White Rock, February 20, 2001
http://www.goodshare.org/femprin.htm
Introduction:
Imagine the difference in the 'tools' needed to model a world where the people lived on a relatively flat, infinite plane where the flora and fauna were consistent from place to place as were the languages and traditions in the human communities, ... versus the tools needed to model a world like our own, ... a spherical biospheric shell with highly diversified topographies and highly diversified floral and faunal ecologies and where the languages and traditions in the human communities are radically diversified.
Surprisingly, the scientific modeling tools we are currently using, based solely on 'the masculine principle' of 'assertion' do not change across these two very different scenarios because these scientific models are based solely on the properties and assertive actions of independent material entities. In other words, our scientific modeling tools are 'environment-shape-independent'. This is because, in our mainstream scientific tools, 'environment' and 'constituents' are regarded as collections of independent material entities and we therefore model environmental effects on the constituents by means of the transactions between the 'subject' material entity and the material entities in its enveloping environment. Meanwhile, our experience tells us that the 'shape of containing space' modulates our opportunity for transformation as we (the constituents) 'push off' our containing space. The sand grain (material constituent) and the sand dune (container shape) push off each other in their process of aesthetic co-transformation (the dune gets 'smoother and more curvy' and the sandgrain gets more rounded). Similarly, the waterflow in the mountain streams pushes off its banks to contour and plateau the landscape and give good footing to a diverse range of floral and faunal life - forms.
The 'shape of the containing space' which envelopes each individual has been termed in alchemy and psychology as 'the feminine principle' or 'soul'. Just as we do not have to cover the world with leather to make the earth easier to walk on, but can cover our feet instead, ... we do not have to mentally describe the shape of the world but can clothe our mind with 'the shape of our containing space'. The 'shape of space' is purely implicit and 'relativistic', and emerges in relativity theory from space-matter codynamics. That is, relativity theory, unlike mainstream scientific theory, says that 'space is a participant in physical phenomena' (Einstein). Our experience tells us the same thing, ... if we are driving in freeway traffic, we realize that we need 'space' of the appropriate shape to give us opportunity to move assertively through the traffic (the 'codynamic'), and we are aware that simultaneously, reciprocally to our assertive movement the shape of opportunity space is dynamically transforming. When we collaboratively manage this 'shape of space' which is clearly a participant in the phenomenon of 'flow'; i.e. when we embrace rather than deny 'the feminine principle', traffic can move far more fluidly and harmoniously.
Thus, our visualization of the world changes radically if we think of 'motion', not just in the pre-relativistic sense of 'the assertive behaviour of independent causal agents' which denies the influence of the 'shape' of the outer-inner volumetric codynamic, but think of 'motion' instead in the larger, inclusive, relativistic sense of 'container-constituent-codynamic' (i.e. 'space-time transformation'), ... the purposive asserting of the constituent into the opportunity-giving shape of its containing space. This larger 'dynamical volume' oriented view, supported by relativity and quantum theory, as well as by ancient wisdom and indigenous tradition constitutes the 'return of the feminine principle' to our toolset for modeling the world and natural phenomena.
When we re-embrace this 'feminine principle' we begin to see the world in terms of 'outer-inner balance' (e.g. environment-organism-dynamic-equilibrium) on many interconnecting nested levels, and to see problems as 'dissonance' (falling out of balance) rather than being constrained to postulate ultimate 'causal sources' such as the notional 'cancer cell' as the 'cause of cancer', 'genetic defects' as the 'cause of psychosis and mental problems', 'bad people' as the source of social problems and 'good people' as the source of 'prosperity'. The 'return of the feminine principle' has us, instead of visualizing a 'causal source' of 'health' problems which must be eliminated and/or suppressed, whether these be in terms of medicine, society, business or government), ... seeing 'therapy' in terms of restoring outer-inner codynamical balance, whether this be at the nesting level of atoms, molecules, cells, organs, organism, community, environment or all of the above.
Therapy based solely on 'the masculine principle' (modifying the assertive behaviour of 'independent' causal agents) has been the unquestioned way of mainstream science and has been applied to medicine, business (technology) and government. The need for therapy based on a 'return to the feminine principle' is what is stirring in the 'collective unconscious' of our third millenium world, though, in the transition, it is being confused with masculine principle based 'good against bad assertive activism'.
~^~~^~~^~
The wise sailor who seeks and finds safe harbour from the hurricane in the cove on the ‘lee’ side of the island ‘fares well’ not because of his assertive actions against the storm, nor because he receives ‘preferential treatment’ from the storm’s assertive actions. The sailor’s ‘well-faring’ is coming from beyond the notions of ‘assertive action’, … it is coming from quest for participating harmoniously in the space-time transformation within which he is a participating constituent, … by ‘letting go’ of his assertive and ‘causing’ (control) tendencies and allowing himself to engage ‘coresonantly with his containing space. In this ‘tuning-in’ to the purely implicit relative geometry of space-time, … he is implicitly recognizing that ‘to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose’. The wise sailor does not ‘pit himself’ against nature in a contrarian and nature-controlling manner, not even if his sailing vessel is the Titanic. Instead, he seeks harmonious engagement with his continually co-transforming containing space.
The geometry of ‘place’, even though it is purely implicit and relational, has a pull on us which we may refer to as ‘psychological’ at the level of organism and environment. But the space between things is ‘unbounded’ and connects without interruption with the space enveloping the organs, the cells, the molecules and the atoms and their ‘constituents’ ad infinitesimum.
How we ‘move’ relative to the dynamically transforming shape of our containing space effects our own continuing transformation; i.e. our movement can be visualized in terms of outer-inner co-transformation (habitat-inhabitant co-transformation). This ‘space-time’ transformational way of visualizing motion is a bigger, ‘inclusionary’ mode of perception which includes the ‘smaller story’ ‘rational’ view wherein we strip away the enveloping space and look solely at the material structures and their assertive kinetics, the inclusions within the enveloping unbounded shape of space, … looking at these inclusions as if they were uninfluenced by the shape of their enveloping environment, the source of their opportunity to assert.
