7.5.
finding meaning in life
Everyone can find meaning in life by concentrating on perfection in the execution of one’s activities or in sharing the love of a family or of a community of friends. But does this appease our existential questions ? Does it help us find solace in our societal arrangement ? Or more generally is this satisfying all the demands of the mind ?
______________
In earlier
times Western citizens were sharing common answers to these
existential questions. In other words they were sharing the common
worldview of their society. And having the same outlook on life was
deepening their trust in their family, their neighbors and
co-workers. The citizens of Late-Modern Western societies do not
share a worldview any longer and their level of trust in family,
neighbors and co-workers, has mostly vanished. They are constantly
plunged in the screen of their cell phones, communicating, playing
and socializing. But when you scratch the surface you discover that
they feel alone. They feel isolated, separated, from family and
neighbors and co-workers, and so they double-down their presence on
the web or in games.
This
feeling of separation is shared by nearly everyone nowadays in the
West. This stands in stark contrast with Asia where people still
share a common worldview. But the same kind of separation is starting
to affect the younger generations in the East. Industrialization
results in the movement of young farmers from rural areas to urban
areas where they are employed in factories and offices. The demands
of their new jobs are unrelenting : hard work and long hours which
reduces their opportunities of socialization to a minimum.
But what
does the separation of the individuals do to the mind ?
Isolation
forces the individual to keep her/his questions, her/his problems, to
her/himself. In other words these questions and problems never go
away and incessantly burden the mind that swirls frenetically within
the bounds of its societal context. Then there is the media and their
brouhaha of fake news and propaganda that leaves no room for trust.
Young minds in the East are still spared this brouhaha presently. In
the West distrust acts like a reagent on frenetic minds. It separates
them from each other and by the same token it atomizes them. Atomized
minds end up being frozen out of their societal context and they
swirl then incessantly around the illusion of their ‘me’-memes.
Thinkers
and artists see all these as so many signs of the sheer madness of
our Western Late-Modern societies. And to keep their own sanity they
stay on the side, on the margins, observing the societal circus and
wondering where all this is going ? Sure there is always a minority
of suckers that plays the system for short term material gains but
they have no significance for society as a whole. What will be
significant for the future of Western societies is what happens today
on their margins. But what happens there on the margins is not being
shared with the societies at the center.
No
surprise then that in this Late-Modern Western madness political hope
goes defunct. Bernard Stiegler paints the zeitgeist of contemporary
youth as follows in his new book, “The Age of Disruption:
Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism” :
“ When
I talk to young people of my generation […] they all say the same
thing: we no longer have the dream of starting a family, of having
children, or a trade, or ideals. […] All that is over and done
with, because we’re sure that we will be the last generation, or
one of the last, before the end“.1
The
videos of Shawn James and many others2
are illustrating the
flight from the misery that is rampant in such a societal context.
There is a
nagging
perception,
out
there by the individuals in the West and
mostly among the younger generations,
of
an
emptiness
in life amidst the
madness of their Late-Modern societies. More and more working
age people
are fleeing this emptiness with the desire to create meaningful daily
lives. What this really means is that they abandon the ranks of their
societies’ ‘working population’.3
The left
part of the lower graph indicates an increase in the labor force
participation in the sixties and seventies that corresponded to the
need experienced by families for a double income to make ends meet.
The right part of the lower graph indicates a rapid decrease in the
labor force participation. But most significantly between 2000 and
2015 the labor force participation :
-
increases in the category 55 years and older from 40.1 to 45.9% for men and from 26.1 to 34.7% for women. Older people need an income from work to compensate – for the missing returns on their savings due to the near zero interest rates policies of the central banks and, – for falling retirement income.
-
decreases in the category 25 to 54 years from 91.6 to 88.3 % for men and from 76.7 to 73.7 for women. This is the core category of the working people. Those who quit are the rats who sense that the ship is going under and who jump overboard in order to survive …
This
decrease in the labor force participation is a powerful signal that
the societal machinery is starting to fall apart but Western
societies don’t register the signal. Instead they register the full
employment of their working population. This just shows how
fictitious is the nature of contemporary labor statistics. But this
tempering with measurements is a fraud. It does not change the
reality.
