7.4.6. giving meaning to one’s life
Last article in this series. 8,052 words.
I want now to address, the perception of our present human condition, from a holistic angle. This placing into perspective, of the structural factors that shape the human condition in Late-Modernity, forms the conclusion of this long series of articles.
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Content
7.4.6.1. the whole is the ultimate purveyor of the universal potential
7.4.6.2. polarities are powering changes and transformations that open the doors to the universal potential
7.4.6.3. living species are the embodiment of life
7.4.6.4. Non-submission to the foundations of life results in the species’ extinction
7.4.6.5. the settlement of disputes, between their polarities, leads species toward more complexity
7.4.6.6. the loop from the whole to the local and back to the whole
7.4.6.7. the true meaning of life
7.4.6.8. a new credo in After-Modernity
7.4.6.2. polarities are powering changes and transformations that open the doors to the universal potential
7.4.6.3. living species are the embodiment of life
7.4.6.4. Non-submission to the foundations of life results in the species’ extinction
7.4.6.5. the settlement of disputes, between their polarities, leads species toward more complexity
7.4.6.6. the loop from the whole to the local and back to the whole
7.4.6.7. the true meaning of life
7.4.6.8. a new credo in After-Modernity
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We are faced with the fact that the mind does not take lightly to be confronted with the inescapable reality of ‘the great convergence’. On one side we observe that humanity is faced with a predicament and on the other we observe that our existing political decision-making bodies are not able to implement the necessary answers to attenuate the effects of this predicament.
The reason Western political decision-making bodies can’t decide to implement valid answers is because they are owned by powerful interests who are constantly privileging their private accumulation of profits over anything else including the fundamentals of life. Furthermore the other countries do not want to move before the West shows it is serious in its own willingness to act. After all the West is the one that started Modernity. It has had the advantage of a few centuries of history freely developing its economy while despoiling nature and ignoring the principle of life. The other countries that started industrializing in the late 20th century have thus good reasons to call for the West to start cleaning up its act first.
The most powerful among Western groups of interest are the big capital holders whose interests are being defended publicly by their servants the state bureaucrats, the intellectuals, the media and other professionals. The servants of big capital holders control all the levers of Western propaganda and use them to mud the reality and instill confusion in the minds of the people on this earth. This confusion is what freezes the human species in its answers to the predicament of the convergence of the multiple side-effects of Modernity with the crisis of the governance-world.
This convergence unleashes a raft of interactions among all these factors that lead to tipping points giving way to abrupt disruptions of the natural elements inside the habitat of life. As a consequence the existence, of the living species on earth, is abruptly threatened. This whole process is what I call “the great convergence”.
Being confronted with the reality of “the great convergence” human emotions are easily heating up to unbearable levels but our minds find themselves at a loss for good answers. Highly sensitive individuals are the first to be distraught and some can’t take it any longer. Suicides, and other mind derangement syndromes, inexorably multiply. This was confirmed by the US CDC which ordered “representative panel surveys ... among adults aged ≥18 years across the United States during June 24–30, 2020” (1). The most significant results from these panels are given in the following graph. (click image to enlarge)
The reason Western political decision-making bodies can’t decide to implement valid answers is because they are owned by powerful interests who are constantly privileging their private accumulation of profits over anything else including the fundamentals of life. Furthermore the other countries do not want to move before the West shows it is serious in its own willingness to act. After all the West is the one that started Modernity. It has had the advantage of a few centuries of history freely developing its economy while despoiling nature and ignoring the principle of life. The other countries that started industrializing in the late 20th century have thus good reasons to call for the West to start cleaning up its act first.
The most powerful among Western groups of interest are the big capital holders whose interests are being defended publicly by their servants the state bureaucrats, the intellectuals, the media and other professionals. The servants of big capital holders control all the levers of Western propaganda and use them to mud the reality and instill confusion in the minds of the people on this earth. This confusion is what freezes the human species in its answers to the predicament of the convergence of the multiple side-effects of Modernity with the crisis of the governance-world.
This convergence unleashes a raft of interactions among all these factors that lead to tipping points giving way to abrupt disruptions of the natural elements inside the habitat of life. As a consequence the existence, of the living species on earth, is abruptly threatened. This whole process is what I call “the great convergence”.
Being confronted with the reality of “the great convergence” human emotions are easily heating up to unbearable levels but our minds find themselves at a loss for good answers. Highly sensitive individuals are the first to be distraught and some can’t take it any longer. Suicides, and other mind derangement syndromes, inexorably multiply. This was confirmed by the US CDC which ordered “representative panel surveys ... among adults aged ≥18 years across the United States during June 24–30, 2020” (1). The most significant results from these panels are given in the following graph. (click image to enlarge)
The societal sickness evoked by Greenwald is the natural outcome of societal atomization as I laid out earlier. The individual atom is trapped in loneliness and life suddenly appears meaningless. It all goes back to the disappearance of the grand narratives of our traditional worldviews that leave the individuals ‒ without meaning ‒ without sharing of a common perception about reality with others.“In a remotely healthy society, one that provides basic emotional needs to its population, suicide and serious suicidal ideation are rare events. It is anathema to the most basic human instinct: the will to live. A society in which such a vast swath of the population is seriously considering it as an option is one which is anything but healthy, one which is plainly failing to provide its citizens the basic necessities for a fulfilling life.” (2)
This points to the abandonment of the fundamentals that are at work in the nature of life. What can we do ?
Our contextual settings are not going to change as per miracle. We can’t change the fact of humanity’s power decision-making process but we can adapt our individual behavior to the reality ‒ of the predicament of the “great-convergence” ‒ of the decision-making process in Late-Modernity.
Adapting our behavior does not mean that we ignore and turn our backs to these realities. It means that we face them with a straight head. Western decision-makers love nothing more than discouraged citizens. We should not give them this pleasure. We have to face reality by getting a better grip on it and in matter of fact the quest for knowledge is the best antidote ever devised not only against discouragement but also on getting a grip on reality.
Eastern decision-makers, and most certainly the Chinese, have another attitude. They view their mission as to procure a higher well-being to their citizens and their citizens trust that the future of their children will be better than their own present. This is the reason for the disconnection between Eastern and Western societal moods that I documented in “A growing disconnect between East and West”.
In our era of Western Late-Modernity two schools of thought dominate the landscape of the mind ‒ the technophiles ‒ the collapsenicks. The technophiles religiously believe that technology will save the day and the collapsenicks religiously believe that the end is near. Each of these two schools behave like established religious cults that further divide into ever more specialized sects.
Most citizens do not harbor such hardcore beliefs. They simply go along consuming the goods that marketeers adapt to the tastes of these two big schools of thought.