Meanwhile, our western culture, through its evolved proclivity to have us worship at the altar of science and rationality, … encourages many of us from the time we are toddlers to see the world solely in material terms, … solely in terms of materiality and the ‘assertive behaviour of independent causal agents’, … a fundamentally constrained mode of perception which denies and discards the influence of the geometry of space and our codynamical engagement within it (otherwise known as the ‘feminine principle’).
Sometimes, in subjects very important to commerce-driven science and technology, the ‘feminine principle’ notion, that ‘the geometric shape of space’ is itself an ‘attractor’, cannot be avoided, and one sees statements such as the following;
“Another
type of semiconductor, called p-type, is formed by adding small
quantities of other impurities such as aluminum, boron, or gallium. These
impurities take electrons away from a few atoms of the semiconductor. This lack
of an electron in an atom is called a hole. A hole can pass from one atom
to another. A flow of such holes passing from atom to atom also forms an
electric current.”
If you think about, ‘holes’ pertains to the ‘shape of space’ and since the space between ‘things’ is unbounded, one cannot really speak of ‘holes’ in the plural but one must instead speak in terms of ‘the geometry of space’. This is indeed the message of the general theory of relativity.
Can you imagine a world in which the attraction of the ‘shape of space’ is not a factor?… where ‘place’ does not participate in physical phenomena, … where the material structures of the masculine no longer possess any desire to assert into and ‘become one’ with the female geometries of their containing space?
Since ancient times, this ‘coniunctio’, this tension which pulls together and seeks to reunify the purposively asserting material structures of the masculine with the opportunity-giving geometrical ‘shapes of space’ of the feminine has been recognized as a fundamental inductive force in nature. This model of outer-inner reunificational force gives the full ‘volumetric’ vision of the auto-transformative powers of our containing space (nature).
The moon symbolizes the ‘feminine principle’ in that it reflects back on us, seeding in us the notion of how we might look from the moon (from space looking from outside back inwards), and thus giving us the notion of ‘reflective thinking’ which can give us a reciprocally perceived sense of codynamical engagement with our environment, so that we don’t go off on an ‘assertive only’ tangent which loses sight of the simultaneous reciprocity between the shape-of-space-and constituent-kinetics.
Meanwhile, our ‘rationality’ reduces the space-time volumes of our experience to the flatspace concepts of absolute, binary, ‘logical’ opposition (plus and minus, good and bad, life and death etc.). So, from our experiencing of the relativistic, inductive codynamical reunificational pull of purposive material assertion and opportunity-giving shape-of-space, … a fully volumetric experience, … we are culturally conditioned to drop down to a reduced flatspace ‘binary logical’ conceptualization where the volume aspect disappears and we talk instead of ‘outer-inner codynamics’, in terms of ‘opposites’ attracting, not in terms of the ‘shape of space’ and its constituents, but in terms of ‘positive and negative’ ‘alignment’ of things.
The reduced non-outer-inner volumetric visualization of nature in terms of ‘forces’ between ‘material things’ out of the context of ‘the geometric shape of space’ is innately incapable of handling situations where multiple constituents are pulled together, … where the geometrical shape of the containing space at a particular nesting level behaves as an ‘attractor’ relative to its commensurately scaled constituents (e.g. when the safe harbour pulls many sailing vessels together as the weather becomes stormy).
While the invention of semiconductors emerged from the consideration of the ‘shape of space’ and the dynamical undulations in the shape of space around ‘sinks’ and ‘sources’, … such geometry continues to be ignored in mainstream scientific thinking.
Historically, the alchemists were amongst those who sought to understand this natural process of the material (masculine) wanting to re-unify with its containing space (feminine), i.e.;
“Alchemy, practiced
throughout the ancient world, is a science or art through which material is
subjected to a series of operations in order to produce gold or the so-called
philosopher's stone, the key to understanding everything. This latter was to be
reached by the union of opposites in the final process called the conjunctio,
normally imaged as the union of male and female in the form of the divine
androgyne or hermaphrodite. Although alchemy was practiced as literal chemistry,
it was also imaged metaphorically as a process of psychospiritual growth. In
this sense, even the literal chemical process was imagined to hold the mental
projections of the alchemist. It was Jung's main metaphor for the process of
individuation whereby opposites are held in tension and brought into harmony
through the constellation of a third possibility. “(http://www.soulworks.net/writings/essays/site_043.html
)
In Jungian psychology, both psychosis and individuation are explained in terms of this quest for the unification of the masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) principles present in all things. The feminine principle, being purely geometrical (relativistic) rather than material, … the ‘space-time container’ within which the material is domiciled (the ‘soul’ in theological terms), has been ‘denied’ by traditionalist science which seeks to explain everything and all things in terms of ‘the assertive behaviours of independent material causal agents’.
For one hundred years now, since the turn of the 19th to 20th century, we have had science whose principles re-establish the primacy of the ‘feminine principle’ (the shape of space) in natural phenomena (e.g. the science of Poincare- ‘The Relativity of Space’, Chaos Theory, … Einstein- ‘Relativity’, … Schroedinger- Quantum Wave Theory) . But the scientific tradition wherein masculine principle-based models prevail, … i.e. a science which denies the existence of the feminine principle, continues on with blinders in place and with the monopolar bit of flatspace rationality in its teeth,… driven by experience-contradicting abstraction such as ‘economic growth’, … scientific tradition which is infusing massive dissonance and dysfunction into society and environment alike.