I
certainly commend those who like Shawn James and the many others who
illustrate how they give meaning to their lives by staying on the
margins of society while literally fashioning their local habitat and
purveying for their daily lives. I know their feelings. I have lived
the same in Belgium in the seventies till beginning of the eighties
of the past century. But I was gradually feeling that my retreat from
society was not fully satisfying and I started searching for
something else. This search landed me in China. With hindsight I now
can see that I was searching for answers to existential questions
that were burdening my mind about the working of reality, about the
working of the mind, of society and so on. In other words I was
searching for knowledge.
Trying to
understand China procured me a mirror and the necessary distance to
observe Western societies and also myself. This was a 30 years
journey that opened my mind to the deep recesses of my subconscious
that I have struggled for years to reconcile with the certainties of
my consciousness. There is no user-manual detailing how to practice
this process of reconciliation and there is no school of thought that
offers an appropriate methodology. Ancient animist men of knowledge
accompanied their apprentices and helped them to avoid obstacles
along their journeys but the apprentices had to find their own ways
to reconcile their subconscious visions and experiences with their
conscious certainties. In short this means that the traveler of the
subconscious has to find her/his own ways. I personally have been
working on this for 5 decades. And all I can say is that since
somehow mastering this process I often feel submerged, physically and
mentally, in an aesthetic bliss.
The
detour of
the
individual in
his
subconscious supplies
his
conscious mind with
a lot of food for thought to say the least. Thinking
and meditation
eventually
will gradually
bring
the
abstractions of
the conscious mind into
clarity. But
this outcome is not a given. For
many
who journey
on
such a path the
abstractions of
the conscious mind do
not
reach
clarity but
confusion and what is even worse is that they lose the capability to
function normally among others in society.
Once
these
abstractions reach
the
clarity
of
a
crystal
they
reflect
a profound and
incomprehensible beauty
that
words can’t start to describe.
I now often observe myself appreciating
–
ideas, writing, painting and
so on
–
on the sole criteria of their aesthetics. I can
imagine
that this might appear weird. But the
fact is that aesthetics
do
not emanate
from
itself. It is a
formal outcome in the unfolding of nature, in the unfolding of the
activity of
an individual,
in the unfolding of the
activity of
a
society, in
the unfolding of the
activity of
a
species, in
the unfolding of the
activity of
the
earth,
and
… in the unfolding of the universe.
What
I mean to
say by
this is that aesthetics does not emerge for aesthetics’ sake.
Aesthetics
is
the formal aspect of a
creation
that
works meaning that it is
being replicated.
Creations
from nature are
always being
replicated.
Creations from
humans
are
not being
replicated
when they reflect their authors’ desire and greed because
they mask their true biological and societal nature.
Creations
from
other species are
always being
replicated
because they reflect their true biological
and societal nature.
And
perhaps most importantly creations
from
the ever bigger ensembles that encompass life on earth are
always replicating.
Aesthetics
is
the formal aspect of a
creation
that
works
which
means
that it reflects
the true nature of the creator. Only the true nature of a creator is
being replicated.
When I was a kid in rural
Belgium I often heard older folks using the expression “they
need to experience life under war and they will come back to their
senses”. I did not understand what the older ones meant
even after they answered my questions. Then time passed and I forgot
about that expression. Recently it reappeared with force in my mind
as if it was coming out of 60 years of hibernation. It re-emerged to
illustrate in my mind the meaning of the 3 scenarios that I described
in “7.3.
truthfulness:
the mind and society”.
What I
envisage in these 3 scenarios is a generalized societal collapse that
will lessen our
societies into
the earlier
stages of societal evolution of our
descendants. There is no doubt that abstractions are
very useful. But abstractions detach us from our emotions. This
saying, of the older folks in my youth, obliges
me to confront these abstractions from a different angle. What
do these
3 scenarios
imply for
daily human
life
? The
abstraction of a mass die-off of 90-99 % of the human population
induces
in our mind the
idea of small groups coping with survival
at the local level. But
the
daily life experience, that will necessarily result from such an
abstraction, evokes a
lot of suffering which immediately activates our sentiments
and
emotions.
And
these emotions are shouting in our minds for action …
Observing
that nothing meaningful happens in our societies to answer the causes
of our emotions we pass
through different stages. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On
Death and Dying”
proposed five stages of grief :
-
Denial and isolation
-
Anger
-
Bargaining
-
Depression
-
Acceptance.