But ever larger throngs of people are growing dissatisfied with this normality and are searching for sense in their lives.
The quest for knowledge I’m personally talking about resides outside the realm of these two dominant schools of thought in Late-Modernity. It is a more direct immersion within the material of reality that attempts to get a grip on the way life goes on unrelentingly evolving ever further. Such a quest pragmatically rejects ideology and opens the mind to the fundamentals of life. I summarized these as follows in the conclusion of “What to do ? Part 7. Finding meaning in life. 7.5.2. pragmatism is aesthetically beautiful” :
“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 of life on earth.
In the midst of such a reality pragmatism advises realism and the rediscovery of the 7 principles relating to the true nature of life :
Acceptance of this reality sets people free to flow, into what works, into aesthetic beauty and bliss.“
- the seeds of the universal possibilities flow throughout ‘the Implicate Order’ of our ‘whole universe’
- the energetic field powers the changes and transformations of the material elements in the local context and when all the conditions for the sprouting of the seeds have materialized the universal possibilities eventually unfold into life
- the interactions, between the local context and these universal possibilities, impact the unfolding of life which then starts to take on a direction of its own and further evolves life into the forms given by the various living species which are the embodiment of life
- local directionality has to submit ‒ to the flow of possibilities originating in “the Implicate Order” of the whole ‒ to the imperatives originating in the inter-relatedness of all the elements in the local habitat. Non-submission to these foundational rules results in the ugliness of irrevocable damages to the local habitat which in turn results in irrevocable damages to the species’ chances to reproduce over the long haul
- 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 species and of the whole Universe
- the conflicts resulting from such negotiated settlements foster individual awareness, and increased consciousness, which eventually contribute to the growing wisdom of human societies. That societal wisdom is then reverberated back to the whole Universe increasing its consciousness about its own wholeness and about the evolution of its parts.
- This process grows the whole and its parts into ever higher levels of physical and mental complexity.
- What this all implies is that the true nature of life has nothing to do with randomness.
- Life is an unbroken energetic cycle that flows from “the implicate order” of the whole and eventually unfolds, in its sub-systems where all the conditions for the sprouting of the seeds have materialized, into species that try to reach more complexity.
- The increase of complexity, in the consciousness and in the organization of species, contributes to the increase in consciousness of the whole about the evolution of its wholeness through the evolution of its sub-systems and their elements.
- Life and consciousness participate in the physical and mental growth of the whole. The living species that eventually emerge in the sub-ensembles of the Universe are thus on a mission to participate in its physical and mental growth. That mission consists in ensuring their own physical and mental growth in order to possibly contribute to the growth of the whole.
The species, that for whatever reason are going against the mission assigned to them by the principle of life, are condemning themselves to a meaningless life made of suffering.
These 7 principles of life constitute my personal vision of Pragmatism that forms my thinking, my painting, and my life.
In my view pragmatism is the way to a reasoned behavior that ultimately helps to reduce suffering while maximizing happiness. This was a major contribution of animism to societal evolution. Pragmatism without any doubt greatly advanced 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, and other thinkers like him, helps to push the envelope of pragmatism to its ultimate.
This vision sets free to flow into ‘what works’ and in this flow one eventually discovers aesthetic beauty. This flow into ‘what works’ is a kind of ‘non-action doing’ (3) which opens the doors to a renewed view of reality that expands the awareness of the mind beyond thinking and lands it into the bliss of the universal spirit.
Variation 08 of Acrylic 16 in the Artsense series.
Variation A4-34 of painting 1-04 from the grand project
The foundational idea in pragmatism resides in the recognition of human suffering and the observation that knowledge helps to alleviate that suffering (4). In that sense pragmatism does not view life as a timely phenomenon but as a process ‒ that originates in the ‘enfolding’ by the universe of the timely substance of all local entities (projection in Bohm’s words) ‒ that actualizes the whole (injection in Bohm’s words) (5) by returning the information, about each moment of the particle’s evolving substance, into the whole.
In other words the substance of life is the ‘uninterrupted interconnection’ between the whole and the local particles of all species. And, as Laoze intuited in the “Dao De Jing”, ‘will’ and desire interrupt the automatic flow of this interconnection which results in suffering and ugliness. Viewed from another angle we observe that the focus, on the self by me me me, is weakening this interconnection which brings us to the understanding that all ideologies, rooted in individualism, are a burden on life.
This process of origination (projection by the whole in a local entity) and the return of information (injection of actuality inside the whole by all local entities) is not a one time act but a continuous and uninterrupted process that keeps the interconnections between the particles and the whole alive at all time. Now this necessarily implies that the interruption by a local entity of its interconnection with the whole signifies the ending, of the projection by the whole into this local entity, of all the potential possibilities which results in the death of that entity.
Pragmatism is concerned primarily by easing the individuals’ lives and it realizes this by easing the interconnection, between the individual and the whole, in the flow of both its projection and injection aspects. In pragmatic terms the individual suffering is abated ‒ through the satisfaction of her/his individual needs ‒ through the boosting of societal cohesion. In this sense pragmatism is the ultimate maximizer of the 7 fundamental principles of life.
I will now review these principles one by one.
7.4.6.1. the whole is the ultimate purveyor of the universal potential
The whole is understood as being the largest ensemble “U” that encompasses all the other ensembles. I summarize its universal potential as follows (6)
"... the seeds of the universal potential are flowing, throughout ‘the Implicate Order’ of the ‘whole Universe’, awaiting to sprout where the right conditions are assembled locally“.
The “implicate order” is a concept that was coined by the physicist David Bohm. As one of the leading researchers in quantum physics he considered that our contemporary perception of reality addresses merely its skin, or its local temporary forms, that unfold out of an underlying dimension which contains the implicate order of the universe. In this view the implicate order is like the ground from which seeds of the universal potential are sprouting when all the conditions for their germination are coming together in a local context. Bohm cites TV broadcasting as an analogy of how this implicate order unfolds into the reality that we perceive which he called “the explicate order” (7):
“...in a television broadcast, the visual image is translated into a time order, which is ‘carried’ by the radio wave. Points that are near each other in the visual image are not necessarily ‘near’ in the order of the radio signal. Thus, the radio wave carries the visual image in an implicate order. The function of the receiver is then to explicate this order, i.e., to ‘unfold’ it in the form of a new visual image.”
In other words all possible manifestations of reality are contained in the universal potential and they are carried in an implicate order. But the manifestation of reality occurs only after all the necessary conditions have been assembled locally. Once the conditions have been assembled particular forms emerge out of the ground of the implicate order and the perception tools inherited by the observer, his culture his history and his creativity, then explicate these forms to him. Now this implies that the explicate order is relative. The perception tools that the observer inherits are indeed evolving over time inside the cultural continuum.