Does our experience corroborate ‘relativity theory’ in its implication that the geometrical ‘shape of space’ (‘place’) is a primary transformative force in society? Native writer Scott Momaday (Kiowa) believes so and it springs forth naturally in his writing, as in this excerpt from ‘House Made of Dawn’;
"... and you just looked around at all the new and beautiful things. And after a while, the trader put some things out on the counter, sacks of flour and sugar, a slab of salt pork, some canned goods, and a little bag full of the hard red candy. And your grandfather took off one of his rings and gave it to the trader. It was a small green stone, set carelessly in thin silver. It was new and it wasn't worth very much, not all the trader gave for it, anyway. And the trader opened one of the cans, a big can of whole tomatoes, and your grandfather sprinkled sugar on the tomatoes and the two of you ate them right there and drank bottles of sweet red soda pop. And it was getting late and you rode home in the sunset and the whole land was cold and white. And that night your grandfather hammered the strips of silver and told you stories in the firelight. And you were little and right there in the center of everything, the sacred mountains, the snow-covered mountains and the hills, the gullies and the flats, the sundown and the night, everything --- where you were little, where you were and had to be."
How does one describe ‘the center of everything’, … ‘where you were and had to be’, … in the purely assertive terms of material kinetics, omitting the ‘quality’ emanating from the ‘dynamical shape of one’s enveloping space’? Is there a ‘psychological pull’ coming from the containing space which makes a difference in social phenomena, or is organismic and social transformation completely indifferent to the geometry of space?
Why is the person in a hospital bed so anxious to return home? Is there a difference in the ‘healing force’ coming from the geometry of space? At the level of ‘psychology’?, … at the level of physical process? Einstein said “Space is a participant in physical phenomena”. Can this be true?
What if, as in the case of semiconductors, we augmented our
scientific theory so that it would take ‘the shape of space’ into account?
What if we included that force which seems to emanate from the ‘shape
of space itself’ and which modulates the evolutionary flow patterns in social
and natural phenomena?, … i.e. “This
lack of an electron in an atom is called a hole. A hole can pass from one
atom to another. A flow of such holes passing from atom to atom also forms an
electric current.” (one can picture this ‘hole flow’ in unbounded
space-time terms, by imagining the shape of the inside volume of a wriggling and
undulating boa constrictor that has swallowed a pig).
If the ‘shape of
space’ is a participant in physical phenomena as Einstein maintained, we would
no longer be restricted to ‘opposites’ in the flatspace binary context of
‘material agents of opposite sign’, but would now be perceiving, inquirying,
responding and managing phenomena in terms of the full volumetric, relativistic
engagement of ‘the unbounded shape of dynamical containing opportunity
space’ in its codynamic with the dimensionally inferior bounded structures and
transactions coming from the assertive behaviours of ‘independent’ material
kinetic causal agents’.
How would this view of phenomena, of a codynamic between the ‘enveloping shape of containing space’ and ‘included material structures and their kinetics’, in place of modeling physical phenomena solely in terms of the latter ‘masculine principle’ change our social outlook?
Clearly, we would no longer be constrained to managing ‘dissonance’ by ‘stopping’ the assertive action ‘which was we presumed was causing the dissonance, … but we could manage instead by transforming the shape of space (moving the constituents relative to their own configuring geometry) so that it would ‘pull’ more harmoniously on the constituents. In other words, we could, by including the ‘feminine principle’, manage the ‘shape of dynamic opportunity space’ as the skilled player does in the game of pool. We could bring the patient home from the hospital to change the utility of their containing space so that it pulls more harmoniously on the psyche and the psyche pulls more harmoniously on the ‘psychosomatic network’ otherwise known as the ‘human being’.
This re-embrace of the ‘feminine principle would not be limited to psychology, however, since it is a general principle which applies to all aspects of nature at all nesting levels and across all nesting levels (i.e. from a volumetric ‘inner-outer’ visualizing, the material body ‘nests’ within the psyche which nests within the containing environment).
It is useful to examine the concept of ‘health’ in regard to models of reasoning which are (a) solely masculine principle based such as mainstream science and western management and governance theory, and (b) including the feminine principle with its natural ‘space-over-matter’ inclusionary primacy over the included but radically incomplete masculine principle. Dr. Robert Herwick [1] comments as follows;
* * *
“One of the most ancient concepts of health was that
personified by Hygiea, the Greek goddess of health who watched over the
corporeal welfare of the residents of Athens. Health was then based upon a unity
with nature, a temperate lifestyle and the belief that good health was a natural
attribute. Rather than treating the sick, Hygiea embodied the ideal of the
preservation of natural health through living in harmony with nature. Slowly
this ancient concept was replaced after the fifth century B.C. by the cult of
Aesculapius, the son of Apollo and the god of medicine. Aesculapian temples were
erected to which the sick were brought for mysterious healing rituals as well as
for mineral baths, exercises (an early precursor of today's physical therapy)
and various unctions. The therapeutic ceremony, performed by the temple priest
during a nocturnal trance in which a healing dream was interpreted, was not
entirely dissimilar to "modern" Freudian or Jungian psychoanalytic
practices. The salient point about the cult of Aesculapius is that it was a
therapy of intervention, of combating a disease and seeking its expulsion from
the body.”
·
* *
Clearly, when the scientific model of health is solely
‘masculine principle based’ (i.e. solely based on the assertive behaviour of
independent material causal agents), the ‘therapy of intervention’ is the
corresponding response. However,
when the model is ‘feminine principle based’ (relativistic), the
corresponding therapy is the cultivation of natural harmony by ‘induction’.
The masculine principle based ‘causal’ model of
mainstream science, then, leads directly to interventions to eliminate or
suppress the ‘cause’ of a disease, while the feminine principle based
‘harmony’ model (harmony between the enveloping shape of space and the
assertive constituent kinetics) leads to non-interventional therapies which seek
to restore the natural balance. Dr.
Herwick comments on the historical roots of this ‘homeopathic’ approach;
* * *
“Hippocrates taught that the body was endowed with
the ability to cure itself and that the outward signs of disease were laudable
manifestations of this process. He brought the practice of medicine to the
bedside where the physician carefully observed the clinical condition of his
patient and sought to assist the natural process which he carefully observed and
for the first time quantitated. The inner balance of the four bodily humors was
first evaluated. Then a diagnosis and prognosis were offered and finally a
homeopathic treatment was instituted to assist the body in reestablishing an
inner harmony with the natural order.”
