{"id":1312,"date":"2011-07-27T23:13:51","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T07:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2011-07-30T13:37:18","modified_gmt":"2011-07-30T21:37:18","slug":"humour-is-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/humour-is-human\/","title":{"rendered":"Ideas: Deconstructions of experience that humour mocks and politics holds us captive to"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"\"<\/a>Ideas: Deconstructions of experience that humour mocks and politics holds us captive to<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Rochus Misch recounts his boss\u2019s humour in his book (The Last Witness);<\/span><\/p>\n

One joke that Rochus\u2019 boss liked to tell was at the expense of his pompous Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering.\u00a0 Goering was a man forever designing himself new uniforms and giving himself new orders and decorations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne day,\u201c Hitler used to say, \u201cMrs. Goering came into the bedchamber and found her husband waving his Field Marshall\u2018s baton over his underwear.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Hermann, darling, what are you doing?\u2018 she enquired.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I am promoting my underpants to overpants!<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Ahh, those are good times when we can share our humour with our friends.\u00a0\u00a0 It brings out the \u2018human-ness\u2019 in everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there are some people that we do not want ourselves to feel any empathy with, such as Rochus\u2019 boss [to even utter his name can put a chill on things], even though those close to him are consistent in recounting his human profile;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo read the memoirs of Hitler\u2019s valet, Heinz Linge, is to read account after account of Hitler as a charming host, flirt and scholar. Whether Hitler is kissing the hands of the married ladies as they leave his dinners or officiating at meatball cooking competitions in his private residence, or changing a light bulb on his own rather than calling for assistance, Linge portrays Hitler as a normal, engaging human being and only occasionally hints at the ruthlessness by which Hitler has come to be known.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is an interesting aspect about \u2018history\u2019 and how we \u2018reconstruct\u2019 the past through the lenses of historians;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHistory\u2014I suppose everything, really\u2014is of necessity learned through filters. What we read is filtered through the perception and bias of the writer. What we experience is filtered through our own prejudices and expectation. We tend to agree with the filters that are consistent with our own. We doubt the filters that make us question what we think we know, however that might be defined. … In the study of military history, the source of our filters can usually be readily identified. Whoever wins, writes the history books. Of course, victory is a powerful filter itself. That is why it usually takes later generations to identify when the victor might have had less than clean hands, or to tell the stories of those on the losing side.\u201d\u00a0 – David Mitchell, \u2018Things Said and Done: What does evil look like?\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This thread that I am writing didn\u2019t start from reflections on historical portraits of evil, and it is not about debating what is \u2018good\u2019 and what is \u2018evil\u2019.\u00a0 It started from the difficulty I was having in sharing my view as to how empathic, compassionate people, dedicated to making the world a better place [e.g. Sir Ken Robinson, \u2018Do Schools Kill Creativity\u2019<\/a> ] could be a force for bringing on social dysfunction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Joseph McCarthy\u2019s attack on \u2018communist sympathizers\u2019 parallels Hitler\u2019s attack on Jews; i.e. Hitler\u2019s views were \u2018literally racist\u2019 only in his speeches.\u00a0 In his thoughts shared with those close to him, he saw the Jews as a group bonded by \u2018spirit\u2019 more-so than by genes, which made them \u2018social and political subversives\u2019, in his view;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJewry was a not a special race, but a spiritual community bound not least to the fate of those of its members persecuted since time immemorial. This interpretation had its roots in the idea that Jewry, whose existence he considered a \u201csad victory of spirit over flesh\u201d, had been responsible for all the evils in history and for which one day it must atone. He himself had made a start in wiping out Jewry, from which humanity had to be \u201cliberated\u201d. There could therefore be no talk of a fundamental deviation from his doctrine.\u201d \u2013 Erich Kempka, Hitler\u2019s Chauffeur<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In some twisted sense, then, Joseph McCarthy and Adolf Hitler were coming from compassion and empathy for \u2018the good people\u2019, their good brothers whose well-being is threatened by subversives.\u00a0 There were not simply \u2018out for themselves\u2019 and in fact, getting rid of subversives was a \u2018dirty business\u2019 that was not pleasant but that \u2018somebody had to do\u2019, for the good of the \u2018good brotherhood\u2019.\u00a0 How we see them today, as David Mitchell points out, is through the filters of history which treat \u2018losers\u2019 very differently from \u2018winners\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, what emerges for me, in all of these inquiries, is one very deep and common basic theme.\u00a0 It is a theme that connects Ken Robinson with Adolph Hitler and with Joseph McCarthy.\u00a0 It is the implicit notion that the state of the world is \u2018caused\u2019 by the actions of the inhabitants.\u00a0\u00a0 In Ken Robinson\u2019s view, we can alter the future of the world by changing our educational system.\u00a0 He claims that our educational system has been strip-mining our youth for a single commodity, for the skills that will fuel the engines of industry, and that we are \u2018ruthlessly squandering\u2019 the tremendous talents of our children. He says;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.\u201d [and re-orient our education system to cultivate\/harvest it]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such a statement, at a minimum, distorts the notion of \u2018ecology\u2019 in that instead of mutual interdependence across all species, we impute to humans, the power to \u2018change the unfolding future of the world\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, is this anthropo-megalomanic thought not implicitly built into the notion of \u2018great ideas\u2019 and the \u2018creative commons\u2019 of TED presentations?\u00a0\u00a0 What is an \u2018idea\u2019, really, … and are \u2018great ideas\u2019, the \u2018original ideas that have value\u2019, which are at the core of Ken\u2019s view of human creativity, like \u2018programs\u2019 that, when installed in the local centre-of-direction of individual humans, can drive the world forward towards a desired future?<\/span><\/p>\n