In Bohm’s mind this observation calls for a paradigmatic shift in the physical description of reality. Having traditionally concentrated on the forms of the explicate order which are relative, as we just saw, he proposed that physics has to concentrate on the implicate order in which everything is interconnected :
“All this calls attention to the relevance of a new distinction between implicate and explicate order. Generally speaking, the laws of physics have thus far referred mainly to the explicate order. Indeed, it may be said that the principle function of Cartesian coordinates is just to give a clear and precise description of explicate order. Now, we are proposing that in the formulation of the laws of physics, primary relevance is to be given to the implicate order, while the explicate order is to have a secondary kind of significance (e.g., as happened with Aristotle’s notion of movement, after the development of classical physics). Thus, it may be expected that a description in terms of Cartesian coordinates can no longer be given a primary emphasis, and that a new kind of description will indeed have to be developed for discussing the laws of physics.” stated in Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
The relativity of the explicate order is what motivated the sages of old to say that the answers to individual needs are there waiting for the taking. And their advise to them was to let go of the illusions cultivated by the self in order to discover the ultimate reality of the universal potential. In the Chinese Tao this is viewed as “the way” of the natural flow of things and of life. The Chinese sages induced from this that the art of life is to let oneself flow without any resistance on the path of ‘non-action doing’. And scholar-artists later applied this wisdom in their artistic creations which came to be called the “Xieyi” way.
7.4.6.2. polarities are powering changes and transformations that open the doors to the universal potential
Things in the myriad sub-ensembles, of the whole Universe, are animated and when the local conditions are ripe change occurs that substantiates other things and eventually life :
Physicists like to think in term of an energetic field powering the changes and transformations occurring in the universe. But a more elegant way of understanding, the powering of changes and transformations in any entities, is given by the interactions between their own polarities. To illustrate what I have in mind I’ll focus on the embodiment of life in species.
The first principle of life states that the one, or the whole, is the ultimate reality that delivers the universal potential which enfolds the multiple possibilities into the local entities.
The music of the cosmic spheres has been playing for billions of years and some four billion years ago, on our planet earth, life emerged in the form of a single-cell species. At the contact of their local contextual habitat these single-cell organisms diversified into various other different single-cell species. Some two billion years later some of these single-cell species further evolved into multi-cells species and some of them evolved lines of ever more complex life. Life thus emerged out of a particular arrangement of matter and energy on earth that had reached the right conditions.
The emergence of different species and their evolution occurred as a synchronization between the projection of the universal potential and the local conditions. This means that a universal projection materializes only after the right conditions have emerged locally. In other words, while the universal potential is rich of multiple possibilities, only those possibilities finding the right local conditions will ever materialize.
Once a living species has emerged its primary focus is its survival. Once its survival is ensured it eventually surges its level of biological complexity in order to advance its development.
After reaching a certain threshold of biological complexity the species engages into a process of societal evolution that runs at multiple times the speed of biological evolution. There is no agreement in the scientific community about this idea of societal evolution and even less about the origin of the process. So what follows is derived from my personal quest for knowledge as I shared it in these pages.
I posit that Homo-Sapiens entered the process of societal evolution with the recognition of human suffering and the observation that knowledge helps to alleviate that suffering. Our species succeeded to abate individual suffering by delegating the process of knowledge formation to the least able body among the members of its small bands and, within a few tens of thousands of years, all small bands of Homo-sapiens on earth had followed this same particular model proving that it had been far more successful than all other possibilities that had been tested in the trials and error process which formed the transition from small bands to tribal societies.
This decision by small bands to start a process of knowledge formation engaged the process of societal evolution. The wo(men) of knowledge succeeded first to ease the satisfaction of individual needs and this resulted in a growing population that destabilized the institutional setting of small bands which was followed by a period of transition that eventually resulted in the stabilization of tribal societies.
The wo(men) of knowledge achieved the stabilization of the institutions of tribal societies by boosting the societal cohesion of their groups through sharing the narrative of a common worldview that Western anthropologists, sometime under High-Modernity, denominated under the appellation animism. But there is again no agreement in the scientific community about ‒ the origination process of tribal societies ‒ the time of their emergence ‒ what tribal societies were all about ‒ how that model of society finally collapsed.
My view, as indicated here above is that change occurs as a synchronization between the projection of the universal potential and the local conditions.
We know that the collapse of the institutions of tribal societies was a process that started sometime around 11.700 years ago when the average world temperature peaked at the end of the Younger Dryas which engaged ‒ a rapidly growing population ‒ the destabilization of the tribal institutional model of society ‒ the emergence of the age called the Holocene that was marked by the agricultural revolution.
We also know that the earliest carvings found as of today, that symbolize thinking abstractions having had tangible consequences for human life, date a little over 100,000 years. They are assumed to be productions illustrating the knowledge of the earliest tribal societies. So it is most probable that the tribal mode of society emerged, before the start of the Last Glacial Period (LGP) which occurred approximately 115,000 Years ago. The preceding inter-glacial period, the Eemian, started sometime 130,000 years ago when the CO2 levels reached around 280 ppm (8) and world temperatures were on average 1 - 2 degrees Celsius warmer than during the Holocene when the agricultural revolution flourished. This indicates a high probability ‒ that there was an abundance of food resources for a period of at least some 15,000 years ‒ that the population of small bands thus most probably increased considerably destabilizing its model of society and unleashing a transition period toward the tribal model of society.
“the interactions, between the polarities of entities, power the changes and transformations of the material elements in their local context and when the conditions for the sprouting of the seeds, flowing in the implicate order, have materialized locally the universal potential eventually unfolds into life”
Physicists like to think in term of an energetic field powering the changes and transformations occurring in the universe. But a more elegant way of understanding, the powering of changes and transformations in any entities, is given by the interactions between their own polarities. To illustrate what I have in mind I’ll focus on the embodiment of life in species.
The first principle of life states that the one, or the whole, is the ultimate reality that delivers the universal potential which enfolds the multiple possibilities into the local entities.
The music of the cosmic spheres has been playing for billions of years and some four billion years ago, on our planet earth, life emerged in the form of a single-cell species. At the contact of their local contextual habitat these single-cell organisms diversified into various other different single-cell species. Some two billion years later some of these single-cell species further evolved into multi-cells species and some of them evolved lines of ever more complex life. Life thus emerged out of a particular arrangement of matter and energy on earth that had reached the right conditions.
The emergence of different species and their evolution occurred as a synchronization between the projection of the universal potential and the local conditions. This means that a universal projection materializes only after the right conditions have emerged locally. In other words, while the universal potential is rich of multiple possibilities, only those possibilities finding the right local conditions will ever materialize.
