Breakdown and Renewal in the Western World

Pender Island B.C. / Dallas, November 28, 2001

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

This essay was motivated by the pulse of 'souffrance' felt in the wake of the September 11th cycle of attacks and retaliatory action which seems to have 'triggered' psychotic/depressive episodes amongst the 'miner's canaries' in my immediate circle of friends and family.  It was simultaneously 'posted' yesterday in the globalpeacecampaign forum in yahoogroups and on the Vancouver 'Indymedia' website.

How the rational mind gets 'trapped' and 'fragmented' by the simplified western notions of split apart 'time' and 'space' is not an easy story to track.   Those whose everyday mental activities 'ground them' in the rational may have difficulty 'stretching' to accommodate the shift towards interdependent space-time as presented in this essay, ... while those whose everyday mental activities 'ground them' in the intuitive may have difficulty coping with the 'dryness' of the rational language-based 'trip' that leads from split-apart 'time' and 'space' to the jumping off point for re-grounding in interdependent space-time.   This essay is written with those ('intuitives' or 'rationals') in mind who are 'suffering' psychologically and trying to deepen their understanding of the origins of the stress in the global social psyche so that their own psychological tensions might be somewhat relieved.

The madness of our western culture is in our belief that change is a function of 'time' even though, as Einstein observed, ... 'time is what we see on our wristwatch', ... something arbitrary and local that 'detaches' us from our natural place within the coherency of the enveloping seasons.   In nature, change is instead induced by the seasons whose opposite states exist 'at the same time', ... regions of winter and regions of summer in which we are enveloped and included which 'induce' transformation in the quest of converting polar opposition into harmony; ... oceanic and atmospheric currents are induced to flow between the simultaneous regions of winter and summer, bird to migrate, animals to change their 'coats' - their inner-outer balancing interface with the enveloping world. Everything natural engages in a resonant, inner-outer transformational dynamic, ... a container-constituent dynamic that is induced by the tension between the simultaneous space-time regions of opposition otherwise known as 'seasons' or 'cycles' or 'waves'.   Meanwhile, western man has set himself the goal of creating and sustaining the 'ideal state' that will make him entirely impervious to the enveloping 'seasons', ... to create technology shell-protected ideal states detached from the globally connecting coherency of 'season' by the artificiality of 'time-' based regulation.   Each ideal state, by  erecting a shell of regulatory technology to neutralize enveloping social and climatic seasons, simultaneously disorders the enveloping global commons beyond the shell commensurate with the imposition of artificial order within the shell.  The mad scenario can be likened to the residents of an apartment building during a hot summer season pumping the heat from their 'climatic control' units (ACs) into the shared enveloping corridor space thus guaranteeing the futility of their quest to sustain a detached, ideal state within an innately interconnected living space.  In response to the rising ambient temperatures in the enveloping commonspace that they themselves have caused, the residents engage in a spiralling competition to upgrade the capacity of their regulating technology, paying a price not only in terms of technology obsolescence but also in terms of ever-higher energy consumption costs.  As the 'heat builds' and the gap widens between the power of their respective regulatory technology, ... more and more of the regulated shells of those who cannot afford to upgrade break down.  Those with the most powerful technology continue to pump their thermal disorder out into the enveloping commonspace, sleeping well at night, maintain order inside of their shell space and thus sustain their ability to buy their disproportionate share of the global energy resource to keep their energy-hungry regulatory control systems running smoothly, ... while those whose regulatory systems have broken suffer sleepless nights and disordered lives which take them farther away from being able, short of becoming slaves to their creditors, to upgrade their equipment and compete for a greater share of energy. 

Breakdown and renewal are the essentials of evolution and natural 'learning’.  When evolution is smooth and continuous, breakdown and renewal is smooth and continuous.   When evolution ‘gets stuck’, breakdown and renewal become episodic and disruptive and occasionally, catastrophic.

