Psyched-Out by our own Logic: Finding a Remedy

Dallas, January 6, 2002

http://www.goodshare.org/psyched.htm

In the early part of the twentieth century, we discovered gaping holes in the 'precision' logic of classical science, the same logic and science we are using to 'run our lives' today, ... lives which have become increasingly 'troubled' by emergent dysfunction in our well laid out logical plans.

At the level of community and at the level of the individual, we are increasing being 'psyched out' by our own rational thought, by our own logical and scientific planning and management of the 'individual-self' and 'community-self'.

Finding a remedy involves going back into history and revisiting the historical development of our dysfunction, how our run-away rational thought is inducing psychosis in our individual and community 'selves'.

In 1927, twelve years after the emergence of Einstein's 'General Relativity Theory', Werner Heisenberg authored his famous 'Uncertainty Principle' and in 1931, Kurt Gödel authored his famous 'Gödel's Theorem', showing the innate 'incompleteness' of systems of logic/mathematics, ... both developments astounded scientists whose working methods had presumed the existence of exact, and ultimately complete, solutions to the complex phenomena of nature.

Since we in the western culture had come to 'worship at the altar of science and rationality' and to use it as the highest reference for the management of our own individual actions and our community actions, one can imagine the huge transformation that these discoveries of 'holes' in rational and scientific thought must have kicked off, ... right?

Well, history shows that the general public has not at all had its faith in the 'exactness' of rational and scientific thought undermined by these 'esoteric' (in the popular view) discoveries of Heisenberg and Gödel (the existence of Gödel's Theorem was already implicit in Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus' of 1921 and Kurt Gödel was a member of the 'Vienna Circle' that emerged around Wittgenstein's ground-breaking ideas on the 'limitations of logic.').

So, we continue on in this year, 2002, using logic and science as if it were 'exact' and as if it will ultimately 'be complete'.  This ignoring of its innate limitations is the very source of our deepening community- and individual-psychosis, for in the 'gap' between the exactness and completeness that we would like think exists, the 'real' world of unpredictable evolution emerges.

What is 'being missed' by rational thought and by popular science may be subtle but an understanding of it is in no way beyond the capacities of a young child.  In fact, the child understands it implicitly and is more in touch with it that the adult conditioned by years of faithful worship at the altar of science and rationality (Note: The intent here is NOT to malign 'rational thought' per se, but to bring to the fore the nature of the dysfunction that comes from assuming its completeness and correctness and seeking to 'manage' our 'self' and our 'community' on the basis of the completeness and correctness of rational thought).

Science and rationality have been culturally constrained to descriptions of what can be tangibly observed.  Pre-Newtonian era scientists such as Kepler and Newton's Contemporary Leibnitz did not impose such constraints on science, but the popular culture (Western culture), preferring to put the tangible and exact into the primacy over more 'fuzzy' modes of inquiry (e.g. intuition), have effectively continued and even strengthened the imposition of this abstract constraint of exactness into the modern day, through the linking of rewards and recognition (the majority of Nobel Prizes in physics etc.) to this 'reduced science' which does not, as Heisenberg suggested in his comments on uncertainty [1] look at the 'flip side' of the certainty and completeness (the space from wherein the emergent fertility of evolution springs forth).

Henri Poincaré's turn-of-the-century work on the 'psychology' (or 'philosophy' if you prefer) of space-time framing conventions (i.e. 'Conventionalism'), his work on the 'Relativity of Space' and his earlier discovery of 'Chaos Theory' in the 1880's, while supplying important insights as to the nature of uncertainty were not seriously brought into connection with either the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg or the 'incompleteness' theorem of Kurt Gödel.  Had they been 'brought into connection in the mind', they would have exposed the source of individual and social psychosis that is being discussed herein, almost a century 'after-the-fact'.

Heisenberg's formulated his uncertainty principle in the following words; "The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa." ---Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

Poincaré formulated his principle on 'the relativity of space' in the following words; "...restricted space would not be homogeneous. The different points of this space could not be regarded as equivalent, since some could only be reached at the cost of the greatest efforts, while others could be reached with ease." 

Einstein commented on the implications of the General theory of relativity as follows; "It [Relativity] forces us to analyze the role played by geometry in the description of the physical world.’

These three statements, brought into connection, imply an interdependency between the dynamical form of the enveloping space and the dynamics of the material constituents included in that space, in keeping with Einstein's comment on the utility of the  non-Euclidian space-time reference framing convention needed for relativity; "Only the genius of Riemann, solitary and uncomprehended, had already won its way to the middle of the last century to a new concept of space, in which space was deprived of its rigidity, ... in which its power to take part in physical events was recognized as possible."

What do we make of these statements?

They suggest that the 'geometry of space' plays an important, over-arching even, role in physical phenomena (i.e. 'over-arching' in the sense that the geometry of space is the 'container', the very referencing 'ground' that the constituents of space must reference their individual dynamics to.).