I know that I am embarking here on a scenario that runs radically counter to our mainstream belief system, but my claim is that this is what the philosophies of Nietzsche, Lamarck, Mach, Bohm, Emerson, Poincar\u00e9, Mcluhan and Schr\u00f6dinger imply.\u00a0 They all suggest that evolution is a process in which outside-inward influence (the orchestrating influence of the transforming spatial-plenum) predominates over inside-outward outflux (what humans make happen).<\/span><\/p>\n

The point is that \u2018what humans make happen\u2019 is something \u2018secondary\u2019 because humans are something secondary.\u00a0 As Emerson says, the genius of nature (the evolutionary force) not only animates the organism, it creates it.\u00a0\u00a0 The creativity of the pear tree that manifests in the pear tree\u2019s ability to \u2018make pears happen\u2019 is a secondary creativity to that of the evolutionary force since the evolutionary force both inhabits and creates the pear tree.\u00a0\u00a0 This is Nietzsche\u2019s premise also.\u00a0 The \u2018will to power\u2019 (the evolutionary force) is an ultimate animating source; a \u2018UAS\u2019 [playing a role like God] that is immanent in our living space.\u00a0 The ultimate animating source is not split up into innumerable point-source sparks or flames within individual \u2018living organisms\u2019 so that \u2018the buck starts here\u2019, in the interior of men.\u00a0 Locally originating behaviour is Fiktion born of discursive convenience that we tend to confuse for \u2018reality\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new physics claims that we, as material forms, are \u2018ripple structures\u2019 in the continually transforming, energy-charged spatial plenum.\u00a0 This is a claim that \u2018checks out\u2019, that we can validate, and what it does is gives us a fluid-dynamic view of the world.\u00a0 The \u2018hurricane\u2019 has a local visible form which encourages us to \u2018personify it\u2019 and to impute to it \u2018its own locally originating internal process driven and directed behaviour\u2019, and such \u2018personification\u2019 [which imputes to the hurricane the same model that we impute to our human organism-self] implies that the ultimate animating source of the hurricane lies within its interior, … rather than deriving from the invisible, nonlocal field-flow of the energy-charged spatial plenum.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new physics, and Nietzsche, would say that we have got this backwards.\u00a0 The human organism is like the hurricane.\u00a0 Instead of personifying the hurricane, we should be hurricanizing the person.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Ken Robinson, who quotes Al Gore in his talk, who in turn cites Rachel Carson and her book \u2018Silent Spring\u2019 as alerting us to \u2018how our actions are killing the world live in\u2019, is also assuming that we humans have the power to change the world we live in; i.e. by way of creativity and original ideas, to construct a desired future state of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The recipe for doing this, according to Ken, is to revise our educational system so that it recognizes \u201cthe richness of human capacity\u201d and cultivates creativity in the upcoming generation which he defines as the capacity for coming up with \u2018original ideas that have value\u2019 which can then be operationalized through concerted human action.<\/span><\/p>\n