Whether the ‘system’ is that of a growing sand pile where each new grain of sand added to the crest is capable of causing an avalanche of unpredictable size, or a collection of nation-states whose individual political-dynamics can provoke an avalanche of repercussions, … the general geometry is one of inner-outer inductive tensions which periodically ‘breakdown’ in manifest kinetics to allow the dynamical balance to renew.

The forté of the western world, since ‘Plato’s Republic’, has been to use education, management and technology to shelter, protect and sustain an idealized environmental state regardless of what is ‘going on in the world outside’.   Since there are many different ‘idealized states’ that seek to protect and preserve their own local character, this protective philosophy sets up inner-outer dynamical tensions in their quest to ‘suspend evolution’ on an overall, natural space-time continuum basis, instead, seeking to ‘manage and control’ evolution on a local basis.

This ‘controlled environment’ orientation pervades all aspects of western life, from the ‘climatic control’ (air conditioning) of homes to the ‘political control’ of sovereign nations on their constituents.   The philosophy of ‘control’ is based upon the invented notion of ‘absolute time’ and thus ‘absolute motion’ (motion ‘in-its-own-right’).  That is, the notion of ‘control’ is rooted in the notion that ‘things change in time’ but not as we would like them to’.   We would like to keep them ‘moving along in time’ in a certain idealized and preferred way.

Our almost ‘religious’ faith in the independence of time and space, … a notion that deludes us into thinking that change is a function of time, … underpins the current conflict within the western psyche.

This view of our worship of ‘time’ as the source of cultural psychosis is not abstracted ‘out of the blue’ but is the natural offspring of research into exceptional performance versus dysfunctional performance in teams (communities) and in individuals.   The dysfunction includes painful psychological breakdown shared with/by those close to me.

Viewing ‘time’ as something that exists in its own right, independent of space and its constituents means that ‘time’ is the agency that allows ‘things to move’ and that allows ‘change to happen’.   Our notions of ‘movement’ and ‘change’ are the cornerstones of our psychology, our behavioral responses and our social management approaches.

At this moment in the enveloping world, it is both winter and summer and day and night.   This intuited reality, that opposite ‘states’ prevail at the same time, tells us that we cannot really separate ‘space and time’ and still consider the overall world dynamic.   If I am forced to choose between whether it is night or day and make the choice that it is ‘day’ because that corresponds to the local condition, … I am anchoring my view of the world to where I happen to be in the world even though many other things are going on AT THE SAME TIME, … I am making my view ‘observer-dependent’.   And in this ‘anchoring’ to my person-centered vantage point, I detach myself from those other simultaneous experiencings of other diurnal phases and seasons.   That is, an observer-including view of the world, a view from the enveloping space within which I am immersed and included within says that my local observations are far from the whole story as we are all experiencing different seasonal and diurnal phases AT THE SAME TIME.   Thus stories based in time, …observer-excluding views of motion and change that depend on ‘time’ are artificially constrained with respect to the simultaneous space-time transformation that our experience and intuition informs us is the ‘real’ nature of the enveloping world dynamic.

The convention we impose on our perception of the world, of ‘time’ that is independent of space (i.e. of ‘time’ that is independent of the existential states of material objects) is a convention that, taken to the extreme, leads to the social psychosis we are now suffering. 

We have already observed that our notional detachment of  ‘time’ from ‘space’ means that we remove from our ‘space-and-time’ language, the capability of speaking about coordinated actions that are going on in the domain of ‘simultaneity’ (e.g. the atmospheric and oceanic currents that mediate between regions of winter and summer).   That is, we know that it is day and night and winter and summer simultaneously and that all of the locations experiencing these seasonal PHASES are simultaneously moving through the phases in a coordinated manner, but once we opt for the independence of ‘time’ and ‘space’ in our language, we constrain our discussion of movement and change to actions and transactions along the axis of ‘time’, …  a radically constrained view.