Can we find a simple 'analogy' to demonstrate the importance of what is being said here, ... that while science describes the tangible, our intuitive mind is looking beyond the tangible and rational at 'shapes of space'? (i.e. see the transcription of Heisenberg's audio clip below [1]).

Yes we can.

Imagine you are driving in the 'restricted space' of a busy freeway.   Rationality and the-science-of-the-tangible only go so far as to inform us of the movements of the constituents of space, the vehicles.   But aren't we really referencing our motions to the continuously transforming 'shape' of the space between the vehicles?   And aren't we conscious of the fact that, in our actions, we are jointly co-creating this continuously transforming shape of space and that it represents not 'the action of a thing' but the 'opportunity-to-act'?

As Poincaré says in speaking of the generalizations constituted by rationality and science versus our experience; "Experience is the unique source of truth : it alone may teach us something new; it alone may give us certainty. These are two points which no-one can contest." ( L'expérience est la source unique de la vérité : elle seule peut nous apprendre quelque chose de nouveau ; elle seule peut nous donner la certitude. Voilà deux points que nul ne peut contester.) ---Henri Poincaré ('La Science et L'Hypothese' - La Nature, Chapitre IX Les Hypothèses en Physique - Rôle de l’Expérience et de la Généralisation)

So what are we to make of this?  Can we perceive the dynamical geometry of the space amongst things, ... the 'other way' of looking at the motions of discrete constituents?

Because if we can, this 'geometry of space' transcends, in information content, the kinetic trajectories of the constituents.  In fact, the general theory of relativity says that for completeness of description, we must see space in terms of the distribution of energy firstly and in this case 'matter' and the motion of 'material objects' are no longer the foundation of our descriptive theory, but are reduced to their energy equivalent so that we can simply describe the geometry of space (space deepens locally in proportion to the total energy contained).

Can we 'sense' this deepening of space when we are driving on the freeway?  What if the images of the enveloping vehicles were simply ghostly holograms manifesting through the imperfect transmissibility of the air.    Would we not sense this and therefore not hesitate to drive right through them.   Even if they were made of balsa wood, we would sense this and not be frightened to crash through them.  But when we sense they are made of heavy metal, then we know better that to run into them.

So, what are the implications here?   The generalizations of rational logic and science are founded on the behaviours of discrete things which as Poincaré has pointed out, depend upon (a) the 'homogeneity' of the relationship between matter and space which does not 'really' hold in nature and (b) the existence of things at an instant in time (the state of the world dynamic) from which, given the forces etc. involved, we 'supposedly' can compute the state of the world dynamic of a later time, without having to know what has gone on at earlier times, ... another notion which does not 'really' hold in nature.

That is, space is non-homogeneous since the 'opportunity-to-act' as constituted by the finite and unbounded shape of space is a unique function of relative position and it is continually transforming (it 'is' relative motion).  So the enveloping reference frame (the geometry of space) for constituent motion changes simultaneously with the motion of any constituent, ... the reference frame is the relative motion of the constituents.  Thus, the geometry of opportunity-to-act is co-created by the relative actions of the constituents.

*** The geometry of opportunity-to-act is co-created by the relative actions of the constituents*** 

We know this to be true when we are 'driving friendly' on the freeway, when we each adjust our speed and position so as to co-create a harmonious flow within which we can all sustain smooth movements in spite of different sizes of vehicles and diverse preferences for driving styles etc.  When we are in this mode, we are co-creating the enveloping shape of space that we are referencing our actions to.   We are co-creating a dynamical reference geometry and letting go of our rational action plans and instead letting our actions be 'in the service' of the dynamical enveloping reference frame we are co-creating.

Who is 'we' in this mode wherein the 'manager' of our actions is the co-created enveloping geometry of space?  Clearly, the 'manager' is not 'an individual' neither is it a rational function based on the behaviours of multiple individuals.   The 'manager' is instead the relative dynamic of the multiple individuals; i.e. the 'community dynamic' which emerges from the 'collective conscious' of the community.

In this friendly driving mode, we take our cues from the enveloping community dynamic that we are immersed and 'included' in and helping to co-create.

The real-world behaviour, ... 'community-constituent-codynamical harmony' is beyond the descriptive capacity of any rational or scientific schema based on the generalizations such as 'the actions and transactions of autonomous material agents' (i.e. the constrained science of the popular western tradition) because it drops out the dynamical relationships amongst things which constitutes the non-homogeneity of space, the shape of the enveloping 'opportunity-to-act' that has an over-arching influence on the actions of the immersed and included constituents.

