household, state, organism or organization typically assumes Euclidian space.

The depletion of habitat resources and pollution of habitat air quality are considered ‘externalities’ by economists, that do not appear in the book-keeping for the GDP or GNP (gross national product).  There is what Nietzsche calls an ‘error in grammar’ here since the instant the floor board is debited from the habitat it is credited the heat production system.  In non-euclidian space [which is a relational space], change transpires by way of the transformation of space.  We ‘don’t see’ the transformation of space if we focus on ‘beings’ and ‘what they do’ in generative time-sequence.   We say ‘the fire-tender stokes the fire’ and this sounds very ‘deliberate’ and ‘intentional’ or ‘deterministic-constructivist’ aimed at conditioning the habitat in a desired way.  But his action of picking up the board to throw on the fire was, at the same time, a degenerative conditioning of the same space. [See Nietzsche, Will to Power, 531, of which a short excerpt follows]

“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.”

Transformation of space as a spatial-plenum or ‘medium’ involves simultaneous genesis and degeneration.   When one conceives of the dynamics of material beings in a historical time sequence [the ‘Euclidian’ space view], there is an irresolvable paradox as to whether what is going on is ‘generative’ or ‘degenerative’.  The European colonizers of the Americas were convinced, as they recorded in their [time-sequential] historical narratives, that their actions constituted the genesis of a new-world civilization, while the indigenous peoples who ‘were colonized’ were convinced, as they recorded in their [time-sequential] historical narratives, that these same actions were degenerative, destroying an established old-world civilization.  What was going on was meanwhile a ‘real, physical phenomenon’, transpiring in the same place at the same time.

The physical unfolding was experienced ‘in common’ [it was the transformation of the common space they shared inclusion in] and it was only their time-based conceptualizing which they objectified the world and presented it to themselves conceptually, as if ‘this was our world in 1491 and look how it had degenerated by 1800.

There was no such thing as ‘our world in 1491’ that persisted through to 1800, as would be required to assess and compare the before and after status.  In the world understood in non-euclidian terms, there is just one space and the dynamics are purely relational, so we would have to say that the finite and unbounded space on the surface of the sphere of the earth experienced some relational rearranging [the only thing possible as there is no absolute movement of absolute material things in non-euclidian space].  The imagery here is of men repositioning themselves, relatively, over the surface of the sphere.  the relationships will be changed by the relative movements, both where the one-to-many dispersals originated and where the many-to-one congregations developed; i.e. the picture is one of the transformation of spatial relations.

The diverse participants in the ecosystems of the earth’s biosphere do not all have the names ‘Europe’ and ‘America’ available to them, nor a lat/long reference grid to describe movement ‘from Europe to America’ and being thus ‘illiterate’, would have to fall back and describe motion in the relative terms of the transforming of relations amongst things, rather than in terms of ‘local independent material beings’ that developed form, behaviour and organization relative to a notional absolute fixed reference grid, an absolute fixed reference grid that made it possible to ascribe behaviour to local material forms as if they were ‘things-in-themselves’ with ‘their own behaviour’ [locally originating and internal process driven and directed].

The instituting of ‘independent sovereign states’ was essentially a declaration in favour of putting the conceptual reality based on fixed and infinite Euclidian space into precedence over the physical reality of non-Euclidian finite and unbounded space.  Instead of having to mentally view the world dynamic in terms of relational transformation, the mental view was instead in terms of local material beings, their deterministic-constructivist actions and interactions, as if in a passive and non-participating [Euclidian] spatial operating theatre.

The ‘democratic governance process’ adopted by the sovereign state, or by the dictatorship, was an intellection and purpose based ‘system of organization’.  In the non-euclidian space view of Nietzsche; the evolving world was a flow-process in which outside-inward-orchestrating [nurturing] influence predominated over inside-outward asserting flow.  In other words, the nurturing quality of space was the primary organizing agency, the oases and fertile valleys orchestrated human behaviours like spilled pools of honey orchestrated ant behaviours.   This outside-inward source of organization has vanished in the intellectual-theory-driven schema of ‘democratic government’ within the sovereign state.

That is, the outside-inward orchestrating schema of nature is felt through the spatial-situational particulars of the individual.  Such influence, which is nonlocal, invisible/intangible and non-material, is impossible in Euclidian space where influence can only come from the local, visible/tangible, material objects in that space.