But let\u2019s go back to Rachel Carson\u2019s observations, because there is something amiss here.\u00a0 The concept of ecological interdependence suggests that we humans are \u2018a strand in the web-of-life\u2019 as the Amerindian belief tradition suggested, and thus we are not \u2018in control\u2019.\u00a0 And in fact, the new physics demonstrates that the future state of the web-of-life is not determined by the actions of the visible, local, material-form based \u2018strands\u2019 in the web-of-life, but predominantly derives outside-inwardly, from the invisible, nonlocal, energy-charged spatial plenum [the \u2018field\u2019 dynamic].<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, its true that we can invent chemicals or develop toxic nuclear wastes that transform the landscape, but that does not mean that \u2018we have the power to control the future\u2019.\u00a0 According to Mach\u2019s principle, like all inhabitants, our dynamics are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.\u00a0\u00a0 Since the space of the earth\u2019s biosphere is a finite (spherical) unbounded space, the model is not one of \u2018control over the future\u2019 but more like running our car inside the garage, conditioning the dynamics of habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning our inhabitant dynamics.\u00a0 The ripples in the spatial flow-plenum can\u2019t become so violent that they destroy the flow they are included in.\u00a0 That would be like the whirlpool in the ocean sucking the entire ocean down inside of itself; it would be a case of the figure devouring the ground.\u00a0 That is a topological impossibility that only psychological delusion could hold to be \u2018real\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

An analogy would be the \u2018gymnastic team\u2019 where many \u2018material forms\u2019 or \u2018strands\u2019 participate within a web-like structure (e.g. a \u2018human pyramid), where one strand in the mutually interdependent spatial-relational web can bring about the collapse of the web.\u00a0 In fact, the individual strand can only \u2018trigger\u2019 the collapse, by \u2018disturbing the balance\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

But such imagery does not account for \u2018field\u2019, the invisible, nonlocal ultimate animating\/engendering source otherwise known as \u2018the energy-charged spatial plenum\u2019, in which the material forms are secondary, transient, flow-features (ripple structures).\u00a0 These secondary features in the unfolding flow of the universe are participants in evolution, in the same manner that convection cells in the flow of the ocean\/atmosphere are participants in evolution.\u00a0 The relation between habitat and inhabitant in this fluid, energy-flow sense, is given by Mach\u2019s principle; \u201cThe dynamics of habitat [spatial flow-plenum] are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants [flow-features] at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants [flow-features] are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat [spatial flow-plenum].<\/span><\/p>\n

As we know, the earth has undergone cycles of \u2018collapse and recovery\u2019 where many forms have disappeared and where new forms have emerged.\u00a0 It is unreasonable to believe that certain malicious members of the collection of forms could have CAUSED the demise of the collective (ecosystem), and if so, their causal powers would have been limited to \u2018destruction\u2019 like that of the suicide-bomber since they were no longer around to orchestrate the re-populating of the new ecosystem-collective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of \u2018destruction\/degeneration\u2019 and \u2018regeneration\u2019, the notion of \u2018transformation\u2019 appears to be more appropriate since the universe continues on, as does the earth\u2019s biosphere-space, while the material forms within it come and go.\u00a0 That is, generation and degeneration go on simultaneously and continually within the biosphere in the same sort of manner as with the generation and degeneration of convection cells in ocean and atmosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n

The notion that one strand in the web-of-life has control over the flourishing or demise of the web-of-life it is included in, suggests an \u2018inflated ego\u2019 on the part of that one strand.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a different way of looking at what is going on here, that departs from our mainstream standard \u2018doer-deed\u2019 way of viewing [which Nietzsche terms \u2018Fiktion\u2019].\u00a0 The different way opens the door to the notion of \u2018field\u2019, the outside-inward influencing, invisible, nonlocal influence that characterizes our energy-charged spatial plenum, … that predominates over the inside-outward \u2018doer-deed\u2019 dynamics of local, visible, material forms.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we include the primacy of \u2018field\u2019 over \u2018matter\u2019 in our worldview, as is demanded by the new physics, this reduces our \u2018doer-deed\u2019 world view where we see material forms moving about and interacting in an empty operating theatre [absolute Euclidian space] \u00a0to a secondary \u2018Fiktion\u2019, a \u2018total Fiktion\u2019 but a \u2018useful Fiktion\u2019 as Nietsche says,… \u2018schaumkommen\u2019 as Schr\u00f6dinger says, and \u2018maya\u2019 as Hindu Vedanta long ago said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget then, that \u2018TED\u2019 presentations and Sir Ken Robinson\u2019s presentation is based on what we can do with human creativity, original ideas, that we feel can \u2018make a difference\u2019 to how the world unfolds.<\/span><\/p>\n