Now what emerges here again is the point that Heisenberg was making, or rather trying to make, in his discussion with Einstein [1], ... i.e. while we speak of a geometric form such as an 'orbit', our science of the dynamics of things cannot go so far as to describe this 'orbit' since there is an innate uncertainty between the position (reference frame) of the material agent and its movement.   It is the observer's own abstracting mind that 'fills in the blanks' and speaks of the 'existence' of an orbit.   What the uncertainty principle does is draw to our attention the fact that actions of the things in nature reference to their own relative motion, as in the 'friendly freeway driving' example.  The existence of the elliptical or circular orbit is made possible only by a 'freezing' of the reference frame and ignoring the interdependence between the relative motion of the constituents (the 'community dynamic') and the motion of the particular constituent who is uniquely situated within the geometrical shape of space continually emerging from the relative motion of 'his' enveloping fellow constituents.

When we drive in 'friendly mode' so as to co-cultivate smooth harmonious traffic-flow (harmonious community dynamic), we let the enveloping reference frame 'flex' and become our motion relative to our enveloping fellows.   In this community-harmony inducing mode, we are, in the sense of interdependency, our own enveloping reference frame.   As Kepler pointed out, the same is true in the system of sun and planets; i.e. the 'community dynamic' of the sun and planets is the only natural reference for the dynamics of the individual constituents.  As the 'deep ecologists' point out, the 'rainforest creates its own enveloping climate' (i.e. the 'community dynamic is the relative dynamic of its included constituents').

A moment's reflection shows that in order to co-create a harmonious community dynamical flow, we use the sense of how 'things are coming together' and this is a historical sense of space-time phase relationships.   We cannot get to this sense of 'how things are coming together' by generalizing space in the split apart terms of euclidian space and absolute time where fixed-in-the-moment geometric states are the foundational information base and change is something we arrive at via sequential updates along the axis of absolute time.  We cannot get there because in the rational/scientific split-apart space and time view, we are missing the information on 'periodicities' the seasonal motions of things and how they are coming into confluence; i.e. their space-time phase coupling.

Kepler noted this in 'Harmonies of the World', and concluded that, in order to understand the resonant codynamics in the solar system,  he had to 'let go' of the fixed reference frame based notion of absolute orbits;

"Therefore with everything reduced to one view, I concluded rightly that the true journeys of the planets through the ether should be dismissed, and that we should turn our eyes to the apparent diurnal arcs, according as they are all apparent, from one definite and marked place in the world --- namely, from the solar body itself, the source of movement of all the planets: and we must see, not how far away from the sun any one of the planets is, nor how much space it traverses in one day (for that is something for ratiocination and astronomy, not for instinct), but how great an angle the diurnal movement of each planet subtends in the solar body, or how great an arc it seems to traverse in one common circle described around the sun, such as the ecliptic, in order that these appearances, which were conveyed to the solar body by virtue of light, may be able to flow, together with the light, in a straight line into creatures, which are partakers of this instinct, as in Book IV we said the figure of the heavens flowed into the foetus by virtue of the rays."

 What Kepler is saying about the celestial goings on replicates what Heisenberg is saying about the atomic goings-on; i.e. that the existence of the absolute geometric forms of orbitals (seasonal or resonant behavioural trajectories) depends upon the imposing of a fixed reference frame, however the constituents of space appear to reference to their own relative motion.

The implication is clear, ... the sensory power of our 'instinct' or 'intuitive intellection' transcends the capability of our rational sense or 'ratiocinative intellection' function since it equips the constituent (any constituent, animal, vegetable, mineral) with the capacity for sensing the interdependence between the enveloping, continually transforming reference frame and its own motion, ... and it is through this instinct or 'relativistic' sensory capacity that community-constituent harmony is cultivated, as in the 'friendly freeway driving' example.

Can you imagine a freeway filled with orderly drivers all moving along at the same speed and then suddenly someone 'getting out of line' and simultaneously, in a geometric sense, putting everyone into a unique position within the geometrical dynamic?   Some drivers might want to 're-impose' the order on the crowd and some might want to 'bull their way through' (particularly those driving bigger vehicles), but others might prefer to accommodate the authentic driving styles and prefences of the diverse constituents and choose to co-create a harmonious enveloping space that facilitates smooth traffic flow (a harmonious community-constituent codynamic based on conscious management of the interdependence between one's motion and the enveloping, continuously transforming reference frame of relative motion).

Now, can you imagine Heisenberg's train of thought in his 1923 doctoral dissertation, 'Über Stabilität und Turbulenz von Flüssigkeitsströmen' (On Stability and Turbulence in Fluid Flow'), which was born of the real world problem encountered by... ".. a company channeling the Isar River through Munich. The problem was to determine the precise transition of a smoothly flowing fluid (laminar flow) to turbulent flow. It was an extremely difficult mathematical problem; in fact, it was so difficult that Heisenberg offered only an approximate solution."  Heisenberg's dissertation advisor commented; "In the handling of the present problem, Heisenberg shows once again his extraordinary abilities: complete command of the mathematical apparatus and daring physical insight." 

His 'daring physical insight' was to 'leave in' the uncertainty and incompleteness and come up with an approximate solution to the actual problem, rather than come up with a pseudo-exact solution to an approximation of the problem, as the 'popular' science typically demanded.