Once a living species has emerged its primary focus is its survival. Once its survival is ensured it eventually surges its level of biological complexity in order to advance its development.
After reaching a certain threshold of biological complexity the species engages into a process of societal evolution that runs at multiple times the speed of biological evolution. There is no agreement in the scientific community about this idea of societal evolution and even less about the origin of the process. So what follows is derived from my personal quest for knowledge as I shared it in these pages.
I posit that Homo-Sapiens entered the process of societal evolution with the recognition of human suffering and the observation that knowledge helps to alleviate that suffering. Our species succeeded to abate individual suffering by delegating the process of knowledge formation to the least able body among the members of its small bands and, within a few tens of thousands of years, all small bands of Homo-sapiens on earth had followed this same particular model proving that it had been far more successful than all other possibilities that had been tested in the trials and error process which formed the transition from small bands to tribal societies.
This decision by small bands to start a process of knowledge formation engaged the process of societal evolution. The wo(men) of knowledge succeeded first to ease the satisfaction of individual needs and this resulted in a growing population that destabilized the institutional setting of small bands which was followed by a period of transition that eventually resulted in the stabilization of tribal societies.
The wo(men) of knowledge achieved the stabilization of the institutions of tribal societies by boosting the societal cohesion of their groups through sharing the narrative of a common worldview that Western anthropologists, sometime under High-Modernity, denominated under the appellation animism. But there is again no agreement in the scientific community about ‒ the origination process of tribal societies ‒ the time of their emergence ‒ what tribal societies were all about ‒ how that model of society finally collapsed.
My view, as indicated here above is that change occurs as a synchronization between the projection of the universal potential and the local conditions.
We know that the collapse of the institutions of tribal societies was a process that started sometime around 11.700 years ago when the average world temperature peaked at the end of the Younger Dryas which engaged ‒ a rapidly growing population ‒ the destabilization of the tribal institutional model of society ‒ the emergence of the age called the Holocene that was marked by the agricultural revolution.
We also know that the earliest carvings found as of today, that symbolize thinking abstractions having had tangible consequences for human life, date a little over 100,000 years. They are assumed to be productions illustrating the knowledge of the earliest tribal societies. So it is most probable that the tribal mode of society emerged, before the start of the Last Glacial Period (LGP) which occurred approximately 115,000 Years ago. The preceding inter-glacial period, the Eemian, started sometime 130,000 years ago when the CO2 levels reached around 280 ppm (8) and world temperatures were on average 1 - 2 degrees Celsius warmer than during the Holocene when the agricultural revolution flourished. This indicates a high probability ‒ that there was an abundance of food resources for a period of at least some 15,000 years ‒ that the population of small bands thus most probably increased considerably destabilizing its model of society and unleashing a transition period toward the tribal model of society.
The destabilization of the tribal model of society, some 11,700 years ago by an abrupt warming of the earth temperature, led to some 6000 years of transition before the institutions of the first power societies stabilized around 5000 years ago.
During this transition, from tribal societies to power societies, the contextual settings, of the Tri-Continental-Era (Middle-East) and of China, engaged radically different evolutionary paths out of the tribal model of society.
The most significant difference in their contextual settings was the size of their alluvial plains and their proximity to other centers of life. These alluvial plains were some 15,000 km2 in Mesopotamia, some 40,000 km2 in the Nile valley, while these valleys were also on the path of migrations from Africa to the far-East and to Europe. This contrasts with China where the alluvial plains were somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million km2 while this territory was protected from outside interference by the Pacific Ocean on the East, the Himalayan mountains on the South, and the Gobi desert on the West. (9)
Over a short few thousands years the population growth, that followed the warming of the Younger-Dryas, had filled the entirety of the relatively small physical size of the alluvial plains in the Tri-Continental-Era. As long as the territory was not fully occupied the tribes and the first agricultural villages went along peacefully (10). But once the agricultural population had occupied most of the alluvial plains the remaining tribes were relegated to portions of the territory not suitable to agriculture. These were poor in any kind of resources thus destabilizing their cultures further and rendering the survival of tribes highly problematic.
Professor Hodder’s studies, of the site of ‘Çatalhöyük’ in Anatolia, indicate that peace was prevalent during the first few millennia of the transition which suggests that the first agriculturalists continued to share animism as their worldview. The following millennia were marked by conflicts and violence which suggest the radical impact on the minds of emerging and exclusive religious ideologies that reject the other. The sharing of these religions boosted group cohesion and societies that hitherto had been collapsing in short order finally succeeded to reproduce their institutions over the long haul of many generations.
In contrast the size of China’s alluvial plains was such that ‒ tribes and agricultural villages could coexist in peace over the millennia simply by spreading their growing populations further along virgin land ‒ power did not emerge out of conflict and violence but as a process of tribal cultural unification. The local forms of the animistic worldview were synchronizing while expanding over ever larger swaths of territory and this process of unification was crowned by the symbolism of the sage sharing his wisdom to the people living within the territory of the unified culture. This process of cultural unification gave rise later to the concept of “Tian Xia” which means “all under heaven” or ‒ a sovereign ‒ a people ‒ a territory.
In tribal times the sovereign was the symbolic representation, by the wisest among the (wo)men of knowledge over the whole territory of cultural unity. Later this animistic symbolism substantiated the rise of the notion of dynastic sovereignty. The dynastic state sovereigns were the old animist sages who separated diverse traditional functions of the animist (wo)men of knowledge while encouraging their specialization : health care, scholars of applied knowledge, the “WU” an office under the sovereign in charge of divination and the communication with spirits (The Office of the Grand Diviner - Tai-bu shu) was in place as late as the Tang, song and Yuan dynasties (11).
All this illustrates how societal evolution unfolds the projection, by the implicate order of the universe, only after the right local conditions have emerged. In other words, while the universal potential is rich in possibilities, only those possibilities that find the right local conditions will materialize. This explains how the cultural continuum (12), of the Tri-Continental-Area and that of China, have diverged so extensively that today the societies, in their respective territory of civilization, have such an otherworldly view about the other.
Our present Geo-political tensions are rooted in this perception of other-worldliness. The knowledge, by the parties in the present Geo-political context of the process that led to this perception of other-worldliness, would easily resolve these tensions in a peaceful manner. Part of our predicament today resides in the fact that ‒ this knowledge has been preserved solely by a few wise(wo)men living on the margins of Late-Modern societies ‒ knowing in our Modern societies is the exclusive affair of ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ and its rationalist and scientific extensions.