·
* *
Thus disequilebria amongst the many nested
‘habitat-inhabitant’ codynamics within the body (the body’s falling out of
balance due to environmental influences; i.e. due to local ‘shape of space’
influences) may give rise to dissonance in organismic processes which ‘show
up’, for example, as a mass on the pancreas (i.e. adenocarcinoma) as well as
digestive tract dysmotility. Mainstream
science, which constrains its view to the ‘masculine’ or ‘causal’
principle, would postulate a ‘cancer cell’ which is somehow causing the
carcinoma which is in turn ‘causing’ the digestive tract dysmotility.
There is an innate flaw in causal reasoning, because of
the fact that it ignores the co-determining role of the ‘shape of space’
(the ‘feminine principle’) and this is that it leads on down to an ultimate
‘causal source’ which somehow contains all of the nasty-causing essences.
Dr. Manu Khotari speaks of this epistemological flaw which has doctors
treating patients by ‘intervention’ so as to ‘strip out’ everything
which is tainted with ‘cause’; (http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/jminterviewmk.htm)
* * *
Assertive action has become a
priority issue in medicine, however wrong it may be. Now with regard to AIDS,
let me point out a few epistemological principles which come to the fore.
Epistemology is the science of knowledge. It is a science which takes any piece
of information and weighs its worthwhileness, its possibility, its
impossibility,.. uselessness, its worthwhileness. Now consider that about 300
years ago, an apple fell on the bald pate of Newton and gravitation was born.
Since then we have been studying gravitation left, right and centre! We know
everything about it from the 10th decimal point.. but one thing remains certain,
we can't alter gravity. As Robert Arturu says," apples must fall
down"! Therefore, supposing we know everything about cancer cells, that in
no way will allow you to alter the cancer cell. Therefore, in fact, Lyall Watson
on the European side and Lewis Thomas on the American side, both have
generalised that the biggest discovery of the 20th century is the discovery of
Human Ignorance!
Around 1983, James Watson of
the double helix fame, characterised cancer research as intellectually bankrupt,
financially ex invigorating and therapeutically useless. And he said cancer
establishments are a lot of shit.. that is the term he used. Sir Meg McFarlen,
the Nobel Laureate,summoned up the entire Nobel scene, and he said that after a
thousand main years work, the outcome is precisely nil. And today what has
happened is, cancer cell no longer is taken as a structural entity. Cancer cell
is taken as one more form of normal cello. Now the question is what is cancer
cell and what is normal cell?
So Albert Szent-gyorgii, the
Nobel Laureate for the discovery of vitamin C and actin myocine, while chairing
a session in America at the 69th Ciba Symposium on Sub molecular biology and
cancer, on the last page, he is asked, Sir, can you define what is a cancer
cell?. And he says, typically of a humble person,"My dear sir, how can I
tell you what's a cancer cell when I don't know what's a normal cell?" Yet
in the cancer establishment, the bogey of the cancer cell as being a vicious,
savage cell is being sustained. Another unholy humbug which they are sustaining,
is that chemotherapy and radiotherapy are useful because they tend to kill the
more fast multiplying cells as compared to normal cells. So we went on till
cytokinetics arrived. And cytokinetics arrived to destroy two illusions.
Cytokinetics showed that if at all cancer cells multiply painfully slowly with
the result that when you give radio therapy and chemo therapy, before you kill a
single cancer cell, you will destroy a million normal cells. That is the trade
off, okay? And the other illusion which it destroyed was that of early
diagnosis, we still drumbeat early diagnosis. From 1802 through the 19th and
20th century, some of the most leading thinkers have shown that early diagnosis
is not possible. This was said intuitively. Then came cytokinetics. And
Cytokinetics has shown that before a tumour assumes one milligram of weight,
which no scan ever can detect, it's a billion cell strong! And to arrive at that
it will take a few years. Which means that by the time a cancer is diagnosed, a
symptomatic silent cancer is diagnosed and detected by the most sensitive scan,
it has been in the patient's body from 5-20 years. And therefore, when I think
about this bogey of early cancer, I say, quoting, almost paraphrasing
Churchill.."Never in the history of science has so much untruth been told,
by so few, to so many, for so long".
* * *
The point is that the ‘causal model’ without the
‘feminine principle’ can only lead ‘down and in’ to explain the cause of
a ‘problem’ and this unidirectionality of ‘causality’ implies that all
‘maladies’ must come from a deep ‘evil essence’ rather than from a
disequilibrizing of a natural outer-inner codynamics (shape-of-space ---
constituent-kinetic codynamics).
As Dr. Herwick notes, we have gone through historical
cycles in which the homeopathic view (based on the feminine principle which
includes the masculine principle) has given way to the allopathic view (based on
the masculine principle which excludes the feminine principle), i.e.;
* * *
“Slowly
this ancient concept [health and healing through natural harmony] was replaced
after the fifth century B.C. by the cult of Aesculapius, the son of Apollo and
the god of medicine. . . . The
salient point about the cult of Aesculapius is that it was a therapy of
intervention, of combating a disease and seeking its expulsion from the body.
The restoration of health was based to a large extent upon superstition: and at
times almost charlatan mysticism which effected a magical cure together with an
increase in the temple coffers. It is parenthetically somewhat disturbing that
the staff of Aesculapius with its single snake has become the symbol of today's
medical profession. This becomes less objectionable, however, when one considers
the often inappropriately used caduceus (that winged staff with two entwined
snakes). This of course was the symbol of Mercury, the god of commerce and of
thieves!