When we put our 'faith' in the pseudo-exact solutions of rational thought and brute-force our way ahead with 'rational plans' and 'rational management schemas' based on this pseudo-exactness, what is the price we pay?   The skilled pool player knows, ... we 'snooker ourselves' if we see the game solely in terms of the actions and transactions of the material constituents (balls) rather than in the deeper sense of the continuing transformation of space-time phase relationships.  Of course, while we are consciously playing the game according to the pseudo-precise generations of rationality (which looks statistically at what has happened in the past, ignoring the fact that what happened was influenced by the enveloping geometry of opportunity-to-act, something that must be taken into account at the same time as one acts because of the innate, relativistic interdependence between actions and opportunity-to-act)

So, ... what is the psychological price we pay for brute-forcing our way ahead, as individuals and as 'communities', managing our behaviours on the basis of the deceptive pseudo-certainty and pseudo-completeness of 'rational thought' and the mainstream science of 'the actions and transactions of autonomous material agents (the 'science of choice' of the western people), in spite of the underlying uncertainty and incompleteness of rationality and science 'buried' in the abstract imposed framing of things in terms of rigid rectangular, empty and infinite Euclidian space and its 'partner in deception', 'absolute time' that purports to exist independently of space-time transformation?

In a 'nutshell', we put ourselves into impossibly deepening snookered situations, the escape from which demands ever-greater 'shot-making' abilities, at least in the mind of the player who sees the game solely in the rational terms of the actions and transactions of autonomous material agents.   That is, our rational thought goes into overdrive in the futile attempt to escape from its own snookering and snookers itself ever deeper in the process.  This is the 'psychological price' we are paying, both at the nesting level of community and constituent, for ignoring the geometry of space, ... the natural dipolar transformation of space-time wherein the feminine-inductive pull of opportunity opening up in the enveloping space is, simultaneously, the relative masculine-assertive dynamics of the constituents.

What the purely rational thought process leads to is to 'bullying one's way out' of the snookering on the part of the most powerful and the psychological breakdown of those (individuals and/or communities) who chose not to live by bullying.

The 'remedy' to the purely rational view (purely masculine-assertive transactional view) of 'to bully or be bullied' is to put oneself into a dominant feminine-inductive environment where one can re-learn how to 'phase-couple' with the enveloping environmental dynamics   This is what Stanislav Grof refers to as 'holotropic therapy'.   Grof says, in discussing the use of music in conjunction with holotropic breathing ('Breathing, a 'sacred act' in the Native American and many old cultural traditions, unites the enveloping external substance with the included internal substance in a unified co-codynamic'.);

"The basic rule is to respond sensitively to the phase, intensity, and content of the experience [i.e. to let oneself come into resonance with the inner-outer experiential dynamic] rather than to impose a specific pattern on it. This is in congruence with the general philosophy of holotropic therapy, particularly with the deep respect for the wisdom of the collective unconscious and the autonomy and spontaneity of the healing process."

Healing processes aren't always thought about in terms of 'autonomy and spontaneity' ('hygiean' healing - providing the conditions needed to allow the system to come back into inner-outer dynamical resonance), but in the popular science of the western world, are more often thought about in the causal (purely rational or transactional) terms of imposing a solution on the problem which eliminates or suppresses the 'cause' of the problem ('aesculapian' healing - restoring the 'correct' actions and transactions of the parts).  (for a historical view of the 'hygiean' versus 'aesculapian' views on healing, see 'The Limitations of Medical Science in the Solution of Social Problems' by Dr. R. Herwick at http://itest.slu.edu/dloads/70s/limits77.txt 

So if being healthy in a natural way is seen in the 'hygiean' sense, what are we doing to ourselves with our purely rational management of self and community that might be 'harmful to our health'?

One of the characteristics of western society with its 'rational ways' is that we are increasing using our rational management techniques to achieve 'logical detachment' from the enveloping environmental dynamics.  This rational detachment is an embodiment of the splitting apart of space and time.  For example,  the instinctive building of a  'teepee' can be contrasted with the purely rational structure of a thermostatically controlled 'climatisation' of a dwelling place.  The 'teepee' simply orchestrated the 'harmonics' of nature (the space-time phase relationships) in a different way.  That is, the 'teepee' did NOT constitute a logical detachment but was a natural 'nesting shell' that buffered the included individuals from the enveloping outer dynamic. that is, it changed the 'harmonics' of the inner-outer dynamical relationships.  If one sat by a fire without being included within a enveloping 'teepee' shell, the cyclic relationships between the thermal flow of the fire and the thermal flow of the night air occurred in a different phase-coupling relationship than if one interposed the 'teepee' in the middle of the inner-outer dynamic.

