Throughout my life I have encountered experiences that made me feel there was something missing. I remember reading Ayn Rand novels. I found her heroes appealing. But I felt there was something missing. I remember working on artificial intelligence. I felt there was something missing. While most of my colleagues believed computers could be more intelligent than humans I believed the something missing would prevent their ever having any real intelligence. Hype to the contrary today, computers are not in any way equal to the intelligence found in life; nor will they ever be.
In our previous article, “Why War?” I concluded that our misunderstanding of life and living processes has led us to the use of force as a means of control and management of life processes leading to calamities such as war. I believe all our social institutions are failing because force to control prevents normal living processes from working. There are effective alternatives to solving living problems that don't require force. I warned against politicians who want to get tough on this and that such as crime. I pointed out that the U.S. has the highest percentage of its population in prison along with the toughest sentencing. In research, we discovered that tougher sentencing increases recidivism; a seemingly paradoxical conclusion until one understands how life works.
So now I want to continue the theme. What is missing? What do we need to know to solve problems without destroying life?
The dominant Western worldview has no room for life! It is a world focused on nonliving matter governed by laws that require force. It is a view of mechanisms, cause and effect, and determinism. It can be understood through reductionism, i.e., breaking everything down to the smallest particles to see how they go together. Physics is said to be the most fundamental science from which all else can be derived.
What is left out of that picture (what is missing) are living energy and living entities! Living entities can initiate acts. In acting they add an uncontrollable quality that cannot be calculated through any physical laws of force. Living entities do not passively await an external force to do something. For life there is no cause and effect. No determinism. Life is wholistic from bottom to top. Using reductionism destroys knowledge of our living organization and how best to work with it; the very aspect we should be trying to understand. Physics as we have known it can no longer be considered the most fundamental science. What now?
Physics may no longer be the most fundamental science; but let us give thanks to physics for what it has provided. It has provided technology by which the internal workings of living organisms can be observed as they live. How living organisms work is unlike anything ever imagined. Biologists used to think that the molecules in the cells of our bodies were moving by being jostled about. Sometimes two molecules would become attached. It was presumed that their shapes were like locks and keys; when they collided they stuck together. Imagine the surprise when it was observed that the molecules were sending signals looking for partners, and when they detected a partner they would move together. Everything in the body is living and acting as an ensemble.
In the human being there are 75 trillion cells living and acting in a pure democracy. Due to coherence conditions they have maximum freedom. All the cells are functioning in unison as what is now being described as a jazz band. As long as we are alive this internal jazz band is playing our personal theme in 72 octaves.
Every living entity, each cell, molecule, you and me, society, Gaia and the universe, functions as artists in creating its own life; jazz artists! There are no written parts to be played. Every living entity is connected to the wholeness, oneness, of life. Through such connection there is great awareness possible within from which to determine action, more than can be experienced through traditional senses.
In contrast psychologist Eleanor Rosch, who in 1996 characterized the current state of human knowledge and what I would call the world of technology, or machine world, as follows:
"In the analytic picture offered by the cognitive sciences, the world consists of separate objects and states of affairs, the human mind is a determinate machine which, in order to know, isolates and identifies those objects and events, finds the simplest possible predictive contingencies between them, stores the results through time in memory, relates the items in memory to each other such that they form a coherent but indirect representation of the world and oneself, and retrieves those representations in order to fulfill the only originating value, which is to survive and reproduce in an evolutionarily successful manner”.
In keeping with current discoveries, she now speaks of primary knowing
.
… "primary knowing" arises by means of "interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of time-less, direct, presentation" rather than through stored "re-presentation." "Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself," said Rosch. Acting from such awareness is "spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making”, and it is "compassionate…since it is based on wholes larger than the self."
The missing element is primary knowing!
In life we are jazz players. We are actors. The world is our jazz band. Ideally we “listen”, not through our ears but may I say through our souls tuning in. The new science of axiological psychology has very recently been announced. That means psychology based on value theory. It’s diagnostic instrument, the Hartman Value Profile, tells a most amazing story.
Without determinism, living organisms choose their acts based on value processes. There are three kinds of values. We have discussed these in previous articles. They are
• Intrinsic, primary knowing
• Extrinsic, conceptual, abstracted from experience
• Systemic, relational, mentally created order
Unfortunately the value profile shows that many folks don’t “listen” well. With the prevalence of force they hardly ever had a chance.
To know what could be and to know what is in today’s world is heart breaking. Is anyone really free to create his or her own life? While participating in a Health Fair, Skye asked people if they thought they were healthy. If they said yes, she asked them to what they attributed their health. Without exception their response was that they had always followed their own interests.
Part of the Hartman profile shows how people value them selves:
• Intrinsically, how much they value their own unique being, unconditional love in primary knowing
• Extrinsically, how much they value what they are contributing to the world.
• Systemically, how much they value the theory they have created for who they should be.
In the U.S. culture, the typical response I have seen, shows the intrinsic valuation is rejected while their systemic is over valued as a means of compensation for the rejection of the intrinsic. They are driven to achieve while seeing their unique identity as irrelevant. No matter what they achieve they will find difficulty in finding meaning. For example note in the financial industry where it is typical for successful young 35 year olds to retire with lots of money (systemic) only to seek out philanthropy (intrinsic) to find meaning.
Regarding values in the world, it is not uncommon to see the intrinsic (life) rejected while compensated by the extrinsic (practical) and systemic (thought forms). This is a troubling situation. There is, in life, a natural value hierarchy. Coherence laws of life require life to take priority. Unfortunately the hierarchy has become inverted leaving life out of the picture.
Words cannot describe intrinsic value. As I told Skye, "If I could tell you why I love you it wouldn’t be love." To speak of my love I would have to go to poetry and metaphor. To act in concert with my intrinsic feeling, I would choose to be there for her through any context or situation, the same as she would do for me. Unfortunately it seems people today mistake reality for what can be said or thought about as words in the mind.
When ideas in the mind trump every thing and we wind up in violence and mass killing, as in war; we have gone terribly wrong. We are committing crimes against others, all life, and ourselves. In today’s conditions, both in our environmental life support and our possession of weapons from Hell, we are likely to terminate all life.
Well, you might ask, what are we to do when confronted by a dangerous enemy? Remember, the whole world is our jazz band. The dangerous enemy is a construct of our minds. There is a vast variety in life and life requires such variety. However, given primitive thought, what is perceived with such (concepts and theories) minds, we would feel differences as threatening. Those differences are different ways of acting and they cannot be understood. "They don’t act like us. They must be hostile." It becomes a mutually agreed upon truth as each side plays its part.
