The Energy-Flow-Dynamics of Self,
Ego and Community
By Ted Lumley
Victoria, Vancouver Island, Spring Equinox, 2002.
Prologue: The goose knows that there are powers of management greater than himself, ... otherwise known as 'the flock', ... and by subordinating his dynamic to the greater dynamic of the flock, he achieves evolutionary advantage for himself; i.e. he can fly faster and farther than in 'solo' mode for less expenditure of energy, increasing his migration range and his danger-avoiding agility, ... an evolutionary advantage derived, not from his physical faculties/ physical behaviour-in-his-own-right but from the 'resonance' in the relative motion of the enveloping constituency in which he is included; i.e. from community-constituent-codynamical harmony whose geometry recalls the resonance in the solar system. Like the goose, the spinning gyroscope has a sense of coresonant inclusion in the enveloping 'mother' dynamic within which his dynamic is simultaneously included. For the practical 'everyday life' purpose of the gyroscope, like the goose and the planet, space is not empty but has 'traction' based on outer-inner resonance relationships. Resonance is a stored and co-created 'community' energy-reserve embodied in the relative dynamic of the constituency that transcends the sum of the kinetic energies of the constituent dynamics in its innate power to inductively shape things (rather than simply 'do' things). So how does the 'self' of the goose (or planet) relate to his stand-alone physical being or 'ego' when he 'let's go' of his 'absolute in-his-own-right independence' and 'self-centered control' (or rather, 'ego-centered control') and 'gives up the helm', putting his movements relative to his fellows in the service of co-creating community-constituent-codynamical resonance? And how does the 'ego' feel when the 'self' 'gives up the helm' to the larger purpose of co-inductively shaping the community dynamic so as to open up opportunity and advantage( that goes beyond that available in 'independent action mode') to himself and his fellows at the same time. How does the 'self' manage to rise up above his 'independent' physical being or 'ego' to become the simultaneous 'multi-mind?' of the enveloping constituency? When the sensate-self of the goose opens himself up 'in the now' and 'feels' that he is positioning himself within a 'sweet spot' in the slipstream of his enveloping fellows, he is not keying to the multiple kinetics or 'causal actions' or 'multi-minds' of his fellows but to the environmental dynamic that their actions are co-inducing relative to one another and to the enveloping environmental dynamic. That is, his sensate self is not limited to management based on the causal actions and transactions of 'independent' material agents, coordinated in multiples or otherwise, but is capable of a transcendently more powerful 'hyper-rational' management that, rather than being based on 'ego-centric' (physical-self-centered) rational control over 'actions-in-their-own-right' lets go of ego-control, allowing the dynamic of the physical constituent to respond to the greater purpose of co-creatively 'deepening' the enveloping community-constituent-codynamical resonance (energy-flow) that he is immersed and included in. The flowing movement of the geese in flight is an evolutionary advantage, ... a property of the energy-flow-dynamics of space that transcends the kinetics of the constituents, ...an evolutionary influence that transcends both Darwinian 'selection' and the explicit genetics of the individual. So perhaps 'the mind', instead of being a property of the physical constituent,'IS' the resonant organizing property of space that is already inductively sustaining the resonant togetherness of the physical being, in the manner of the 'mind-eye' of the hurricane, ... a resonance-inducing power that 'lives in' the continuing energy flow, in the unbounded dynamical space between things, that inductively informs physical beings even as it envelopes them? The goose or man whose sensate self lets him slip into the enveloping slipstream in a way that awarely or unawarely (relative to 'rational' awareness) deepens the slipstream for his enveloping fellows, has a power of mind that transcends any rational power of mind based on 'the actions and transactions of 'independent' material agents', the standard 'causal' scientific paradigm of the west.
Though we are inextricably enveloped and included in the continually evolving energy flow of the world dynamic, we develop a sense of 'self' that can seduce us into believing we are 'independent'. But does the free will of the spiraling hurricane give it the right to claim 'detached existence' from the atmospheric 'mother flow' that envelopes and includes it? While 'space' and 'energy' can certainly lay claim to 'existing', what right has any 'material' constituent of space, or their 'ego', to lay claim to a peer level 'existence' with the containing space that induces its and all other material constituents' emergence and subduction? The constituent's 'free will' evidently stops short of being able to take over the management of its own outwelling and inwelling. Its 'existence' is no more than an eruptive phase in the energy flow, a transformation of 'pre-existing' dynamical energy relationships, a seasonal pimple on the face of the cosmos.
But our ego may speak up and say; 'But what about our mind?, ... our mind is surely 'independent' and our everyday activities validate that we can plan and manage our life as we alone choose to do so, ... to create new life and so take life away.'
Like the boy whose thrown stone launches a flock of birds into beautifully coordinated flight, man's claims of 'look what I did' seem somewhat over-stated. What is 'wrong' with man's perspective of his 'self' relative to the enveloping world dynamic?
It is accepted that we are 'imprinted' with our cultural dynamic and our family dynamic, however dysfunctional they are and in spite of what pain may come to us in 'living them out'. That is to say, we enter into a 'dynamical equilibrium' with the enveloping cultural and family dynamics whose management is taken over at the level of trained neural responses and so becomes 'involuntary' or 'auto-matic' ('self-matic'). Since outer-inner dynamical equilibria are simultaneous movements on either side of a common 'dynamical fulcra', ... the 'self' of these trained, sub-awarely managed neural responses seems to be purely relational, in the manner of the hurricane or a local whirlpool within the mother-flow of the Gulf Stream. There are no bounds to such relational geometries as are evident in energy-flow-space and the inclusionary participant is thus not, as in the Euclidian space framing, 'detached from', but directly in touch with 'infinity'. Our 'ego', meanwhile, seems to 'take off' where our sub-aware neural responses 'leave off', taking for granted all the sub-aware inner-outer dynamics-management that the 'self' is continually engaged in, and, in scientific man, ... imagining that 'the ego is all she wrote', ... an 'independent' material agent whose behaviour is fully 'in-its-own-right', ... a delusion that is only broken in psychosis or addiction or in 'post-traumatic-stress-disorder', ... where this induced imprinting at the subaware level of neural responses can no longer be denied.
It is not man's ego that so carefully manages his outer-inner thermal equilibrium, keeping his body temperature within remarkably narrow limits in spite of wild fluctuations in the weather or in the wake of his consumption of hot soup or frozen ice cream, ... it is his sub-aware neural system. Neurofeedback training, a rapidly growing 'healing' and conditioning activity, has a demonstrated capacity to put a person 'in touch' with those trained neural responses that have in his infancy and early development, descended into subawareness, ... but where is this hidden management doing the training coming from and what are its objectives?
The neural responses induced in each of us, that imprint the dynamics of family and culture in us at the subaware level, are transgenerational in origin. The goose that accompanies the flock in its annual southward migration was not born with explicit migratory instructions in his genetic scripts to do so, any more than his genetic material contained explicit instructions on how to conserve more than 20 percent of the energy required in solo flying and, at the same time, augment his migration range (thermal equilibrizing capacity) and environmental hazard-avoidance agility (relative speed) by flying with others in a 'V' formation. What man and goose are born with is the ability for their neural responses to be inductively trained by the enveloping environmental dynamic. Of course, if the constituents of space can be seen as 'trainees', it is 'space', the enveloping energy-flow dynamic, that must be seen as 'trainor'.
Energy likes to be conserved in the sense of equitably distributed in an 'inner-outer' sense rather than 'bunched up' in space. If it happens to become 'bunched up', it quickly disperses itself in a wavey dynamic, like the big ocean swell that emerges from a confluence of little ocean swells, and proceeds to pull itself down over, and shamefully 'cover-up' the deep troughs of inequity in the atmo-sphere - hydro-sphere inner-outer codynamic it seems to have induced. Equitable energy distribution involves the continual conversion in the forms of energy (inner-outer dynamical geometries of energy), and most particularly with respect to human focus, conversions from 'kinetic energy' (the energy of assertive behaviour of material agents) to 'potential energy' the energy of 'place' ('dynamical place', to be sure).
Newton 'carved out' this self-inducing equitability and harmony-seeking property of the enveloping energy-flow from his philosophical principles on the workings of nature, as he states in his 'Author's preface' to 'Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica' (1687);
"I wish we could derive the rest of the phaenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from physical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they all may depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy."
However, in the writing of his 'General Scholium' to summarize this same work, he concluded that it was impossible to accommodate these converging and diverging inner-outer harmonies within the workings of a mundane nature and relegated them instead to the causal actions of 'an intelligent and powerful Being' operating out of a divine antechamber beyond the enveloping 'living space' of 'Mother Nature'.
"... and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explained ; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those planets ; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits ; for by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the planets, and with great rapidity ; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
Thus, though Kepler had underscored the beauty and importance of this equitability- and harmony-seeking property of the enveloping energy-flow of space in his 1619 work 'Harmonies of the World', Newton 'detached' the planetary dynamics from their enveloping community dynamic by referencing their motion, not to each other, but on an individual basis, to a notional rigid, empty, homogeneous and non-participating containing frame - Euclidian space and absolute time, discarding the information on the simultaneous harmony of the community-constituent codynamic (the inner-outer spherical resonance). Einstein, at least in principle, 're-attached' the planet dynamics to the planetary dynamic, restoring the notion of the 'relativity' of the community-constituent codynamic with its simultaneous dynamical interdependence (as contrasted with the sequential dynamical interdependence of Newton's formulation, that Newton 'synthesized' by inter-posing an abstract notional rectangular space and clockworks frame in between the community dynamic and the constituent dynamics.). Clearly, the 'trainor' role of the enveloping energy-flow-dynamic of space that had 'its invisible hand' in the energy equitability and harmony management of the solar system was, in one 'foul swoop', banished from the 'living space' of Nature by this abstract inter-posing.
