My thoughts are scattered. So much to say and yet so little. So much in the sense that I enjoy dialogue. So little in the sense that I hold other's untarnished experiences dear.
Where will this baffling conscious experience of "energy" lead? Physicists like Eugene Wigner recognized consciousness as an essential aspect of future theories of matter. Yet to comply, physics will have to contend with its entrenchment in mathematical precision. So, I set physics aside.
Our appearance of independence is deceiving. There shouldn't be any doubt how interconnected we all are. We have the autonomy to exert cause, but not to determine effect. That right lies with each perspective. In this regard, others can be looked upon as coaches, even still mirrors. Hope would have it that they are a guiding rather than interfering influence. Yet, we are the true player on the field of our "inner world". The whole offers possibilities, causes. Each part chooses effect.
With the rapid spread of ideas, cultural evolution has greatly sped up the rate of change within the environment. As self-organizing systems we are bombarded with the stress. How true is the maxim that the ideas that got us here may not be the ones to keep us here?
For me, I see the need to take another look and make choices that contribute to the well being of the life system as a whole. To develop a natural sense of connectedness to the whole of life.
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela while forming their thoughts around autopoietic systems recognized the role of structural coupling. Structural coupling is the term for the structure-determining engagement of a given system with either its environment or another system. Such a coupling fosters the unpredictable nature of living systems that I contend extends down to the level of quantum awareness and therefore reject simplified deterministic cause and effect.
So the question becomes sustainability. As Lester Brown observed "A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations." It is unfortunate how, over time, society as a whole has lost its roots in a diverse natural living world. Obviously, that's subjective of one who rejects the notion of a separate identity with the goal of dominating and subduing the environment.
We are not separate from our environment or anything else for that matter. We are simply a unique strand in the web of life. We are all embedded in, and ultimately dependent upon, the cyclical processes of our very nature. Multiple manifestations of an inherent unity.
Projected enough. Time to step back and listen again.
5 comments:
Do we really have "the autonomy to exert cause," or choice? Or is the interconnectedness so profound that maybe the universe just "blossoms" and everything that is and happens is part of that single organic process whose forces are greater than us and briefly animate us into being?
I'm just wondering aloud. That is, I'm not asking these questions rhetorically because I think I know this is the answer. I really don't know whether we have choice. It often feels like we do. And if we don't, what basis is there to morally evalute ourselves and others?
Do people who do the worst things choose to do bad things? Do people who cause even the most terrible suffering and harm freely choose to do that? Do they see evil as evil and think: "I want to be a 'bad guy' so I freely choose to do evil instead of good, even though I'm fully aware that good choices would be better for both myself and others in the long run."
Even people who are, say, "juvenile delinquents" and are proud of how "bad" they are seem to me to think of "bad" as "cool" or powerful, strong - as, in a word, "good," even if it's a take on goodness that most of us reject. I'm pretty sure terrorists think of themselves as the good guys too.
So maybe everyone is just doing what they have to do from out of how they've happened to come to perceive things owing to factors and forces beyond their own understanding...
If that's the case do "good" and "evil" have any meaning in terms of attributes of people? I can see how they could still be used for categories of action or behavior. But if everyone's just doing what they have to do, they seem to lose their validity for categorizing people...
I really agree with what Paul just said. (instead of arguing with you, Paul, as usual!)
As to your scientific way of looking at things, N2, I tend to pull back from the intellectual side of it - consciousness, mathematics & so on, in order to stay with that with which I feel comfortable as a tool for finding reality. I am referring to my animal nature.
I find that evolution is a tool for explaining why we are as we are, except for one thing, which we are all here to try and discuss, I think. That is our sense of spirit and interconnectedness.
It seems to me that the best model - and a simple one too, that does not require an advanced university education to apprehend - is one which posits that life-energy precedes the Big Bang which established the universe (supposedly). Whilst the various life forms have evolved in the manner described by Darwin, and the mineral forms have evolved in the manner described by physicists, there is something that unites all.
I don't know how it is for a bird or a tree or a cow or a moss, but when I am aware, I see the awareness in everything. I can interact spiritually with man, fish, insect.
In fact there is a special technique, I find, to interact with humans. They often carry an aura of "who they think they are" or perhaps I should say usually carry that aura. So it is necessary to bypass that and connect to soul.
So in the case of the juvenile delinquent or the genocidal tyrant or the deluded head of a so-called democracy, there is still the same soul of the universe, that you could catch with a certain look of the eyes, or by rejecting the aggression or the defences that people build up around themselves.
As I say, with non-humans it can be easier. But this may be simply because of the personality type I have developed over the course of my life.
This is gonna be a bit of a ramble. A bit of projection on my part since I enjoy reading other’s perspectives.
One of the books I was reading about systems theory touched upon “structural determinism”. What struck me was how fitting this was of “one nature unfolding”.
The light momentarily went on. Choice was an illusion.
This was followed with the puzzling thought of consciousness just being along for the ride, with fate as the driver. I always come back to ask the question “why?” Either way I looked, though, it was to experience.
When I fell back to “but there must be choice", I ran into a pickle. I didn’t think anyone chooses to be all out bad. Perhaps it was accumulated small choices. Ultimately it came down to that I believed in a “departure”. In the history of times and time, another made a decision that I wouldn’t of. I would have chosen “better”. But this was untenable. What an idiot, I thought, this is not true Oneness.
Unfortunately, that momentary glimpse drifted away, and illusion returned. But you have brought it back into perspective.
If I let choice drift away, I can see where an experiencing body would be frustrated with a thinking intellect. I’ve always felt comfortable with logic and scientific fact. Explains why I program computers and read science “text” books.
Yet, I find “not knowing” as a strong current for myself as well. I think (ouch) that drives me to “connect” and hold other perspectives in high regard.
Not knowing...I have a tinge of guilt that I might have botched this comment.
I don't know if you could have botched much. From my perpective, I think all I really said was "I don't know", lol...
I guess the free will vs. determinism debate goes on and on through the centuries - either because it's determined that people have to wonder about it or they choose to...
Wait, wait, I've got it! Thinking about it always hurts my head! Why would I do that to myself? It MUST be determined!
That "life energy" idea Yves mentions is also ancient - I think, actually, much more ancient than thinking about free will vs. determinism. If there is some sort of unifying underlying energy what if life is a higher order experession of it? And for all we know there could be something still more highly ordered? Maybe the underlying energy is quarks or something still more basic to everything.
I don't know...
I've never been very comfortable with the idea of choice in my life. It sounds too cerebral for a start, and I could make serious miscalculations which would blight my life thereafter! Actually I think of life as a flow: my aim is not to make right choices (like a computer program) but to be in harmony within my own self and the environment.
We may have the "benefit" of intellect but we have evolved from millions of years of life which lacked the free-thinking brain that can evaluate choices as we do. And that evolution did OK because it produced us anyway.
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