Replying to LO24350 --
Dear Organlearners,
Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz> writes in reply to my
observation on the phsyical sciences:
>>In the evolution of all of them the "becoming-being" imagination
>>is now essential.
>
>I think the concepts of scientific thought will not take the
>same road as it did in the last 500 years because of what
>we now know from all the sciences.
Greetings Gavin,
I agree. It is also the very point which I stressed. "Becoming-being" is
a pattern which entered science some 400 years ago as a "meta-scientific"
pattern rather than as a concept of science itself. But through the
evolution of concepts that 400 years it is now possible to categorise many
dualistic concepts in science as instances of this "becoming-being"
pattern. (I have given some examples in LO24340.) Prigogine was the first
to point out as the main theme of his book "From being to becoming" that
this is a pattern running through all the phsyical sciences.
I wish to stress once again that it entered science as a "meta-scientific"
pattern. Thus, after 400 years, it may still be a meta-scientific pattern
despite all its extensive ramifications. By "meta-scientific" I do not
mean "un-scientific" or even "para-scientific". I simply mean that it is a
pattern which humans already were aware of when modern science began some
400 years ago with Boyle's Law. The evolution of Western science goes back
much further to the Greeks and even the Babilonians and Egyptians before
them. However, the awareness to the "becoming-being" pattern goes backjust
as far.
>Remember we make it essential because we deem it to be so.
There are many ways how people interpret "essential" and thus how they
"determine" something to be essential. In my series on the seven
essentialities I stress that I follow Husserl's interpretation. Something
is essential to a phenomenon when that phenomenon cease to exist when that
something is "thought away". Thus, for example, motivation is essential to
humankind. Without it humankind will not do anything which is typical of
humankind.
The awareness to the "becoming-being" pattern is also essential to
humankind. For example, without that awareness we will not be able to
communicate any more since this pattern is essential to all natural
languages. The reason why I call the essential "becoming-being" pattern an
essential-ITY, is because together with sicx other patterns they have a
unique bearing on our creativity and whatever emerge from such creativity.
Thus, although motivation is essential, it is not an essential-ITY.
>You might be referring here to alchemy and chemistry
>astronomy and astrology, but I think that metaphor does not exist
>in our modern world as it did hundreds of years ago. Although on
>the other hand we have spiritualists talking to heaven knows what
>and coming up with bizarre ideas.
If I wanted to include alchemy and astrology under science, I would have
done so. All the branches of science rely on the principle of causality to
make careful observations and to falsify creative speculations based on
such observations. Alchemy and astrology sidestep the priciple of
causality.
The "becoming-being" pattern may appear like a metaphor, but it is merely
because I use words to name this pattern. I am able to formulate this
pattern without words in terms of some very abstract symbolism as I did in
my original discovery of the seven patterns. I promise you that it will
appear for most people like a bizarre or horrible scribble rather than a
metaphor.
Ouch -- the problems which we get into with language. There is a vast
difference between "spiritualism" and "spirituality". I do not want to say
anything ons "spritualism" per se. Languages follow as a rule of thumb
"precedence" in interpretation when ambiguities arise. A "spiritualist" is
person who ascribes to "spritualism". A "spiritualist" has nothing to do
with a person who ascribes "spirituality" as a property of a person.
Sadly, the word "spiritual(s)" would have sufficed for persons who
consider spirituality as a property of a person. That name is used to
denote the Fraticelli sect (13-15th century).
In the essentiality wholeness I have explained the very important
difference for me between holism and wholeness. An "### - ism" in general
results when the ### is believed to be the one and only sound basis to
work from. I very much believe in "spirituality" as a most important
property of every human which makes it a person with a personality.
>>One of the things which I focus very much on, is the "awareness"
>>of living species other than humans on "becoming".
>
> .... I do not think that we have any awareness above the basic
>needs to survive (plus a whole host of so called higher values
>derived from the death instinct) which in the animal kingdom
>is food, protection, procreation. These are the motives.
Dear Gavin, every observation you make may indeed fit for you by
considering basic needs to survive as the motives for the animal kindom.
But its does not fit for me. I have made many observations that animal
behaviour is also motivated by "things" which seem to fit only humans
such as curioisty, compassion and happiness. I cannot describe these
things by "needs" even using my wildest imagination, although I can call
them propensities other than motives.
As for the "death instinct", I think that this needs much more
contemplation, perhaps also taking into account my concept of a "creative
collapse" from "deep creativity". The fact that you link the "higher
values" to the "death instinct" is most remarkable for me because it
points to the close relationship between the "creative collapse" and the
"bifurcation" from which a higher order as an emergence or lower order as
an immergence will result. The fact that you use the phrase "so called"
means that the whole issue of "becoming in order" is still highly
contended. It means that while some try to understand also "becoming in
order" others insist on "being in order", "only one order" or "no order at
all".