This whole thesis is contradicted by the Nietzschean thesis, that \u2018evolution is a fluid process in which outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward outflux.<\/span><\/p>\n

The TED presentations address only the \u2018inside-outward\u2019 aspect as if it were \u2018determinative\u2019.\u00a0 It speaks about human creativity in terms of \u2018original ideas that have value\u2019 (Ken Robinson\u2019s definition of creativity) and implies that the operationalizing of these \u2018original ideas\u2019 CHANGES THE WORLD.<\/span><\/p>\n

This notion of an \u2018original idea that has value\u2019 meshes with the over-simplistic view of the organism as a little \u2018powerboater\u2019; i.e. a \u2018local material system with its own locally originating, internally powered and directed behaviour.\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, the TED \u2018creative commons\u2019 view of the value of ideas implies that when we drop copies of the idea (the \u2018program\u2019) into the seat of direction within each of these powerboater-organisms, we can use this program to coordinate the actions of the many and CHANGE THE WORLD.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is a problem here.\u00a0 These ideas do not, and cannot, incorporate what is already going on in the spatial plenum within which they must be operationalized.\u00a0 That is, \u2018ideas\u2019 are formulated in the inside-outward pushing doer-deed terms; i.e. as if in an absolute fixed, empty and infinite operating space [Euclidian space] but the \u2018catch\u2019 is that the \u2018real-world\u2019 space in which they will be operationalized is continually transforming, and the \u2018transformation of space\u2019 is a more comprehensive way of understanding \u2018change\u2019 than the \u2018doer-deed\u2019 operationalizing of \u2018ideas\u2019.\u00a0 As McLuhan observed in his work that inquires into the predominating of the transforming effects of the \u2018medium\u2019 over the activities of \u2018content\u2019;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMany people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs. \u2014 Marshall McLuhan,\u2018Understanding Media\u2019<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the \u201coriginal idea that had value\u201d that Henry Ford had, to build a factory that turned out Ford automobiles, was formulated in the inside-outward predominating terms of \u2018what things do\u2019.\u00a0 But this \u2018doer-deed\u2019 world view, did not, and could not, contemplate how the dynamics of spatial transformation (the larger view of dynamics) would be affected by interposing the operationalizing of the idea into an already continuously transforming spatial habitat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here, we can see Mach\u2019s principle at work;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A simple example illustrating that spatial transformation is a more comprehensive view of these dynamic, can bring out the fact that farm-workers will migrate to factory work, and that roads will show new wear and tear (and new roads will be built) to bring in supplies to the factory and to deliver the output.\u00a0 Services (cafeterias, gas stations will emerge along the new supply and delivery routes and will go out of business on older routes that experience a decline in traffic.\u00a0 The factory will become a \u2018hive of activity\u2019 and will have a notional centre; e.g. Detroit.\u00a0 And one way of telling the story will be in doer-deed terms of the activities of the factory, as in the original \u2018idea\u2019 form, … but the \u2018bigger story\u2019 will capture how the habitat is transformed by the introduction of the factory into its continual spatial transformation.\u00a0 What the factory does is secondary to the continuing story of the transforming habitat, a continuing story that speaks of the land and the people in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But \u2018what the factory does\u2019 is what is presented in \u2018the original idea that has value\u2019.\u00a0 The operationalizing of original ideas is thus, in general, secondary to the spatial transformation that associates with their operationalization.<\/span><\/p>\n