During this transition, from tribal societies to power societies, the contextual settings, of the Tri-Continental-Era (Middle-East) and of China, engaged radically different evolutionary paths out of the tribal model of society.
The most significant difference in their contextual settings was the size of their alluvial plains and their proximity to other centers of life. These alluvial plains were some 15,000 km2 in Mesopotamia, some 40,000 km2 in the Nile valley, while these valleys were also on the path of migrations from Africa to the far-East and to Europe. This contrasts with China where the alluvial plains were somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million km2 while this territory was protected from outside interference by the Pacific Ocean on the East, the Himalayan mountains on the South, and the Gobi desert on the West. (9)
Over a short few thousands years the population growth, that followed the warming of the Younger-Dryas, had filled the entirety of the relatively small physical size of the alluvial plains in the Tri-Continental-Era. As long as the territory was not fully occupied the tribes and the first agricultural villages went along peacefully (10). But once the agricultural population had occupied most of the alluvial plains the remaining tribes were relegated to portions of the territory not suitable to agriculture. These were poor in any kind of resources thus destabilizing their cultures further and rendering the survival of tribes highly problematic.
Professor Hodder’s studies, of the site of ‘Çatalhöyük’ in Anatolia, indicate that peace was prevalent during the first few millennia of the transition which suggests that the first agriculturalists continued to share animism as their worldview. The following millennia were marked by conflicts and violence which suggest the radical impact on the minds of emerging and exclusive religious ideologies that reject the other. The sharing of these religions boosted group cohesion and societies that hitherto had been collapsing in short order finally succeeded to reproduce their institutions over the long haul of many generations.
In contrast the size of China’s alluvial plains was such that ‒ tribes and agricultural villages could coexist in peace over the millennia simply by spreading their growing populations further along virgin land ‒ power did not emerge out of conflict and violence but as a process of tribal cultural unification. The local forms of the animistic worldview were synchronizing while expanding over ever larger swaths of territory and this process of unification was crowned by the symbolism of the sage sharing his wisdom to the people living within the territory of the unified culture. This process of cultural unification gave rise later to the concept of “Tian Xia” which means “all under heaven” or ‒ a sovereign ‒ a people ‒ a territory.
In tribal times the sovereign was the symbolic representation, by the wisest among the (wo)men of knowledge over the whole territory of cultural unity. Later this animistic symbolism substantiated the rise of the notion of dynastic sovereignty. The dynastic state sovereigns were the old animist sages who separated diverse traditional functions of the animist (wo)men of knowledge while encouraging their specialization : health care, scholars of applied knowledge, the “WU” an office under the sovereign in charge of divination and the communication with spirits (The Office of the Grand Diviner - Tai-bu shu) was in place as late as the Tang, song and Yuan dynasties (11).
All this illustrates how societal evolution unfolds the projection, by the implicate order of the universe, only after the right local conditions have emerged. In other words, while the universal potential is rich in possibilities, only those possibilities that find the right local conditions will materialize. This explains how the cultural continuum (12), of the Tri-Continental-Area and that of China, have diverged so extensively that today the societies, in their respective territory of civilization, have such an otherworldly view about the other.
Our present Geo-political tensions are rooted in this perception of other-worldliness. The knowledge, by the parties in the present Geo-political context of the process that led to this perception of other-worldliness, would easily resolve these tensions in a peaceful manner. Part of our predicament today resides in the fact that ‒ this knowledge has been preserved solely by a few wise(wo)men living on the margins of Late-Modern societies ‒ knowing in our Modern societies is the exclusive affair of ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ and its rationalist and scientific extensions.
7.4.6.3. living species are the embodiment of life
The universal potential eventually enfolds life when the local conditions are right. Here is how I summarize this principle :
Life is embodied simultaneously in millions of species and humanity is but one of those species. What is puzzling is that all the species that are living today should represent no more than 0.01% of all species that have ever lived on this earth. In other words for every species that lives today 10,000 have gone extinct earlier :
Reading this quote our mind is faced with two observations :
My mind can not let go the idea that this should be taught as a priority in all schools around this earth. We can’t trust any longer that the older generations, who are invested with the decisions of their communities, will take the right decisions to protect the younger generations that will have to navigate the consequences of our societal actions today. We are faced with an inescapable moral conundrum. The movement of history tells us that we need to prioritize the life of the younger generations and of their future off-springs against the egotistical prioritization by the older generation of decision makers of their capital stock and of their own well-being.
This 3rd principle of life leaves no place for doubt. ‘The reason that is at work within the principle of life’ has to be prioritized and ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ has to be brought into compliance with the principles of life. Perhaps the time has come to eliminate ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ all together… The predicament we face in Late-Modernity is indeed not going away.
Power can no longer eschew this reality and the people have gained the moral high ground to fight for giving younger generations the power to decide how they want to shape their future.
“the interactions, between the local context and the universal potential, eventually unfold life which immediately takes a direction of its own by evolving into one of the various living species. This is called the embodiment of life”
Life is embodied simultaneously in millions of species and humanity is but one of those species. What is puzzling is that all the species that are living today should represent no more than 0.01% of all species that have ever lived on this earth. In other words for every species that lives today 10,000 have gone extinct earlier :
“Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct. Many of them perished in five cataclysmic events.
According to a recent poll, seven out of ten biologists think we are currently in the throes of a sixth mass extinction.” (13)
Reading this quote our mind is faced with two observations :
- most of the species that have ever lived on this earth are extinct today. 10,000 gone for 1 living today… wow ! What is suggested here is that life is really fragile and that species come and go.
- biologists are scientists specialized in biology and biology is the primary characteristic of life. So when 70% of polled biologists agree (14) that we are in the midst of a mass-extinction we know that our species has a real problem on its hands.
My mind can not let go the idea that this should be taught as a priority in all schools around this earth. We can’t trust any longer that the older generations, who are invested with the decisions of their communities, will take the right decisions to protect the younger generations that will have to navigate the consequences of our societal actions today. We are faced with an inescapable moral conundrum. The movement of history tells us that we need to prioritize the life of the younger generations and of their future off-springs against the egotistical prioritization by the older generation of decision makers of their capital stock and of their own well-being.
This 3rd principle of life leaves no place for doubt. ‘The reason that is at work within the principle of life’ has to be prioritized and ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ has to be brought into compliance with the principles of life. Perhaps the time has come to eliminate ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ all together… The predicament we face in Late-Modernity is indeed not going away.
Power can no longer eschew this reality and the people have gained the moral high ground to fight for giving younger generations the power to decide how they want to shape their future.