This brings us to the basic problem since the days of the Greeks who made
it a problem of either ontology or ontogeny but not both. (They apllied
LEM, the Law of the Excluded Middle.) Perhaps it is time to see a third
case: neither ontology, nor ontogeny but both as merely one colour of a
picture in seven colours!
>Animals cannot bind time they can only effect each others
>nervous systems within space - humans however are effected
>by those long dead.
I myself am very careful not to insist that animals, and for that very
reason, also plants as well as inorganic matter, have to conform to human
concepts of space and time. I am not exactly sure what you mean by "bind
time", but I assume it to be the human "awareness to span of time". Should
we be so arrogant as to insist that animals or plants have to be aware of
time, I have made many observations that they are indeed aware, but in a
far lesser degree than humans, of the "span of time". Even an unstable
fundamental particle is "aware of a span of time". When Einstein's theory
of relativity predicted this as time dilation, some scientists thought
that science has indeed gone bizarre. But when empirical studies on cosmic
rays proved that the faster a fundamental particle moves, the more it is
"aware of a span of time" other than our own "aware of a span of time".
However, as I have said, I rather try to understand the "world-outside-me"
without forcing from the "world-inside-me" my concept of "time" and
"awareness to span of time" on such an understanding. I now try to seek
the harmony between the "world-inside-me" and the "world-outside-me"
rather than forcing the latter to conform to the former.
Gavin, your next sentence
>(were is the continual, succession in animals (only in the gene
>structure)- I think becoming is not the correct term here)
points to the the difference in our viewpoints. You think of "gene
structure" as essential to maintaining a succession in animals. I have
pointed out several times that biologists are now convinced that all life
forms have at least two properties (many consider it as the only two
properties) -- heredity STRUCTURE (RNA, DNA) and catalytic PROCESS (basic
enzymes). Biological evolution is not "only in the gene structure" of
BEING, but also in the "enzymatic catalysis" of BECOMING.
Gavin, a few paragraphs later you write the following which has some
beautiful moments in it for me
>I do understand this however, for me to first understand my
>motivations was the most releasing feeling, I felt like dying
>and being reborn.
I can say exactly the same with respect to, FOR EXAMPLE, my understanding
of "spiritual free energy". But I can also say it with respect to, FOR
EXAMPLE, my understanding of "entropy production", the "seven
essentialities", "faith" and "one-to-many love". In other words, is it the
understanding of ONLY motivation which which affords your fantastic
description of "most releasing feeling, I felt like dying and being
reborn", or does it apply to EVERY emergent phase of authentic learning?
>Understanding ones personal motivation is the first step
>to releasing one from the binding of time, it releases the
>shackles of the past and unleashes a burst of energy that
>is fantastically creative.
Here is my rather clinical description of the same thing in terms of "deep
creativity". Each of us as a system (involving both the physical and
spiritual realms) has a certain amount of total energy. It generally
differs from person to person. Some of this total energy is
bound/unavailable because it has to maintain the present organisation
(chaos and order) of the system. The present organisation has a
history/evolution from the moment when the sperm cell (from the father)
and egg cell (from the mother) have fused into one new cell defining a new
life. The rest of the total energy which is not needed to maintain the
present organisation is called the "free energy" of the system. It has a
physical component and a spiritual component.
This "free energy" of any system is that which is needed to change the
organisation of that system itself and/or the organisation of any other
system(s) in its surroundings. This change leaves the system with less
free energy, and perhaps more organisation if it was spent on itself and
not also the surroundings. However, the system can obtain even more "free
energy" by letting some part (which also entails the history of that part)
of the present organisation collapse creatively. Thus this creative
collapse provide additional "free energy" which is often required for an
extraodinary creative venture because of the immense organisation in such
a venture require.
The higher the order of evolution, the greater the complexity of the
creative collapses possible. Thus at the high order of the human spirit
the complexity of creative collapses and thus the subsequent bifurcations
are stunning -- SO STUNNING THAT EVEN THE REST OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD AND
NOT MERELY HUMANS ARE BEGINNING TO SUFFER AS A RESULT OF HUMAN FORKINGS
TURNING BAD RATHER THAN BETTER! In other words, human creativity is
indeed fantastic, but also abdominable.