But life creates differences for a purpose. It can all be transformed into more advanced jazz, if we tune in with our souls. Or, as religious leaders have been saying for centuries, try love.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Old Paradigm Based on "What Is" Metaphysics
Substance Metaphysics Characteristics (Old Paradigm)
• Discrete individuality
• Separateness
• Fixity of nature
• Passivity (being acted upon)
• Classificatory stability
Substance (Metaphysics) Required
• Determinism
• Cause/effect
• Passive Things
• A thing world
• A fixed thing world
• A study of only “what is”
• It makes “what is” permanent
The Old Material World View
Psychologist Eleanor Rosch characterized perception based on this form of knowledge as follows:
"In the analytic picture offered by the cognitive sciences, the world consists of separate objects and states of affairs, the human mind is a determinate machine which, in order to know, isolates and identifies those objects and events, finds the simplest possible predictive contingencies between them, stores the results through time in memory, relates the items in memory to each other such that they form a coherent but indirect representation of the world and oneself, and retrieves those representations in order to fulfill the only originating value, which is to survive and reproduce in an evolutionarily successful manner”
• Discrete individuality
• Separateness
• Fixity of nature
• Passivity (being acted upon)
• Classificatory stability
Substance (Metaphysics) Required
• Determinism
• Cause/effect
• Passive Things
• A thing world
• A fixed thing world
• A study of only “what is”
• It makes “what is” permanent
The Old Material World View
Psychologist Eleanor Rosch characterized perception based on this form of knowledge as follows:
"In the analytic picture offered by the cognitive sciences, the world consists of separate objects and states of affairs, the human mind is a determinate machine which, in order to know, isolates and identifies those objects and events, finds the simplest possible predictive contingencies between them, stores the results through time in memory, relates the items in memory to each other such that they form a coherent but indirect representation of the world and oneself, and retrieves those representations in order to fulfill the only originating value, which is to survive and reproduce in an evolutionarily successful manner”
Emergent Paradigm is about Life-itself and How It Creates Itself
Based on Process Metaphysics Characteristics (New Paradigm)
• Interactive relatedness
• Wholeness
• Innovation novelty
• Productive Energy
• Fluidity
Process Metaphysics Requires
• Becoming based on values
• Wholeness
• Stretching for Novelty
• Fluidity
• Self aware energy
• Relations of relations
• Functions of functions
New Life World View
Eleanor Rosch has also described the world of life:
"Primary knowing" arises by means of "interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of time-less, direct, presentation" rather than through stored "re-presentation." "Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself... Acting from such awareness is "spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making”, and it is "compassionate…since it is based on wholes larger than the self."
• Interactive relatedness
• Wholeness
• Innovation novelty
• Productive Energy
• Fluidity
Process Metaphysics Requires
• Becoming based on values
• Wholeness
• Stretching for Novelty
• Fluidity
• Self aware energy
• Relations of relations
• Functions of functions
New Life World View
Eleanor Rosch has also described the world of life:
"Primary knowing" arises by means of "interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of time-less, direct, presentation" rather than through stored "re-presentation." "Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself... Acting from such awareness is "spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making”, and it is "compassionate…since it is based on wholes larger than the self."
Life has its own will
Life Works How?
• Life is creative and fundamental
• Life works by living entities choosing and initiating acts based on values, all connected
. Life requires coherence laws, not control
• Life does not work by cause and effect
Imagine Billiard Balls on a Pool Table
• With right force, momentum and angle, you can predictably cause those balls to go where you want them too.
-This is cause and effect
Now Imagine Billiard Balls as alive with their own will and ability to choose acts
• No force, momentum nor angle of approach can predict what will occur when you hit such living entities, can you?
- This is life and living processes
• Life is creative and fundamental
• Life works by living entities choosing and initiating acts based on values, all connected
. Life requires coherence laws, not control
• Life does not work by cause and effect
Imagine Billiard Balls on a Pool Table
• With right force, momentum and angle, you can predictably cause those balls to go where you want them too.
-This is cause and effect
Now Imagine Billiard Balls as alive with their own will and ability to choose acts
• No force, momentum nor angle of approach can predict what will occur when you hit such living entities, can you?
- This is life and living processes
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Why War? My Life's Walk by Norm Hirst
November/December 07 Inner Tapestry
Some of you have been asking about the history of my research. And given today's preoccupation with war and what war does to people, causing major turns in human history, I feel compelled to share my war story, and how it caused me to dedicate my life to finding the reasons for war. My years of investigation are now beginning to produce the findings that we are bringing to you in each issue in this column with a book now in progress. It began 60 years ago. I began to dig and dig deeply into what we believe about reality, about science, about fundamental structures that have continuously formed a war-filled world.
We have just returned from delivering a paper at a Values Conference. I was thrilled to learn that a major point of our message was received and acknowledged. Our paper was received with a degree of enthusiasm I never expected. One of the participants has now sent us email in which he wrote:
“Being originally trained as a scientist, I’m specially impressed by your distinction between causality, as THE explanatory tool in the natural sciences, and the concept of fluidity or process you presented to us as the explanatory tool in the human sciences, the distinction stemming from acknowledging man’s free will... Otherwise we would only be deterministic objects, and not the (unique and most valuable) subjects that, thankfully, we are.”
Now I want to write about our message. To properly ground it I will begin at the beginning.
It was 1951. The Korean War was in progress. General MacArthur had missed his promise to have the boys home for Christmas. I was in the Air Force and in Korea. My job was to maintain airborne radar. I was told to pack up and be ready to fly out. The fighting had come within 200 miles of us. If it came any closer I was to be out of there. As it happened it never came closer.
I found myself in an unusual position. I was to have a ringside seat to the war; far enough away to be relatively safe yet close enough to witness the war. What I witnessed was horrifying. I was not prepared to see human beings inflict such pain, suffering, death and destruction on other human beings. I defended us on the grounds that it was our moral duty to snatch success from an evil enemy. Never would we engage in such acts if an evil enemy had not forced us to.
Finally my enlistment was up! I went home. I applied to MIT and was accepted as a full time student. Because of my radar background I also had a part time job maintaining components of an unusual computer. One day I found a spontaneous party going on in the computer room. They told me they had finished running tests of a new weapon system. It exceeded their expectations. I thought, “They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people." That thought went on for two and a half days, around and around.