7.4.6.4. Non-submission to the foundations of life results in the species’ extinction
The fourth principle of life goes as follows :
This fourth principle addresses the substance of what future decision making has to prioritize. In the particular situation of Late-Modernity, there can be no doubt any longer that “the imperatives originating in the inter-relatedness of all the elements in the local habitat” have to be made a priority of decision-making. This means that any human activity, that encroaches on the habitat of other species, and on the habitat of the weakest among them, have to be curtailed and forbidden all together.
I know that this is a call for an extremely radical change in the ways of life under Modernity. I also understand that this can’t possibly be implemented in one go from one day to the next. But, from the perspective of life on this earth, the urgency is so high that we have to put immediately in place the necessary structural institutional changes that will absolutely permit younger generations to start acting radically in order to deflect the worse life outcome tomorrow.
Acting radically does not mean acting unreasonably and irrationally. Here follows a short list of what I view as being the necessary structural changes that have to be activated shortly :
This is a skeleton of a plan that sketches the process to be followed in order to deflect the worse of what comes our way. This sketch should be fleshed out as soon as possible while also gaining the broadest popular agreement. The 5th, 6th, and 7th principles will further shed light on how to go about fleshing out this skeleton.
“the local directionality of life has to submit ‒ to the flow of possibilities originating in “the Implicate Order” of the whole ‒ to the imperatives originating in the inter-relatedness of all the elements in the local habitat. Non-submission to these foundational rules results in the ugliness of irrevocable damages to the local habitat which in turn results in irrevocable damages to the species’ chances to reproduce over the long haul.”
This fourth principle addresses the substance of what future decision making has to prioritize. In the particular situation of Late-Modernity, there can be no doubt any longer that “the imperatives originating in the inter-relatedness of all the elements in the local habitat” have to be made a priority of decision-making. This means that any human activity, that encroaches on the habitat of other species, and on the habitat of the weakest among them, have to be curtailed and forbidden all together.
I know that this is a call for an extremely radical change in the ways of life under Modernity. I also understand that this can’t possibly be implemented in one go from one day to the next. But, from the perspective of life on this earth, the urgency is so high that we have to put immediately in place the necessary structural institutional changes that will absolutely permit younger generations to start acting radically in order to deflect the worse life outcome tomorrow.
Acting radically does not mean acting unreasonably and irrationally. Here follows a short list of what I view as being the necessary structural changes that have to be activated shortly :
-
knowledge wise :
The priority of ‘the reason at work within life’ has to be recognized by the scientific community as figuring higher than ‘the reason at work within capital’. And any blackmail by the traditional investors in science, private or public, has to be punished in the harshest possible fashion. -
sharing of the knowledge :
The media have to convert their traditional ways and transform into a public good by prioritizing the spread of knowledge about ‘the reason at work within life’. -
adapting the legal framework :
Legal systems have to prioritize activities that maximize ‘the reason at work within life’ while forbidding all activities generated by ‘the reason at work within capital’ that impinge on ‘the reason at work within life’. -
implementation of the new legal framework :
The implementation of such a legal framework has inevitably to remain in the control of older and more experienced professionals. But younger generations have to be given free reign to inspect their implementation and to correct their decisions in case their actions are not satisfactory to their younger perspectives. -
transmission of public decision-making power to the younger generations :
Humanity has entered the unknown of coming societal collapses and life extinction. This is no longer a time to favor the conservation of the status-quo. Innovation and change have to be prioritized and this can’t possibly be implemented by the older generations. For the sake of the future generations the decision-making power has to be given to the younger ones and older knowing people can act for advisors.
This is a skeleton of a plan that sketches the process to be followed in order to deflect the worse of what comes our way. This sketch should be fleshed out as soon as possible while also gaining the broadest popular agreement. The 5th, 6th, and 7th principles will further shed light on how to go about fleshing out this skeleton.
7.4.6.5. the settlement of disputes, between their polarities, leads species toward more complexity
The fifth principle of life can be sketched as follows :
Species focus primarily on ensuring their reproduction over the long haul of as many generations as possible. And if they succeed the feat to reproduce over the very long haul their target expands to increasing, as much as they possibly can, their physical and mental complexity.
These two objectives are contradictory which is the cause of much confusion particularly under a radically flawed Western Late-Modernity. Covid-19 has brought the enormity of this confusion to the fore and it has passed judgment on human governance around the world. This judgment is non negotiable. It is by now inscribed in the historical facts. And what the facts show without an inch of a doubt is that countries plagued by hyper-individualism have been penalized by high death counts and huge falls in their economic output while countries that are gifted with a high sense of community have minimized their death counts and have also minimized the fall of their economic output.
These incontestable facts came just in time to confirm the operational truth of this 5th principle of life that views societal negotiated settlements, of conflicts between conservation and change, as the originators of increased mental and physical complexity. In view of these incontestable facts, in all logic, we should assist at a coming re-calibration of societal priorities around the world. But I will not hold my breadth. The weight of ideology is indeed acting as a powerful anesthetic on the minds…
_______________
11. In the Yuan dynasty "yin yang academy".
12. See modulation of the “cultural field”
13. “Roundtable : A Modern mass-extinction” PBS
14. “Mass extinction underway, majority of biologists say”, The Washington Post, by Jo Warrick. 1998-04-21.
“the interactions between the two polarities of a species (individuals = change and society = conservation) drive their negotiated settlements toward ever more complexity which participates in the growth of the species and of the whole Universe”
Species focus primarily on ensuring their reproduction over the long haul of as many generations as possible. And if they succeed the feat to reproduce over the very long haul their target expands to increasing, as much as they possibly can, their physical and mental complexity.
These two objectives are contradictory which is the cause of much confusion particularly under a radically flawed Western Late-Modernity. Covid-19 has brought the enormity of this confusion to the fore and it has passed judgment on human governance around the world. This judgment is non negotiable. It is by now inscribed in the historical facts. And what the facts show without an inch of a doubt is that countries plagued by hyper-individualism have been penalized by high death counts and huge falls in their economic output while countries that are gifted with a high sense of community have minimized their death counts and have also minimized the fall of their economic output.
These incontestable facts came just in time to confirm the operational truth of this 5th principle of life that views societal negotiated settlements, of conflicts between conservation and change, as the originators of increased mental and physical complexity. In view of these incontestable facts, in all logic, we should assist at a coming re-calibration of societal priorities around the world. But I will not hold my breadth. The weight of ideology is indeed acting as a powerful anesthetic on the minds…
7.4.6.6. the loop from the whole to the local and back to the whole
I sketch the sixth principle of life as follows :
Not only do successful societal negotiated settlements increase societal complexity they also increase the consciousness of the species’ polarities which solidifies ‒ their capacity to reproduce over the long haul ‒ their capacity to increase their complexity by further settling the contradictions between their objectives.