That the sourcing of organization is, in its most fundamental operative, a sourcing wherein outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward [e.g. intellectually-driven] influence, … is suggested by phrases such as ‘it’s stuffy here, let’s gets some fresh air’.   ‘It’ refers to the condition of the spatial medium and ‘get’ is not intended in the sense of ‘fetching a bucket of substance known as fresh air’, since we are included in an airy medium [the ‘atmosphere’] which varies in ‘quality’.   While the language is consistent with the Euclidian CONCEPT of an ‘organism’ as an ‘independent material system’ with its own locally originating, internal process driven and internal process directed [e.g. ‘intellect and purpose’ directed] behaviour, the PHYSICAL REALITY is that we are included in a NURTURING MEDIUM whose nurturance conditions our actions at the same time as our actions are conditioning its nurturance.

The ‘let’s get some fresh air’ scenario is the same as ‘let’s get some fresh land’ scenario in the case of the colonizers moving from east to west (Europe to America) where the more realistic physical phenomenon is describable in terms of reorganizing the global living space [‘east’ and ‘west’ conceptual extremes on a straight line; on the surface of a sphere, if one is heading west, one is, at the same time, heading east [i.e. heading for a point immediately behind where one is starting to move forward from].

These phrases based on inside-outward driven movement represent ‘monological’ viewpoints [as associate with ‘dialectic’ rather than ‘dialogic’ process].  If the living space were a flat plane of infinite extent [Euclidian], THEN the notion of the colonizers ‘moving from east to west’ and the people ‘moving from the stuffy air towards the fresh air’ would be consistent with the structure of the living space, but such a living space (the space on the surface of a plane of infinite extent) is purely conceptual, depending on ‘infinity’ for its ‘realization’.

To avoid constructing a living space based on ‘infinity’, we have to assume a ‘relational’ space [non-euclidian] that is finite and unbounded, like the space on the surface of a sphere, and now we can only say that ‘movements of things’ constitute transformations of relations within that space.  And when we do this, the role of ‘intellection’ in ‘determining what unfolds’ is demoted to a ‘supportive tool’.

For example, we need not explain the movements of sheep in a grassy meadow in the terms that they are ‘organisms’ with their own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviours.   The sheep enjoy the nurturance of the space they are included in, if the nurturance OF THE SPATIAL MEDIUM THEY ARE INCLUDED IN declines [which corresponds to the airy medium becoming stuffy, or the European land becoming depleted], then the nonlocal, invisible/intangible, non-material outside-inward orchestrating influence of the variably-nurturing spatial medium [aka ‘environment’, aka ‘living space’] predominates over the inside-outward asserting behaviour of the ‘organism’.

The sheep could all be blind and they would still manage to trim the grass uniformly over the whole meadow, or over the portion within their fenced off area.  Like maggots cleaning every scrap of flesh from a carcass, the nurturing quality of space is an outside-inward orchestrating influence that predominates over the inside-outward asserting deterministic [intellection and purpose directed] action.  Only if we ignore the nurturing quality of the medium of space, do we throw the ball back to the notionally independent ‘organisms’ and make them the ultimate inside-outward animator of inhabitant-dynamics.

Thus, the space of our SENSORY physical experience is more like non-euclidian geometry (relational space where change is by transformation of spatial relations) than it is like euclidian geometry (absolute space where change is due to the dynamic behaviours of the local, visible, material inhabitants and what is not occupied by material inhabitants is void; i.e. space is not an energy-charged medium but an empty void, locally filled by material objects/organisms/organisms/organizations/systems).

Like the hurricane living in the flow/medium of the atmosphere and being animated by the energizing nurturance of that medium, so is it with man and all flow-forms.  The Euclidian view, meanwhile, decouples the inhabitants from the nurturing/parenting medium and re-renders them as local, independently existing and operating systems.  This is thanks to the notion that the inputs are drawing on infinite supply and their outputs are discharging product and waste into an infinite receptacle/accommodating-space.  For if the space they are included in behaves as a finite space, then the dynamic of this habitat changes in instant reciprocal complement to the inhabitant dynamic [its drawing in and discharging], as with the hurricane in the energy-charged/nurturing atmospheric flow-medium.

There is just one PHYSICAL dynamic here and it is the ‘transformation of the energy-charged spatial medium’ though we are able to distinguish ‘figures’ [flow-forms] and ‘ground’ within that transforming, nurturing, energy-charged medium/unum.  Once we NOTIONALLY separate out the ‘flow-forms’ [forms are our own mental conceptions], we are building a conceptual reality which is not in accord with the physical reality.  And as we let the ‘ground’ fade from our focus and attention, re-centering attention on the flow-forms, we are then left to explain all of the action, in terms the dynamics of these local, visible/tangible, material forms.  In other words, once we are ensconced in the conceptual reality based on ‘forms’, our understanding of ‘dynamics’ is forced to rely fully and solely on the ‘forms’, the local, visible/tangible, material objects/organisms/organizations/systems, and we simply ignore the PHYSICAL REALITY AFFIRMED BY OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE that the outside-inward energizing/nurturing influence of the spatial medium predominates over the inside-outward asserting deterministic dynamics of the ‘forms’.