As Henri Poincare has said, we can impose our abstract space framings on our science, but we cannot impose them on Nature, thus the energy-flow-dynamic continues to 'train' our 'self' at a level below our awareness, leaving our 'ego' free to believe that it's forward march 'in time' is without simultaneous interdependence with the enveloping environmental dynamic, ... without being 'included' within the energy-flow-dynamic, ...marching along to the tick-tocking of an absolute time-clock, ...enveloped in constituent-detaching, empty, infinite, homogeneous, non-participating Euclidian space.
So what happens when certain simultaneously interdependent aspects of our engagement with the enveloping environmental dynamic become so familiar to us that they fade from sight and slip below our awareness? What happens when recurrent codynamical behaviours that are induced on an outside-in basis through our immersion and inclusion in the enveloping family-, cultural- and environmental-dynamics, descend to the level of trained neural responses that no longer have to 'interrupt' and engage our aware levels? While we are 'busy making other plans', there is a lot about our non-discursive habitat-inhabitant codynamic that not only speaks to 'who we are' in terms of our 'kinetic' history of assertive actions and achievements, but also to our base-level relationship with the enveloping environmental dynamic in terms of energy-flow-codynamics, as 'managed' inductively and sub-awarely by 'space', by the 'potency of place'.
Our deeper 'self', unlike the rationally aware 'ego' that sees the world in terms of discretely independent 'enumerable' entities, knows all about this; i.e. the 'self' knows about those induced 'outside-in' or 'habitat-inhabitant' simultaneous-codynamical-interdependencies that have descended to involuntary neural responses accessible only to our sensory consciousness and how their communicating and coordinating (harmoniously or dissonantly) is only dimly seen by our rational consciousness, otherwise known as the 'ego'. Only when we can find our way into the full sensory consciousness of 'self', ... the dynamical space-time 'now' of simultaneously-interdependent-outer-inner-codynamics, can we 'come home' to our 'inclusionary' role, in the manner of the whirlpool in the river flow, within the continuing energy-flow-dynamic that is 'space'.
So what happens when our sub-aware neural response based 'self' is taking lessons from the enveloping energy-flow-dynamic while our only partially aware, rationally conscious 'ego' is skipping merrily along, making plans in the belief that he enjoys a 'dynamical independence' from the enveloping environmental dynamic in which he is really, in an energy-flow-dynamical sense, an 'inclusion'?
To find out, we can tune in to the daily serial on the 'Rise and Fall of Western Civilization', otherwise known by such names as 'CNN News'. Of course, 'rise' and 'fall' are the 'up' and 'down' rectangular terms of Euclidian space. Civilizations are many things at the same time, like vortices nesting within vortices in co-enfolding manner, ... some brewing up in strength at the expense of their fellow-inclusions and others declining in strength by giving up their energies to their inclusional-fellows. So we could instead refer to 'Another Phase in the Transformation of the Energy-Flow-Dynamic - The Western Civilization Upwelling'. As already pointed out, for our 'self' as an inclusion to 'visualize' things in the simultaneously interdependent codynamical terms of the enveloping energy-flow dynamic, we would have bring our full 'self'-consciousness including our subaware neural responses onto our mindseye screen, rather than splitting apart space and time as we do to conceive of the world dynamic in terms of 'independent' material entities engaging with the environment sequentially.
So it wasn't that Newton was responsible for the duality in the way we perceive things, ... it was just that he ascribed the inductive influence of the enveloping energy-flow-dynamic to a God-Outside-of-Nature, ... and in humans, that amounts to attributing our involuntary, subaware neural connecting with the enveloping energy-flow to a 'Divine Outsider'. Since this 'disconnect' from nature is itself a 'rational' act, it puts the only-partially-aware rational consciousness or 'ego' into an unnatural primacy over our subaware 'self', the habitat-inhabitant 'grounding dynamic' that our rational consciousness 'pushes off from'.
The 'mind-matter' split is thus a split between our sub-aware neural responses 'trained' by the enveloping energy-flow-dynamic (aka 'space') by aberrantly attributing our energy dynamics other than the 'kinetic' or 'assertive behaviour' variety, to a source outside of Nature and splitting us off from our inclusionary relationship with Nature, in the process. That is, the equitability- and harmony-seeking of the energy-flow-dynamic of space, as manifest in the relative motion view of the community-constituent-codynamics of the solar system and otherwise known as the 'Logos' of Heraclitus and the 'Harmony of the Spheres' of Kepler and the Ancients, was by Newton 'handed off' to an 'Outside-God' so that there was no longer any need to coordinate the sub-aware responses of the 'self' with the partially conscious awareness of the 'ego'. That is, the property of the community dynamic that allows it to serve as a local energy bank for energy deposits and withdrawals (reciprocal to relative cyclical needs for kinetic energy on the part of the constituents) and that naturally seeks to avoid 'runs-on-the-bank', was 'handed off' to God-outside-of-Nature so that there was no longer any requirement on the part of the aware individual, to bring his deliberate actions into resonance with his inductively trained neural responses, to coordinate his energy usage in an inner-outer phase-coupled (resonant) manner. In Newton's formulation, The God-Outside-of-Nature became the 'energy bank manager'.
Since it is impractical to expect the reader to spontaneously drop into a meditative state and experience the pregnant and infinite 'now' of the dynamical space-time continuum and so put the sub-aware, sensate 'self' back together with the only-partially-aware rationally conscious 'ego' in order to review the repercussions of the 'splitting' of 'self' and 'ego', an alternative is to review the 'symptoms' of this 'consciousness-splitting' such as the rapidly escalating incidence of psychopathology and prescription drug usage; i.e. to examine the implications of the 'self' - 'ego' split relative to our notional models of 'psychological health', psychopathology and 'healing'.
I. Inducing Healing in Individual/Community Affective Disorders
'They think they're doing me a favour', said Patty, whose life had been saved yet again after she overdosed, and this time her vital signs had flat-lined during surgical intervention and she had been in a coma for two weeks.
'They just don't get it', she said, as she bummed another smoke from me. 'In the hospital, they put me on programs where everyone treats you pretty well, ... you are enveloped in a caring community, and it feels good and you are 'better' again because you are in a good spot. Then, they say 'you're better', as if 'health' had only to do with you and nothing to do with the environment, and throw you back out into the community-at-large. But they don't want me out there, ... I'm not pretty enough, I'm not sexy enough, I'm not talented enough, I'm not rich enough, and I'm tainted with the label of 'having a 'disability', ... even my welfare-supplied bus pass is colour-coded for 'disability', ... so I slip back down again. The street people are there and I have been part of it and they are great, but then I find it too confining and just want to get back into the mainstream and when it shuts me out I overdose again."
What Patty is saying is something that everybody knows from their experience but which clashes with the fundamental principle of 'causal' science, that the behaviour of the 'independent' material agent is 'in-its-own-right' (as if enveloped in empty, non-participating Euclidian space). What Patty is saying is that one cannot separate the health of the individual and speak of the 'health' of an individual in terms of the individual's behaviour in-its-own-right, ... 'health' is intrinsically 'relational', an outer-inner, habitat-inhabitant codynamic, ... 'health' is where (i.e. 'where-when' in the unsplit-apart terms of space-time) the community-constituent codynamic is in phase-coupled resonance, ... a healthy community dynamic (i.e. relational dynamic of the collective) is a mutually-referencing dynamic (a 'complex system dynamic') and not the linear 'sum of the 'healthy dynamics of the constituents'. Thus one cannot speak of the 'health-of-an-individual' out of the context of the enveloping community dynamic that the constituent's dynamic is included in and 'pushes off' from.
What Patty is saying is what Johannes Kepler said about the 'system of sun and planets' back in 1619, ... that the dynamic of the individual is not 'absolute' and in-its-own-right but simultaneously 'relative' to the enveloping community dynamic as the kinetics of the vortex is to the enveloping energy flow. One cannot speak about the 'health' of a planetary dynamic out of the context of the 'health' of the solar system dynamic because the dynamic of the constituent planet is continually referencing to the enveloping community-of-sun-and-planets dynamic that the constituent dynamics are co-creating via their relative motion.
II. The Effects of 'Relativity' at the 'Speed of Life'
As we pursue our every day activities, do we really 'reference our motion' to the Euclidian space and absolute time frame of Newton's laws? Or do we instead let our motion reference to the geometric shape of the real-world 'corridors of opportunity-to-move' embodied in the enveloping community/environmental dynamic that are continually opening up or 'co-unfolding' 'in front' of us?
We know what this 'feels like' when we 'drive friendly' on a crowded freeway and 'let go' of our ego-priority of controlling our trajectory and instead, allow the dynamical geometry of space (that can sustain and balance the enveloping opportunity-to-move) to guide our actions; i.e. we follow a co-produced 'leadership' that emerges from the relative dynamics of the community of drivers and in this case our action can be seen as being induced from the outside-in, by the enveloping dynamical geometry of space (that we are co-unfolding) rather than seeing our action as being 'caused' by something internal to us (i.e. our 'mind-in-its-own-right', our genetic scripting, our biochemical functioning etc.). The 'internal cause' story for the source of the dynamics is 'still there' but has now been reduced to a lesser story included within the bigger story of the constituent dynamics being induced by the enveloping environmental dynamic that the constituents are helping to co-produce.