The successful societal negotiation of settlements, by reconciling the contradictory objectives of the polarities of the species, is the holy grail of the human species.
The holy grail is the search for the highest achievement of a species. But the loop, from the species and its particles to the whole, is even more important because it injects into the whole the consciousness of the higher levels of complexity of its parts. This loop from the parts to the whole are furthermore actualizing the universal potential by adjusting its existing possibilities to the increased local complexity and this eventually expands the potential possibilities to new territories.
What is most important for us, human individual particles, is not a finer granularity in the description of the loop from the parts to the whole, the actualization of the consciousness of the whole, or the expansion of the universal potential. What is most important is to size the systemic dynamic that is at work between the ensembles from the whole that implicates the parts to the parts that actualize the whole.
This systemic dynamic implies that the whole universe, in which we are but tiny tiny particles, is on an unknown trajectory which is a known unknown that, for the sake of our species’ sanity, we better keep locked up. What I mean to say is that, in their search for knowledge, the individual particles should not forget their own standing in the grand scheme of things. The individual particles participate in this grand scheme but have no control over it. So they have to show respect, and willing blind acceptance, of the whole’s trajectory.
“the negotiated settlement of conflicts, by the polarities of species, results in fostering individual awareness and increased consciousness which eventually contributes to the growing wisdom of human individuals and their societies. Individual and societal wisdom are then synchronized back to the whole (U) increasing thus its own consciousness about its wholeness and about the evolution of its parts.
This process grows the whole and its parts into ever higher levels of physical and mental complexity.
The true nature of life has thus definitely nothing to do with randomness.“
Not only do successful societal negotiated settlements increase societal complexity they also increase the consciousness of the species’ polarities which solidifies ‒ their capacity to reproduce over the long haul ‒ their capacity to increase their complexity by further settling the contradictions between their objectives.
The successful societal negotiation of settlements, by reconciling the contradictory objectives of the polarities of the species, is the holy grail of the human species.
The holy grail is the search for the highest achievement of a species. But the loop, from the species and its particles to the whole, is even more important because it injects into the whole the consciousness of the higher levels of complexity of its parts. This loop from the parts to the whole are furthermore actualizing the universal potential by adjusting its existing possibilities to the increased local complexity and this eventually expands the potential possibilities to new territories.
What is most important for us, human individual particles, is not a finer granularity in the description of the loop from the parts to the whole, the actualization of the consciousness of the whole, or the expansion of the universal potential. What is most important is to size the systemic dynamic that is at work between the ensembles from the whole that implicates the parts to the parts that actualize the whole.
This systemic dynamic implies that the whole universe, in which we are but tiny tiny particles, is on an unknown trajectory which is a known unknown that, for the sake of our species’ sanity, we better keep locked up. What I mean to say is that, in their search for knowledge, the individual particles should not forget their own standing in the grand scheme of things. The individual particles participate in this grand scheme but have no control over it. So they have to show respect, and willing blind acceptance, of the whole’s trajectory.
7.4.6.7. the true meaning of life
This seventh principle procures true meaning to life which promises the melting away of individual anxiety and an eventual boosting of societal cohesion, that is, if enough individuals have accessed this true meaning. Both these factors are a promise of easing the circulation of the vital flow between the whole and its parts. But we have always to remember that this is a promise and not a given. The individual particles and their societies have indeed to be willing participants in this systemic dynamic.
I sketch this 7th principle as follows :
Those who are not in the know view the Universe as a mass of random processes and derive from this erroneous observation that the individual particles are free to roam in whatever direction. But they move and talk without conviction and are soon stuck in the boredom of a meaningless life.
Those who are in the know view their life as the embodiment of a mission to grow the physical and mental complexity of their societies which will then be further synchronized with the whole. The meaning of their life resides in the systemic dynamic that is at work in the universal ensemble ‒ from the whole that implicates the parts ‒ to the parts that actualize the whole.
The belief in randomness, from a societal perspective, is a killer of societal cohesion which leads societies on a path of extinction. From an individual perspective both, a melting societal cohesion and a societal extinction, result in a life of dire suffering.
The belief, in a mission to grow the physical and mental complexity of society, opens a societal path of cooperation and trust between the individuals that boost societal cohesion. From an individual perspective the trust and cooperation between the individuals quietens the mind and opens one’s mental horizons to the systemic dynamic that is at work in the universal ensemble. This definitely gives meaning to one’s life and abates suffering.
I sketch this 7th principle as follows :
“Life and consciousness participate in the physical and mental growth of the sub-ensembles which is then synchronized with the whole. This implies that the living species emerging in the sub-ensembles of the Universe are on a mission to participate in its physical and mental growth. That mission consists in ensuring their own physical and mental growth in order to possibly contribute to the growth of the whole.
The species, that for whatever reason are going against the mission assigned to them by the principle of life, are condemning themselves to a meaningless life made of suffering and eventually go extinct.”
Those who are not in the know view the Universe as a mass of random processes and derive from this erroneous observation that the individual particles are free to roam in whatever direction. But they move and talk without conviction and are soon stuck in the boredom of a meaningless life.
Those who are in the know view their life as the embodiment of a mission to grow the physical and mental complexity of their societies which will then be further synchronized with the whole. The meaning of their life resides in the systemic dynamic that is at work in the universal ensemble ‒ from the whole that implicates the parts ‒ to the parts that actualize the whole.
The belief in randomness, from a societal perspective, is a killer of societal cohesion which leads societies on a path of extinction. From an individual perspective both, a melting societal cohesion and a societal extinction, result in a life of dire suffering.
The belief, in a mission to grow the physical and mental complexity of society, opens a societal path of cooperation and trust between the individuals that boost societal cohesion. From an individual perspective the trust and cooperation between the individuals quietens the mind and opens one’s mental horizons to the systemic dynamic that is at work in the universal ensemble. This definitely gives meaning to one’s life and abates suffering.
7.4.6.8. a new credo in After-Modernity
The seven commandments of life :
The species, that for whatever reason are going against the mission assigned to them by these 7 principles of life, are condemning themselves to a meaningless life made of suffering that puts them on the path of their extinction.
- the potential, of ‘the Implicate Order’ of the ‘whole Universe’, is infinite but its seeds can only sprout after the right conditions are assembled locally.
- 2. the interactions, between the polarities of entities, power the changes and transformations of the local elements. After the local conditions for the sprouting of the seeds, flowing in the implicate order, have been assembled the universal potential eventually unfolds into life.
- the interactions, between the local context and the universal potential, eventually unfold life which immediately takes a direction of its own by evolving into one of various living species. This is called the embodiment of life.