Now, our culture has upped-the-ante hugely by inventing the ‘sovereign state’ and ‘the corporation’ as ‘organisms’ or ‘machines’ that roam about in empty Euclidian space populated by a multiplicity of other such ‘machines’ and engaging in ‘competition’ with them.  We see ourselves as internal components in these machines, and allow our behaviours to be directed by intellectual-theoretic models imposed by a ‘brain-like’ ‘central authority’ within the conceptual ‘machine’.   That is, the ‘democratic process’ of the sovereign state by being intellectual-theoretic, forcibly imposes an unnatural predominating of inside-outward asserting influence which then stone-walls the outside-inward orchestrating influence of the nurturing quality of space.

This is elevating of a conceptual reality based on notionally ‘independent’ forms which ignores the predominating, in nature’s dynamics, of the outside-inward orchestrating influence of cyclically renewing nurturance in the energy-charged spatial medium, over the inside-outward asserting deterministic-constructivist PRODUCTION of the forms that we re-cast as independent organisms/machines.

As John McMurtry (Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada) research into the value structure of economic theory and its consequences for global civil and environmental life points out, the world dynamic is troubled by a ‘decoupling’ of ‘monetary value sequences’ from ‘life-affirming sequences’.  Since monetary wealth is a source of power to inside-outwardly organize and direct, this decoupling tends to convert the whole world dynamic into an inside-outward asserting ‘productive machine’, out of the context of the nurturing quality of the energy-charged spatial medium; i.e. out of the context of PHYSICAL REALITY.   The implication of the following figure is that those countries focusing on ‘banking’ [making money purely on the movements of money without dependency on physical reality] are becoming more wealthy [and thus more powerful as a group, in the inside-outward organizing of the global social dynamic] out of the context of the real global physical dynamic.

Banking; where making money on the movement of money predominates

That is; gross domestic product per capita [GDP per capita] or gross national product per capita [GNP per capita], which sounds like a measure of ‘production’; i.e. which sounds like an aspect of a ‘physical reality’ is highest in those countries specializing in banking (Luxembourg, Switzerland, Bermuda, Norway etc.) where money is made on the movement of money [McMurtry et al].

The movements of money are based on speculated anticipation of production, rather than physical production.  For example, “Margaret Blair of the Brookings Institute in Washington (Dzinkowski, 1999) was able to show that the ‘missing value’ [read intellectual capital] in companies has grown from about 38% in 1982 to about 62% in 1995. Baruch Lev estimates that the market value of the Standard and Poor’s 500 averages six times the net asset value on the companies’ balance sheets. This implies that traditional accounting methods are only measuring about 15% of companies value.  What is the missing value? A good deal of it at least, and maybe all, is knowledge capital. http://www.delhibusinessreview.org/v_5n1/v5n1c.pdf

Example; RIM last traded below book value in 2002, before it became profitable. The company earned $329 million, the least in four years, in the quarter ended in August. RIM shares peaked at 24.3 times book value in November 2007. … The MSCI World Information Technology Index trades at 3.2 times book value, with 18 of 147 of its stocks, including 13 Japanese companies, below 1. RIM’s rival Apple costs 4.8 times book value. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-08/rim-s-stock-falls-below-book-value-on-blackberry-sales-slump.html

It is a ‘given’ that there has been a ‘decoupling’ of the wealth-redistribution dynamic from the physical production dynamic, but the question remains as to ‘how far upstream’ our inquiry needs to go in identifying the source of this decoupling.

We could stop with the ‘powerful class’, the group of people who have maximized their wealth acquisition by mastering and exploiting the ‘movements of money’ which have nothing to do with ‘physical production’, which is to say, that where physical production is involved, it is incidental, since exploiting of the movements of money is the over-riding organizing principle.

Or, we could go still further upstream, to the social processes that have shifted us out of space-based ‘physical reality’ into forms-based ‘conceptual reality’, the cultivating of ‘belief’ in the ‘independent existence’ of the ‘sovereign state’ being a primary case in point, and the institution of ‘democratic process’ within the context of the ‘sovereign state’ which proxies the will of the people into a top-down driving intellectual-theoretical inside-outward driving organization.  But this ‘will’ is an intellectual will which is, once again, ‘conceptual’ and it ignores the actually unfolding physical reality.