As the skilled pool player always keeps in mind, without sustained opportunity-to-act, there can be no action (i.e. one is 'snookered') and while the 'causal' model, by ignoring the geometry of opportunity associated with relative motion, in effect assumes the homogeneity of space (i.e. assumes an equitable opportunity-to-act for all constituents). Meanwhile, the dynamical geometry of space (emerging from the relative dynamics of the constituents) is, in most community dynamics, far from homogeneous, opening up opportunity disproportionately to the approach of some, and closing down opportunity disproportionately to the approach of others. This is what Patty is talking about and what the skilled pool player knows to be reality; i.e. one can't have a healthy assertive dynamic without being immersed in a healthy opportunizing dynamic. 'Healthy' dynamics do not 'exist-in-their-own-right' in 'empty space' but are co-created by the opportunizing inductive-dynamic of space that emerges 'interferentially' from the relative assertive behaviours of the constituents. This is essentially the 'relativity' of space-dynamics - matter-dynamics described by Kepler, Poincare and Einstein and it has fundamental implications in our approach to 'healing' of all types, individual, family, community, organizational, national, global and environmental, since it is at the level of our culturally-induced neural training that underpins perception, inquiry and response.
'Causal science', a culturally preferred and culturally-evolved science that has us see things in the informationally limited terms of the 'causal actions and transactions of 'independent' material agents', has us see the newborn infant as a 'stand-alone', genetically scripted, biophysical/biochemical system whose behaviour is 'independent' of the environmental dynamic. This perceived 'detachment' of the dynamic of the individual from the enveloping environmental dynamic is in spite of our knowledge that without opportunity to maintain thermal equilibrium (energy equilibrium); i.e. to breath, to drink, to eat, ... the child could not survive 'on its own'. Causal science has 'patched' its dynamical detachment of the material agent, that comes with the imposing of a rigid Euclidian containing-frame notion of space (rather than the space-time energy-matter flow of our common experience and relativity) using the time-dependent notions of 'feedback' and 'adaptation'. This 'time-based' view of dynamics is what underpins the logic of; 'First, let's fix up Patty so that her feedback and adaptive 'dynamic functions' are demonstrated to be in good working order, ... then she will be ready for re-entry into a healthy community dynamic (seeing the health of the community dynamic in the informationally constrained 'linear' terms of the health of the dynamics of its constituents).
But the constituent dynamic 'is', at the same time, the community dynamic, as is readily visualizable in the system of sun and planets, or on the crowded freeway or on the pool table; i.e. the relative motion of the constituents is the dynamical geometry of opportunity that gates and shapes the assertive behaviours of the constituent. It is not the dynamic of the constituent-in-its-own-right that determines its 'health' but the nature of the 'phase coupling' between the movements of the constituent relative to the movements of the enveloping collective. And we know, as Patty has experienced, that this phase-coupled relative motion that 'belongs to no-one' and is thus 'not-caused' can stealthily 'close down' to (i.e. it can 'snooker') those who 'are not pretty enough', ... 'are not sexy enough', ...'are not smart enough', ... 'are not talented enough', ... 'are not rich enough'.
III. Astronomy and the Energy-Dynamics of Relativity
As Kepler said in 'Harmonies of the World' (1619);
"... I concluded rightly that the true [independent, in-their-own-right] journeys of the planets through the ether should be dismissed, and that we should turn our eyes to the apparent [relative] diurnal arcs. ..."
Kepler recognized that the dynamical interdependence between community and constituent was simultaneous rather than sequential ; i.e. that the sun and planets were dynamically 'referencing to themselves as a dynamical system' rather than to space seen as a fixed containing grid filled with 'independent' constituents surrounded by empty space. In his original words in 'Harmonice Mundi' (1619), Kepler describes the dynamics of sun and planets as being simultaneously self-referential and thus the 'harmony' as being an attribute of space, emerging from the simultaneous relative motion of the constituents rather than from their time-based adaptive relationships as can be 'built up' by considering the motion of two things at a time and avoiding the 'three(or more)-body-problem' (i.e. there is no analytical or 'bottom-up' solution of the motion of three or more bodies moving under each other's influence);
***
"Nun aber tragen zur Vervollkommnung der Welt mehr die Gesamtharmonien aller Planeten bei als die einzelnen Harmonien bei je zwei und die Paare von Harmonien bei je zwei benachbarten Planeten. Denn die Harmonie ist gewisserma?en ein Band der Vereinigung. Es liegt aber eine weitergehende Vereinigung vor, wenn alle Planeten miteinander eine Harmonie bilden, als wenn immer je zwei fur sich in doppelter Weise harmonieren. Im Widerstreit dieser Harmonien mu?te daher von den beiden Harmoniereihen, die die Planetenpaare miteinander bilden, die eine oder andere nachgeben, damit die Gesamtharmonien aller bestehen konnte."
whose translation reads
"Now, the 'harmony-of-the-whole of all the planets contributes more to the perfection of the world than the single harmonies by twos and the pairs of harmonies by the twos of neighbouring planets. For harmony is, so to speak, a volume of unity. A deeper unity yet is presented, when all the planets form a harmony with each another, as when just two at a time harmonize in a bivalent manner. In the interference of these harmonies deriving from the dual harmonic line-ups, which the pairs of planets form with each another, the one or the other must give way, so that the harmony-of-the-collective can prevail."
* * *
Kepler was 'speaking Patty's language'; i.e. the 'dynamical health' of the system is simultaneously interdependent with the 'dynamical health' of the constituent, ... one cannot speak of getting the constituent 'healthy' in-their-own-standalone-right since it is the manner in which the constituent dynamic phase-couples with the enveloping community-dynamic that determines 'dynamical health'. And community-constituent phase-coupling emerges from the simultaneous relative dynamics of the constituents and therefore from the 'collective response' ('collective consciousness') of the community, ... whether 'community' refers to the community of sun-and-planets or to the 'community' of people who phase-couple so as to induce the opening up of opportunity-to-participate for those who are 'pretty', 'sexy', 'intelligent', 'talented' and 'rich' but phase-couple so as to induce the closing down of opportunity-to-participate for those who are 'not-pretty-enough', 'not-sexy-enough', 'not-talented-enough' and 'not-rich-enough'.
Motion, seen beyond the simplistic approximation of 'independent material agents' moving within a fixed rectangular frame and enveloped by 'absolutely nothing', ... in the context of continuously co-unfolding energy relationships as in relativity, does not detach the dynamics of the constituent from the dynamics of the enveloping space but sees the relationship between the enveloping environmental dynamic and the included constituent dynamics as 'inclusional' in the manner of the tornado nesting within the storm nesting within the atmospheric flow-dynamic. In this relativistic, space-time continuum, energy-flow visualization of dynamics (the view of the 'friendly' freeway driver), the dynamical geometry of space (opportunity-to-move) is in a natural primacy and it 'induces' the relative assertive action of the constituents though they are aware that their action, relative to that of their enveloping fellows, is co-producing the enveloping shape of 'opportunity-to-move'. As one says; 'The rainforest creates its own climate' ('The dynamics of the constituents of the rainforest co-create their own enveloping climatic dynamic'.)
IV. Neural Response Training: the Micro-dynamics of Energy-Flow
The notion of a human organism as an 'independent' genetically-scripted, biophysical/biochemical machine, 'framed' in the rigid terms Euclidian space and absolute time does not 'go away' with the relativistic view where dynamics reference to themselves rather than to a fixed frame interposed between 'community' and 'constituent'. The internal cause-based view of the organism's dynamic is simply 'subsumed' and included as a special subview (informationally degenerate subview), in the same manner that viewing the game of pool in terms of the actions and transactions of 'independent' constituents (balls) is a informationally degenerate subview included within the more comprehensive view of the evolving play in terms of the transformation of the geometry of opportunity-to-move (the 'bigger over-englobing story' of the evolving play that skilled pool players 'key to').
The bigger story of dynamics, in an informational sense, informs in terms of how the relative motion of the constituents shapes the enveloping (opportunity-to-move) space that inductively shapes the assertive behaviour of the included constituents. The community (of balls) that manages their play (grace of the multi-minded thinking capacity of the pool player) by 'keying to' their co-creative shaping of their enveloping opportunity-to-act space is a community capable of sustaining community-constituent-codynamical harmony. Since the shaping of opportunity-to-move by the relative dynamics of the constituents is 'going to happen anyhow', ... to ignore it is at the community's peril, exposing them to dynamical dissonance and dysfunction emerging from those constituents who would simply 'follow rules' based on the notion of the dynamical independence, and exposing them to covert collaborations destined to disproportionately opportunize or disopportunize selected others. In Patty's case, the 'covert' collaboration that disopportunizes her from participating within the community dynamic is at a 'sub-aware' level which suggests that it is at a neurally trained level.
The person addicted to abusive levels of alcohol or tobacco understands on an aware level, that his actions may be damaging to his health, but his neural responses have been inductively trained, in the manner of Pavlov's dogs, to respond involuntarily, at a level below his rational awareness. The dynamical behaviour of the constituent is, in general, 'environmentally induced' and those community-constituent-codynamics that become habitual descend below the level of the constituent's awareness by the training of neural responses. That is, the view that the enveloping environmental dynamic (the relative dynamics of the constituents) inductively shapes the assertive behaviour of the constituent is an informationally deeper view (deeper than the Euclidian view that is capable only of conceiving things in terms of the independent constituent behaviours).
For example, the child's behaviour 'models' the behaviours of the enveloping family, ... the family behaviour 'models' the behaviours of the enveloping culture, ... and more generally, the inhabitants' behaviour 'models' the behaviours of the enveloping habitat with its hot and cold seasons, its time for sowing and growth and its time for rejuvenating rest (i.e. 'to every thing there is a season and time to every purpose'). This phase-coupled, outside-inside nesting dynamic points to a primacy of the 'inductive' influence of the enveloping environmental dynamic on the dynamics of its included constituents. We may protest by saying 'rain, rain, go away, come again another day', ... but we do not control the environmental dynamic (social or feral) but are induced to phase-couple to it. If you ask someone, ... why are you wearing that heavy coat and fur hat? They are more likely to respond in the terms that suggest their 'independent' behaviour; 'It's because I am sensitive to the cold and these clothes keep me nice and warm.' That is, they are unlikely to say; 'My dynamic in dressing this way is a phase coupling induced by the enveloping environmental dynamic.'.