That ‘time language’ (language that depends upon the notion of time’) is a very limited way of talking about the world was noted by Dennis Gabor in his ‘Theory of Communication’ (1944).   Gabor (who won the Nobel prize in physics for holography) observed that ‘time language’ constrains our thinking to ‘causal’ thinking where what happens can only be influenced by things occurring at times up to and including the present time, but that in the domain of 'frequency’ or ‘seasons’, the future can also contribute to the present, thus our real-world reality, which is characterized by space-time-connecting seasonalities (annual, mensual, diurnal)  is not constrained to ‘causality’.

When we try to put our ‘heads around’ this idea of simultaneous, space-time connectedness, we cannot quite get to it, and this is because we are coming at it from our cultural default reference ground of independence of ‘time’ and ‘space’.  And the fact is that the ‘framing’ of interdependent space-time transcends in a geometric sense, the ‘framing’ of independent ‘time’ and ‘space’.   That is, it is mathematically impossible to conceive of the interdependent space-time framing when one starts from a conceptual underpinning of independent ‘time’ and ‘space’.   Another way of saying this is that the rectangular Euclidian space is a degenerate form of spherical space-time.   On the surface of a sphere such as the Earth, … the movement of, for example, an oceanic or atmospheric current can be seen, in a deeper sense, as the geometric transformation of the spherical space dynamic (the dynamic of the moving water or air is simultaneously its own enveloping dynamic).

For example, if we are playing the game of pool, we can conceive the movement and evolution of the play in terms of the actions and transactions of the balls, consistent with our independent ‘time’ and ‘space’ framing convention.   But it is evident to us that we can look at the movements and the evolution of the play in a still deeper way that accounts for the enveloping, evolving space-time geometry.   That is, as the balls move relative to each other, simultaneously, the enveloping geometry is transforming, … a geometry that constitutes their ‘opportunity-to-move’, thus the moving balls are co-creating their own enveloping opportunity-to-move.   This deeper conceptual view (transformation of space-time) transcends any concept of movement or change that can be perceived in the context of ‘time’.   The deeper, space-time geometric transformation view, the relativistic view’, is a ‘beyond time’ view transpiring in the 'continuing now’.  

This space-time-transformation-in-the-continuing-now view is a deeper and more complete view of our enveloping world dynamic that is not available to us when we rely on the independent ‘time’ and ‘space’ framing convention.   Thus to over-rely on the abstract notion of 'time’ as distinct from ‘space’ is to deny the inner-outer seasonal connectedness of things and infuse dysfunction into our behaviour in the same way as occurs in the game of pool (freeway driving is another easily visualizable example).    That is, what is left unaccounted for when we focus only on the ‘time language’ domain (actions and transactions of things) is the manipulation of the geometry of opportunity-to-move and opportunity-to-evolve.   Our western language, used assertively, is effectively a ‘time language’ and it thus CONCEALS the issues of ‘frequency’ and ‘space-time phase’ that deal with inner-outer space-time dynamics constituting OPPORTUNITY; i.e. the ‘OPPORTUNITY-to-act’ and the ‘OPPORTUNITY-to-evolve’.  In other words, our western ‘time language’ exclusively accommodates the masculine-assertive forms of motion and change that we conceptualize as transpiring in the form of time-based actions and transactions.  ‘Time language’ EXCLUDES and CONCEALS the feminine-inductive forms of motion and change (transformation) that occur SIMULTANEOUSLY as ‘seasonal’ space-time coherencies.

Psychologically, we know that we can use the 'feminine-inductive’ to shape and manipulate the dynamical geometry of space so as to, for example, opportunize ourselves and collaborators and disopportunize others.  For example, on the freeway, we can speed up a bit as we drive in the fast lane and ‘close down’ an opportunity-to-move of another driver who is seeking to shift out of the slow lane into the fast to avoid slowing down for a truck that is blocking the slow lane.   Or, we can drive side-by-side on a two lane freeway and only let our ‘friends’ pass through.  In these type of relative motions, we use the feminine-inductive that relates to inner-outer dynamics and this type of motion, which relates assertive action to the reciprocal shape of space (opportunity-to-move) transcends description in the purely masculine-assertive terms of causal actions and transactions.

