Something's Missing. Why Force? By Norm Hirst

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.

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.