Throughout
history this dichotomy of Hygienic health through natural harmony and
Aesculapian healing by intervention eternally recurs. Hippocrates, the great
Greek father of medicine, returned to the former tradition and stressed the
treatment of the person as a whole, reflecting and participating in a natural
order of natural health. The good physician assisted nature after the manner of
"similia similibus," treating like with like. An example of this would
be applying hot compresses to augment the inflammation of a local infection.
Hippocrates taught that the body was endowed with the ability to cure itself and
that the outward signs of disease were laudable manifestations of this process.
He brought the practice of medicine to the bedside where the physician carefully
observed the clinical condition of his patient and sought to assist the natural
process which he carefully observed and for the first time quantitated. . . ..
The counter current of allopathic medicine, often based on the opposite
principle of "contraria contrariis" (that is, attempting to counteract
external symptoms by producing an opposite effect) was not buried with the ruins
of the Aesculapian temples. It has reappeared throughout history and at times
has coexisted to a remarkable extent with the natural harmony concept of Hygiea.
The Gnostics of early Christian times developed rather elaborate rituals for the
expulsion of disease. Disease by their understanding represented the adversary
forces of evil over which a mystical salvation could be effected by the
initiates. Their invocation with the word "abrucadabra" survives in
the vocabulary of prestidigitators of modern times.”
·
* * *
Mainstream
sciences’ notion of causality in the domain of health (physical and/or social)
leads on down to some ‘essential evil’ as the source of the malady and this
is what gives rise to the notion of ‘contraria contrariis’ and the
‘therapy of intervention’ since scientific models based solely on the
masculine principle (i.e. ‘the assertive behaviour of independent causal
agents’) can lead to no other explanation.
The
relativistic view, by which physical phenomena emerge from the codynamic between
the enveloping shape of space and the simultaneous, reciprocal
constituent-kinetics has no such bizarre constraints. Meanwhile, literally trillions of dollars are being
spent on cancer and AIDS research which seek to isolate the ‘essential evil’
or ‘essential dissonance’ which causes these conditions (i.e. the notional
‘cancer cell’ or ‘virus’). The
same is true in the domain of psychiatry (see www.breggin.com
) where billions more are being spent to discover ‘the violence gene’ and
the ‘schizophrenia gene’, … the ultimate dysfunction of science based
solely on the ‘masculine principle’ of assertion, and denial and rejection
of the ‘feminine principle’ of the codynamics of the ‘shape-of-space and
constituent-kinetics’).
The
‘Hygiean’ or ‘homeopath’ who believed that “all sickness emerges from
a departure from the normal state” (rather than from a ‘cause’) and that
“a return to this basic harmony was the goal of all medicine” [1] seeks to
understand all aspects of the patient including the ‘shape’ of his
surroundings and to prescribe a remedy on the personal particulars which can
restore the natural shape-of-space – constituent-kinetic codynamic which
permeates, through the medium of unbounded space, all nesting levels from
environmental through organismic inwards through organs and cells and molecules.
The unbounded shape of space which is in continual codynamic with the
constituent structures and their assertive kinetis ‘is’ organism, according
to relativity theory’ and to the Hygiean model.
That is, one cannot conceive of an ‘organism’ without including the
continuously transforming shape of space which both envelopes and permeates the
organism and is in continual, simultaneous reciprocal codynamic with the
constituent structures and their kinetics.
In
sum, the homeopathic (Hygiean) ‘therapy of non-intervention’ addresses the
person and their environment as a unique, codynamical ‘package’ and strives
to return it to natural codynamical balance, quite unlike the allopathic (Aesculapian)
‘therapy of intervention’ which treats all patients as the same (out of the
context of their unique connection with their enveloping space) and which seeks
to exorcise or purge the essential malicious ‘causal essences’ from the
body.
The
modern shift back to the emphasis on allopathic medicine changes the aspect of
the physician, taking him away from the bedside and re-focusing his interests on
the drugs and tools used to excise or suppress the malicious causal essences’
(viruses, bacteria, ‘faulty genes’, cancerous cells).
The
same is true in terms of the ‘physicians of social health management in
business and government’; i.e. they have lost interest in ‘the patient’
(the individual and the community) and its unique codynamics with its enveloping
space, and are re-focusing on ‘cures’ which they can administer to exorcise
the essences of malicious cause.
Returning to the specific health example, … viewed
from the models of relativity and quantum theory, … the ‘feminine
principle’ based interference model, … both the carcinoma and the gastric
dysmotility would be seen in terms of ‘symptoms’ emanating from an innately
outer-inner (container-constituent-coresonance) based interferential system
which had become unbalanced, and the therapy would be non-interventional,
seeking to restore balance (an exception would be the treatment of
‘symptoms’ involving such damage to ‘the shape of space’ as produced
obstructions to flow).
From this ‘Hippocratic’ or ‘homeopathic’ view,
the dysmotility of the digestive tract would be the body’s attempt at curing
itself, … perhaps by generating natural ‘opiates’ to put the digestive
tract ‘to sleep’ so as to cease continuing to ‘fuel’ the now dissonant
(out-of-balance) system. One can
think of this as a ‘call for help’, … a call for changes in the shape of
space within which the transformative processes constituting the organism’s
life transpire.
The reciprocity between ‘constituent kinetics’ and their ‘enveloping shape of space’ which underpins the ‘homeopathic’ outer-inner balancing view is readily available to our experience, as in the opening example of the sailor, the storm and the protected cove. Other manifest examples include the community of bees and their hexagonally shaped cells. At the innermost nesting levels, examples are cropping up in biochip technology where the “Intimate contact of a living cell with a semiconductor can be a method of controlling the movement and directions of electrons in the solid crystal, by providing metabolic "sources" and "sinks" for electrons and "holes" that are amplified in common transistor-type circuits.” (http://wings.buffalo.edu/faculty/research/iucb/Biochip.htm )
It is indeed interesting that our ‘masculine principle-based’ science can focus in so intently on the goal of ‘controlling movements and directions’ of things using colonies of living organisms and their natural ‘space-shaping’ codynamics without stopping to reflect on the fundamental role of this ‘shape-of-space – constituent-kinetics’ codynamic in nature; i.e. the above example is about the ‘scientific discovery’ of a means of making better semiconductor chips. The discovery is a manifest proof of the primacy of the ‘feminine principle’ which is being excluded and ignored by science even in those situations, such as in biochip production, that they are staring right at it.