Then after lunch I was walking by the athletic field going back to work. I suddenly got an electric shock in the back of my neck. I could feel the electricity go up into my head and down my spine. I thought of two armies of little boys approaching each other with toy guns. In moments they would learn that they were no longer little boys; the guns were not toys. Then I remembered the parades I had seen with flags waving and soldiers marching. Then in a moment, all the values I had grown up with died. The values that justified our acts in the Korean War were gone. I was left feeling like a zombie. I had to begin to question everything at the most fundamental levels to rebuild my world. I dedicated my life to finding the causes of war and preventing war. I was soon to realize that it depended on better understanding of values, but I did not know how.
For the next semester Robert Hartman arrived; a visiting professor of philosophy whose specialty was creating a science of value. From my physics training I knew what science is. I learned Hartman thought the same about science. Science combines the analytic theories of empirical philosophy with the synthetic theories of a formalism such as mathematics. Without the formal component there is no science, just a form of philosophy. Hartman became my teacher, friend and mentor for many years.
Unfortunately, today, the nature of science has been totally lost. I've learned that today’s philosophy has lost the analytic and synthetic, an unfortunate regression. The practice of science has been thoroughly corrupted by greedy sponsors who suppress scientists from speaking truth. I hate to mention science; but we do need to restore real science to provide help for us now in confusing times.
Learning and unlearning through many disciplines of my inquiry:
I studied physics gaining experience with an actual science. I studied the philosophy of science to help me understand science in general. I studied mathematics to understand the driving force behind scientific inquiry. I studied the theory of logic to understand the limitations of mathematics. I discovered the limitations of logic itself. I then studied the most modern theory of formalisms and discovered that logic, as we know it, is simply one amongst many possibilities for doing meaningful formalisms. What people today believe is rational is simply one choice. Believing that philosophy itself was a way of exploration I turned to it. Mainstream substance philosophy offered a worldview, a metaphysics that further entrapped us. Way down deep human knowledge developed in a way that became committed to errors that destroy life.
My fifty-year search found more useful knowledge, but I kept learning that what was accepted, as foundations of our sciences, didn't support the living domain. I concluded that values were only operative in living processes. Thus I considered biology. It became apparent to me that biology had tried to become scientific by adopting the protocols of physics. These conformed to materialism, cause and effect, and reductionism. I believed that biology would provide no answers.
In one developing area I found great promise. At the end of the 19th Century there were crises in the foundations of mathematics. This I saw as very significant; yet I suspect that very few people have heard about it. This led to more research in logic in the 20th Century than all previous human history. I found the results electrifying. There are now forms of logic that do not require consistency; at least not truth consistency. I saw truth consistency as a catastrophic error. Life is creative. It does not conserve truth. Life requires both poles of categorical contrasts. Life works on self-knowing by self-reference. Consistency blocks self reference. Given the importance of self-knowing we named our Institute “Autognomics” for auto gnosis, i.e., self knowledge.
I had found an unbridgeable lacuna between mathematics and the logic required to understand life. Physics can no longer be considered the basic science.
Beginning in the 70’s I began to see new disciplines such as autopoiesis, the theory of self-creation and astounding discoveries in both physics and biophysics. Physicists discovered the Dirac Sea consisting of zero point energy that fills what had been thought of as empty space. In 1992 the biophysicist, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, discovered that living tissue is liquid crystalline. Our bodies are an electro-magnetic environment that supports oneness of action. It may appear that our bodies consist of organs as parts, but functionally there are no parts. Our bodies function holistically. There are whole organism diseases that defy current medical models.
All this totally changes our beliefs about reality, and now a paradigm change is underway and documented by The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS has just published a report documenting the change, the 2007 Shift Report. Their web site summarizes the report as follows:
“The 2007 Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming, attempts to chart the transition we believe is underway from a rigid, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview to one that is built on a foundation of interconnectedness, cooperation, and the intersection of science and spirituality.”
Reviewing the growing catalog of unsolvable problems facing us today, it appears that all of the problems are based on errors of the old paradigm. I will write about them in future reports. For now, know that life requires every living entity to be autonomous. Every living entity can only do what it has learned through inner processes. Also, every living entity is unique and equipped to insist on fulfilling its unique meaning. Thwarted it will turn to coping dysfunction and possible violence.
Life cannot be controlled. Unfortunately force and control is all that we know from the old paradigm. There has been no room for understanding values beyond thinking of them as Sunday-School virtues. In the new paradigm conscious awareness of value processes become essential to the way living entities choose their acts and assert their will. Since, as yet, we do not have sufficient understanding of the role of value processes we think force makes sense. Politicians stand up and promise to be tough. This is just futile posturing because under the heading “tough” there is nothing they can do that doesn’t exacerbate the problem they are trying to solve. I would reject such politicians.
To give such an example, the United States has the largest percentage of its population in prison. It also has the toughest sentencing. We found that a contributing factor to the growth of the prison population was an increase in recidivism after imposing tougher sentences. That seems paradoxical. One might think tougher sentencing would cut down recidivism. By understanding how living entities function and that life cannot be controlled may explain why tougher sentencing increases recidivism.
Life requires coherence laws, not control.
I think legislators should know that laws that attempt to control will fail and will make things worse. In life, coherence laws are required. Coherence laws maximize freedom. An example of a coherence law is driving on the right hand side of the road. It works so well it rarely ever needs enforcement. Another example is the right to privacy. When governments spy on citizens there are people who say they don’t care because they have nothing to hide. That is not the issue. The issue is privacy. We all have different life styles. We don’t need to be in each other’s face all the time. Coherence laws are what enable life to work miraculously. Our founding fathers, in writing the Constitution, knew this. To not defend the Constitution is to sacrifice the coherence conditions desperately required. Life free to produce miracles will solve the unsolvable problems we face. It is life itself that produces evolution.
Where life cannot find ways to fulfill itself, results will be abhorrent, unhealthy work-arounds. If subverted long enough, violence is inevitable. Life will not be controlled by any degree of force. War serves only to make a few people rich.
Some of you have been asking about the history of my research. And given today's preoccupation with war and what war does to people, causing major turns in human history, I feel compelled to share my war story, and how it caused me to dedicate my life to finding the reasons for war. My years of investigation are now beginning to produce the findings that we are bringing to you in each issue in this column with a book now in progress. It began 60 years ago. I began to dig and dig deeply into what we believe about reality, about science, about fundamental structures that have continuously formed a war-filled world.