- local directionality of life has to submit ‒ to the flow of possibilities originating in “the Implicate Order” of the whole ‒ to the imperatives originating in the inter-relatedness of all the elements in the local habitat. Non-submission to these foundational rules results in the ugliness of irrevocable damages to the local habitat which in turn results in irrevocable damages to the species’ chances to reproduce over the long haul.
- 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 species and of the whole Universe
- the negotiated settlements of such conflicts result in fostering individual awareness, and increasing consciousness, which eventually contributes to the growing wisdom of human individuals and their societies. These individual and societal wisdom are then reverberated back to the whole Universe increasing thus its own consciousness about its own wholeness and about the evolution of its parts.
- This process grows the whole and its parts into ever higher levels of physical and mental complexity.
- What this all implies is that the true nature of life has nothing to do with randomness.
- Life is an unbroken energetic cycle that flows from “the implicate order” of the whole and eventually unfolds, in its sub-systems where all the conditions for the sprouting of its seeds have materialized, into species that try to reach more complexity.
- The increase of complexity, in the consciousness and in the organization of species, contributes to the increase in consciousness of the whole about the evolution of its wholeness through the evolution of its sub-systems and their elements.
- Life and consciousness participate in the physical and mental growth of the sub-ensembles which are then synchronized with the whole. The living species that eventually emerge in the sub-ensembles of the Universe are thus on a mission to participate in its physical and mental growth. That mission consists in ensuring their own physical and mental growth in order to possibly contribute to the growth of the whole.
The species, that for whatever reason are going against the mission assigned to them by these 7 principles of life, are condemning themselves to a meaningless life made of suffering that puts them on the path of their extinction.
_______________
Notes
1. “Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, June 24–30, 2020.” Weekly / August 14, 2020 / 69(32);1049–1057. Authors : Mark É. Czeisler1,2; Rashon I. Lane, MA3; Emiko Petrosky, MD3; Joshua F. Wiley, PhD1; Aleta Christensen, MPH3; Rashid Njai, PhD3; Matthew D. Weaver, PhD1,4,5; Rebecca Robbins, PhD4,5; Elise R. Facer-Childs, PhD1; Laura K. Barger, PhD4,5; Charles A. Czeisler, MD, PhD1,4,5; Mark E. Howard, MBBS, PhD1,2,6; Shantha M.W. Rajaratnam, PhD
2. by Glenn Greenwald in “The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling”. The Intercept. 2020-08-26.
3. “non-acting doing” simply means following the flow without the impact of one’s ‘will’ or ‘desires’. In my conclusion of “What is going on ?” I wrote following about this :
4. The recognition of suffering and its alleviation by knowledge was not only the foundational idea of pragmatism. It was also the foundation of societal evolution.
5. In Appendix B of “Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order A dialogue between Rupert Sheldrake and David Bohm” first published in ReVision Journal. Renée Weber, the journal’s editor gives the following clarification on the concepts “projection” and “injection” :
6. I gave a tentative summary of the “the true nature of life” in the conclusion of “What to do ? Part 7. Finding meaning in life. 7.5.2. pragmatism is aesthetically beautiful” that I quoted in the introduction of 7.4.6. The summary I give here and in the following chapters is an adaptation of these “principles of life” to the evolution of my thinking while writing these pages.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order” by David Bohm. First published 1980 by Routledge & Kegan Paul
8. ppm = Parts Per Million
9. I describe the occurrence of a radical divergence, between the Middle-East and China in their transition from tribal to power societies, in “From Modernity to After-Modernity” Book 2 - Volume 4. Governance and societal evolution” (blog posts 212-219 written during the winter 2015-2016).
10. In “Çatalhöyük: 4,000 years of peace without war” Professor Hodder says the following :
2. by Glenn Greenwald in “The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling”. The Intercept. 2020-08-26.
3. “non-acting doing” simply means following the flow without the impact of one’s ‘will’ or ‘desires’. In my conclusion of “What is going on ?” I wrote following about this :
“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 that originate in the inter-relatedness 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 inter-relatedness of the elements in the local habitat, is bound to be ugly and damaging for the habitat of its creator.”
4. The recognition of suffering and its alleviation by knowledge was not only the foundational idea of pragmatism. It was also the foundation of societal evolution.
5. In Appendix B of “Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order A dialogue between Rupert Sheldrake and David Bohm” first published in ReVision Journal. Renée Weber, the journal’s editor gives the following clarification on the concepts “projection” and “injection” :
“Each moment will therefore contain a projection of the re-injection of the previous moments, which is a kind of memory; so that would result in a general replication of past forms”.
6. I gave a tentative summary of the “the true nature of life” in the conclusion of “What to do ? Part 7. Finding meaning in life. 7.5.2. pragmatism is aesthetically beautiful” that I quoted in the introduction of 7.4.6. The summary I give here and in the following chapters is an adaptation of these “principles of life” to the evolution of my thinking while writing these pages.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order” by David Bohm. First published 1980 by Routledge & Kegan Paul
8. ppm = Parts Per Million
9. I describe the occurrence of a radical divergence, between the Middle-East and China in their transition from tribal to power societies, in “From Modernity to After-Modernity” Book 2 - Volume 4. Governance and societal evolution” (blog posts 212-219 written during the winter 2015-2016).
10. In “Çatalhöyük: 4,000 years of peace without war” Professor Hodder says the following :
“Çatalhöyük was once a truly stable society. The ancient inhabitants successfully lead a simple life in peace, without fighting, for 4,000 years. It's a superb example and model of a way of life free from fighting. Since collective life within society was important in ancient times, individuality was not seen in Çatalhöyük. The locals used to share a common life and sustained a lifestyle living in peace, without any leader. Family relationships were not very common between them. Rather than living together with family members, these people used to live together with other people from within the society. They were a complex society genetically. Thought to consist of between 3,000 and 8,000 people, they were a truly large family.”
11. In the Yuan dynasty "yin yang academy".
12. See modulation of the “cultural field”
13. “Roundtable : A Modern mass-extinction” PBS
14. “Mass extinction underway, majority of biologists say”, The Washington Post, by Jo Warrick. 1998-04-21.
The scary thing is that this poll was taken more than 12 years ago and since then the destruction of the habitat of life has accelerated considerably which implies that even larger proportions of biologists today would agree with the statement that a "mass extinction" is underway …“Nearly seven out of 10 of the biologists polled said they believed a "mass extinction" was underway, and an equal number predicted that up to one-fifth of all living species could disappear within 30 years. Nearly all attributed the losses to human activity, especially the destruction of plant and animal habitats. … The scientists interviewed in the Louis Harris poll were members of the Washington-based American Institute of Biological Sciences, a professional society of more than 5,000 scientists”
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