No, we are in control of our own behaviours, right? The world dynamic is given by the collective of 'independent constituent-dynamics', out of the context of the enveloping community/environmental dynamic, right? We have the choice to go nude in the arctic, but, of course, this would not keep us as an active participant in evolution for very long, ... so if 'we' includes our evolutionary history, we would have to say, 'no', our individual dynamics are not 'independent' of our enveloping environmental dynamic. To drop out the information on evolutionary history and address 'dynamics' in terms of discrete transactions and apparently 'independent-of-the-environment' decision-making is what the poor pool player does by viewing the evolving play in terms of the transactions of the balls, approaching each situation as if it were 'independent' of the continuing flow of reality; i.e. 'Let's see now, how can I sink the most balls on this turn?', ... not thinking that, by this type of thinking, he is not paying attention to sustaining a favourable opportunity-to-shoot from turn to turn (i.e. in the geometrically transforming space-time continuum) and is thus making his subsequent shots more difficult if not snookering himself totally.
Thus, the man, who, grace of his 'free will' (so-called dynamical independence) chooses to go around nude in the arctic, ... will in the deeper informational sense of dynamics, be transforming the shape of his continuing opportunity-to-move, and his 'next move' may be to try to recover from pneumonia. Of course, he did not 'cause' the pneumonia, it was environmentally induced, which does not 'count' in the 'causal' modeling of dynamics, at least from 'his' perspective. But if the pneumococcus had an 'ego' like him, ... it would surely 'take credit' for causing his 'fall from health'. As Pasteur conceded on his deathbed (folding in to the long-standing argument of Antoine Bechamps), ... 'le microbe n'est rien, le terrain est tout' (The microbe [assertive behaviour] is nothing, the terrain [environmental dynamic] is everything). That is, the constituent dynamic can always be seen in the informationally more comprehensive context of a transformation of the environmental dynamic. The man going nude in the arctic may be 'exercising his free will' as an 'independent material-causal agent', ... but he knows that his action, relative to the enveloping environmental dynamic is co-producing transformation in the shape of the corridors of opportunity-to-move that he is asserting into.
V. The Fall of 'Genetics' and the Rise of Neural Response Training
Neural training' is recognized as a means of transporting behavioural concepts across successive generations as in the research-thought-experiment of the five chimps who are all sprayed with ice-cold water every time any one of them climbs a uniquely coloured (bright red) ladder. They soon develop a community policing tactic wherein they prevent each other from climbing that ladder. Soon the 'correct behaviour' policing reduces the 'infractions' to zero and no one climbs the red ladder any longer, so no further sprayings occur and the spraying equipment is removed. At this point one of the chimps is replaced with a new chimp who is quickly taught by the policing action of his fellows that he must not climb the red ladder. Subsequently, another new chimp is brought in to replace another of the original chimps and the community policing-based 'training' is repeated. This one-by-one replacement of the chimps continues until there are no longer any chimps in the group who have actually experienced the ice water spraying, yet the policing continues and the chimps persist in following and enforcing 'the correct behaviour' of not allowing each other to climb the red ladder. So there is something akin to 'myth' or 'oral tradition' being used by the chimps to pass behavioural traits on from generation to generation, ... something 'neural training-based' that induces the continued trans-generational training of neural responses.
To put this in 'systems' terms, ... there was originally a 'context' that gave rise to the development of 'the correct behaviour', but the context has changed (there is no longer an 'ice-water spraying context'). If the chimps were able to speak and if they were conditioned in our western culture, one of them might ask; 'Why can't we climb on this red ladder?' And they would look around at each other and one might say; 'I don't know why, exactly, ... but I do know that it is not a good thing to do, and my older cousins would never do it, and they are wiser and more experienced than I am'. So, climbing the red ladder is just 'not the way we do things around here.'.
So what is the 'original context' underpinning our regulation of group discussion?, ... i.e. in the contextual principles that lie beneath the 'need for maintaining brevity in group discussion'? Do we not, when we dig down, 'bottom out' on an epistemological framework or 'paradigm' that would have us 'manage on the basis of the correct behaviour of the constituents of a system/community without 'revisiting the original context' that the 'correct behaviour' was based upon?
Well, we know that this principle of conciseness and being 'to the point' is good for maintaining 'order' of a certain type in a community dynamic. For example;
'Sir, I know that we are all following the correct engineering practice in building this incinerating equipment, but I would like to see an open discussion on the context relating to the size, number and severe deadlines associated with the current contract.'
'We have a long tradition here, son, of meeting the needs of our customers and our success is in no small measure due to 'getting on with the job' as we know how to, rather than getting caught up in futile deliberations that would end up having us contemplate our own navels. The equipment we are currently constructing has been contracted directly from us by the government, bypassing normal competitive bidding procedures and giving us an unusually hefty profit margin. Here at Belsen-Bergen Engineering, ... we turn out quality work in a timely fashion, ... that is the correct behaviour for us and we must not let ourselves be diverted from the task at hand in a questioning of what goes on 'out there' that has no end and is therefore futile and wasteful. We have good people looking after planning and customer relations issues and there is no need to duplicate this effort.'
This type of 'order' is given by 'division of labour' or 'specialization' wherein each constituent in the community is responsible for behaving in a particular way and the overall system dynamic is seen as arriving 'constructively' from the sum of the contributions; i.e. where each constituent focuses on their own responsibility without simultaneous awareness by the constituent of the enveloping community dynamic except on a 'need-to-know' basis. The constituent, in this linear-sequential 'division-of-consciousness' behavioural mode, is not consciously co-producing the enveloping community dynamic (i.e. as contrasted with the case, for example, where the driver amongst a group of 'friendly' freeway drivers helps to co-create a harmonious enveloping traffic flow geometry; i.e. in this friendly driving case, the constituent is referencing his behaviour directly to (as in relativity) the enveloping community behaviour, rather than to an interposed synthetic framework embodying a suite of 'correct behaviours' or 'laws' established by some particular environmental context that may no longer apply.
That is, the experimental replication-based validation paradigm of mainstream science involves 'controlled conditions' that seek to isolate the experiment from being influenced by the enveloping environmental dynamic; i.e. an experiment to assess the law of universal gravitation by dropping objects of different mass from a tower and measuring their acceleration will be repeated often enough to 'cancel out' variations in results emerging from atmospheric conditions etc. Meanwhile, such 'real world' departures from the statistically established 'correct behaviours' (behaviours that ignore the 'potency of place') are of essential importance to the airforce aerobatics team that is co-creating an inverting pyramid on a windy day. The constituents in the aerobatics exercise cannot reference their dynamics to 'correct behaviours' but must instead reference to the enveloping 'community dynamic' emerging from the 'relative' motion of the constituents. In this orientation, no questions are asked as to 'who is behaving correctly' or 'who is being thrown off by the wind' or 'who's motion is lacking agility because of equipment malfunction' since the constituents are orienting to the dynamical geometry of space (the geometry emerging from the relative motion of the constituents) rather than to the dynamics of the constituents-in-their-own-right.
So what is the connection between the pressure in our society to have us speak and act explicitly and with brevity (i.e. 'being to the point'), and 'neural training'?
To speak and act explicitly and 'to the point' is to detach our 'self' from the environmental dynamic and to put our 'ego' at the helm, proceeding according to our 'independent rational plan'. But the aerobatics pilot is not going to proceed bloody-mindedly when he can see that 'things are not coming together'. Instead, he will 'let go' of his 'ego-at-the-helm' rational 'independent' mode and let his sensate 'self' take over, putting his movements in the service of a harmonious evolution of the enveloping 'relative' community dynamic.
The connection, then, is that neural training is induced by the environmental dynamic while the social pressure to speak and act explicitly and with brevity amounts to giving our 'ego' instructions to 'detach' from our 'sensate self' that is oriented towards 'phase-coupling' with the environmental dynamic.
That is, the training of neural responses is induced by environmental context (e.g. by community-constituent-codynamical context), as in the case of the chimps. Once the 'correct behaviours' are established and the neural responses 'trained' accordingly, ... the system need no longer refer to the original 'context' in order to carry out its activities but can switch over and reference to the 'correct behaviours' precipitated from the context and this seems to be the originating context where conciseness and brevity in the use of language and instruction (explicitness as contrasted with fuzzy webs of relational connectings) derives.
If chimps could speak (and they do indeed 'speak' non-discursively by their gestures and behaviours), they would perhaps say; 'It is not correct behaviour to climb the red ladder and you will be punished or excluded from the group if you do it' .... 'But what is the reason behind prescribing this 'correct behaviour' of abstaining from climbing the red ladder?', ..... 'The reason is, that 'this is the way we do things around here, and since that was good enough reason for my grandparents and my parents, it is good enough for me.'
There is nothing in the DNA of a goose that prescribes the explicit behaviour needed for flying in 'V' formation and saving over 20 percent of the energy as would be required for solo flying and, as well, extending the migration range and the agility of the geese (by increasing their swiftness in moving from one place to another) relative to the speed of environmental dangers and weather conditions. Meanwhile, the neural training associated with community-constituent-codynamical harmony, that goes beyond the 'explicit genetic scripts' of the constituents provides the 'community-of-geese' an evolutionary or 'survival' advantage that is purely relational and that transcends the limits of what is possible in terms of individual 'constituent behaviour'. Meanwhile, the 'community harmony' emerging from purely 'relational' dynamics (inner-outer dynamical balancing) is 'inductive' in character rather than 'causal' (i.e. the constituents co-create the enveloping opportunity-to-move in a sustainably 'balanced' manner so that the form of their 'assertive behaviour' co-unfolds with the corridors of opportunity they are asserting into.)