With
time we
gradually
come to terms with these emotions and when
reaching acceptance we start
to observe
what
will be the
necessary behavioral adaptation that
our surviving descendants will
have to submit to in order to survive.
Being
flooded with these
images
my
mind suddenly realizes the true meaning of the saying
of the older folks in my youth. I
find myself under the spell of
an illumination. The
minds of our surviving descendants will
be cleansed. There will be no
illusions left.
The extreme hardship of their lives will
cleanse their minds of
any trace of non-sense and
they will
be
completely free to see what really
counts
to
ensure
their survival. They will
no longer be
bickering
about trivialities like money,
material
possessions, ego trips, or prestige. They will
laugh
away the memory of their ancestors’
illusions
and obsessions
with ideologies
like political freedom, like
democracy. like
human
rights, and
the rights to
the
identity
of minorities.
Suddenly
the only thing that will count will be to survive till tomorrow and
then the day after.
In
their minds our
descendants will
perceive these trivialities of Modernity as being
pure
evil that
distract the minds from
what counts in ensuring individual
survival
and societal
reproduction.
These
trivialities
will
rapidly vanish from the memories of their own kids and
so will
rise
the idea that the survivors must never, never, forget about the evil
of these
trivialities
of
Modernity.
This
is how (wo)men
of knowledge will
rise to the task of telling
the story of
the myths that will shape the worldview of the
new cycle of societal evolution. These
myths will lay the foundations of the new worldview that I call
“After-Modernity” for no other reason than the fact that I have
no clue what our descendants will be calling this new era.
The
saying,
of the older folks in my youth, in
essence conveys the same understanding about life than
our surviving descendants will necessarily rediscover by necessity.
Life has priorities and those priorities relate to the physical
realities that shape the habitat of its different species. No
species, no individual no society, has
the wherewithal
to
abstract
themselves from the
reality of
their habitat.
Going counter to its
habitat
equals
the
certain
death of a
species.
What
this teaches us is that the
principle of life forces
all species to recognize the priorities relating to
the
interactions occurring
among all entities within
their habitat. Their existence and their reproduction depend on this.
The acceptance by a species, and its submission to this principle of
life, are vital
signs
of its pragmatism. Pragmatism
is a philosophy of life. It is the acceptance of our inter-dependence
with all other entities within our habitat and the recognition that
our habitat is inter-dependent with all other habitats within the
larger ensemble earth that we all inhabit.
The
physical realities, of our habitat, and their interdependence with
the physical realities, of the habitat of other species on this
earth, is one aspect of human reality. There are evidently many other
aspects of human reality, within
the ensemble earth, like the maintenance
of the individual bodies and minds, like the
evolution of species, like their organization in societies, like the
evolution of their societies, and so on. And our mother
earth
is
furthermore
but one ensemble among many other that combine to form the
bigger ensemble of our
solar system. Solar systems furthermore combine to form the
bigger ensembles of galaxies
and galaxies combine to form
the largest ensemble of all;
our universe.
Living species on earth are interrelated with all these larger ensembles in ways that remain mysterious. David Bohm4, a world leading quantum physicist, maintained that space and time are derived from a deeper level of objective reality that he called ‘the Implicate Order’. The manifest world, that we humans perceive with our senses, and rationalize through our abstractions, unfolds out of the laws of this Implicate Order which is modulated by various fields : the electromagnetic field, the energetic field, the protonic field, and other fields like the morphogenetic field theorized by Rupert Sheldrake5 that guides and controls the growth, into their particular forms, of all living species.
In Bohm’s view these fields obey quantum-mechanical laws that project properties of ‘discontinuity and non-locality’ throughout the whole universe which implies that everything is connected and that any individual element in the universe, from fundamental particles to vast ensembles, contain information about every other element. And from this idea he postulates that what we humans think we see at the level of the fundamental particles is just an illusion. In other words the fundamental particles do not unfold reality. They are rather flowing out of ‘the Implicate Order’ as seeds of possibilities. Some of these possibilities will then eventually materialize as an outcome of the local contextual setting.
