Replying to LO24312 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>He was apparently walking down a beach strewn with living
>starfish and as fast as the sea threw them up onto the beach
>into the burning sun to perish he was throwing them back, he
>was fighting a losing battle. A man saw this with crystal clarity
>and helpfully informed him of the obvious, saying to him, ' No
>point in doing that old son, you'll never throw them all back,
>so what's the point?' Brian replied, ' I know, but you see it
>makes a difference to those I do throw back.'
>
>Funny how the man did not see until he could see.
Greetings Andrew,
This beautiful story is also a powerful parable. Thank you very much.
The requisite in a parable (shorter) or in a allegory (longer) is its
content, traditionally called its story. This content is needed to become
aware of a certain form, traditionally called the lesson -- the seeing in
the seeing. According to tradition the lesson is moral or religious.
But people of old times knew little of the actual relationships between
creativity, knowledge, wisdom, morality, faith, religion and love. They
only knew that all these things together shaped the personality of a
human.
We are now entering the age of complexity. In this age we are learning how
all these facets of personality are related to each other. In these
relationships chaos and order play an extraordinary role. They help to
establish the rhythm of the evolution of one relationship into another. A
higher order facet of personality emerges from a lower order facet by way
of a bifurcation at the brink of chaos.
This emergence is highly contingent. Should not all the sufficiency
conditions be satisfied, the bifurcation will result rather in a
destructive immergence. The basic patterns in these sufficiency conditions
stay the same for each emergence at every level. The only difference from
level to level is the maturity of these patterns. We may reflect on these
sufficiency conditions by means of the seven essentialities.
According to tradition the lesson in a parable or allegory is moral or
religious. However, morals and beliefs come into existence by way of
emergences empowered by the seven esssentialities. Consequently, when we
became aware of the seven essentialties, we may spot one or more of them
in a parable or allegory. This causes some people to react negatively
towards the essentialities since they had hurting experiences with morals
and beliefs forced onto them rather than becoming aware of these morals
and beliefs through internal emergences. It is easy to confuse the morals
and beliefs with the essentialties because the essentialities empower or
sustain the former. However, the power of the essentialities are universal
because they sustain all emergences, even the primitive emergences in the
physical world such as atoms from elementary particles and molecules from
atoms.
For example, Jan Smuts (1926, Holism and Evolution) was deeply aware of
the power of wholeness in sustaining and driving evolution. But the
majority of his own people thought that he was proclaiming a new religion,
alien to their own Calvinistic tradition. Thus many of them were lured
into accepting apartheid (anti-holism) as a sound ideology and policy.
When we look at Andrew's parable, the "man" was aware of only spareness
("quantity-limit"). But the "son" was also aware of otherness
("quality-variety"). He knew that he would never reach the limit of the
quantity to be thrown back into the sea. But he also knew that his deeds
had a quality to it in maintaining the variety of life. But he was also
aware of fruitfulness ("connect-beget") unlike the "man". He manifested
this in every starfish he picked up. He was also aware of liveness
("becoming-being") unlike the "man". Every starfish was thrown back into
the sea and not dropped again onto the beach. So what about the remaining
essentialities: sureness ("identity-categoricity"), wholeness
("monadicity-associativity") and openness ("open-paradigm")? Was the
"man" aware of them?
>You think this is esoteric?
>
>At de Lange speaks occasionally of the Renaissance, the
>Guilds, 'old things', history. OK At, let me a little 'connecting' do
;-)
>I see a world of people very much in 'uncreative collapse' mode.
>The age will still demand and fashion a generation who will
>convert that dark into light,
Andrew, I speak of history because I am intensely aware of the rhythm of
"deep creativity". Some people believe that there is no evolution at at
all. Others will concede to evolution as a slow, reversible and thus
linear change. But very few see the rhythm or "dance of change" in this
evolution. Even less see the deeper change in the dance of change. In
other words, very few people are aware of short lived rhythms with a fast
tempo and long term rhythms with a slow tempo.
Its a complexity of rhythms in rhythms as Beethoven tells us in his later
piano sonatas or Rachmaninoff in his rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. Yes,
artists rather than scientists are at the frontiers of human awareness
trying to express what the majority of humankind is still unaware off. But
when a scientist from whatever branch of science tries do the same, the
codifications are unfamiliar to at least his/her peers so that that under
their guidance the majority of humankind suspect him/her of scientific
treason rather than original, independent thinking, paving the way into a
new scientific era.