The 'teepee' was unlike the logical control circuit (negative feedback circuit)  of the 'thermostat' in that it did not remove the dweller from his participation in co-creating the confluence of harmonies needed to soften the thermal periodicities.  That is, he remained a participating co-creator of the enveloping inner-outer dynamic he was included within.  But in the case of the thermostatically controlled climatisation, the dweller is removed from his co-creative participation with the natural world dynamic and 're-references his actions to the logical shell structure that now envelopes him.  His rational structures are thus 'detaching him' from his 'grounding reference' in the harmonies of nature within which he is an evolved emergent 'inclusion' and he is replacing his 'grounding reference' with the rigid frames of rational systems structures which are purely masculine-assertive, the 'feminine-inductive' aspect which pulls things into a natural harmonic confluence having been removed.

In researching this aspect of 'community-as-complex-system' in Cork, Ireland, I met with teachers who claimed that they could see the difference in these two types of grounding in children by the 'consciousness' in the connection or lack thereof, in eye contact. (e.g. they could differentiate between children brought up in the country or highly exposed to nature (referencing to natural inner-outer dynamics) and those in the 'urban ghetto' who were kept indoors watching television all the time (grounding by referencing to the enveloping logical shell structures which are embodiments of split-apart space and time.). 

From my own experiences in undergoing psychotic collapse of the ego and observing others in this process, I can validate the potency of the 'healing approach' described by Stanislav Grof wherein the presence of a dominant 'feminine-inductive' environment 'allows things to pull themselves back into harmonious confluence' without any subjective imposing.   For me, a song which captures 'what this pull of the feminine-inductive 'feels like' is captured in the Eagles 'Take it Easy' [2] and particularly the lines "/Take it easy, take it easy, don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy/Lighten up while you still can, don't even try to understand, just find a place to make your stand and take it easy/ ... /Well, I'm a standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and such a fine sight to see/it's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me/Come on, baby, don't say maybe. I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me./We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again./So open up, I'm climbin' in, so take it easy/

The 'feeling' that comes to me is that I am enveloping in the substance of the 'now' and the sense of the substance is that it is desirable opportunity that is opening up all around me, and pulling my authentic assertivity into harmonious confluence.  In working with psychologically troubled others, I imagine that I am their personal agent committed to opening up this kind of inductive space for them.  This makes me think that ideally, the person undergoing a psychological ego-collapse should be enveloped by a diverse team of loving friends who are all in this mode of setting up an enveloping environment that is holotropically therapeutic (dominantly feminine-inductive so that it is continually opening up opportunity to assert authentically).  This then leads to the thought that when health is restored, this is the mode of 'healthy community' wherein everyone is an agent of setting up opportunity-to-assert authentically for everyone else.

The 'feeling' that I associate with this community geometry is, to me, the feeling that the holotropic therapy of Slanislav Grof should feel like; i.e. the enveloping dynamic of space should feel entirely inductive and opportunity-giving so that my broken and struggling authentic assertivity (aka my 'ego') can 'rise up' and assert itself in a manner that re-discovers its own authenticity.   There must be no 'imposing' in this enveloping environment that insists that I should be doing 'this' or 'that' or that gives me the message through eye contact, that I am a poor shadow of my former self and 'isn't it a pity', and why can't I hurry up and become my 'old self' again.  All of these 'rational impositions' destroy the holotropic pull of the feminine-inductive that I need to pull me back into my authentic feminine-inductive-masculine-assertive inner-outer dance harmony.  

The 'self' that stops grounding it's 'self' by actively participating in the co-creation of its enveloping opportunity-to-act dance and instead starts grounding it's 'self' with reference to rational containing structures will 'forget' its authentic dance-rhythms and will begin to perform in a 'bully-or-be-bullied' mode.  If the 'self' cannot stomach bullying as a way of life and it has also lost its ability to find its authentic inner-outer-dynamical dancing rhythms, it may be bullied to the point that a psychotic episode ensues in which the ego collapses and the search is on for a rediscovery of the lost inner-outer dynamical rhythms.   The environment needed for such rediscovery is an environment 'which doesn't impose' but which is rich and predominant in feminine-inductive pull, as in Stanislav Grof's 'holotropic therapy' geometry and as is the feeling one might get (that I get) from the song 'Take it Easy' which speaks about making the most of the 'now' ('we will never be here again' in this same space-time geometrical positioning in the continuing 'now' so we must 'tune in' to the latent opportunity that envelopes us and which scents and flavours the fluid substance of the enveloping space-time 'now').

The only thing that well-intended rational advice can do for someone suffering an ego breakdown is to infuse 'noise' into their search for the enveloping pull of the feminine-inductive.  And if their recoil from the noise of those imposing rational thought, that makes them close up like a frightened sea-anenome, and this in turn attracts even more imposing rational advice with the intent of having the retreating 'self' get on back out there, ... such rational imposition will constitute an intensifying spiral of dysfunction in which the individual will be unable to blossom outer from the inner like a snake responding to the seductive harmonies of the enveloping flute music or the sea-anemone to the seductive harmonies of whales calling to each other.