The sub-ensembles, and their constitutive elements are continuously generating feedback loops among themselves that are impulsing the universe’s physical and mental growth. In this understanding the whole universe is animated by an energetic field (the plenum) that powers changes and transformations of the elements into a flow of matter that unfolds into life. And the dance between the polarities of living species then rapidly increase the complexity of life which drives species towards awareness and further consciousness. Being a participating entity in the whole the consciousness of humanity is fed back to it. This contribution then results in an incremental increase in the whole’s own consciousness about the working of its wholeness.
In light of life’s contribution to the increasing consciousness of the whole Bohm considers that it is the destiny, or the ‘raison d’être’, of humanity to achieve a higher consciousness. And he adds that "There is no other way out. That is absolutely what has to be done and nothing else can work".
I wrote here above that :
“Pragmatism is a philosophy of life. It is the acceptance of our inter-dependence with all other entities within our habitat and the recognition that our habitat is inter-dependent with all other habitats within the larger ensemble earth that we all inhabit.”
Pragmatism is the way to a reasoned behavior within out habitat that ultimately helps to reduce suffering while maximizing happiness. This was the contribution of animism to societal evolution. Pragmatism without any doubt fostered an immense progress in the human condition. But it still does not answer the fundamental existential question of what the meaning of life is really all about.
The work of David Bohm helps to push the envelope of pragmatism to its ultimate. Here is how this works :
- information, knowledge, and seeding of possibilities are all flowing from the ‘the Implicate Order’ of the whole to its parts. This forces living species into acceptance of their being a small part only of a causal whole. It forces also their acceptance of being one only among the many elements living in interdependence inside of their habitat. Acceptance then unfolds into pragmatism which, in essence, is nothing else than to make the most out of the cards that were distributed to us.
- the idea, that life contributes to the increasing consciousness of the whole, opens the gates of consciousness in the minds of the individuals. And they are suddenly struck by a flash of truth. The whole is alive and conscious and its nervous system brings information, knowledge and seeds of possibilities to its parts (enfoldment) while information and knowledge flows back from the parts to the whole increasing its consciousness about the evolution of its own wholeness. At this point one senses that, at the image of the brain, the whole must be computing the best path forward and sending its orders for its sub-ensembles to act. And so my initial intuition, that the universe cleans up the mess of a species that loses the plot of the principle of life, finally finds a plausible explanation.
We now basically discover that pragmatism at its ultimate provides all the answers to the existential questions that the individuals might have about the nature of the principle of life :
- to the question “what is ‘the way’ of life” it answers minimizing suffering will maximize happiness. A species achieves this by caring and satisfying all the demands emanating from the interdependence between all the elements within its habitat
- to the fundamental question “what is the meaning of life” it answers that, as particles of a living and conscious whole, the individuals have a duty to participate in the increase of their individual consciousness in order to boost the consciousness of their species which, in turn, contributes to the increase in consciousness of the whole about the evolution of its own wholeness.
Oops ! There is no place for ideology in all that.
I wrote
here above that :
“Aesthetics
is the formal aspect of a creation that ‘works’ which means that
it reflects the true nature of its creator. Only the true nature of a
creator is being replicated”.
Let
me unpack this.
A
creation that works means that it is efficient at doing what it is
meant to do. The most dramatic example is given by biological
evolution. During the transition from chaos to order, in
one specific function of a biological assembly,
a slew of mutations (possibilities) arise as candidate carriers of
the coming stage
of order.
Only one of these mutations will be retained and
will replicate, that specific function of the
biological assembly, over the future generations. Mutations,
or possibilities,
that are
replicating over the generations are
considered to be working. All the other possibilities
do
not replicate and so they are considered not to be working. Over
the very long haul the patterns of what works are generating what we
call beauty and the patterns of what does not work are generating
what we call ugliness.
The
possibility that works reflects the true nature of the specific
function that was traversing a moment of chaos. It is because it
represents the true nature of that function that it was
retained and is
replicating
over the generations. In
the particular case of biological evolution the creator of the
possibility that works is the principle of life that governs the
biological assembly that
was in a state of chaos. The principle of life is given by “the
implicate order”
of the whole and is actualized in the local context. Let’s now
apply what I just wrote to the process of art creation.