In the relativistic view, therefore, DNA appears as 'hardware' (explicit structure) that is precipitated within the individual constituent by environmentally-induced 'software' (neural training). The following publications speak, implicitly, to the natural primacy of neural training (induced by the relative dynamics of an enveloping collective);
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"Unraveling the DNA Myth - The spurious foundation of genetic engineering" by Barry Commoner. Harper's Magazine, Feb 2002, pages 39-47) in which Commoner states that "Because of their commitment to an obsolete theory, most molecular biologists operate under the assumption that DNA is the secret of life, whereas the careful observation of the hierarchy of living processes strongly suggests that it is the other way around: DNA did not create life; life created DNA.
Check in at Harper's Magazine
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... and, ....
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"Genetic Good News: Complexity and Accidents" by Stephen Jay Gould New York Times Tuesday, February 20, 2001 CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts
(from a formal report of data for the human genome project released on Feb. 12)
A previous error in genetics has now been exposed; i.e. the assumption that each message came from a distinct gene....a single gene can make several messages because genes of multicellular organisms are not discrete strings, but are composed of coding segments (exons) separated by noncoding regions (introns).
The collapse of the doctrine of one gene for one protein, and one direction of causal flow from basic codes to elaborate totality, marks the failure of reductionism for the complex system that we call biology...First, the key to complexity is not more genes but more combinations and interactions generated by fewer units of code - and many of these interactions (as emergent properties, to use the technical jargon) must be explained at the level of their appearance, for they cannot be predicted from the separate underlying parts alone. So organisms must be explained as organisms, and not as a summation of genes.
...Our 30,000 genes make up only 1 percent or so of our total genome. The rest - including bacterial immigrants and other pieces that can replicate and move - originate more as accidents of history than as predictable necessities of physical laws. These noncoding regions, disrespectfully called "junk DNA," also build a pool of potential for future use that, more than any other factor, may establish any lineage's capacity for further evolutionary increase in complexity. The deflation of hubris is blessedly positive, not cynically disabling.
The failure of reductionism does not mark the failure of science, but only the replacement of an ultimately unworkable set of assumptions by more appropriate styles of explanation that study complexity at its own level and respect the influences of unique histories..
Check in
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Thus, environmentally-induced neural response training, in its most elemental form (e.g. wherein it secures the community-constituent cooperation of bacteria in the digestive tract and makes human life possible) appears to be playing a more fundamental role in the origins of evolved life than does 'genetic material'. (In the non-neural domain of the solar system, the same 'involuntary' effects are manifest wherein the dynamic of the individual constituent yields ('nachgebt' in Kepler's terms) to the equitability and harmony needs of the enveloping community dynamic.)
'Environmentally-induced neural training that becomes detached from its originating context' is a rather fuzzy relational notion that is not nearly so easy to share as the explicit concepts of reductionism. In fact, the 'conciseness' and 'brevity' that characters 'correct behaviour' in western-culture dialogues emanates from a particular epistemological paradigm (a particular assumption on how one comes to know things) and the particular paradigm that underpins the desirability of concise and explicit propositions is, in fact, one that assumes that we can come to know the complex dynamics of the enveloping world by understanding the behaviours of the constituents-in-their-own-right (e.g. molecules, cells, organs, organisms, communities of organisms etc.).
However, this 'causal' paradigm, that assumes that the behaviours of the constituents (e.g. the behaviours of human organisms) can be understood on the basis of their internal 'genetic makeup' and their internal 'biochemical/biophysical' systems behaviours in a 'inside-outwards' or 'bottom-up' fashion is being called into question by the principle of 'relativity' that gives an 'informationally more comprehensive view' showing that the enveloping group/community/environmental dynamic induces behaviours in the constituent (from the outside-in), ... a dynamical model that 'informs' in a manner that transcends understandings of dynamics based on constituent behaviours constrained to the causal actions of their internal genetic scripts and internal systems behaviours.
Given this reality, which has been implicitly pointed to by Kepler, Poincare, Einstein, and in the above citations from Commoner and Gould, ... where do we 'look' for the sourcing principles of these behaviours (e.g. trained neural response based behaviours that are evident in the flock-flying behaviours of geese etc.); i.e. what is the nature of the inductive influence and how is it possible to talk about it in a language that is decidedly designed for expression in terms of 'what things do' (i.e. a language such as English designed to express things in terms of the behaviours of the constituents, ... a design philosophy for phonetic languages driven by the trade and commerce needs of the ancient Phoenicians (1000 B.C) and Greeks (775 B.C))?
The message is, that the way the assertive behavioural motions of the constituents 'interfere' or relate relatively to each other in nature is intrinsically more complex than any understanding that can be deduced by detailed knowledge of the behaviours of the constituents-in-their-own-right. This is evident in the case of the geese flying in formation, and it relates to the energy exchanges seen in a 'nested' community-constituent-codynamical sense (i.e. the nesting puts the dynamical energy flow at the level of molecules, cells, organs, organisms, groups of organisms, ecologies, ... etc. 'into dynamical communication' with each other. This is basically what the 'space' of 'relativity' is all about; i.e. auto-transforming energy-flow relationships.
It is evident that a new epistemological framework is needed to discuss neural training on the level of relativistic energy exchanges, and this places new demands on the use of languages such as the English language, that have evolved to serve the needs of a 'behaviour of the constituent' based epistemology, rather than the 'relative behaviour of outer-inner nesting group' epistemological paradigm.
In terms of 'Patty's situation' in the above discussion, there is no therapy oriented to the internal genetics and biochemical systems that can resolve Patty's psychopathology (short of drugging her to distraction). Her 'complaint' is that when she is deemed 'healthy-in-her-own-right', it is not because she is 'healthy-in-her-own-right' but that she is participating in a healthy community-constituent-codynamic (a resonant, balanced codynamic) in the 'special case' world of the therapeutic program. But when the program administration concludes that she has been restored to 'health-in-her-own-right' and thus sends her back out into the community-at-large, ...she is unable to sustain her 'healthy condition' because of the exclusionary character of the community-at-large which will not allow her to become a co-productive participant in the community-constituent codynamic. That is, her health is not 'in-her-own-right' but emerges from 'inclusion' within an accepting (tolerant, empathetic) community-constituent-codynamic.
That is, Patty must co-create her own dynamical 'niche' or 'nest' within the world dynamic and that does not simply depend on 'correct behaviour' on her part, but, like the Keplerian-Einsteinian planet or the friendly freeway driver, ... she must let her behaviour relative to her fellows co-unfold so as to promote harmonious energy withdrawals and deposits from/to the enveloping community dynamical energy-bank that she wants to help co-manage. More than this, her fellow constituents must open up opportunity for her to participate in such co-unfolding and energy-bank management.
To paraphrase Barry Commoner ("DNA did not create life; life created DNA"), ... one could say that "the individual's brain dynamics do not (causally) create neural response patterns, neural response patterns (inductively) create the individual's brain dynamics."
That is, 'intuition' or 'instinct' would appear to induce neural structures rather than vice versa. This recalls that the question of whether or not 'instincts' gave rise to 'genetic variation' or whether the opposite has occurred has been a contentious topic since Darwin's writing of "The Origin of Species'.
In the section "Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection as applied to Instincts: Neuter and Sterile Insects", Darwin discusses 'objections' that reference how the neuter and sterile offspring of insect families seemed have an evolutionary life of their own though they do not reproduce and thus are not exposed to 'selection'. In countering this objection, Darwin wrote;
"This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I believe, disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied to the family, ... as well as ... to the individual, and may thus gain the desired end."
The 'family', meanwhile, is a relational community-constituent dynamic rather than a dynamical constituent-in-its-own-right and 'families' do not beget physical 'baby-families' in the same assertive-dynamical sense as the dynamical constituents do. In fact, the 'family behaviour' is an unbounded-in-space-time, transgenerationally induced-and-inducing relational phenomena, as in the behaviour of geese flying in their 'V' formation. Because such group behaviours deliver energy and agility advantages to the constituents that transcend the limitations of the individual constituent, the group behaviour itself constitutes an evolving 'evolutionary advantage' that does not depend on material reproduction and selection, but, as in 'Camelot', is a community 'instinct' that transcends the materiality of both the community and the constituent. The following citations from 'First Knight' illustrate this perspective;
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King Arthur (to Lancelot as he shows him around Camelot): ...if you must die, die serving something greater than yourself... ... (Regarding the round table and his style of politics Arthur says) ...No head, no foot. Everyone equal. Even the King.
Lancelot: (reading the words around the center of the Round Table) IN SERVING EACH OTHER WE BECOME FREE.
Arthur: That is the very heart of Camelot. Not these stones, timber, towers, palaces, burn them all! and Camelot lives on because it lives in us. It is a belief that we hold in our hearts.
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Apparently, 'beliefs one holds in one's heart' and/or 'neural responses induced by the enveloping community-dynamic' are capable of having an evolutionary history that has no dependency on the explicit genetic structures of the material constituents..
VI. The Physicists' 'Abuse' of Mathematics
The mathematical 'abuse' that associates with imposing the Euclidian space frame, forcing the independence of behaviour of the constituent (Euclidian space is not capable of simultaneous interdependence between the collective and constituent dynamics, as the spherical space of relativity is) was picked up on by Zeno and Poincare. Zeno pointed out in his paradoxes that it was entirely ambiguous whether it was the Euclidian frame that moved or the constituent within ('when a thing is moving it occupies the same space as when at rest, thus when it is moving, it is at rest'), so one could not arbitrarily ascribe 'motion' to 'a material constituent'. Poincare in his comprehensive investigations into the mathematics and psychological implications of space in science and hypothesis (viz. 'The Relativity of Space'), observed;
"Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.... The two propositions: "The earth turns round" and "it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round" have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other."