As Lao Tsu intimated, … while it is the ‘shape of space’, the ‘feminine principle’ which makes ‘things’ or ‘masculine structures’ useful, … one cannot ‘sell’ the ‘shape of space’ and thus the cultivation of the harmonious shape of space is lagging in our ‘health of the economy’ orientation of our western culture dominated society.
The season for a return of the ‘feminine principle’, for a return of the primacy of harmonious living space over dissonance inducing profit-taking is now.
"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there."
Lao
Tsu, … ‘Tao Te Ching’
* * *
...
[1]
Herwick, Dr. R., ‘THE LIMITATIONS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE IN THE SOLUTION OF
SOCIAL PROBLEMS’
http://itest.slu.edu/dloads/70s/limits77.txt
Dr.
Robert Herwick, M.D. is presently in private practice in San Francisco. He is
also on the clinical faculty at the University of California, Childrens Hospital
and St. Joseph's Hospital in San Francisco. Dr. Herwick received his BA in
German Literature at Cornell University and was enrolled in Phi Beta Kappa,
1964. He interned at Childrens Hospital in San Francisco in 1969, after
receiving his M.D. at the Cornell Medical School in New York City. He completed
his Residency in Dermatology at the University of California Medical School in
San Francisco in 1972. From 1972 - 74, Dr. Herwick served as Major in the United
States Air Force Medical Corps and Chief of Medicine at the Strategic Air
Command Headquarters at Omaha, Nebraska.
In
seeking to examine the capabilities and the limitations of medical science in
solving problems of social significance, one must begin by tracing the history
of medicine as it recedes from its enlightened present into the darkness of
ancient times. As with other historical inquiries, it is not surprising to find
that perhaps fundamentally little is new ... that recurrent themes and patterns
are discerned which may at the same time provide a basis for optimism or
disillusionment, depending upon one's interpretation.
One
of the most ancient concepts of health was that personified by Hygiea, the Greek
goddess of health who watched over the corporeal welfare of the residents of
Athens. Health was then based upon a unity with nature, a temperate lifestyle
and the belief that good health was a natural attribute. Rather than treating
the sick, Hygiea embodied the ideal of the preservation of natural health
through living in harmony with nature. Slowly this ancient concept was replaced
after the fifth century B.C. by the cult of Aesculapius, the son of Apollo and
the god of medicine. Aesculapian temples were erected to which the sick were
brought for mysterious healing rituals as well as for mineral baths, exercises
(an early precursor of today's physical therapy) and various unctions. The
therapeutic ceremony, performed by the temple priest during a nocturnal trance
in which a healing dream was interpreted, was not entirely dissimilar to
"modern" Freudian or Jungian psychoanalytic practices. The salient
point about the cult of Aesculapius is that it was a therapy of intervention, of
combating a disease and seeking its expulsion from the body. The restoration of
health was based to a large extent upon superstition: and at times almost
charlatan mysticism which effected a magical cure together with an increase in
the temple coffers. It is parenthetically somewhat disturbing that the staff of
Aesculapius with its single snake has become the symbol of today's medical
profession. This becomes less objectionable, however, when one considers the
often inappropriately used caduceus (that winged staff with two entwined
snakes). This of course was the symbol of Mercury, the god of commerce and of
thieves!
Throughout
history this dichotomy of Hygienic health through natural harmony and
Aesculapian healing by intervention eternally recurs. Hippocrates, the great
Greek father of medicine, returned to the former tradition and stressed the
treatment of the person as a whole, reflecting and participating in a natural
order of natural health. The good physician assisted nature after the manner of
"similia similibus," treating like with like. An example of this would
be applying hot compresses to augment the inflammation of a local infection.
Hippocrates taught that the body was endowed with the ability to cure itself and
that the outward signs of disease were laudable manifestations of this process.
He brought the practice of medicine to the bedside where the physician carefully
observed the clinical condition of his patient and sought to assist the natural
process which he carefully observed and for the first time quantitated. The
inner balance of the four bodily humors was first evaluated. Then a diagnosis
and prognosis were offered and finally a homeopathic treatment was instituted to
assist the body in reestablishing an inner harmony with the natural order. The
very word "physician" based on the Greek root for "nature"
reflected this understanding of the doctor's role. This philosophy of
non-intervention was carried forth into the Roman Empire and there are numerous
examples of its influence. Tiberius advised that anyone who consulted a
physician after the age of 30 was a fool, as he thereby demonstrated that he had
not yet learned to account for his own life or body.(1)
The
counter current of allopathic medicine, often based on the opposite principle of
"contraria contrariis" (that is, attempting to counteract external
symptoms by producing an opposite effect) was not buried with the ruins of the
Aesculapian temples. It has reappeared throughout history and at times has
coexisted to a remarkable extent with the natural harmony concept of Hygiea. The
Gnostics of early Christian times developed rather elaborate rituals for the
expulsion of disease. Disease by their understanding represented the adversary
forces of evil over which a mystical salvation could be effected by the
initiates. Their invocation with the word "abrucadabra" survives in
the vocabulary of prestidigitators of modern times. To my knowledge this
incantation is not in frequent use today by many members of the modern medical
profession, no matter how heretical their personal philosophy.
During
the middle ages phlebotomy, or blood letting, enjoyed a great popularity: the
penultimate example of "contraria contrariis." The rationale for this
was to divert toxic materials from one organ to another and thence out of the
body: a rather primitive concept until one considers the present day therapy for
Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, a dermatologic abnormality of hemoglobin metabolism.