This note started off with the point that \u2018humans\u2019, as \u2018humans that have families and live their lives naturally\u2019 have a tendency to play around with \u2018ideas\u2019 [The tendency is amplified by the use of language].\u00a0 They may come to believe that the operationalizing of \u2018ideas\u2019 is the pathway to constructing a desired future.\u00a0 Because the desired future is seen as so much better than \u2018the present\u2019, they are willing to both inflict and endure considerable pain and conflict to \u2018achieve it\u2019, by \u2018operationalizing their ideas\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 But as Nietzsche would say, the world we live in is not determined by the doers of deeds, the world we live in is a continual \u2018becoming\u2019 and it is only a convenient Fiktion for us to reify the transient material forms in this spatial-relational \u2018becoming\u2019 and re-render the world dynamic AS IF IT WERE DETERMINED BY THE ACTIONS\/INTERACTIONS OF MATERIAL FORMS REIFIED AS \u2018BEINGS\u2019, \u2018material forms\u2019 that we impute to be \u2018powerboaters\u2019 with their own locally originating, inboard power-driven and steerage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ultimate animating source is, by this smoke and mirror game of inventing \u2018beings\u2019, imputed to reside within the beings as a kind of God-in-the-machine that is the first-cause source of development of form, behaviour and organization.\u00a0 \u2018Field\u2019, the invisible, nonlocal primary evolutionary force, is no longer to be seen in this re-rendering of the world dynamic starting from reified material forms (secondary flow features; i.e. ripple structures in the energy-charged spatial plenum).\u00a0 In place of \u2018field\u2019, we have a notional \u2018God-in-the-machine\u2019, an ultimate animating source that we impute to reside within the \u2018being\u2019, the secondary material form that we have reified and synthetically made \u2018primary\u2019 so that the whole sourcing of the world dynamic is directionally inverted so that inside-outward outflux (the visible, material, deeds of doers) appears to predominate over outside-inward influence (the invisible, nonlocal, non-material field dynamic).\u00a0 Or, more precisely, we ignore the invisible, nonlocal, non-material field dynamic that is the ultimate animating source responsible for the development of material form, behaviour and organization, and we accept as \u2018reality\u2019, the visible and tangible material form dynamics.\u00a0 We thus confuse \u2018idealization\/Fiktion\/schaumkommen\u2019 for \u2018reality\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u2018creative commons of TED\u2019 which looks for human creativity and \u2018original ideas\u2019 to \u2018save us from ourselves\u2019 and to restore health and harmony to the world (as if we, as a strand-in-the-web-of-life had such powers!), is encouraging a kind of megalo-manic anthropocentrism as the \u2018solution\u2019 to rising socio-environmental dysfunction.<\/span><\/p>\n

That a collective \u2018insanity\u2019 (the confusing of \u2018idealization\u2019 that is Fiktion, for \u2018reality\u2019, imputing material forms [\u2018organisms\u2019, \u2018humans\u2019] to have within them the ultimate, first-cause animating-source-power) prevails in the TED undertaking, is the view that follows from the assumptions of Nietzsche, Lamarck, Mach, Bohm, Emerson, Poincar\u00e9, Mcluhan and Schr\u00f6dinger, all of whom argue that evolution is a process in which outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward outflux, the latter equating to the operationalizing of creative, original ideas through people and technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

History shows that there have been a number of people who have come up with \u2018ideas\u2019 that have \u2018captured the imagination\u2019 of a people-collective and who have orchestrated their individual and collective actions in the operationalizing of the \u2018idea\u2019.\u00a0 In many cases, it is understood that in the midst of the operationalizing process, existing structures have to be destroyed to make way for the new structures, however, the assumption is that\u00a0 \u2018the ends more than justify the means\u2019 that must be used to \u2018get there\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

We can summarize the \u2018scenario\u2019 that has been discussed to this point fairly simply.\u00a0 We have two competing world views,<\/span><\/p>\n

(A)\u00a0 the Nietzschean\/new-physics view in which an invisible, nonlocal spatial influence [\u2018field\u2019] is the primary \u2018evolutionary force\u2019 and the material forms that gather and regather within the flow (the transforming spatial plenum) are secondary aspects in the manner of whorls in the flow [ripple structures in the energy-charged spatial plenum]. \u00a0In this world view, outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward outflux, or, \u2018field\u2019 predominates over \u2018matter\u2019 since it both inhabits and engenders matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

(B) the currently popular Materialist view in which dynamics are re-rendered starting from material forms, by lifting the forms out of the flow-of-becoming [of the transforming spatial-plenum] and objectifying them as local \u2018beings\u2019; i.e. locally existing things in themselves notionally equipped with their own locally originating, internal process-driven behaviour [i.e. their own locally originating, internal process based development of form, behaviour and organization]. \u00a0This is a world view in which inside-outward outflux, the results of the actions or deeds of local beings, predominates over the outside-inward influence of the habitat in which these \u2018material beings\u2019 are situationally (and transiently) included.<\/span><\/p>\n