Who is to blame for this good-bad in my creativity -- The Creator,
spirits, other humans, animals, plants, inorganic matter, the stars,
subatoic particles, the Big Bang? Blaming will help me nothing in managing
this "constructive-destructive duality" in me. I have only my creativity
and that of fellow humans to search for the keys of understanding so that
eventually I can improve on my constructive creativity and diminish my
destructive creativity. My authentic learning that my "spiritual free
energy" is a "measure of my motivation" played and is still playing a key
role in the managing of this "constructive-destructive duality" in me.
I am not making claims on anybody else's creativity. I merely try to learn
authentically about their creativity as well as that of the rest of
Creation and of the Creator. The becomings and beings of that authentic
learning I try to express with my art (theory and practice) of "deep
creativity". I myself have a deep distrust for any kind of "rote" action,
whether it be "rote creating", "rote learning", "rote believing" or even
"rote loving". Because of this I have to urge others to distrust even my
concept of "deep creativity" and whatever "authentic actions" emerge from
it.
The only things remaining for me is to encourage others to learn and to
act as midwife with their learning. The key to midwifery is not trying to
control the "spiritual free energy" and thus motivation of a learner, but
to guide the leaner to BECOME master of his/her own motivations.
Gavin, I stress this "BECOMING of motivations" for a very definite reason.
When I read your last paragraph
>As I mentioned above you trying to give meaning to these
>concepts which if this gives meaning to you that is fine and
>actually healthy, but I cannot see or intuit this to be so for
>me it is a huge leap of faith for me to say that process
>(continuos field) is "becoming" the discriminated object
>"being".
I was shocked in to becoming conscious of myself when I was told I had to
take care of something which I caused, but of which I was not aware of.
That was more tha fifty years ago. Looking at my conscious life from that
day up to now, I can see it as a journey of motivations like a river
meandering towards the sea. It was not one motivation which pushed me
forward, but many of them. They came and went, the one connecting to the
other, often one into many and many into one. Some lasted for many years
and some for less than an hour. In terms of "deep creativity", it was a
journey of more than fifty years in which my "spiritual free energy"
changed fantastically in content and form.
I have carefully described elsewhere my motivation for the discovery of
the seven patterns (essentialities) of which liveness or "becoming-being"
is one of them. I deliberately tried to bridge the abyss between the
physical realm and spiritual realm of reality for a second time. I was not
satisfied that my first bridging was perhaps seredendipity and thus not
scientifically of any value. In science a discovery only counts when it
can be repeated. My first bridging was merely the discovery that LEP (Law
of Entropy Production) also applies to the abstract world of the mind and
not merely the material world of the brain. (I have careful described
elsewhere my motivation for this most unexpected discovery.) In other
words, my first discovery was to bridge the abyss between the physical and
spiritual realms of reality. Suddenly Prigogine's insight that LEP has the
power to bridge was not bizarre to me any more.
It took me five years to grow so much in my understanding of the seven
essentialities that I became brave enough to tell others about them too
despite their reactions to it. In the first five years I experienced much
hurt when my attempts to tell them in the traditional channels of academic
communication were met with so much words as: "Shut up you fool. We in our
discipline are not interested in such tripe." Were it not for the
emergence of Internet, I probably would have commited suicide as a result
of such clear rejections. I was once very near in doing so.
What I am doing in my contributions to the topic "To become or not to
become" is to paint a rich picture on the pattern "becoming-being",
looking to its inside and to its outside.
In the fifteeen years since their discovery, I have become extremely aware
how difficult is for other people to make any sense out of them. Many of
them experience it exactly as you have expressed it -- it requires "a huge
leap of faith". The more I tell them that authentic learning helped me to
understand them more, the more it becomes an issue of faith for them.
Crazy, is it not?
One of the problems which they have, is trying to weigh (evaluate) any of
these seven patterns against something which is very dear to them as a a
result of their own authentic learning. Here is an example. Motivation
becomes essential to the understanding of person X as a result of
authentic learning. Now the person weighs "motivation" against, say for
example, "becoming-being". The person finds that "motivation" is
actual-true-good-etc while "becoming-being" is virtual-false-bad-etc. So
drop this "becoming-being" pattern as something which have no value, if
not decidedly a negative value.
Let me offer some help again by way of a metaphor. Think of the seven
essentialities (patterns in the form of creativity) as the seven colours
which we will use in a painting. Say "becoming-being" is the colour
yellow. Now use all of them to paint a plant with flowers. Will you ever
compare the flower to the colour yellow and conclude that since the flower
is not the colour yellow, the colour yellow is virtual-false-bad-etc. so
that it has to be left out of the painting?
Gavin, thank you very much for sharing your doubts about the
"becoming-being" pattern. It is such doubts which makes midwifery in
authentic learning so priceless.
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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