The situation we are currently in, is that implosion is occurring wherein the extraction of wealth by way of the movement of money is no longer attuned to the cycles of nurturance-replenishment in the spatial medium.  Because of the conjugate habitat-inhabitant relation [Mach’s principle], the wealthy class is like a blood-sucking tick that is bloating up in reciprocal complement to the deprivation/shrivelling of its once healthy host.  The solution is not for the body of the host or the 99% to go to war against the bloating tick or 1%, but to look still further upstream to the role of the ‘sovereign state’ and the ‘democratic process’ within the context of the sovereign state (the brain within the machine), since it is where the trouble starts.

And if we were to examine the philosophical roots of the instituting of the ‘sovereign state’, …yes, as a colonizing device, but more than this, as an agreement between the Kings of Europe and the Church, to partition authority into the world, giving authority over the temporal [transient, material] realm to the Kings [politicians] and giving authority over the spiritual [eternal, non-material] realm to the Church.  There was really no other ‘power’ to stand in the way of this partitioning of authority, history shows that one Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas [current home of the Zapatistas], Bartolomeo de Las Casas (1484 – 1566) had an enormous influence on the thinking of these times with his argument that there could be no splitting apart of the land and the people because, ‘the people belonged to the land’, ‘the land did not belong to the people’.

The separation of Church [concerning authority over the spiritual, the eternal] and the State [concerning authority over the temporal, the transient material] continues to be seen by legal historians [see ‘Native American Sovereignty: Now You See It, Now You Don’t’, by Peter D’Errico] as a ‘secularized theological concept’.  That is, the will of the people is ‘spiritual’ and it is, thanks to the ‘Faustian’ device of the ‘Sovereign State’ [designed to pry apart the indigenous peoples from their lands] which one swears an oath of allegiance to, in order to ‘be allowed to’ partake of its nurturance, re-organizing the social dynamic around a purely intellectual belief-based concept that is absolutely decoupled from physical reality [i.e. the birds, four-leggeds, insects, winds, rivers, plate tectonics, pay absolutely no attention the proudly declared ‘independent existence’ of the imaginary-line-bounded sovereign state].

Thus we may conclude that the upstream source of our current global social dysfunction is still further upstream from the bloated blood-sucking of the 1% that is grappled onto the shrinking host body, ticks that emaciate and bring death to the moose.  The engorged tick is only one centimeter long, compared to the moose which can stand seven feet high at the shoulders and weigh 1400 pounds, but it has the power to bring its host down by taking control of its source of nurturance (the blood supply).  In this real-world physical analogy, the remedy would be to get rid of the ticks, and that is the immediate suggestion that comes to the minds of the 99% in regard to the 1% that has taken control of their source of nurturance [the money supply], but closer examination shows that this analogy does not ‘go deep enough’.  This is not a simple competition between tick and moose.  Warmer winters allow the ticks to survive, reproduce and multiply while colder winters cut their population back.  That is, if we include the spatial medium, this seeming ‘dialectic’ blossoms forth into a ‘dialogic’ involving many mutually influencing participants whose rise and fall is mediated by the common energy-charged medium of space they share inclusion in.

Only when we ignore the predominating outside-inward orchestrating influence of space do we get to this degenerate materialist view in terms of the simple win/lose competition between ‘independent organisms’.  In the case of the global social dynamic of humans, the problem is the materialist view which ignores the inherent primacy of the nurturing spatial medium in the evolutionary process.  That is, the unfolding physical reality is constituted by the transforming of spatial relations.  It is not a deterministic-constructivist mechanical process, as is the popular view of the Western culture that has been implemented by instituting ‘sovereign states’ and ‘corporations’ as ‘machines’ whose behaviour is inside-outwardly directed by a central-authority-brain [intellectual-theoretic behaviour direction], as is the unfortunate, de-spatialized Western view of ‘self’ as ‘organism’.

In conclusion, we can see that the ‘decoupling’ of ‘wealth acquisition from production’ comes from the same psychological root as the decoupling of ‘people’ from ‘the land’, via the Faustian device of the ‘sovereign state’ and its ‘democratic process’, and from the decoupling of the ‘inhabitant’ from the ‘habitat’, the [outside-inward] influence of the habitat on the inhabitant being ‘nonlocal, non-visible and non-material’ (i.e. ‘spiritual’) and the [inside-outward] influence of the inhabitant being ‘local, visible, and material’ (i.e. ‘temporal’).  The latter ‘decoupling’ arising from language and the reifying of ‘material forms’ as ‘forms-in-themselves’; i.e. the elevating of ‘forms-considered-in-themselves’ to ‘forms-in-themselves’ [the elevating of thought-based conceptual reality over experience-based physical reality].

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Return to main essay ‘The Followers of the Democratic State’

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