We have just returned from delivering a paper at a Values Conference. I was thrilled to learn that a major point of our message was received and acknowledged. Our paper was received with a degree of enthusiasm I never expected. One of the participants has now sent us email in which he wrote:
“Being originally trained as a scientist, I’m specially impressed by your distinction between causality, as THE explanatory tool in the natural sciences, and the concept of fluidity or process you presented to us as the explanatory tool in the human sciences, the distinction stemming from acknowledging man’s free will... Otherwise we would only be deterministic objects, and not the (unique and most valuable) subjects that, thankfully, we are.”
Now I want to write about our message. To properly ground it I will begin at the beginning.
It was 1951. The Korean War was in progress. General MacArthur had missed his promise to have the boys home for Christmas. I was in the Air Force and in Korea. My job was to maintain airborne radar. I was told to pack up and be ready to fly out. The fighting had come within 200 miles of us. If it came any closer I was to be out of there. As it happened it never came closer.
I found myself in an unusual position. I was to have a ringside seat to the war; far enough away to be relatively safe yet close enough to witness the war. What I witnessed was horrifying. I was not prepared to see human beings inflict such pain, suffering, death and destruction on other human beings. I defended us on the grounds that it was our moral duty to snatch success from an evil enemy. Never would we engage in such acts if an evil enemy had not forced us to.
Finally my enlistment was up! I went home. I applied to MIT and was accepted as a full time student. Because of my radar background I also had a part time job maintaining components of an unusual computer. One day I found a spontaneous party going on in the computer room. They told me they had finished running tests of a new weapon system. It exceeded their expectations. I thought, “They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people." That thought went on for two and a half days, around and around.
Then after lunch I was walking by the athletic field going back to work. I suddenly got an electric shock in the back of my neck. I could feel the electricity go up into my head and down my spine. I thought of two armies of little boys approaching each other with toy guns. In moments they would learn that they were no longer little boys; the guns were not toys. Then I remembered the parades I had seen with flags waving and soldiers marching. Then in a moment, all the values I had grown up with died. The values that justified our acts in the Korean War were gone. I was left feeling like a zombie. I had to begin to question everything at the most fundamental levels to rebuild my world. I dedicated my life to finding the causes of war and preventing war. I was soon to realize that it depended on better understanding of values, but I did not know how.
For the next semester Robert Hartman arrived; a visiting professor of philosophy whose specialty was creating a science of value. From my physics training I knew what science is. I learned Hartman thought the same about science. Science combines the analytic theories of empirical philosophy with the synthetic theories of a formalism such as mathematics. Without the formal component there is no science, just a form of philosophy. Hartman became my teacher, friend and mentor for many years.
Unfortunately, today, the nature of science has been totally lost. I've learned that today’s philosophy has lost the analytic and synthetic, an unfortunate regression. The practice of science has been thoroughly corrupted by greedy sponsors who suppress scientists from speaking truth. I hate to mention science; but we do need to restore real science to provide help for us now in confusing times.
Learning and unlearning through many disciplines of my inquiry:
I studied physics gaining experience with an actual science. I studied the philosophy of science to help me understand science in general. I studied mathematics to understand the driving force behind scientific inquiry. I studied the theory of logic to understand the limitations of mathematics. I discovered the limitations of logic itself. I then studied the most modern theory of formalisms and discovered that logic, as we know it, is simply one amongst many possibilities for doing meaningful formalisms. What people today believe is rational is simply one choice. Believing that philosophy itself was a way of exploration I turned to it. Mainstream substance philosophy offered a worldview, a metaphysics that further entrapped us. Way down deep human knowledge developed in a way that became committed to errors that destroy life.
My fifty-year search found more useful knowledge, but I kept learning that what was accepted, as foundations of our sciences, didn't support the living domain. I concluded that values were only operative in living processes. Thus I considered biology. It became apparent to me that biology had tried to become scientific by adopting the protocols of physics. These conformed to materialism, cause and effect, and reductionism. I believed that biology would provide no answers.
In one developing area I found great promise. At the end of the 19th Century there were crises in the foundations of mathematics. This I saw as very significant; yet I suspect that very few people have heard about it. This led to more research in logic in the 20th Century than all previous human history. I found the results electrifying. There are now forms of logic that do not require consistency; at least not truth consistency. I saw truth consistency as a catastrophic error. Life is creative. It does not conserve truth. Life requires both poles of categorical contrasts. Life works on self-knowing by self-reference. Consistency blocks self reference. Given the importance of self-knowing we named our Institute “Autognomics” for auto gnosis, i.e., self knowledge.
I had found an unbridgeable lacuna between mathematics and the logic required to understand life. Physics can no longer be considered the basic science.
Beginning in the 70’s I began to see new disciplines such as autopoiesis, the theory of self-creation and astounding discoveries in both physics and biophysics. Physicists discovered the Dirac Sea consisting of zero point energy that fills what had been thought of as empty space. In 1992 the biophysicist, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, discovered that living tissue is liquid crystalline. Our bodies are an electro-magnetic environment that supports oneness of action. It may appear that our bodies consist of organs as parts, but functionally there are no parts. Our bodies function holistically. There are whole organism diseases that defy current medical models.
All this totally changes our beliefs about reality, and now a paradigm change is underway and documented by The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS has just published a report documenting the change, the 2007 Shift Report. Their web site summarizes the report as follows:
“The 2007 Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming, attempts to chart the transition we believe is underway from a rigid, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview to one that is built on a foundation of interconnectedness, cooperation, and the intersection of science and spirituality.”
Reviewing the growing catalog of unsolvable problems facing us today, it appears that all of the problems are based on errors of the old paradigm. I will write about them in future reports. For now, know that life requires every living entity to be autonomous. Every living entity can only do what it has learned through inner processes. Also, every living entity is unique and equipped to insist on fulfilling its unique meaning. Thwarted it will turn to coping dysfunction and possible violence.
Life cannot be controlled. Unfortunately force and control is all that we know from the old paradigm. There has been no room for understanding values beyond thinking of them as Sunday-School virtues. In the new paradigm conscious awareness of value processes become essential to the way living entities choose their acts and assert their will. Since, as yet, we do not have sufficient understanding of the role of value processes we think force makes sense. Politicians stand up and promise to be tough. This is just futile posturing because under the heading “tough” there is nothing they can do that doesn’t exacerbate the problem they are trying to solve. I would reject such politicians.