It is the source of much psychological stress that our ‘time language’, the mainstay of western communications accommodates only the masculine-assertive and denies the existence of the feminine-inductive.   Our actions in opportunizing ourselves and our friends and disopportunizing others by means of the managed mediation of the dynamical inner-outer geometry of space (i.e. the ‘feminine-inductive’) are implicit and invisible (i.e. these co-actions are purely relational) and therefore their results are UN-caused.   Did he slow down or speed up to close down my opportunity to pass?, … did the two semi-trailers drive side-by-side to close down my opportunity to get through?    Their actions were not ‘their own actions’ but were simply ‘relative actions’ and thus there is no explicit cause that can be ‘blamed’ for the result, … the causal agent is not a ‘thing’ but the dynamical geometry of space (which may or may not have simply ‘emerged’ or been deliberately shaped by the consciousness of others).   It is possible for a group of collaborating individuals to manage the dynamical shape of opportunity-to-move space to selectively opportunize cronies and disopportunize others.  Since the influence of the dynamical shape of space is an action-inhibitor or action-enabler, manipulation of the movements of others can be achieved while ‘laundering out’ the causal source. 

We use our ability to ‘manage the dynamical shape of space-time’ on a regular basis, … to modulate inner-outer dynamic that constitutes ‘opportunity-to-act’ and use the influence of the ‘feminine-inductive’ like an opportunity valve, … to selectively open up and enable some actions to occur and to close down and inhibit other actions.   We do this regularly but our western ‘time-language’ with its dependence on assertive action based description cannot speak to it directly, and our systems of values, rewards and justice that are similarly dependent on masculine-assertive actions and transactions are innately handicapped in trying to deal with the purely inductive ‘inspirational’ or ‘manipulative’.   The sensitive individuals in our society who are naturally inclined towards the feminine-inductive, … the lighter-side people who inspire joy and community harmony in their surroundings but who ‘score low’ on the masculine-assertive achievement side, are prime candidates for psychotic breakdown as they become convinced by the valuing traditions of the enveloping social dynamic that their lives are without value, … value being ascribed lopsidedly by the western culture to masculine-assertive achievement.   And the darker-side people who use the feminine-inductive to manipulate the opening up of opportunity for themselves and their cronies at the expense of closing down opportunity for others do so with the western cultural values and justice system ‘on their side’.

This growing gap between our western ‘time language’ which ‘sees’ only the ‘masculine-assertive’ and our experiencing of the enveloping real-world dynamic that manifests the dual-poled ‘feminine-inductive-masculine-assertive’ of nature is leading to the growth of psycho-social breakdown.

Psycho-social breakdown is growing because we are putting our technology in the service of our ‘time-language’ and our technology is becoming increasingly powerful.

It starts with the notion, embodied in Plato’s Republic, of designing and implementing the ideal state.   In Plato’s design, the city streets were laid out in a perfectly rectangular grid and the constituents were specified in terms of their assertive roles and their central control-based management, an idealized convention that does not consider the conflict that will arise as the grids of many cities on the spherical surface of the earth, each working to their own ‘ideals’, begin to grow and interfere with each other, .. nor does it consider the clash of multiple centrally managed ideal states ‘as the world shrinks’ in a transportation and communications sense.  Plato’s design was exclusively ‘masculine assertive’ and based on idealized ‘states’ seen ‘in their own right’.  That is, Plato’s design was ‘all content and no container’.  The ‘inner-outer dynamic’ or ‘feminine-inductive’ was not a part of the design.  

Only today are systems thinkers beginning to ‘rehabilitate’ the banished ‘feminine-inductive’ in architecture and design.   As Russell Ackoff says, the inductive influence of the enveloping supersystem dynamic is the reference ground from which the dynamics of the included constituent systems must push off from.   This is equivalent to the principle of ‘relativity’, validated in Einstein’s relativity theory, … theory that is the most comprehensive of scientific theory to date since it accounts for motion at the deeper perceptual level of the transformation of the geometry of space-time (rather than the simple assertive action and transactional view).