While it is accepted in the nonlinear dynamics of 'complex systems' (the general case in nature) that there is a self-referentiality (relativity) in and amongst the dynamics of a collective as in 'community-constituent-codynamical resonance' (as is manifest in the solar system), this is precisely what is precluded in a rigid Euclidian space-framing. The ambiguity of whether the rigid inertial frame moves or the material constituent 'moves' seems to be resolved when we move from one to two constituents since we now refocus on the relative movement of the two constituents. But we are simply white-washing over the ambiguity issue and forcibly imposing the notion of 'independent behaviour' of the constituents. The mathematical reality is, that if the dynamic of the constituent is relative to the co-created collective dynamic, as relativity says, then this simultaneously dynamical interdependence cannot be modeled in a split-apart absolute space and absolute time framing.
The buried ambiguity noted by Zeno and Poincare resurfaces in the informational degeneracy of the 'causal' model (the model wherein we perceive the world dynamic in the sole terms of 'kinetic energy exchanges', ... in the sole terms of the actions and transactions of 'independent' material agents'). In the self-referential view of the dynamics of the constituent and collective, meanwhile, the collective dynamic serves as a potential energy 'bank' that the constituents 'deposit energy into' and 'withdraw energy from' as they speed up and slow down (e.g. as the planets do on their approximately elliptical orbits), giving more the impression of 'inhaling and exhaling' than clockworks mechanics. In the causal model, the movements of the hidden potential energy are ignored because they are embodied in the geometrical form of the enveloping environmental dynamic. When the rock rolls down the mountain, we focus on the assertive kinetic behaviour of the rock, ... but the hole the rock left in the mountain will inductively shape the evolutionary history of the mountainscape and the protrusion the rock puts in the stream-bottom where it ends up may barricade the stream and inductively shape the evolutionary history of the mountainscape. That is, just as in the game of pool, or in the friendly freeway driver group, the continually changing geometric form of the enveloping mountainscape is a deeper way to look at motion that includes (at an innately less comprehensive informational level) the so-called 'independent' assertive kinetic (causal) behaviour of the constituent.
VII. Ternary Threading
The companion essays in this essay trilogy ('Space, Being and Infinity') give differing 'renderings' of the same geometry discussed herein, wherein the 'dynamics of energy flow' (kinetic-potential energy transformations) are in a natural primacy over the 'dynamics of existence'. The 'existence' of material objects would appear to be an abstraction that is 'reverse-engineered' from that aspect of the continually transforming energy-flow we somewhat arbitrarily categorize as 'kinetic'; i.e. as the 'something' associated with the observation that 'there is' 'something moving' (there is an arbitrariness as to the motion of the reference frame versus the motion of the constituent being referenced to the frame). As mentioned, the 'falling rock', the 'kinetic view', can also be seen in the informationally more comprehensive terms of 'land-form-flow' or, since matter has energy equivalence, 'energy-form-flow'.
Our mathematical concepts of space, numbers, time and infinity and the nature of 'existence' continue to shape our faculties of perception, inquiry and response. Twenty-five hundred years ago, in the dawn of the history of western philosophy as we know it, the issue of the primacy of 'flow' ('becoming') versus 'material existence' ('being') was in contention.
As Frankfort et al note in 'The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man';
"Heraclitus had declared being a perpetual becoming and had correlated the two concepts with his 'hidden attunement' [the fire-like mediator role of space]. Now Parmenides declared the two to be mutually exclusive, and only being to be real."
This early victory for the discrete material foundations of our world view, reinforced by the classical theory of numbers has been intricately woven into the fabric of all aspects of our daily lives so that only by bringing into connection, inconsistencies in multiple realms of life, can the shortfall be visually resolved in the mind's eye.
In this essay trilogy, Lere Shakunle's essay gives a rendering of the mathematical implications of the natural primacy of space-time flow over time-based kinetics while Alan Rayner's essay gives a rendering of the ecological systems implications of the natural primacy of 'flow' over 'material existence'.
It is my hope, induced in me, in some way from the energy-flow-that-brings-us-together, that we shall continue to open ourselves up to the inductive forces in nature that would bring us together, restoring the harmony-seeking 'community ethic' of our enveloping 'living space' in our human social dynamic,... an ethic that has the capacity to 'heal' and quell a rising tide of psychopathology, 'bringing home' those who have been squeezed out or are being sucked dry by the energy thievery of exclusionary social dynamics.
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Appendix: Practical Insights of the Energy-Flow Model of Psychosis
(From the Point of View of the Experient of the Psychosis)
The central implication of the energy-flow model of psychosis is that while the deeper 'self' that includes sub-aware neural responses inductively 'trained' via the sensory faculties by the enveloping environment dynamic is 'conservation of energy' oriented, ... the only partially aware 'ego' orients solely to 'kinetic energy exchanges'; i.e. solely to the assertive behaviours of apparently 'independent' material agents. Thus, there is a splitting between the 'self' that is being pulled and 'trained' sub-awarely and sensately by the 'outer world' and the 'ego' that is being 'trained' awarely and rationally by the 'inner world'. Thus one's inner world and one's outer world are put into a dual with the outer world 'arming itself' with the sensate faculties and the inner world 'arming itself with the rational faculties.
Since the sub-aware sensate faculties 'manage order' on the basis of the full energy-flow dynamic that 'conserves' energy (i.e. they seek to respond to the equitability-and harmony-seeking inductive influence of the environmental dynamic) and the rational faculties 'manage order' on the sole basis of 'kinetic energy exchange' --- the actions and transactions of 'independent' material agents (i.e. they seek to control the arrangement of things in the environment), there need be no conflict between 'self' and 'ego' provided that the outer-inducing-inner harmony-seeking sensate functions are in a natural primacy over the inner-causing-outer rational control functions; i.e. in this 'polarity' the two order-management faculties can complement one another. However, if the inner-causing-outer control-seeking rational functions are put into an unnatural primacy over the outer-inducing-inner harmony-seeking functions, the 'order' that will be imposed will be 'unstable' since the potential-kinetic energy balancing will have been ignored. The 'polarity' of 'sensate-over-rational' is thus a 'stable dynamical equilibrium' while the 'polarity' of 'rational-over-sensate' is an 'unstable dynamical equilibrium.' A 'psychotic break' occurs when the conflict between the inductive energy-pull of the continually transforming 'now' of the outer world over-balances the assertive control energy of the material transaction based inner world.
One can visualize the experiencing of these two 'order management' modes by (a) the desire to get fully into the 'now' so that one can open one 'self' up to a full sensory appreciation of the current inner-outer codynamic of the self's engagement with other, and (b) the 'now'-eclipsing time-based orientation of the ego to accounting for the assertive behaviour wins and losses in the past and rational planning for future transactions and their associated kinetic energy wins and losses. Both mania and depression emerge from an excess of as the experient loses his ability to restore-at-will the full energy balancing mode (a). Therapy, by implication, consists of finding ways to develop the experient's capacity for restoring-at-will the primacy of the sensate mode; i.e. the primacy of the experiencing of 'now'. While time-based rational transaction-accounting can be a 'foreground process' included within the background sensate experiencing of the 'now' process, the inverse arrangement is not possible; i.e. a background process of time-based rational transaction accounting innately lacks the capacity to accommodate, in the foreground, sensate experiencing of the 'now'.
While the therapies for developing the experient's ability to restore-at-will the sensate mode include playing and listening to music, dancing, swimming, taking showers, exposing the skin to wind and wetness and many other kinds of activities that raise an awareness of the ongoing inner-outer dynamic, ... the key requirement for sustaining the inner-outer balance will for the experient to participate co-creatively in a community-constituent codynamic with an ethic for maintaining the primacy of the sensate (empathy as the background process) over the rational (transactional accounting and planning as a supportive foreground process). While this 'polarity' is commonly experienced amongst friendly groups and in families, it is giving way in the culture at large, to the inverse unstable dynamical equilibrium which puts the kinetic (assertive transactional behaviour) into an unnatural primacy over the full energy-flow (balanced potential and kinetic exchanges). Thus one cannot 'heal the patient' since there is a simultaneous interdependence between the constituent dynamic and the enveloping community dynamic (i.e. as in the solar system the constituent planets co-produce and co-manage the enveloping community dynamic as an energy bank for phase-coupled (balanced, equitable and harmonious) energy deposits and withdrawals).
The experient of a psychotic break must be cognizant of the fact that most of psychiatry is oriented to the 'defense of the 'normal' community' and thus to the re-integration of the experient of the psychotic break back into smooth and compliant functioning within the community dynamic such as it is (i.e. whether dysfunctional or not). Since modern society has inverted the natural primacy of the sensate 'now' as the background process and the rational 'time-based transaction' orientation as a supportive foreground process to the inverse arrangement, ... much of the psychiatric therapy will consist of getting the experient to restore their transactional engagement (i.e. the experient will be encouraged to 'set goals' for himself etc. not in a supportive manner but in lieu of his crippled ability to restore-at-will the sensate 'now' mode that is inner-outer energy balance-seeking.
As Ian Pitchford and Robert Young ask, in their plenary address to the Third International Conference on 'Psychosis: Integrating the Inner and Outer Worlds' (University of Essex, Colchester, England, September 1996), whether psychiatry must continue to be oriented to the defense of the 'normal' community or, "Is a pragmatic psychiatry devoted to the benefit of the patient possible? "
The authors cite Ongaro Basaglia, who stimulated the development of a highly effective inversion of the psychiatric approach by transforming the mental hospitals of the city of Trieste from places of detainment into communities in the service of the clients. Pitchford and Young cite Basaglia as follows;
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"The problem of psychiatric illness and its institutions developed in our society primarily as a question of public order. It came into being as a socio-political problem, namely the defence of the healthy and working community from elements that would not conform to its modes of behaviour and rules of efficiency." She continued, "Isolated care and treatment justified the segregation and internment of the 'ill', who were considered less for their illness than their potential as disruptive elements. This focus on abnormality and deviance, especially social disruption, meant that subjective suffering was not addressed - nor were the diverse variables giving rise to psychiatric problems. Despite decades of public concern and specific legislation opposing this approach, scientific theories, professional bodies and institutions have resisted abandoning the provision of a style of care that protects society to the detriment of those cared for.' (Ongaro Basaglia, Int. J. Soc. Psychiat., 1992, 38, p36).