Again we can think of Jan Smuts as an example. When Wolfgang Goethe tried
to make scientists aware of wholeness in science, they squashed his
efforts as the drudgings of poet who was not satisfied to be immortal
merely as a poet. But when Jan Smuts did it once again, showing how
important wholeness is as a force of evolution which spans both the
physical and spiritual world, they judged it as philosophical musings
rather than an actual scientific work. Thus Smuts is today still
remembered by a few people as a statesman or a philosopher, but not as a
scientist. Only when David Boehm several centuries later began to uncover
the role of wholeness in Quantum Mechanics itself, are some scientists now
willing not to judge wholeness as an unscientific idiosyncracy.
The most compelling example for me of a creative collapse in the physical
world is in the order of the insecta. It happens when a worm transforms
into a pupa which then transforms into a butterfly. During the pupa stage,
all the organs of the worm collapse into a "primordial soup" before the
organs of the butterfly emerge from that soup. The collapse and the
emergences all happen through the complex actions of a diversity of
enzymes.
People get interested in "complexity science" when it is pictured by the
parable that a severe tempest destroying some region in the world may have
been caused by a butterfly flapping its wings in another part of the world
far away. This parable tells us about wholeness. But complexity science is
more than that because it is also pictured by the parable of how a worm,
by collapsing in the pupa stage, emerges into that butterfly causing all
the interest!
Andrew, most people assume that humankind is now at the worm stage, eating
and growing, eating and growing, eating and growing. Why? Because it is
so easy to make predictions on eating and growing. Yes, when we die, worms
will eat up our cadavers if they are not buried deeply in tight coffins.
But what about those very worms which we prevent the course of life? Do
they not tell us that even the worm stage is also limited -- spareness
coming into play?
Few people realise that humankind is once again in the pupa stage. I
myself believe that this pupa stage is one of the profoundest since the
emergence of Homo sapiens from Homo erectus. I can compare its immensity
with only two previous pupa stages with sufficient documentation in the
history of Homo sapiens. (The emergence of spoken language is a pupa stage
which we have to leave out since we have no documentation on it.) The
first one happened about 6 to 10 millenia ago (depending how we interpret
C-14 dating, but that is too long an explanation for now) when humankind
began to express its experiences also as hieroglyphs on rocks and not only
in speach. The second one happened about two and a half millenia ago when
humankind began to explore the world with these writings as its guide.
I prefer to think of the first pupa stage as the birth of the childhood of
human creativity, the second stage as the transformation into the teenhood
of human creativity and the present third stage as the transformation into
the adulthood of human creativity. The difference in personality between
a child, a teenager and an adult is a fair metaphor of how humankind
behaved, is behaving and will behave in the three dispensations with
respect to human creativity.
I wrote a contribution about a year ago to this list in which I depicted
the essence of leadership as that of a catalyst. Ensymes are the
catalysts of the biological realm. Whereas catalysts in the inorganic
realm stays the same for billions of years, they evolve in the biological
world to become more complex million years after million years. It is
likewise with leaders among humankind.
Think about leaders in wholeness. The awareness to wholeness of Gottfried
Leibniz in the 17th century was more mature than that of Roger Bacon in
the 13th centurty. That of Goethe in 19th century was more than that of
Leibniz and that of Smuts in the 20th century more than that of Goethe.
But more important than comparing their differences, was the fact that
they all functioned as enzymes in catalysing certain transformations
(Renaissance, Enlightenment, Science-Technology-Industry) which each
brought humankind closer to the pupa stage it is presently entering. In
other words, they together with later comers like Boehm and Prigogine will
function as one complex enzyme for wholeness preparing humankind for the
new dispensation through a grand creative collapse.
We may stare ourselves blind at the explications of an individual leader
of the present age. We must open our eyes to the implicate order of an
extraordinary wave packet of leaders, each coming from a different age,
but together forming a "strange LO" which spans many ages in a
dispensation. It is this implicate order of leaders rather than any
individual among them which will catalyze the dispensation into its pupa
stage. But when the many popular leaders rather than few authentic leaders
of any one age pack together, please do not expect the same thing from
this pack of predators. And please do not expect any one the few authetic
leaders, belonging to the same age as the pack of popular leaders, to keep
them at bay. It will only distress the authentic leaders immensely.
>At' I want to ask you here and now, are we living ourselves into
>an age demanding of us our maximum 'spareness' potential
>and is this paradox a true one?
Dear Andrew, even though present technology is unprecedented, the
preoccupation of humankind with technology is not. We find waves of
technological innovation which synchronises with waves in human
civilisation. For example, trace the history of technology in warfare
which is fairly well documented to become aware of these preoccupations.
We should take care not to get brain washed by the present flood of
commentaries on technological innovation, but rather try to paint a rich
picture so as to see where we are coming from and where we are going to.
Insight into evolution without painting rich pictures is virtually
impossible.