A
painting that works means two things :
-
First its form is composed of a combination, of lines forms and colors, that works. What I mean by a combination that works is that the combination offers a visual harmony to the viewer. But as Iwo Zaniewski writes “The essence of the phenomenon of visual harmony has not been described so far"(6). And he then goes on to propose an algorithm of harmony, based on a series of parameters he thinks are so perfect, that it must be that “perfect harmony is an algorithm”. Wow ! To me this stinks reductionism. Let me explain.I proposed here above that the idea of beauty refers to what works in “the implicate order” that sustains the working of our universe and its subsystems as well as all the elements in these subsystems. In that sense beauty is given by the patterns of what works in “the implicate order” as it materializes in our habitat. In earlier texts I limited these patterns of beauty to biological evolution but biological evolution itself is a local biological adaptation of what works in “the implicate order”. That’s why I have to expand the realm of the patterns of beauty to the patterns of what works in “the implicate order”. Iwo Zaniewski further mentions that "composition is the fundamental factor in the perception of beauty". This I agree wholeheartedly.Beauty is indeed an abstract principle that relates to the feelings it generates in the body-mind of the observer. But that abstract principle results from more down to earth considerations. Visual beauty is the outcome of a perfect pitch composition by the creator of lines, forms, and colors as they appear in his work. But how does this perfect pitch composition emerge ? The answer is that beauty arises when the artist ‘somehow’ succeeds to sync his composition with the information about the patterns of what works in “the implicate order”. I say somehow because how the artist realizes this is still largely a mystery. We know that it is only marginally the fact of the conscious mind applying learned principles. But in a more important way it derives from the working of the unconscious dance between the body and the mind which perhaps is a dance of adaptation on the flow of “the implicate order” or some other forces.
-
Secondly the content of the work has to reflect the knowledge of the day or the worldview that the wo(men) of knowledge derive from that knowledge. The reason, why art has to mirror knowledge in the eyes of the viewer, has nothing to do with knowledge itself. It relates to the evolution, of knowledge and societies, that feeds back this information to the whole in order to allow it to grow its own consciousness about its wholeness and about the increase in complexity in the functioning of its sub-ensembles and their parts.But for this feedback loop of information, about the evolving complexity in the sub-ensembles of the whole, to continuously flow it is imperative that the reproduction of societies is not interrupted. Worldviews and art both play a decisive role in the continuous reproduction of societies. Worldviews are narratives, elaborated by the wo(men) of knowledge, to glue the minds of the citizens into a cohesive societal whole. Visual art is a vehicle transporting visual signs that passes this narrative to their minds.
We should always remember that thinking, about reality about knowledge about worldviews about societal evolution and about art, has to take into account the following two dimensions :
- the ultimate reality flows from ‘the Implicate Order’ and its seeds flow throughout the universe
- at the local level these seeds germinate and unfold into ’the ten thousands things’(7). The local context then impacts the germination and it starts to take on a will of its own. Knowledge originates on top of this original emergence of local will and it impulses societal evolution which set humanity on the path of a very fast evolutionary loop.
These two forces, enfoldment (flowing from) and unfoldment (unfolding in), work in tandem. They are the yin and the yang of the ultimate reality. The will of the ten thousand things, that participates in their unfolding, can’t thus possibly go against the gist of the enfolding that flows from the ‘the Implicate Order’. So the idea that humans might control nature is necessarily a heresy, an illusion, or hubris of delusioned minds that inevitably must ends in the ugliness of unworkable outcomes. In other words human will and desires are an impediment to harmony. To possibly reach harmony human will has to fuse with the true nature of its human carrier. The true nature of humanity resides in :
- first their submission to the flow originating in “the Implicated Order” of the whole
- secondly their submission to the natural unfolding of the imperatives originating in the interrelatedness of all the elements in the local habitat.
Only when the creator lets flow his true nature in synchronicity, with the flow from ‘the Implicate Order’ and with the unfolding of the imperatives originating in the interrelatedness of all the elements in the local habitat, will the creation possibly be harmonious. This principle is valid in all acts of creation be it by a species, or be it by its societies, or be it by its individuals. Any creation, that is forced against the grain of the flow from ‘the Implicate Order’ or of the imperatives originating in the interrelatedness of all the elements in the local habitat, is bound to be ugly and damaging for the habitat of its creator.