Press for Article
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The observations of Basaglia and Pitchford and Young point to the problem that the psychiatric intervention is typically oriented to 'abnormality and deviance, especially social disruption' and that this focus over-rides attention to the suffering seen from the point of view of the sufferer with the result that 'the diverse variables giving rise to psychiatric problems [are not addressed]'.
In particular, the 'diverse variables' include the fact that the 'normality' in our society that the psychiatric process attempts to return the patient to, is in itself an unstable dynamical equilibrium which puts the unbalanced kinetic energy dynamics of the rational into an unnatural primacy over the energy-balancing dynamics of the sensate faculties. In other words, the psychiatric process seeks to return the recovering patient to the inductive source of his psychosis.
Practically speaking then, the implications of the energy-flow based model of psychosis demand that the experient approach 'healing' in two ways;
1. Work with others to co-create a stable polarity (energy-balancing) 'nest' for the recovery process and also for ongoing life. This 'nest' or 'nests' within 'nests' (as in 'halfway home within local community-of-friends within local community etc.') must be characterized by the natural polarity of placing the sensate appreciation of the 'now' in the primacy (as the 'background' or 'mother' process) and having the rational attention to time-based transaction accounting (past and future) in a foreground, support role. This is radically different from the inverse polarity where the community or sub-community puts rational structure (focus on transactions and planning) in the primacy; i.e. the primary reason that people 'are there' in the 'nest' is to experience empathy in the sensate 'now' and all kinetic issues (what to do when) are relegated to secondary importance.
2. Work alone or with others to cultivate one's ability to 'restore-at-will' one's 'presence' or sensate 'now-awareness'. Awareness of 'now' equates to an awareness of the inner-outer dynamical equilibrating that is going on in an energy exchange sense, ... breath coming in and out of the body, ... inner-outer energy exchanges by means of the pulsating blood-flow (by the inner-outer pumping of the heart) to maintain thermal and overall dynamical energy balance from the level of cells and organs through to the organism and its enveloping environmental dynamic. Any stimulus that briefly perturbs the inner-outer dynamical equilibrium (showering, a sea breeze, music, dance etc.) and tends to restore the sensate awareness of 'now' that works for the experient can be useful. The native sweats and healing circles can be particularly beneficial in this respect since the energy-flow theory of the native tradition is also 'relativistic' and fully consistent with what has been presented in the body of this essay. Neurofeedback training, which puts one in touch with the neural responses and how they 'switch' from rational mode to sensate mode are also valuable in this category (e.g. neurofeedback to 'reward' the sensorimotor response frequencies (11 - 13 Hz.) in a relative sense, is used to eliminate 'anxiety attacks' which stem from the experient being 'stuck' in rational transaction-accounting mode ('how could I have screwed up my life like that? (past transactions), ... and 'how will I ever be able to cope in the future?' (future planning)) and not being able to restore-at-will the sensate appreciation of the 'now' mode.
The role of medication, in this approach, is simply to alleviate anxiety and 'noise' as is necessary, in support of this energy-flow based therapeutic approach. Care must be taken that the medication does not paralyse sensory faculties that are necessary or important to the restoration of natural energy-flow balancing faculties.
The above two-pronged therapeutic approach, .. (1.) to co-create an enveloping community dynamic that puts sensate appreciation of the 'now' into a natural primacy (background mode) over the rational time-based transaction-accounting (foreground mode) rather than the inverse, ... and, (2.) ... cultivate one's ability to restore-at-will the sensate appreciation of the 'now' mode in the primacy over the rational transaction-accounting mode, may come into conflict with psychiatric programs oriented to 'returning the patient to 'normal social functioning'' where such 'normality' is equated to putting 'kinetics' or 'assertive behaviour in the time-based transactional sense' into an unnatural primacy over an appreciation of the sensate 'now', ... an aberration that increasingly corresponds to 'societal normality' in the western culture workplace.
Interestingly, there is an 'ethic' in the psychiatric profession, and medical profession in general, that would have family members refrain from treating other family members. However, the 'defensive' mode of psychiatry, identified by Ongaro Basaglia, is one that encourages participation by 'normal' family members in treating their fellow member suffering from a psychological disorder. This is unfortunate when the 'treatment' consists of returning the experient to a 'normality' that is the very source of his psychosis. This effect has been noted by Breggin, Laing, Szasz and others, in terms of the sustained inducing of schizophrenic behaviour emanating from the enveloping family dynamic via the attitudes of family members on 'mental illness' and its treatment. This effect is readily explained in terms of the energy-flow model of psychosis, since the reason the person is undergoing the psychosis is because his sensitive (strong sensate) nature can no longer stand being 'whipped about' by his rational aspect and the effect of his fellow family members pressuring him to return to an 'aberrant normality' simply aggravates the source of the psychosis.
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Plasma for an Authors' Epilogue
There are times when I am right and they are wrong but where they think they are right and I am wrong, ... and the drums and cymbals of war begin can be heard. Diplomatic relations have been momentarily suspended, ... our normally harmonious words, ambassadors of goodwill, recalled.
But I know I am right and they are wrong.
What was that Heraclitus said; - 'The knowing of many things does not teach understanding'.
Whatever did he mean by that?
Anyhow, I'll give my partners credit for knowing far more about mathematics and ecology than I'll ever know. I can't imagine how a mathematician or a biologist looks out upon the world.
We are all 'explorers' searching for insight into the deep philosophical wheres and whyfores of harmony and dissonance in the ecologies of nature and man. We are searching for that keystone morsel of new insight that brings everything into connection in our minds.
Lere knows so much more about mathematics than I that it would be hopeless for me to contemplate 'coming up to speed' with him, ... the same for Alan in the field of biology/ecology. We move ahead side-by-side in our voyage of discovery, trustingly, harmoniously, .... and then, ... they get something wrong and are angry when I bring their attention to it, ... or else they think I have gotten something wrong and are angry when I try to show them they are mistaken. Could I ever be wrong when I think I am right, I wonder? Could they ever be right when I think they are wrong, I wonder?
We come at each other like angry bears some times. At first I thought it was their ego and pride that was angered even at the idea that their ideas would be challenged. I asked myself where the ego comes from, ... is it in the hypothalamus, ... it is certainly not in the corpus callosum, the cable of white matter than provides the mediating communications between the rational and the feeling.
Then I reflected on myself and thought; it is not my ego that makes me like an angry bear, ... it is that they have gotten between me and the cubs of my ideas, ... cubs that are still developing and don't deserve to be threatened by foreign adult ideas that are too narrow to understand what my cubs will grow up to be. They can't judge my cubs in the early stages of their development, ... evolution is not a thing you can linearly project.
Maybe it's the same with them, ... maybe they become angry bears, not from ego, but because I get between them and the cubs of their ideas. We are, all of us, interested in the evolution of ideas.
In that case, what does it mean for me to 'know I am right'? I can only be 'right' in a limited sense and a new insight may expose the fact that my knowledge is no more than a small pimple on an elephant's arse. They might have been looking at the welt that the pimple stood on, ... how do I know, ... I don't understand their mathematical and biological points of view. What is 'up' and what is 'down', ... what is a hill and what is a valley and how do they work?, ... to describe them demands a particular 'vantage point' and arbitrary bounds and in the end everything runs around the globe and into everything else and what we have is wrinkled apple kind of thing where the discrete ups and downs and hills and valleys we were arguing over dissolve into a new kind of one-ness.
There is something very interesting and seductive in the space between our ideas that keeps us working together in spite of the tension and periodic skirmishes, ... but what is it? It is this intrigue and mystery that binds us like geese, to fly in formation so that we can feel our way into the sweet spots of the slipstream we are co-creating as we beat into the currents of the enveloping thought-stream.
But we cannot rationally decide on what basis we should fly together because we do not even understand fully where we are each 'coming from'. So we must 'feel our way along' and of course, we can fly farther and faster and with less energy by co-creating this resonant platform that somehow slips through the ambient thought-stream currents more aesthetically and more powerfully than our individual thought-thrusting transports.
We all, each of us, have our 'points of view' and we all share the notion, when we reflect on it, that these points are not fixed and lifeless 'points' on the pixel screen of an absolute reality, ... but 'points' that live and breath and evolve somehow interdependently and not in detachment, ... that come together not like the proverbial limbs of the elephant 'felt' by the blind men, ... to render the elephant in terms of the stuffed museum piece, ... but instead that come together like the flowing charging elephant as he engages with his environmental dynamic. The flock of geese in full flowing motion has an evolutionary advantage, ... not the stuffed flock. The evolutionary advantage derives from the way in which the geese engage with each other as they engage with the enveloping environmental dynamic. It is not in their explicit knowledge, either genetically embedded or as captured through experience and eruditely expressed in terms of the assertive behaviours of things, ... for none of these captures the intermediating role of the enveloping environmental dynamic. There can be no resonance set up by the assertive behaviours of material agents traveling side by side that facilitates their forward progress through a medium unless they can engage with that medium, ... otherwise, it would make no sense to speak of their forward progress. If one is moving through an empty infinite space, how can one say one is 'moving'?
What invisible hand cups and holds the resonant system of sun and planets and keeps them confined to the overall togetherness that they enjoy, a together that is sustained in spite of their unique and energetic orbital aetherbatics? Maybe it is just the resonance that they co-create through their relative aetherbatics? Maybe the planets are like the geese and can feel their way into the 'sweetspots' in the enveloping slipstream that their relative motion is co-creatively producing?