An education system that cultivates original ideas inevitably puts ideas into an unnatural predominance over live experience; i.e. the operationalizing of an \u2018original idea\u2019 requires that people submit to playing roles in the operationalizing dynamic.\u00a0\u00a0 Note that this is not like \u2018situational learning\u2019 wherein the individual is letting his creativity actualize in the manner in which his behaviour is orchestrated by the dynamics of the space he is included in (letting \u2018outside-inward influence be the \u2018leader of the dance\u2019).\u00a0 \u00a0The operationalizing of \u2018good ideas\u2019 which have become \u2018knowledge\u2019 in an \u2018educated society\u2019 mesh with the notion of the organism as a \u2018material being\u2019 with an internal seat of \u2018first-cause\u2019 direction\/steerage.\u00a0\u00a0 The \u2018original idea\u2019 is used together with this model of the organism, in the manner of a program installed in the seat of direction of the machine.\u00a0 The people participating in the operationalizing of the original idea; i.e. the \u2018educated society\u2019, must give priority to their roles in operationalizing the idea in an inside-outward direction; i.e. they must open themselves up to the \u2018loading of the program\u2019;<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n
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Awaiting program download into the centre of direction<\/p><\/div>\n

This is \u2018at the bottom\u2019 of what an \u2018educated collective\u2019 looks like when we model the human organism as a \u2018local material system\u2019 with its own locally originating, internal process driven power-drive and direction\u2019.\u00a0 Human \u2018beings\u2019 as local machines are subordinated to the power of the original idea. \u00a0This is one model of an \u2018educated collective\u2019 where we drive our behaviour forth (inside-outwardly) under the direction of the \u2018best available knowledge\u2019 or the \u2018best original idea\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Ken Robinson indicated, we didn\u2019t always have such \u2018education systems\u2019, they came about in the 19th<\/sup> century to support the \u2018original ideas that have value\u2019 associated with industrialization [e.g. Henry Ford\u2019s original ideas].\u00a0 But today, as he points out, we have systems of education everywhere in the world and they all feature a \u2018hierarchy\u2019 of subjects that puts maths and language on top and then humanities and then art at the bottom.<\/span><\/p>\n

One might conclude that the development of\u00a0 \u2018the education system\u2019 has been in the service of cultivating \u2018ideas\u2019, and the \u2018operationalizing of ideas\u2019 has been hijacking individual and collective behaviour, turning it into an inside-outward driving activity, whereas, it is in nature, orchestrated by the unfolding dynamics of habitat wherein outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward outflux [\u2018what things do\u2019].<\/span><\/p>\n

Lev Vygotsky notes, in contradicting the concept formation model of Piaget [which dominates educational theory in our society] that in natural learning, spontaneous concept formation predominates over scientific concept formation.\u00a0 In other words, situational learning naturally predominates over structured learning.\u00a0 It follows that situational creativity (sailboater creativity which manifests in how we let our behaviours be orchestrated \u2018outside-inwards\u2019 by the dynamics of habitat we are situationally included in, acknowledging that we derive our power and steerage from the habitat dynamic), predominates in our natural equipment over assertive creativity (powerboater creativity which manifests by the operationalizing of ideas in an inside-outward driving manner, as if our source of power and steerage were \u2018internal\u2019 and originated \u2018within us\u2019.).<\/span><\/p>\n