To give such an example, the United States has the largest percentage of its population in prison. It also has the toughest sentencing. We found that a contributing factor to the growth of the prison population was an increase in recidivism after imposing tougher sentences. That seems paradoxical. One might think tougher sentencing would cut down recidivism. By understanding how living entities function and that life cannot be controlled may explain why tougher sentencing increases recidivism.
Life requires coherence laws, not control.
I think legislators should know that laws that attempt to control will fail and will make things worse. In life, coherence laws are required. Coherence laws maximize freedom. An example of a coherence law is driving on the right hand side of the road. It works so well it rarely ever needs enforcement. Another example is the right to privacy. When governments spy on citizens there are people who say they don’t care because they have nothing to hide. That is not the issue. The issue is privacy. We all have different life styles. We don’t need to be in each other’s face all the time. Coherence laws are what enable life to work miraculously. Our founding fathers, in writing the Constitution, knew this. To not defend the Constitution is to sacrifice the coherence conditions desperately required. Life free to produce miracles will solve the unsolvable problems we face. It is life itself that produces evolution.
Where life cannot find ways to fulfill itself, results will be abhorrent, unhealthy work-arounds. If subverted long enough, violence is inevitable. Life will not be controlled by any degree of force. War serves only to make a few people rich.
Monday, September 17, 2007
New Series on Emerging Paradigm
In this series of pub notes, I hope to make it a real discussion. That is, I hope pub note subscribers will contribute their thoughts.
The topics will be:
∑ Recognizing the nature of and dynamics of this fundamental paradigm shift
∑ What a paradigm is
A paradigm is a system of very basic ideas by which we define and recognize reality; how we make sense of experience. For example, the old paradigm reality has been "what we can perceive through our senses, if you can see it, touch it, or measure it, it is real." Once such basic ideas take hold they develop a momentum of their own. As people live with such ideas it is very hard to escape. This is the power of a paradigm. Life just keeps changing everything until the old paradigm doesn't fit or work anymore. There becomes an abundance of problems that cannot be solved. Then a new paradigm is born. The transition from the old to the new paradigm can be a time of chaos. That is our current state.
∑ What are the characteristics of this emerging paradigm?
∑ How will the paradigm affect you?
∑ How the old paradigm makes problems and how the new paradigm solves them. The new paradigm provides a new and different understanding of the fundamental character of life, how it works and what it requires. As we learn about and examine the basic ideas of the new paradigm we see how the unsolvable problems can be solved.
For example, (full details in future PubNotes):
Health Care: The US has the worlds most expensive health care. Unfortunately it is not the world’s best care. On most measures of quality, in comparison to other countries, the US ranks from midlevel to last. The basic assumptions behind our health care, notions of machines, mechanisms and technology, are ill suited to care for living organisms.
Prison Populations: The US has the largest percentage of the population in prisons. We also have the toughest sentences. Knowing how living organisms learn and develop we see how unreasonable tough sentences increase recidivism and too many laws increase crime.
Education: Schools assume today they can put information into children. They cannot. Education results from self-motivated inquiry. Schools can facilitate inquiry, but not force it.
The topics will be:
∑ Recognizing the nature of and dynamics of this fundamental paradigm shift
∑ What a paradigm is
A paradigm is a system of very basic ideas by which we define and recognize reality; how we make sense of experience. For example, the old paradigm reality has been "what we can perceive through our senses, if you can see it, touch it, or measure it, it is real." Once such basic ideas take hold they develop a momentum of their own. As people live with such ideas it is very hard to escape. This is the power of a paradigm. Life just keeps changing everything until the old paradigm doesn't fit or work anymore. There becomes an abundance of problems that cannot be solved. Then a new paradigm is born. The transition from the old to the new paradigm can be a time of chaos. That is our current state.
∑ What are the characteristics of this emerging paradigm?
∑ How will the paradigm affect you?
∑ How the old paradigm makes problems and how the new paradigm solves them. The new paradigm provides a new and different understanding of the fundamental character of life, how it works and what it requires. As we learn about and examine the basic ideas of the new paradigm we see how the unsolvable problems can be solved.
For example, (full details in future PubNotes):
Health Care: The US has the worlds most expensive health care. Unfortunately it is not the world’s best care. On most measures of quality, in comparison to other countries, the US ranks from midlevel to last. The basic assumptions behind our health care, notions of machines, mechanisms and technology, are ill suited to care for living organisms.
Prison Populations: The US has the largest percentage of the population in prisons. We also have the toughest sentences. Knowing how living organisms learn and develop we see how unreasonable tough sentences increase recidivism and too many laws increase crime.
Education: Schools assume today they can put information into children. They cannot. Education results from self-motivated inquiry. Schools can facilitate inquiry, but not force it.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
PubNotes: The Nature of Occurring Paradigm Shift and Values
By Norm Hirst
Copyright (c) September, 2007
Here we begin a new series of newsletters called PubNotes.
As the Institute of Noetic Sciences has documented, in their published 2007 Shift Report, a change of consciousness is sweeping through the world. This is a new paradigm developing. As usual with new paradigms there will be a period of chaos. Ultimately the chaos will yield to a new order.
Meanwhile there is cause for hope; there are many new ideas and understanding to help us sail through the chaos. New paradigms usually occur when there is a growing accumulation of unsolvable problems. Today there is such an accumulation. New paradigms bring new ways of thinking. Today there is a new and different science revealing unprecedented understanding of values and value processes. Such understanding shows how the "unsolvable problems" can be resolved.
What follows is a description of some of the topics PubNotes will be about; and of course, as we go deeper, new topics will arise.
What I want to share is not suitable for normal dialog. There will be moments when we should stop and ponder/reflect. I will speak of topics that I understand – after years of pondering! I am reminded of discussions in Schultz’s Beer Garden near the University of Texas. Discussions were of such quality that we called Shultz’s, "Philosophy Department Headquarters". I will tell my story in PubNotes. Each note will be another day in the bar having left space to ponder between notes. My favorite beer is John Courage. I could get it in Connecticut. I can no longer find it. We proceed with courage.
Fifty-two years ago, studying physics at MIT, I realized that in the future the most important problems were going to involve values; physics would not solve them. “I realized” is an understatement. What I experienced was a soul altering force.
The next semester Robert Hartman came to MIT as a visiting professor; a renowned philosopher working to create a science of value out of philosophy. He pointed out that if we could bring Plato back to life he would understand our philosophy books, but our science books Plato would find utterly bewildering. "That," said Hartman, "described the crisis of our time." I took Hartman’s course. He became my teacher, my mentor and my friend.