Techonology is usually concerned with spareness ("quantity- limit").
Humankind tries to reach the limit of extensive quantities by using
technology because the human itself is a limited creature. In other words,
humankind uses technology so as to extend its own limitations. This
feeling of transgressing human limitations is so bewitching that humankind
becomes ignorant to the inherent limitations of technology itself. That is
why, for example, the discovery of the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg
came as such a great shock to scientists. We demand "maximum spareness
potential" from our technology rather than our age demanding it from us.
Our age merely points, according to the rhythm in evolution, that we have
reached the end of a very long dispensation.
The hot question which we should ask ourselves, is how much longer can
humankind sustain its present way of living which relies so much on
techology of all kinds. The key to the answer of this question is the
concept of "free energy" which gives rise to "entropy production" when one
form of energy is converted into another. Technology devours "free energy"
and thus pollutes the environment with destructive immergences rather than
enrich it with constructive emergences. The reason is that techonology
lacks the qualities of living systems which also produces entropy by
consuming free energy, but which let this entropy production be manifested
constructively as order rather than destructively as chaos.
How much longer can humankind stay the kind of BIG worm which it now is.
Yes, I mean the BIG. For example, study John Ziman's book "The Force of
Knowledge" to become aware of how humankind thinks of its modern
achievements in science and technology as BIG advancements. We will find
the same infatuation in economics, sociology, recreation, politics,
demography and even religion -- humankind has become BIG now.
Dear Andrew, when the worm has become very BIG, it is very close to its
pupa stage. I strongly urge you to become aware of the shut-down of some
typical worm activities. They may seem to be insignificant or even a
nuisance to those who wish to ride the soliton wave to its very end. But
its end is the very "continent of some contingency" which the very medium
carrying the soliton wave is ignorant to.
The paradox in spareness (like in any other essentiality) is
manifested when a particular essentiality is deliberately denied.
In this case it is the essentiality openness ("open-paradigm").
When the one BIG worm says to the other BIG worm upon
seeing a butterfly gracefully flying over them:
"It is better to eat and grow than to become a creature
like that which do not eat and grow, but spill all its free
energy in flying from flower after flower to pollinate it",
then the paradox gets resolved to all who learned to paint the
rich picture.
As you have quoted:
"In the light there is darkness,
but don't take it as darkness.
In the dark there is light,
but don't take it as light."
Lastly, compassion is linked to the awareness of creative collapses. The
best example of this outside the world of human awareness is among
elephants. Because of their gigantic size, they are the least prone to
prey-predator digestions. Thus they are particularly tuned to creative
collapses rather than destructive immergences. When an old elephant,
either a lone bull or a cow in the herd, becomes aware that it is time to
die, it signals to the others to follow it. Then a funeral procession
begin in which the dying elephant is comforted by the subaudible rumblings
of its companions to their secluded grave yard. None of those joining the
procession will divert from it until the last ritual has been completed.
There are no false pretentions among those who join the procession, but a
deep commitment to caring love going beyond death.
When they arrive at the grave yard, they all will once again take sniffs
at the skeletons already laying around, raising their trunks and making
soft shrieking sounds. Then the companions will gently lower down the
dying elephant to its knees, even though it could have done this last
kneeling as if in prayer itself. Then they will softly turn it over to its
side, caressing compassionately its body with their trunks. All of them
knows that death will come peacefully as a result of laying for a
prolonged period on the side. With their trunks they embalm this peace
into the body of the dying elephant, becoming one with it in death. We do
not know what they actually know about life after death, but they seem to
know that death is the last act as the very creative collapse of the
present living.
Afterwards they will stay another couple of hours, caressing each other,
filling up the void left by their companion, walking slowly in strange
ways as if trying to trace the very figure of life. They will now and
again nudge the body of their companion until they are sure that rigor
mortis have set in -- the last becoming of their companion. Then they will
leave for the scavengers to benefit too from this creative collapse.
Andrew, in our compassion we must not only caress, but also have to move
in seemingly strange ways so as to figure life as the prefiguration of
what will become. As you have written:-
>We are living maybe in a prefigurative age then; we must make or
>create the outcomes in real time space as it newly presents itself,
>not seek them through walking along the neat converging lines of
>the old linear perspectives and accept the deeper realities of a
>'smashed space' and build what we can with the voids and pieces.
Spareness does not signal death. It reminds us of the new life which will
emerge from an old life. Let us put as little baggage of past destructions
in that new life. We owe it to our children so that their laughter and joy
can fill the world, displacing the crying and sorrow which we brought into
it.
When you see a child smiling so sweetly that it numbs the mind and opens
the heart, its time to think about that the future of children and make
peace with your own hurting past.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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