There is thus controversy over the idea that we need a formal \u2018education system\u2019 that elevates the realm of \u2018ideas\u2019 and inside-outward driving implementation of ideas, over the realm of our included-in-the-transforming spatial-plenum experience.\u00a0 Education as we are deploying it today, as Ken Robinson describes it and in his vision of how \u2018it should operate\u2019, suggests that ideas should predominate in shaping our behaviour, and that the orchestrating influence of the habitat-dynamic we are situationally included in, should take \u2018second priority\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0In this view, where the best original ideas are operationalized, we become slaves to the operationalizing of ideas.\u00a0 This is the basis for \u2018social Darwinism\u2019 where the assumption is that the social collective with the best ideas will prevail over the rest.\u00a0 Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, who subscribes to this, believes that democratic process must be set aside so that operationalizing of the best ideas can predominate;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is one of the contradictions of a democratic society in a highly advanced technological world, \u2026 to make rational political decisions, you have to have a knowledge which is accessible only to a very few people.\u201d\u00a0 [Lewontin continues by noting;] \u201cthat different people have different interests, and therefore the struggle is not a moral one, it\u2019s a political one.\u00a0 It\u2019s always a political one, and that\u2019s the most important thing you have to recognize\u2026 that you may be struggling to make the world go in one direction, \u2026 [while] somebody else is struggling to make it go in another direction, and the question is; who has power?\u00a0 And if there\u2019s a differential in power, and if you haven\u2019t got it and they have, then you have to do something to gain power, which is to organize.\u00a0\u201c\u00a0 \u2013 Richard Lewontin<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lewontin is correctly describing the political process.<\/span><\/p>\n

But is \u2018political process\u2019 based on the operationalizing of \u2018ideas\u2019 \u2018written in stone\u2019?\u00a0 It was not the organizing process of the Iroquois in their much admired Five Nation Confederacy;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo Engels, Morgan\u2019s description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry Morgan\u2019s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois] was important because \u201cit gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state.\u201d Jefferson had also been interested in the Iroquois\u2019 ability to maintain social consensus without a large state apparatus, as had Franklin. Engels described the Iroquoian state in much the same way that American revolutionaries had a century earlier: \u201cEverything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households \u2014 still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal \u2014 including the women.\u201d \u2014 Bruce E. Johansen, Forgotten Founders<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do you not see an \u2018entire pattern\u2019 here that differentiates our current \u2018civilization\u2019 on the basis of the unnatural predominance we give to the operationalizing of ideas as a \u2018way of life\u2019, as a socio-political, individual and collective organizing approach?<\/span><\/p>\n

Rejecting this approach doesn\u2019t mean that we have to return to primitive conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

My sense is that language has served to \u2018deconstruct\u2019 our experience. An example may serve to illustrate how this occurs.<\/span><\/p>\n

When men and women mingle, emotions stir and sexual intercourse may result.\u00a0 One can undergo this experience \u2018without a word being spoken\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 In nature, the union of opposites is a general model for dynamics.\u00a0 Imbalances in the thermal field of the atmosphere engender \u2018whorls\u2019 or \u2018convection cells\u2019 where hot and cold seek union so as to resolve their differences by way of restoring\/cultivating balance and harmony.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u2018operands\u2019 in this unfolding process have an inside-outward driving behaviour, but the dynamics of habitat seems to be the mother-ground for this inhabitant-interaction; i.e. outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward asserting behaviour.\u00a0 The intercourse is unplanned and it unfolds out of the general living space dynamic in which both participants are included.<\/span><\/p>\n

In sign language, one of the earliest signs was probably the sign for sexual intercourse where one curls the fingers of one hand to make a hole and one uses an erect finger of the other hand to thrust in and out of the hole to signify \u2018sexual intercourse\u2019; i.e. to formulate the \u2018idea\u2019 of sexual intercourse that can serve to drive the process in reverse; i.e. to have the \u2018idea\u2019 driving the dynamic behaviour rather than waiting for it to silently unfold as \u2018comes naturally\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 As Giambattista Vico observed, \u2018cohabitation\u2019 of male and female didn\u2019t have to start out as an \u2018idea\u2019 or \u2018intention\u2019.\u00a0 The early man and woman who ran from the thunderstorm may have found themselves seeking shelter in the same cave.\u00a0 Instead of fornicating in the forest as they migrated with the reindeer, the experience of cohabitation may have come in this sort of unfolding experience and because it was enjoyable, it was one of those things that turn out to be a \u2018keeper\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 After it was established, the sign language for \u2018your place or mine\u2019 would have followed naturally, so that the idea of cohabitation could drive the dynamic behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n

What language has also brought with it is logic. <\/span> According to logicians<\/a>, the \u2018telos of logic\u2019 is \u2018avoiding falsehood\u2019. \u00a0Language allows us to;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cconstruct a suite of premises that guarantee the truth of an argument\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Logic and the biological model of the \u2018organism\u2019 — as a local material system with its own locally originating intellection and purpose directed behaviour— meld together to further complexify \u2018understanding\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