As Grof noted, music which 'does not impose' is the best for creating the feminine-inductive vessel, and this is where the chanting and drumming of the native healing circles are effective, though the participation of a psychologically troubled loved one in the chanting and drumming of native healing ritual, in their search for their authentic inner-outer rhythms, may elicit fear in 'white western' friends of the 'experient', ... fear that their soul may be irrecoverably lost etc. and such fear may be imposed on the experient by the irrational fear of the 'rational relative or friend' via efforts to stop the ritual and thus block this particular avenue of access to the needed feminine-inductive vessel.

This same 'detachment' from the inner-outer dynamical harmony in nature is occurring at the social level of 'community' through the 'money system'.  Money transactions enable the splitting apart of the natural community harmonies embodied in bartering.  In a bartering community, we see the same conscious participation in co-creating a sustained harmonious confluence as in the 'friendly freeway driving example'.   The emergent, evolving barter based community is one wherein the productive assertions of its constituents co-create the enveloping opportunity-to-produce dynamic.   The invention of 'money' is what enabled the splitting apart of the space-time phase relationships in the community-constituent production-consumption codynamic, so that the whole process could be 'logically' or 'rationally' managed instead of being a co-resonant dance of the constituency with itself, as in the complex systems in nature.

Using money, the community erects a financial shield around itself in the manner of the thermostatically controlled dwelling with the aim of 'nulling out' the relationship with the external seasonalities.   The community and its constituents then switch their 'grounding reference' from the basket of seasonalities in which they are enveloped, to the logical financial structures enable by money.   Money thus plays the same sort of role as 'matter'; i.e. it is an expedient notion that enables one to visual energy flow in terms of material transactions.

The purely rational view of community-constituent production-consumption codynamics leads, as in the former case, to a 'bully or be bullied' stance (what we refer to as win/lose competition).  The instinctive or intuitive view of how the productive activities of the constituents co-create the enveloping opportunity-to-produce is lost to the purely rational viewer.   And once again, those communities that are successful in 'bullying' are not as prone to psychosis as those who cannot get comfortable with 'bullying' and, for that reason or by circumstance, fall into the ranks of the 'bullied'.   If they cannot get back in touch with the balanced inner-outer dynamic of the community-constituent codynamical harmony mode, they as a community may go into 'psychosis'.  And in this case, there is only so much space in the global commons and if the imposing rationality of the financial 'bullies' monopolies the productive resources of the global commons, there will be no room to establish a dominant 'feminine-inductive' enveloping space for holotropic therapy at the level of community.   For example, the 'Marshall Plan' (The Economic Cooperation Act of 1948) approximated a form of holotropic therapy at the level of community;

"As the war-torn nations of Europe faced famine and economic crisis in the wake of World War II, the United States proposed to rebuild the continent in the interest of political stability and a healthy world economy. On June 5, 1947, in a commencement address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall first called for American assistance in restoring the economic infrastructure of Europe. Western Europe responded favorably, and the Truman administration proposed legislation. The resulting Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 restored European agricultural and industrial productivity. Credited with preventing famine and political chaos, the plan later earned General Marshall a Nobel Peace Prize."

But the Marshall plan, which facilitated active participation in co-creating an enveloping opportunity-to-produce space was intended simply for the 'recovery' period, rather than the vision of a means for sustaining the COMMUNITY-community codynamic in an inner-outer resonant state.  Thus, the global economy, built upon rational principles, has fragmented into 'the bullies' and 'the bullied' and is inciting psychosis in the form of community ego breakdown amongst the 'bullied' who have lost their ability to 'tune-in' to their authentic rhythms as existed in the old 'beyond rational' community-constituent codynamical harmonies of the barter era.

As in the individual-level 'holotropic therapy' of Grof, wherein an enveloping environment dominant in the 'feminine-inductive' is established for the experient to re-discover their authentic assertive rhythms (outer-inner codynamically phase-coupled rhythms), there is a like need today in the 'global economy'.  It is unlikely to come about as long as the 'most successful bullies', like the poor pool player, believe their purely rational theory (based on the actions and transactions of autonomous agents) that it is their mastery of transactions that makes them successful, rather than the 'snookering patterns' they are imposing on their fellows, the informationally deeper view of the game.

One can choose between many 'leitmotifs' in seeking to bring these comments into a connective, in-context 'overview'; i.e. there are issues of 'uncertainty', 'incompleteness', psychology, culture etc. involved.   But perhaps one of the 'deepest' connectors is 'information', ... how we 'inform' ourselves on these issues.  Heisenberg suggests that we cannot 'jump to perfect or absolute conclusions' such as the 'existence' of an orbit since that 'skips over' the mathematical details in the same manner as when we lay a flat triangular object down on the table, pour salt over the corners, and then remove the object, we can still clearly visualize the perfect form of the triangle just by the three angular voids in the piles of salt.  The triangle does not have tangible existence but is something that emerges from a suite of informational relationships brought into connection in our minds.  We have in-formed ourselves of the pseudo-existence of this triangle in a purely 'relational' manner.