This therapy consists in fact of repeated phlebotomies to divert excessive heme
precursors from the liver and bone marrow. In the past decade this has been
recognized as unquestionably the treatment of choice in this disorder and is
used in every major university and teaching hospital in the western world.
Phlebotomy also survives today as standard therapy for Polycythemia Vera and
Idiopathic Hemochromatosis. These provide rather striking examples of the
aphorism taught to medical students studying pharmacology: "Be not the
first by whom the new is tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."
Medical practices in the middle ages such as blood letting were based to a great
extent upon ill-founded dogma perpetuated by the rigid scholasticism into which
medicine had fallen and numerous unsubstantiated and even harmful remedies were
carried forward unchallenged. There survived, nonetheless, a viable kernel of
effective treatment based largely upon practical results rather than
pathophysiologic theory.
The
physician of the fourteenth century, by contrast, used very little such rational
empiricism, but become more and more preoccupied with the grandeur of such
external trappings as prescribing drugs by ceremoniously pointing them out at
the pharmacy with his baton. His excellence by our "scientific"
standards and his proximity to the patient's bedside waned in inverse proportion
to the majesty of his flowing robes and elaborate costumes.
With
the coming of the Renaissance, man was again elevated to a position deserving of
the center of human thought and with this came a regeneration of the classic
espousal of the harmony of nature and of disease as a temporary disequilibrium
in this harmony. Great advances were made in anatomy by Leonardo in his quest
for accurate representation of the human body in his sculpture. As physicians
returned to the Hippocratic teachings lost in the scholasticism of the middle
ages they regained their position of social esteem and shedding their
magisterial robes again became educated and cultured members of society. In the
seventeenth century Galileo pioneered the scientific method which become the
cornerstone for all modern science. The discovery of new methods and tools
proliferated during the next hundred years as the microscope, blood
transfusions, obstetrical forceps and new surgical instruments took their place
in the physician's armamentarium.
The
doctors of this enlivened period again began to drift away from the patient's
bedside to such enterprises as Anton Mesmer's tub of sulphuric acid with its
iron bars to conduct healing magnetic forces into his diseased and gullible
patients. Despite temporary dalliances such as this, the Romantic era of the
late eighteenth century lured physicians back again from the laboratory and its
paraphernalia to a de-scienced and perhaps overstated concern for the natural
state of man. Rousseau taught that all sickness was the result of deviation from
the natural state; that a return to this basic harmony was the goal of all
medicine. The scientific era had now gone full circle. It had worshiped in the
temples of science and dabbled in external contrivances in seeking the key to
health. Now such events as the discovery of Tahiti in 1767 fueled a new quest
for an idyllic happiness almost to the exclusion of all "extraneous"
aids. Hygiea returned triumphant
and Aesculapian intervention had again fallen from power, this time, however,
only temporarily. The romantic fervor could not be indefinitely sustained, nor
could scientific discoveries be repressed by the noble savage, and the Age of
Reason supervened.
With
the Industrial Revolution came unsanitary crowding and frightening increases of
communicable diseases such as typhoid and smallpox, and with these there came a
demand for social reform. This reform, it must be carefully noted, was based
upon the Hygienic ideals of the Romantic era rather than occuring as a direct
consequence of the intervention of scientific theories. It is the thesis of
biologist and Nobel laureat Rene Dubos in his book "The Mirage of
Health" that the dramatic decline in European death rates that began in the
nineteenth century was the result of these social reforms and preceded the
introduction of the germ theory(2) and other medical advances. It is a
universally uncontested fact that the increase in life span documented during
the past 200 years is almost entirely a function of the decrease in infant
mortality which is in turn almost entirely the result of increased hygiene. It
has been demonstrated that 90% of the total decline in combined mortality from
scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles between 1860 and the
present occured before the introduction of antibiotics.(3) One of the leading
opponents of the germ theory, chemist Max von Pettenkofer, was almost singly
responsible or a fivefold drop in typhoid mortality in Munich in the late
nineteenth century. This he did by convincing the town authorities that on an
aesthetic basis it would be more desirable to divert the cities sewage from
upstream to downstream.(4)
A
brief look at the incidence of modern epidemics will perhaps dispel any illusion
that the gates to Elysium have been thrown open before us by vaccines,
antibiotics and modem medical techniques. Taking measles as an example, one sees
this viral infection of negligible importance in 1785. By 1804 it had increased
to such an extent as to equal the death rate from smallpox. By 1840 measles had
declined and was replaced by scarlet fever as the primary infectious disease. By
1915 the death rate from measles had climbed again, this time to outstrip the
death rate from smallpox, scarlet fever and diphtheria combined. Since that year
its incidence has steadily declined.(5) In Europe leprosy and plague reigned in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, syphilis in the sixteenth, smallpox in
the seventeenth and eighteenth, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and measles in the
nineteenth. The great influenza pandemic of 1918 killed 20,000,000 people world
wide. That specter was raised again only this year. Paradoxically as the
incidence of a disease decreases, its virulence may increase because of less
natural immunity. This was the case with poliomyelitis during this century:
better sanitation meant less exposure to the virus during early childhood and a
fall in the overall pool of antibodies with a marked worsening in the severity
of the disease for those unfortunate few who did encounter the pathogen during
later childhood. The Salk and Sabin vaccines are now therapeutically adding to
this antibody pool, but as one disease is "conquered" one asks of
history whether another will not inexorably rise up to take its place. Such is
Dubos' "mirage of health." At this very moment in history, helicopters
are flying smallpox vaccine into Ethiopian villages and public health experts
fully expect to have seen the last case of smallpox on the face of the earth
this spring. This is no small accomplishment as smallpox has literally raged
epidemically for all recorded time. Records of it go back to 1122 B.C. in the
Tcheou dynasty. With such statistics it is tempting to believe that twentieth
century man has finally wrested fire from the gods and has begun to immolate all
diseases, one at a time, upon the alter of the temple of Aesculapius. Tempting,
that is, if considered without the benefit of historical perspective.