Now, what might he have had in mind as a “science of value”? In his time there was a clear distinction between empirical philosophy and science. In the time I was studying and working with Hartman there was still such a distinction, perhaps a dying remnant.
Before Newton there was only philosophy. Based on new mathematics, Newton provided a new basis for inquiry. That became known as science. Science replaces the analytics of language with the synthetics of formalisms. Mathematics is a formalism, but by no means is it the only formalism.
You may need to ponder. “Analytics of language” and “synthetics of formalisms”! These are not difficult ideas. They are just so damned different. I am reminded of some experiments done a few decades ago. Mathematicians tried teaching transfinite arithmetic to first graders. First graders latched right on to it. Adults have problems with it. (This topic might require several days in the bar. It might require Scotch!)
Bertrand Russell stated that philosophers know what they are talking about; they just don’t know what they are saying. Mathematicians know precisely what they are saying; they just don’t know what they are talking about. It takes both to make a science. But even that doesn’t get to the full depth of it. Inquiry by formalism reveals ideas that we would never encounter in experience. The foundational ideas of physics would never be known except by formal inquiry. Electromagnetic waves were discovered on the basis of Maxwell’s differential equation relating electricity and magnetism. My favorite formalism is the square root of minus one, an unreal mathematical idea that now plays a major role.
Hartman fully appreciated all this. He knew that if we were ever going to save ourselves we needed a formalism for values. On the basis of the formalism he developed the Hartman Value Profile (HVP); a test of value perception. It does not reveal your own personal choice of values but it does reveal how you use them. We are all different!
No, this is not just Hartman’s idea. The HVP has been validated and used in most societies on Earth to day. Has the formalism revealed anything we would not detect in ordinary experience? Yes. I will mention two examples.
Measurement is all the rage today. I was asked what the value formalism says about metrics. The full set of metrics includes finite numbers and at least two levels of transfinite numbers. The finite numbers only apply to the lowest level of values. Any project subject to measurement can only deal with the lowest values. Such measurement is destructive of values and life.
Similarly, General Petraeous is being considered as the ultimate authority on continuing the Iraq war. No doubt he should be considered the ultimate authority on military operations since war is based on the logic of force. But war is in a domain of living where value processes are operative. We should be asking if military operations are the best option. That is a question for folks with an entirely different expertise than that of a military general.
Back at MIT, I fully agreed with everything I learned from Hartman, but still I was troubled. There was nothing in our knowledge to support Hartman’s ideas. Given our dominant worldview of matter, determinism, reductionism and what we mistakenly thought of as protocols for science, there was neither place nor need, for values. I accepted the task of finding support for values.
It was a bleak task until the 70’s. Then there occurred experiments casting doubt on our worldview. Today, the last two decades have totally invalidated our worldview. The Institute of Noetic Sciences has published a 2007 Shift Report documenting that there is a change in consciousness, a new paradigm, occurring all over the world. (www.ions.org)
What's coming:
Life is fundamental - not matter. Empty space is filled with zero point energy, energy from quantum fluctuations at a temperature of absolute zero. This energy is called the Dirac Sea in honor of the physicist Paul Dirac. Living entities, such as you and I, are connected through the Dirac Sea; all life is oneness.
As we learn how living entities function, it turns out that it is nothing like we thought. Living entities are not machines, nor machine-like. Their workings are not subject to cause and effect, and they are not carrying out calculations. Living entities are capable of initiating their own acts based on values. They live in societies that give them maximum freedom within coherence conditions required by life. That is true even in the cells in our bodies. It is true of the molecules in cells, and, in nature. It is true of us on the living earth.
Unfortunately, some people are so limited in their understanding of living processes they don’t trust freedom. They insist on control. But living entities are autonomous. Controlling them with force, shock and awe, confinement and such may appear to be a way to control living entities, but we're learning the inner life force is stronger and actually cannot be controlled. A lifetime of learning, the living entities identities and the fundamental will to act autonomously cannot be predicted when force is imposed. Force is a bankrupt notion.
Matter as fundamental, determinism and reductionism have lost their dominance as a worldview. This will take several days in the bar celebrating. We will switch to Champaign.
Copyright (c) September, 2007
Here we begin a new series of newsletters called PubNotes.
As the Institute of Noetic Sciences has documented, in their published 2007 Shift Report, a change of consciousness is sweeping through the world. This is a new paradigm developing. As usual with new paradigms there will be a period of chaos. Ultimately the chaos will yield to a new order.
Meanwhile there is cause for hope; there are many new ideas and understanding to help us sail through the chaos. New paradigms usually occur when there is a growing accumulation of unsolvable problems. Today there is such an accumulation. New paradigms bring new ways of thinking. Today there is a new and different science revealing unprecedented understanding of values and value processes. Such understanding shows how the "unsolvable problems" can be resolved.
What follows is a description of some of the topics PubNotes will be about; and of course, as we go deeper, new topics will arise.
What I want to share is not suitable for normal dialog. There will be moments when we should stop and ponder/reflect. I will speak of topics that I understand – after years of pondering! I am reminded of discussions in Schultz’s Beer Garden near the University of Texas. Discussions were of such quality that we called Shultz’s, "Philosophy Department Headquarters". I will tell my story in PubNotes. Each note will be another day in the bar having left space to ponder between notes. My favorite beer is John Courage. I could get it in Connecticut. I can no longer find it. We proceed with courage.
Fifty-two years ago, studying physics at MIT, I realized that in the future the most important problems were going to involve values; physics would not solve them. “I realized” is an understatement. What I experienced was a soul altering force.
The next semester Robert Hartman came to MIT as a visiting professor; a renowned philosopher working to create a science of value out of philosophy. He pointed out that if we could bring Plato back to life he would understand our philosophy books, but our science books Plato would find utterly bewildering. "That," said Hartman, "described the crisis of our time." I took Hartman’s course. He became my teacher, my mentor and my friend.
Now, what might he have had in mind as a “science of value”? In his time there was a clear distinction between empirical philosophy and science. In the time I was studying and working with Hartman there was still such a distinction, perhaps a dying remnant.
Before Newton there was only philosophy. Based on new mathematics, Newton provided a new basis for inquiry. That became known as science. Science replaces the analytics of language with the synthetics of formalisms. Mathematics is a formalism, but by no means is it the only formalism.