Had Heisenberg's discussion with Einstein been augmented by including Henri Poincaré (1854 - 1912) the discussion might have gone in the direction of the influence of space-time framing conventions on mathematical and human conceptualization of such entities as 'the self' and its relationship to the 'world'.  In Euclidian space, the information content of the basic 'pixel' in space is simply a 'point' which has neither form nor content.  It can only speak to the binary issue of whether somethings exists OR does not exist at this point, ... all else, including the concepts of 'volume' (inner-and-outer) are secondary constructs beyond the basic capabilities of the mathematical space.  On the other hand, in the spherical space of relativity, the information content associated with each elemental pixel is the notion of a 'sphere', the essence of the 'inner-outer' relationship.   Einstein speaks of the 'frightening ghosts' of the fixed inertial frame and the concept of absolute time, that we need to avoid in our conceptualization of nature.  So what difference do these space-framing conventions then have on our view of 'self' and 'world' which seem to vary by culture. 

The 'self' of the spherical space of relativity, where 'matter' is seen as a secondary concept derived from the more fundamental notion of an energy flow and where 'time' is seen as a secondary concept derived from the more fundamental notion of the continually transforming space-time continuum, would necessarily be purely relational, a dynamical inner-outer relationship as between the atmosphere and the hurricane or the water flow and whirlpool (or inner-outer multiscale nesting of vortices as in turbulent fluid flow).   In the relativistic view, we see that the concept of 'self' must be unique (because everything is uniquely situated within a spherical space-time continuum) but that there is no existential detachment of the 'self' since the self 'is' the dynamical inner-outer relationships between the constituent dynamics and the enveloping world dynamic.   As Nietzsche says, 'man' is the diminutive of 'mankind' and in this sense his 'self' is an 'Über-mensch' (over-man) and, as in the example of the friendly freeway driver, he has a 'Will zur Macht' (will to power) wherein he seeks to transcend his material self (i.e. he seeks to live his live in Camelotian style, realizing that community and humanity are relational dynamics that transcend the apparent 'existential' life-cycles of the material constituents; i.e. he seeks to live his life with the humility that recognizes that 'he' is not a detached and independent 'thing', but an agent of assertion pulled into being in the service of an over-nesting dynamic).  While these concepts are consistent with the Native American, Celtic and ancient philosophical traditions, and with the thinking of Heraclitus, Lao Tsu and Buddha, the western world since 500 B.C. and the advent of the discretist ideas of Parmenides, Plate and Aristotle, has opted for a space-time referencing framing convention that makes binary 'existence or not' the foundation of the view of world and self, rather than the ongoing dynamical inner-outer relationship that we experience.

While the philosophy of Heraclitus ('one can never step twice into the same river'), Lao Tsu (the 'valley' as the 'mysterious woman') and Buddha (the unchanging flow of the Ganges) were all 'dynamical inner-outer (feminine-inductive-masculine-assertive) flow-based, Parmenides was the first to say that we could not trust our sensory experience but must rely on the perfection of abstraction as embodied in the 'existence' of 'things'.. As Kirk, Raven et al note in 'The Presocratic Philosophers';

"Parmenides claims that in any inquiry there are two and only two logically coherent possibilities, which are exclusive --- that the subject of the enquiry exists or that it does not exist. On epistemological grounds he rules out the second alternative as unintelligible. He then turns to abuse of ordinary mortals for showing by their beliefs that they never make the choice between the two ways 'is' and 'is not', but follow both without discrimination [the problematic issue of how to handle dipolarity, an inherent aspect of all of nature raises its head here]. In the final section of this first part [of his hexameter poem] he explores the one secure path, 'is', and proves in an astonishing deductive tour de force that if something exists, it cannot come to be or perish, change or move, nor be subject to any imperfection. Parmenides arguments and his paradoxical conclusions had an enormous impact on later Greek philosophy; his method and his impact alike have rightly been compared to those of Descartes' cogito."

Clearly, the discussion as to whether we should found our 'in-forming' on perfect forms or on dynamical inner-outer relationship is a continuing discussion that is evident in Heisenberg's comments on his dialogue with Einstein.   Meanwhile, the abstraction of 'existence' (e.g. of 'matter' etc.) continues to dominate in western philosophy and western man has become so convinced that its 'partner in deception', the abstraction of  'time' is also something that 'absolutely exists' and that it is a more fundamental foundation of reality than inner-outer energy flow that he has coined the phrase 'time is money' (i.e. the implication being that 'time is value' or 'time is a substance that exists' rather than an abstracted secondary notion derived from the purely relational inner-outer energy flow that in relativity theory is referred to as the space-time continuum.). The existential foundation of western philosophy, as contrasted with the inner-outer energy flow foundations of relativity are capable only of a reduced view of the inner-outer dynamical essence of 'self'.   That is, the price of the 'perfection' that removes the uncertainty of continuously evolving energy transformation and builds instead upon fixed identity matter, is the loss of the notion of 'inner-outer-harmony', and thus our notion of 'health' and 'healing' is reduced from the 'Hygiean' notion of inner-outer dynamical resonance to the 'Aesculapian' notion of the 'correct functioning of the material components'.  On the celestial scale, this loss is manifest in going from the 'Harmonies of the World' of Kepler (the dipolar inner-outer dynamical equilibrium between the feminine-inductive and the masculine assertive) to the 'Mathematical Principles' of Newton (monopolar masculine assertion of material entities).  Only if we abandon our psychological dependence on fixed reference frames and absolute time can we envisage the simultaneous harmony (inner-outer codynamical resonance) of our enveloping solar system dynamic, a truly marvellous dynamic as described by E.E. Richards in 'Faster than The Speed of Light'.