The
greatest danger of our present scientific medical Weltanschauung is not,
however, simply a mistaken optimism about the eradication of a finite number of
disease entities one at a time. It is rather that it constitutes one of many
bases upon which the subtle erosion of man's personal responsibility for his own
life is precariously founded. Disease has come once again to be looked upon as
something extraneous which has fallen upon man and must be expelled, rather than
as a necessary manifestation of an inherent disharmony in a fallen universe. The
responsibility for being sick is shifted from the individual to the doctor and
worse, to the medical establishment. A cure is demanded, if not of the physician
then of the goddess of Science whom he vicariously represents. If the World
Health Organization can successfully eradicate smallpox in a ten year campaign,
one demands the some for cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Understanding
illness as a complex disharmony affecting an even more complex individual, read
"human being," has in many cases been temporarily set aside in the
frenzied search for specific etiology and then for its curative antithesis. The
pendulum has again swung back to healing by "contraria contrariis."
Ivan
Illich speaks of the "medicalization of life" in his book "The
Medical Nemesis." For rich and poor, life is turned into a pilgrimage
through checkups and clinics back to the ward where it started... this lifespan
is brought into existence with the prenatal checkup, when the doctor decides if
and how the fetus shall be born, and it will end with a mark on a chart ordering
resuscitation be suspended."(6) He observes that "unsick people have
come to depend on professional care for the sake of their future
health."(7) Carrying this a step further, Paul Ramsey sees present day
concern with various genetic techniques including cloning to eliminate diseases
from future generations as treating "non patients," i.e., the species
or the gene pool rather than individuals.(8) Individual rights may be violated
in the name of a higher eugenic goal of "a
healthier mankind" rather than healthier men. The object of the
healing art drifts further and further from the suffering individual and
threatens to become lost in a misty realm of generalities and lofty causes.
Clearly these questions must be answered, for in perfecting techniques to
prolong an individual's life, the process of natural selection ceases to operate
and the overall incidence of heritable diseases, once limited by death before
the age of reproduction, increases exponentially. A case in point is the
incredible increase in the incidence of diabetes mellitus in the general
population -- an increase made possible by the use of insulin in literally
saving the lives of juvenile diabetics, allowing them to reproduce and
perpetuate their genetic abnormality. The exciting possibilities of
DNA-recombinant engineering radically to correct the cause of diabetes on a
chromosomal level releases the specter of mutant genes and their possible effect
upon those now living.
Medical
scientists today have been lead from one discovery, one triumph to another,
inexorably further away from the patient's bedside and from the Hippocratic
ideal. Embued with the fervor of this new religion, the patient himself has in
his faith in science literally chased his physician thither. The healer has
often retreated to the inappropriate security of prophylactic laboratory tests
("prophylactic" in the sense of offering protection for him against
the threat of malpractice litigation for failure to diagnose). In other cases he
may have hidden himself behind a barrage of computerized fluoroscopes,
radioisotope assays and electron microscopic analyses to avoid confronting his
ultimate inability radically to cure. The profound anxiety stirred up by the
realization of this limitation has become as untenable for the worshippers at
the temple, the patients, as it has for its high priests. The flight from such a
frightening realization further and further into the technologic strata betrays
the society's growing existential dilemma. The individual has increasingly
abdicated responsibility for his own life in the great illusion that he has
enhanced his ability to enjoy that life. He seeks no longer only the apple, but
the entire tree. He has climbed a bit too far and too fast out upon a limb of
that tree and he is frightened. To retrace his ascent is impossible and so he
clings more tightly, more stubbornly to these branches and looks higher still
for a resting place. Like Faust he has ventured so for and so high that in his
bedazzlement he has risked losing his very self. Dubos expresses this quite
well: "To discover, to describe, to classify, to invent, has been the
traditional task of the scientist until this century; on the whole a pleasant
occupation amounting to a sophisticated hobby. This happy phase of social
irresponsibility is now over and the scientist will be called to account for the
long-term consequences of his acts. His dilemma is and will remain that he
cannot predict these consequences because they depend on many factors outside
his knowledge or at least beyond his control -- in particular on the exercise of
free will by men."(9) Obviously I cannot end on such a pessimistic note of
what I see as a strong trend on the stage of modern medicine's reenactment of
the Aesculapian scenario. As with other oscillations of history, there endures a
spirit of the healing art which is transcendent, the spirit of comforting a
patient who suffers, a spirit which is nonetheless immanently present in the
technology adopted by the healer. Technology cannot be dismissed with a
nostalgic sentimentality, the Samaritan today would have rejected the pouring of
oil into his patient's wounds. We know today that oil impedes wound healing. One
would not relish the prospect of treating bacterial endocarditis without
penicillin or leprosy with sulfones, no matter how Hippocratic his concern for
the whole patient. Given this spirit of healing, the awesome complexities of
technology can be forged into remedies of inestimable value to be utilized by
the good physician. Absent this spirit and Science, that foreboding temple
priestess, usurps the physician's role, transforms means into ends, and in the
end displaces individuals as the rightful recipients of the healing art. Free
man is thereby lead further out that limb at whose end is found the loss of yet
another facet of his existential freedom: the ultimate responsibility for his
own body.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Arturo Castiglioni, "A History of Medicine," Jason Aronson,
Inc.,
New York, 1975, p. 143.
2.
Rene Dubos, "Mirage of Health," Harper & Row, New York,
1959,
p. 23.
3.
Ivan Illich, "Medical Nemesis," Pantheon Books, 1976, New
York,
p. 16.
4.
Dubos, op. cit., p. 149.
5.
Ibid., p. 177.
6.
Illich, op. cit., p. 79.
7.
Ibid., p. 122.
8.
Paul Ramsey, "Fabricated Man," Yale University Press, 1970, p.
101.
9.
Dubos, op. cit., p. 271.