You may need to ponder. “Analytics of language” and “synthetics of formalisms”! These are not difficult ideas. They are just so damned different. I am reminded of some experiments done a few decades ago. Mathematicians tried teaching transfinite arithmetic to first graders. First graders latched right on to it. Adults have problems with it. (This topic might require several days in the bar. It might require Scotch!)
Bertrand Russell stated that philosophers know what they are talking about; they just don’t know what they are saying. Mathematicians know precisely what they are saying; they just don’t know what they are talking about. It takes both to make a science. But even that doesn’t get to the full depth of it. Inquiry by formalism reveals ideas that we would never encounter in experience. The foundational ideas of physics would never be known except by formal inquiry. Electromagnetic waves were discovered on the basis of Maxwell’s differential equation relating electricity and magnetism. My favorite formalism is the square root of minus one, an unreal mathematical idea that now plays a major role.
Hartman fully appreciated all this. He knew that if we were ever going to save ourselves we needed a formalism for values. On the basis of the formalism he developed the Hartman Value Profile (HVP); a test of value perception. It does not reveal your own personal choice of values but it does reveal how you use them. We are all different!
No, this is not just Hartman’s idea. The HVP has been validated and used in most societies on Earth to day. Has the formalism revealed anything we would not detect in ordinary experience? Yes. I will mention two examples.
Measurement is all the rage today. I was asked what the value formalism says about metrics. The full set of metrics includes finite numbers and at least two levels of transfinite numbers. The finite numbers only apply to the lowest level of values. Any project subject to measurement can only deal with the lowest values. Such measurement is destructive of values and life.
Similarly, General Petraeous is being considered as the ultimate authority on continuing the Iraq war. No doubt he should be considered the ultimate authority on military operations since war is based on the logic of force. But war is in a domain of living where value processes are operative. We should be asking if military operations are the best option. That is a question for folks with an entirely different expertise than that of a military general.
Back at MIT, I fully agreed with everything I learned from Hartman, but still I was troubled. There was nothing in our knowledge to support Hartman’s ideas. Given our dominant worldview of matter, determinism, reductionism and what we mistakenly thought of as protocols for science, there was neither place nor need, for values. I accepted the task of finding support for values.
It was a bleak task until the 70’s. Then there occurred experiments casting doubt on our worldview. Today, the last two decades have totally invalidated our worldview. The Institute of Noetic Sciences has published a 2007 Shift Report documenting that there is a change in consciousness, a new paradigm, occurring all over the world. (www.ions.org)
What's coming:
Life is fundamental - not matter. Empty space is filled with zero point energy, energy from quantum fluctuations at a temperature of absolute zero. This energy is called the Dirac Sea in honor of the physicist Paul Dirac. Living entities, such as you and I, are connected through the Dirac Sea; all life is oneness.
As we learn how living entities function, it turns out that it is nothing like we thought. Living entities are not machines, nor machine-like. Their workings are not subject to cause and effect, and they are not carrying out calculations. Living entities are capable of initiating their own acts based on values. They live in societies that give them maximum freedom within coherence conditions required by life. That is true even in the cells in our bodies. It is true of the molecules in cells, and, in nature. It is true of us on the living earth.
Unfortunately, some people are so limited in their understanding of living processes they don’t trust freedom. They insist on control. But living entities are autonomous. Controlling them with force, shock and awe, confinement and such may appear to be a way to control living entities, but we're learning the inner life force is stronger and actually cannot be controlled. A lifetime of learning, the living entities identities and the fundamental will to act autonomously cannot be predicted when force is imposed. Force is a bankrupt notion.
Matter as fundamental, determinism and reductionism have lost their dominance as a worldview. This will take several days in the bar celebrating. We will switch to Champaign.
Monday, November 06, 2006
What's Life-itself, Norm?
Life It Self: by Norm Hirst
Copyright (c) 2006, November
The phrase “Life It Self” came to our attention as the titles of two books by Robert Rosen, a mathematical biologist. The book titles are “Life It Self” and “Essays on Life It Self”. I believe that Rosen meant the phrase to mean life in all its forms. In any event, that is what we intend by it. We mean that which is essential and common to life in all its forms.
It is common today to emphasize a carbon base as if all life has a carbon base. If we speak of the ecosystem as living it must seem strange since the ecosystem is not carbon based. Worse yet, if we speak of the economy as living that must seem absurd. God forbid we should mention that the cosmos might be living! A carbon base is not a requirement for life. All that can be said for it is that everything we assumed to be living has a carbon base. But now, I have read that sulfur based life forms have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Clearly we need to expand our definition of life.
Life is an ongoing process with functional abilities missing in non-living processes. To identify the living we need to consider whether an entity functions with the functionality of life or with only the functionality of non-life. The Gaia hypothesis shows the ecosystem works with living functionality. That biodiversity is necessary for the way the ecosystem manages energy is convincing. As we ignorantly diminish biodiversity we may lose our life support. Regarding the economy I have read that some economists today are saying they can not understand economics until they learn more about how life functions. Finally the living cosmos! Thinking of matter as being fundamental may be a blunder. Rosen demonstrated that physics can not be the most fundamental science. It is a special case. We await the most fundamental science from which physics can be derived. It will be a science that grapples with the functions of life.
The living process is made up of totally interconnected and interactive organisms. An organism is a focus for coherent acts. The coherence conditions are just now being discovered beginning with quantum coherence. Organisms are powered by electron flows (electricity) and proton flows (proticity). The incredible speed of proton jumps makes organisms wholistic. Everything is functioning simultaneously. Appearances to the contrary not withstanding there are no parts. Organisms are self-creating (autopoietic). Autopoiesis requires self-reference. Self-reference creates havoc with traditional logic suggesting that traditional logic is inappropriate for life. Fortunately there are now epilogics showing that thought processes compatible with traditional logic are historical accidents. There are new and better ways to think ready for discovery
Self-reference introduces paradox. Life itself requires paradox, i.e., both poles of categorical contrasts. For 25 centuries logic has been thought of as truth preserving. Paradox has been banished from logic. New logics show that paradox does no harm. It is resolved by oscillations. It leads to creativity. Life is creative and evolutionary. Life can adapt to new realities and it can create new realities.
“Evolutionary” raises thoughts of Darwin. There is a lot of talk these days about random processes and survival of the fittest. I think these ideas are utter nonsense. When I mentioned it to my son George he asked if I had ever read “Origin of the Species”. I have not, he has! He informed me that Darwin never wrote what people think he did. I find that easy to believe. There are a lot of erroneous myths, misunderstandings and crazy ideas. Once upon a time they may have made sense. In terms of what is now being discovered they must be discarded.