"Each cosmic body---a planet, a moon, or a star---utilizes the spherical shape as its energy containment. The sphere is an ideal shape for a resonant cavity. The very nature of the sphere means that it resonates over vast spectrums of frequency. For example, if we start by considering the earth circumference of approximately 7.5 Hz., as a fundamental, we may calculate and detect many higher harmonically-related frequencies. In addition, there are radius frequencies with higher harmonics present. Harmonic waves in a spherical solid set up a periodic distribution within the inner and outer spherical cavities. The Van Allen energy belts surrounding the earth also present a multitude of resonant harmonics at lower frequencies than the circumference 7.5 Hz. Figure (9) shows some of the earth related frequencies. …The Music of the Spheres", an ancient concept of the Universal Song, may be seen as a reality when considering the motions of the solar system. When the revolutions and rotations for the planets and their moons are converted to frequencies, there appear many harmonic relationships. For examples: the Moon's revolution is harmonically attuned to the three largest moons of Jupiter, which are themselves one octave separated from each other in their revolutions. Jupiter's rotation is a harmonic of the Earth, and Pasiphae, the outer moon of Jupiter, is in harmony with the Earth's revolution. There are many other similar solar system harmonics."  http://www.gwi.net/~erichard/fastlit.htm 

 * * *

[1] Audio clip of Heisenberg discussing the Uncertainty Principle (transcription)

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/voice1.htm

"We had understood the mathematical scheme, and we also had understood that certainly we need the discrete energy levels, and the quantum jumps, and so on. But we could not even explain how such a thing as an orbit of an electron in a cloud chamber comes about, because they would see the orbit, but still we had no notion of the orbit in our mathematical scheme.

And at that time I remembered a long discussion which I had with Einstein about a year [before] - it was my first meeting with Einstein - I had given a talk on quantum mechanics in the Berlin colloquium. And Einstein had taken me to his room, and he first asked me about this idea which I had said in my lecture, that one should only use observable quantities in the mathematical scheme. And he said, he understood the ideas of Mach, Mach's philosophy, but whether I really believed in it, he couldn't see. Well, I told him that I had understood that he has produced his theory of relativity just on this philosophical basis, as everybody knew. Well, he said, that may be so, but still it's nonsense. And that of course was quite surprising to me.

Then he explained that what can be observed is really determined by the theory. He said, you cannot first know what can be observed, but you must first know a theory, or produce a theory, and then you can define what can be observed....

And could it not be the other way around? Namely, could it not be true that nature only allows for such situations which can be described with a mathematical scheme? Up to that moment, we had asked the opposite question. We had asked, given the situations in nature like the orbit in a cloud chamber, how can it be described with a mathematical scheme? But that wouldn't work, because by using such a word like "orbit", we of course assumed already that the electron had a position and had a velocity. But by turning it around, one could at once see that now it's possible, if I say nature only allows such situations as can be described with a mathematical scheme, then *you can say, well, this orbit is really not a complete orbit. Actually, at every moment the electron has only an inaccurate position and an inaccurate velocity, and between these two inaccuracies there is this uncertainty relation. And only by this idea it was possible to say what such an orbit was.

  (From "The Development of the Uncertainty Principle", an audiotape produced by Spring Green Multimedia in the UniConcept Scientist Tapes series, © 1974).

[2] Lyrics to 'Take It Easy' by 'The Eagles'

Well, I'm a runnin' down the road, tryin' to loosen my load,
I've got seven women on my mind:
four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me,
one says she's a friend of mine.
Take it easy, take it easy,
don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.
Lighten up while you still can, don't even try to understand,
just find a place to make your stand and take it easy.

Well, I'm a standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
and such a fine sight to see:
it's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford
slowin' down to take a look at me.
Come on, baby, don't say maybe.
I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me.
We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again.
So open up, I'm climbin' in, so take it easy.

Well, I'm a runnin' down the road, tryin' to loosen my load,
got a world of trouble on my mind.
Lookin' for a lover who won't blow my cover,
she's so hard to find.
Take it easy, take it easy,
don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.
Come on, baby, don't say maybe.
I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me.
Oh, we got it easy,
we oughta take it easy.