The male partner, equipped with language and logic, may conjecture as to the \u2018purpose\u2019 that is driving his partner\u2019s behaviour, and pose the query;<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you doing this [participating in sexual intercourse] because it gives you pleasure, because you love me, because you want a child, because you want to seduce someone into giving you food, shelter and security on a permanent basis, or because you are competing with the other women that are seeking my attention?\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But wait a minute!\u00a0 It was language that allowed us to \u2018deconstruct\u2019 our natural experience into \u2018ideas\u2019, the sign-language symbol for intercourse captured the experience as an \u2018idea\u2019 so that one could use the idea to drive behaviour; i.e. one could operationalize the idea whenever and wherever one wanted, no need to wait for a natural unfolding, for the \u2018tide to rise\u2019 or for the \u2018sun to rise\u2019 or for the outside-inward influence to predominate over the inside-outward assertive action. \u00a0The idea, the deconstructed experience, could be operationalized in a forward driven manner, at will. \u00a0The rising stimulus associated with natural \u2018play\u2019 that would orchestrate the sexual activity could be obsoleted by operationalizing the idea and the relative prodominance that started of as \u2018outside-inward influence predominates over inside outward assertive influence INVERTS and inside-outwards assertive influence takes over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Insofar as the male partner sees himself and his partner as biological organisms according to the definition of an organism as a local material being with locally originating, intellection and purpose directed behaviour [thanks again to language where, as John Stuart Mill points out, \u2018every definition implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the existence of the object defined\u2019], logic whose telos is avoiding falsehood, may put him on the trail of establishing \u2018which purpose\u2019 is directing the behaviour of his partner; pleasure, love, motherhood, food\/shelter\/security, jealousy\/competition?<\/span><\/p>\n

This logical inquiry is entirely language-based and it assumes the truth of the biological model of the organism which is also language-based. \u00a0If the individual is behaving naturally and letting their behaviour be orchestrated by the spatial dynamics they are included in, then their experience is simply their experience and there is no need to use language to deconstruct their experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if a person begins to believe in the oversimplistic, mechanistic, language based biological model of the organism; i.e. if they believe that they are local material systems with their own locally originating, intellect and purpose-directed behaviours, then they may end up questioning their own purpose in the relationship as well as that of their partner.\u00a0 That is, they may become prisoners of their own language-and-logic based deconstructing of experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

In general, we have the option to let our behaviour be orchestrated by the unfolding dynamics of habitat, or to employ \u2018ideas\u2019 to drive our behaviour from within.<\/span><\/p>\n

One can imagine the sailing vessel where the crew starts off by letting their behaviours be orchestrated by the dynamics of wind and currents they are situationally included in.\u00a0 In this process, outside-inward influence predominates over inside-outward assertive expression.\u00a0 Meanwhile, language would allow the deconstructing of this experience into ideas; -sheeting in the mainsail or reefing it, hoisting the jib, hoving to etc. etc. so that it becomes feasible, given the following;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n”]\"\"<\/a>\n

… for one person using language to deconstruct the experience, to re-construct it in the reverse direction so that \u2018inside-outside asserting influence\u2019 predominates over \u2018outside-inward orchestrating influence\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 This can lead to conflict between the inside-outward asserting idea-driven agents and the habitat-dynamic based outside-inward orchestrating influence.\u00a0 The captain of the Titanic was not sensitive enough to the natural precedence of the outside-inward influence and thus the inside-outward asserting idea-driven collective drew the short end of the straw, as will always, ultimately, be the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

In general, \u2018ideas\u2019 that can be operationalized are \u2018made of\u2019 deconstructed experience which can be reconstructed \u2018going in the opposite direction\u2019 [inside-outward asserting rather than outside-inward orchestrated] using the model of the human organism as a \u2018powerboater\u2019; i.e. as a local material system [machine] with its own locally originating, internal process driven [idea-driven] behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is wrong with the current educational system, in this case, is that it subordinates experience to ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

One might say that this is a problem with global society as a whole. \u00a0Language and logic are \u2018tools that have run away with the workman\u2019, as Emerson says.<\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ideas: Deconstructions of experience that humour mocks and politics holds us captive to Rochus Misch recounts his boss\u2019s humour in his book (The Last Witness);<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apn","count-0","even alt","author-emile","last"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1317,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions\/1317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}