First I would challenge and discard the dreary view of reality we have all inherited. I mean the view that makes matter fundamental and physics the most basic science. First there is a lifeless planet. The search for how life started was going strong fifty years ago. The only “answers” I have seen are embarrassingly ineffective. For example, lightening hit a pond of chemicals and life began. Really?! What if we reversed the question? What if the earth started as the locus of living energies that created its form in matter? As we learn more about life itself I believe the solution to that question will be easy.
Next I would discard Darwinism. Since I do not know what Darwin wrote I don’t mean to discard Darwin, only what Darwinism has become. Darwinism features a struggle for life. To me this moves our worldview from dreary to downright depressing. Life is seen as an epiphenomenon resulting from a random accident and struggling to survive. Where is the meaning? What makes the struggle worthwhile?
Now I quote from a chapter by Reinhard Eichelbeck in the book “What is Life”.
“… in nature cooperation and communication are more important than struggle and competition. This is shown by a multitude of impressive examples: social associations, symbiosis, cooperation between animals and animals, animals and plants, plants and plants and plants and fungi can be found in all spheres of life everywhere in the world.”
Let’s all give up the notions of struggle and competition and enjoy our lives. No, you don’t have to give up sports. Sports are supposed to be games. Games are autotelic. That means winning or losing shouldn’t have consequences beyond the game. Competition to determine if someone is guilty of a crime is obscene. Cooperation is how the courts should work. I have read that in Italy prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to cooperate in determining truth. In adversarial systems winning depends on factors that have little to do with guilt or innocence.
Now I plan to go on to a series of pubnotes dealing with different ways in which life itself functions. Based on past misunderstandings there are many crazy oughts that imprison us and diminish our lives. Life is the highest value, yet it is destroyed and trashed as if it hardly matters.
Copyright (c) 2006, November
The phrase “Life It Self” came to our attention as the titles of two books by Robert Rosen, a mathematical biologist. The book titles are “Life It Self” and “Essays on Life It Self”. I believe that Rosen meant the phrase to mean life in all its forms. In any event, that is what we intend by it. We mean that which is essential and common to life in all its forms.
It is common today to emphasize a carbon base as if all life has a carbon base. If we speak of the ecosystem as living it must seem strange since the ecosystem is not carbon based. Worse yet, if we speak of the economy as living that must seem absurd. God forbid we should mention that the cosmos might be living! A carbon base is not a requirement for life. All that can be said for it is that everything we assumed to be living has a carbon base. But now, I have read that sulfur based life forms have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Clearly we need to expand our definition of life.
Life is an ongoing process with functional abilities missing in non-living processes. To identify the living we need to consider whether an entity functions with the functionality of life or with only the functionality of non-life. The Gaia hypothesis shows the ecosystem works with living functionality. That biodiversity is necessary for the way the ecosystem manages energy is convincing. As we ignorantly diminish biodiversity we may lose our life support. Regarding the economy I have read that some economists today are saying they can not understand economics until they learn more about how life functions. Finally the living cosmos! Thinking of matter as being fundamental may be a blunder. Rosen demonstrated that physics can not be the most fundamental science. It is a special case. We await the most fundamental science from which physics can be derived. It will be a science that grapples with the functions of life.
The living process is made up of totally interconnected and interactive organisms. An organism is a focus for coherent acts. The coherence conditions are just now being discovered beginning with quantum coherence. Organisms are powered by electron flows (electricity) and proton flows (proticity). The incredible speed of proton jumps makes organisms wholistic. Everything is functioning simultaneously. Appearances to the contrary not withstanding there are no parts. Organisms are self-creating (autopoietic). Autopoiesis requires self-reference. Self-reference creates havoc with traditional logic suggesting that traditional logic is inappropriate for life. Fortunately there are now epilogics showing that thought processes compatible with traditional logic are historical accidents. There are new and better ways to think ready for discovery
Self-reference introduces paradox. Life itself requires paradox, i.e., both poles of categorical contrasts. For 25 centuries logic has been thought of as truth preserving. Paradox has been banished from logic. New logics show that paradox does no harm. It is resolved by oscillations. It leads to creativity. Life is creative and evolutionary. Life can adapt to new realities and it can create new realities.
“Evolutionary” raises thoughts of Darwin. There is a lot of talk these days about random processes and survival of the fittest. I think these ideas are utter nonsense. When I mentioned it to my son George he asked if I had ever read “Origin of the Species”. I have not, he has! He informed me that Darwin never wrote what people think he did. I find that easy to believe. There are a lot of erroneous myths, misunderstandings and crazy ideas. Once upon a time they may have made sense. In terms of what is now being discovered they must be discarded.
First I would challenge and discard the dreary view of reality we have all inherited. I mean the view that makes matter fundamental and physics the most basic science. First there is a lifeless planet. The search for how life started was going strong fifty years ago. The only “answers” I have seen are embarrassingly ineffective. For example, lightening hit a pond of chemicals and life began. Really?! What if we reversed the question? What if the earth started as the locus of living energies that created its form in matter? As we learn more about life itself I believe the solution to that question will be easy.
Next I would discard Darwinism. Since I do not know what Darwin wrote I don’t mean to discard Darwin, only what Darwinism has become. Darwinism features a struggle for life. To me this moves our worldview from dreary to downright depressing. Life is seen as an epiphenomenon resulting from a random accident and struggling to survive. Where is the meaning? What makes the struggle worthwhile?
Now I quote from a chapter by Reinhard Eichelbeck in the book “What is Life”.
“… in nature cooperation and communication are more important than struggle and competition. This is shown by a multitude of impressive examples: social associations, symbiosis, cooperation between animals and animals, animals and plants, plants and plants and plants and fungi can be found in all spheres of life everywhere in the world.”
Let’s all give up the notions of struggle and competition and enjoy our lives. No, you don’t have to give up sports. Sports are supposed to be games. Games are autotelic. That means winning or losing shouldn’t have consequences beyond the game. Competition to determine if someone is guilty of a crime is obscene. Cooperation is how the courts should work. I have read that in Italy prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to cooperate in determining truth. In adversarial systems winning depends on factors that have little to do with guilt or innocence.
Now I plan to go on to a series of pubnotes dealing with different ways in which life itself functions. Based on past misunderstandings there are many crazy oughts that imprison us and diminish our lives. Life is the highest value, yet it is destroyed and trashed as if it hardly matters.
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