The application of these ideas to visual art has 2 implications :
- beauty is an objective state of reality. It represents the patterns of what has worked successfully over the whole time-span of “the implicate order”. These patterns are combinations of lines, forms, colors and other parameters that “the implicate order” has constantly replicated. The information about these patterns is somehow accessible to all particles within the whole. But for some reason, that still remains mysterious, humanity lost the notion that such patterns exist at all. As a result we have no clue any longer that such patterns might influence our judgment and our sensitivity.
- the access to the information, about the patterns of what works in biological evolution, is accessible to those who succeed to shut down all pretensions that have been ingrained in the conscious mind throughout the process of societal domestication. This pretension is notoriously absent in young children before the domestication succeeds to lock their minds. It is also absent in some people whose minds, for whatever reason, are said to have been ‘deranged’. Some other rare people kept their minds unlocked, for reasons that are still not well understood, and these people excel at all kinds of activities which distinguish them from the bulk of society. Some of them are what society regards as the geniuses in science and in art. But most will never be recognized because societies only recognize those who are rewarded with prestige, financially, or otherwise.
The domestication in power societies has resulted in a kind of societal Alzheimer. Modern societies have forgotten about ‘the way of the universe’. The diabolic possession of the minds of our men of power by ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ is so complete, and the propagandizing of their ideology is so thorough nowadays, that it has become nearly impossible to distinguish between the facts and their propaganda. We should thus not be surprised that Late-Modern societies are driving us straight into a civilizational collapse and a 6th mass extinction.
In the midst of such a reality pragmatism advises realism by rediscovering the true nature of life :
- the seeds of the universal possibilities flow from ‘the Implicate Order’ throughout the whole universe
- those seeds sprout in a local context when all the conditions for it sprouting have materialized
- the local context then impacts the germination which then starts to take on a will of its own
- local will has to submit to the flow of possibilities originating in “the Implicated Order” of the whole and to the imperatives originating in the interrelatedness of all the elements in the local habitat. Non-acceptance to submit to these results in ugliness and irrevocably damages the local habitat
- an energetic field, the plenum(8), powers changes and transformations of the material elements and when the right conditions are present they eventually unfolds into life. The morphogenetic field then guides the growth of all living species into their particular forms.
- living species are the embodiment of life
- the interactions between the two polarities of a species (individuals = change and society = conservation) drive their negotiated settlements towards ever more complexity which participates in the growth of the whole
- the conflicts resulting from such negotiated settlements foster individual awareness, and increased consciousness, which contribute to the growing wisdom of the whole about its wholeness and about the evolution of its parts. This grows the whole and its parts into ever higher levels of physical and mental complexity.
The true nature of life has nothing to do with randomness. It is an unbroken cycle flowing from “the implicate order” of the whole to the unfolding of the elements in its sub-systems.
Life and consciousness participate in the physical and mental growth of the whole by assigning a mission to the living species in its sub-ensembles. That mission is to ensure their own physical and mental growth in order to contribute to the growth of the whole.
Acceptance of this reality sets people free to flow, into what works, into aesthetical beauty.
______________Notes
1 From “ Fighting the Unprecedented ‘Proletarianization’ of the Human Mind “ Leonid Bilmes / Los Angeles Review of Books. 2019-11-15.
2 The following video by Shawn James proposes “living a meaningful life” as an antidote to “the proletarization of the human mind”. See also the creative Li ZiQi.
3 Labor force participation = “percentage of the civilian non-institutional population 16 years and older that is working or actively looking for work.” by Steven F. Hipple in bls.org.
4 David Bohm. “Wholeness And The Implicate Order”. Free pdf.
5 Rupert Sheldrake’s website
6 Iwo Zaniewski in “composition matters”. “Harmony is typically equivocated with compositional balance, where it would be achieved through golden ratios and other less precisely defined proportions. But there is also perfect harmony, or a state where any perceptible change means reducing the value of the work’s overall aesthetic expression. Such artworks exist and so it is worth exploring this phenomenon.”
7 "The ten thousand things’ is a Chinese saying that addresses all there is in the universe.
8 David Bohm. “Wholeness And The Implicate Order”. Free pdf.
No comments:
Post a Comment