After all, our assertions; i.e. 'what we know' does not give us an understanding of the 'whole story'. There is this thing called 'resonance' that seems to emerge from the interference of the assertions and is somehow more than the sum of the assertions as in the flying of the geese or the coming together of a man and a woman. It doesn't 'add up' because it doen't 'just' add up, ... it does more than that, it induces 'resonance' or 'harmony' and resonance is a property of space rather than a property of the constituents included within the space who are said to 'produce' the resonance. But 'they' don't produce it on their own, they produce it in conjunction with the enveloping 'ether', .. the environmental dynamic that mediates in 'energy affairs' amongst its included constituents. The geese do not fly in a vacuum, and neither do the planets in the solar system. As Einstein says in 'Ether and Relativity';
"... [space] not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.", ... "the recognition of the fact that 'empty space' in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials g(mu-nu), has, I think finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty."
So with or without air molecules, space has 'traction' of some sort that allows the assertive dynamics of the constituents to simultaneously interfere with the enveloping community dynamic and to give rise to 'resonance' that shapes and sustains the general form of the community dynamic. Just as the resonant relative assertive dynamics of the geese give rise to the sustained shape of the flock, the resonant relative assertive dynamics of the sun and planets give rise to the sustained shape of the solar system.
... And, similarly, the resonant relative assertive thought-dynamics of a transdisciplinary team (can) give rise to the sustained shape of the thought system (in this case 'inclusionality').
Evolutionary truth, as opposed to 'the absolute and final truth' is not so bad, ... it is a magic thought carpet that takes its passengers to shores that they have never seen before and will never see again in quite the same way. It gives views that are 'beyond' what the the individual could ever get to see in-his-own-right, by 'flying solo', even if it frustrates by 'making hungry where most it satisfies'.
The truth of the matter is, that there is no final and absolute truth, ... there is only 'evolving' truth since the container that is to be the receptacle for the absolute truth and is receiving the cargo of truth through the process of 'learning' is also included in the incoming cargo, ... thus placing the demand on the receptacle to 'know thyself'. The trouble with the receptacles is that their discrete duration doesn't allow themselves to get a truthful perspective on their own beginning and ending, ... and thus constraint of finite duration precluding them from fulfilling their goal of taking aboard the final and absolute truth.
So, if the members of a team could first determine where they were coming from and where they were going to, ... this would give them a better base for claiming that 'they were right', ... that they had hold of a superior truth than the others. but the problem is that whatever truth they are holding is necessarily referenced to where they are coming from and going to. So when they claim they are 'right', it can only be in this necessary but not sufficient sense because of this 'rightness' being referenced to their personal platform that is pending the additional info on where they are coming from and where they are going to. By the time some kind of historical perspective is available on that, the receptacle has degenerated and its contents spilled.
So, the assertive behaviour based view of the world is a tough way to go because of the 'quality of the receptacle' problem. As some folk singer said, ... 'the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind', ... and this seems to be some kind of bigger truth; i.e. space might be a better receptacle for the truth instead of a material constituent-receptacle that seems to have been designed for obsolescence and disposability. Space has a more enduring quality to it and it doesn't spill things, ... in fact, it gathers up all the spills.
Faraday realized this when he was working on electricity and magnetism, i.e;
Newton's gravity became one model for how forces might operate in other domains. By the late eighteenth century, it was clear that the attraction and repulsion of electrical charges followed an inverse square law. Perhaps electricity was another instance of action at a distance.
This viewpoint had its critics, among them Michael Faraday, who rejected both the primacy of matter and the notion that electricity operated 'at a distance'. The examples of Faraday's problem-solving processes described in this section are distilled from detailed, fine-grained cognitive studies by Tweney (Tweney, 1989a) and Gooding (Gooding, 1990a). "For him [Faraday], fields of force were the primary reality, and 'matter' a secondary or derived phenomenon.
So Faraday bit the bullet and James Clerk Maxwell, trusting in Faraday's intuition in 'putting space first', made the mathematics come out right. He did this by inventing or re-inventing the principle of conservation of energy; i.e. Maxwell's law of conservation of energy is as follows; "The total energy of any body or system of bodies is a quantity which can neither be increased nor diminished by any mutual action of these bodies, though it may be transformed into any other forms of which energy is susceptible"
Now, once we 'start talking' conservation of energy, we are no longer limiting our view to 'kinetic energy' based behaviours. Now we have to ask, ... where is the energy coming from and going to in these 'assertive behaviour transactions'?. So the old 'container' question of 'coming from and going' to' raises its ugly head again and we can't sweep it under the carpet and just deal in assertive transactions that just 'start' and 'stop' just like that (because we say so), ... not if we want to get to the 'full story'. So when Maxwell worked out the math's for Faraday's 'put space first' model, this forced him to consider the spillage out of the finite-duration receptacles; i.e. the material agents that carried and splashed their kinetic energies around in sporadic assertions. Of course, someone has to take care of the mess, and its back to mother space again. so does she have any tricks to keep her house in order when its full of material constituents spilling energy all over the place in their questionable and erratic assertions.
As Faraday and Maxwell showed on the electromagnetics side, the constituents (charged in their case) were simply the precipitates of their own energy spilling. Einstein said the same about the non-charged material constituent; i.e. that the material constituents of space are; "nothing else than condensations of the electromagnetic field".
What mother nature has to keep her house tidy and neat is 'resonance', the space-based property of simultaneous harmony amongst multiple constituents, as in the solar system. Resonance cannot be explained in terms of the assertive behaviours of the constituents (kinetic energy transactions) because it is a property that applies to 'shapes' or 'regions' of space (as in concentric sphere-layers) that charge a greater or lesser energy fee for moving around in them, ... just like the sweet and sour zones in the slipstream co-produced by the geese via the mediating role of the enveloping atmospheric dynamic; i.e. you can flap around wherever you want to flap around, but it is going to cost you different amounts in terms of the energy you have to give up to the enveloping dynamical space. So mother nature keeps certain regions 'clean', like the concentric spherical layer regions around Saturn that show in the ecliptic plane of the moons etc. of Saturn as 'rings', ... zones that are less expensive and more expensive, energy-wise.
If you're affluent and are not concerned with spending, ... you don't have to tune-in to the sweet spots in the slip-stream, ... you can let your kinetic ego run wild. But affluent or not, you may want to tune-in to the shape of the resonance in space because that's the embodiment of evolution and if you want to spend your energy wisely, in participating in evolution, you have to tune in to those resonances.
And of course, those resonances don't show up on the 'kinetic energy screen', ... the screen that monitors assertive behaviours of independent material agents; i.e. you can't study the kinetics of the constituents, ... the assertive behaviours of the constituents and find out anything about resonant regions of space. They are invisible energy sapping or energy conserving zones and you can only feel them as they form around you out of the interferenence of your own motion with your enveloping fellows. Just as in Faraday's model, if you move a charged particle into an electromagnetic field to measure the field, what you are measuring will be influenced by the measuring device; i.e. the tools of inquiry are innately included in the inquiry, ... just like the receptacle of inquiry into truth must be included in the inquiry into truth. ... so if you are the one doing the inquiry, 'know thyself' stands in the way of your accessing of the truth.
Well as it turns out, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and Faraday's principle carries over into the non-charged world of the dynamics of uncharged material constituents; i.e. in order to measure resonance in a system of material constituents moving under mutual influence, one must 'move something' within that region of space to see how it is affected. of course, as soon as you move it, the system resonance is effected because it's dynamic is included in the enveloping system dynamic. So you can't really measure it as it was because measuring is in itself a constituent dynamic.
Well, the electrical folks had the problem with measuring the resistance of an electrical circuit by putting a potential field across it and seeing how much it resisted a flow through of current. The problem was that currents heat up the material in the circuit and the resistance changes as a function of temperature. Since it is very hard to 'air condition' at the level of molecules with a metallic wire, ... the idea was to make a measuring device that would only put a teentsy-weensty current through the circuit so as to leave the resistance as close to what it would be without the current as possible.
By now it should be clear that 'electrical resistance' is a concept akin to the 'noise' that a tree makes when it falls in a forest, when there's no-one there to 'hear' it. or its 'like one of those wag's version of an old folk song';
'Oh, no John, no John, no John, ... Oh, no John, no John, no.'
(as the song actually goes).
and the revised lyrics;
Oh, no John ...
Ooh, noo.
Ooooh Johhhhn
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!
...
'I am returning this circuit, sir, since it did not meet the advertised specifications for resistance.'
'But what you are giving me is simply some blackened melted-down metal. You must have put a current of a hundred amperes through this circuit!'
'Sir, I am telling you that the resistance was not to spec's, ... I do not appreciate your denying your error by countering with a critique on the quality of measuring instruments. Sure, sure, it was the fault of the measuring instrument, ... sure, sure. I would like my money back without your further excuses and whinings.'
So, to close but not to end this assertive rambling and let its energies spill where they may, ... we need to do what Faraday did, ... bite the bullet and put space into its natural primacy over matter. When we do this we see beyond 'kinetic energy', ... or rather we 'feel' beyond kinetic energy into the domain of potential energy that is stored non-homogeneously in space by means of 'resonance'. Resonance emerges from the relationships between the dynamics of the constituents. To measure it one must go inside and be included in it. Once one gets in there it is fun and one can move around (relative to one's fellows of course) and feel it simultaneously change. It changes whether one bothers to 'feel' it change or not, and with it the evolution of the community-constituent-codynamic transforms. If one stays in rational mode, ... which looks solely at the kinetic energy transactions, one is oblivious to how one is co-transforming the enveloping resonance and thus the evolutionary development of the community dynamic one's individual dynamic is included within.
Thus 'feeling' of one's engagement with the enveloping otherness is an evolutionary advantage that transcends 'rationality'.
This 'feeling' is, I think what has been shaping our ternary community dynamic and sustaining our awareness of our participation in the evolution of the enveloping community dynamic.
ted
© Lumley, Ted 2002