Within the United States, the native peoples persist in saying that spiritually we must stay in tune with the nesting inner-outer dynamic of nature in which we are ‘inclusions’, … and that we must reference our actions to our enveloping world dynamic.  But also within the United States our regulatory structures continue to build solely on the masculine-assertive, attempting to create the idealized state of Plato that is ‘all assertive content and no inductive container’, … a state that will be a powerful shell so that the constituents in its interior may operate ‘in their own right’ and not have to even think about the enveloping world dynamic.   Unlike the native American (or skilled pool player) who would put the need to stay in harmony with the inner-outer dynamic in the primacy over the masculine assertive; i.e. to put the masculine-assertive into the service of cultivating inner-outer dynamical harmony, … the regulatory systems of the western world seek to do the inverse, … to ignore the nesting of inner-outer dynamic (to ignore the role of ‘opportunity’ and the ‘feminine-inductive’) and to concentrate on maintaining the smooth functioning of the ‘idealized state in-its-own-right’.

The western regulatory agencies use what are called in systems terms ‘control systems’ to sustain the smooth functioning of the idealized state.   This is done through a time-language based concept called ‘feedback’.   A ‘thermostat’ is the classic example of ‘feedback’ in a negative sense.    The goal is to sustain an idealized temperature, regardless of the inner-outer dynamic (regardless of changes in the enveloping supersystem dynamic aka ‘weather’).   When the temperature starts to drop in response to the enveloping supersystem, ‘negative feedback’ in the control system operationalizes assertive actions to restore the inside of the control system ‘shell’ to the ‘ideal state’.   Similarly when the temperature starts to rise in response to the enveloping supersystem dynamic, ‘negative feedback’ activates to assertively drive the temperature back down.

Within the ‘technology-regulated shell’, the design goal is that the constituents within the shell can become totally ‘insensitive’ to the inner-outer dynamic.   Unlike the native, who seeks to be in-tune with inner-outer change and to sensitively and resonantly co-respond with it, western man has sought to use technology to liberate himself from engagement with the ‘feminine-inductive’ so that he can be free to live in an environment that is purely masculine-assertive.   However, technology does not have to be ‘shell-building’ technology, … the motorcycle rider eschews the ‘conditioned shell’ of the car because he wants to let his sensibilities ‘tune-in’ to the subtle changes in enveloping atmospheric and other inner-outer dynamical conditions.  He wants to ‘feel’ the road and ‘feel’ his displacement within the enveloping space and stay in a ‘resonant zone’ (resonant inner-outer dynamic) with it rather than to ‘float along’ in a disconnected, idealized and conditioned space that detaches him from the inner-outer dynamic.

Nevertheless, in the western political sphere, the name of the game is to put technology (military and other) into the construction of regulated shells that allow the constituents to be impervious and unconscious of the feminine-inductive, … to detach them from the inner-outer dynamic with the enveloping global socio-political supersystem.   This is the symbolism that has come to be attached to the western national flag; i.e. it represents the rallying around the idealized state/s and rejecting a resonance-seeking engagement with the inner-outer global dynamic.   The job of government, rather than working to cultivate inner-outer harmony amongst the community of nations, has become one of keeping the interior of the regulated shell of the idealized state free from outer-inner dynamical perturbations so that the constituents can continue to focus solely on the masculine assertive development of their ‘ideal state’.

My daughter suggests that this retrenchment into the protective shell has been because of the way people manage their fear.  While the native north american believes that God is within man and within all things as well as being immanent in the enveloping ‘containing space’, … the western religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) have come to believe (arguably in contradiction to Jesus, Moses and Mohammed) that God is in the form of a Divine Causal Agent, … a notion that brings us back to the purely masculine-assertive.   This concept of a Causal God, perhaps brought on by our increasing ‘time-language’ orientation, leads directly to the ‘causal control hierarchy’ of western style government that protects ‘our way of life’ seen in terms of a purely assertive ideal state.

In this mode we deliver our personal assertive power up the hierarchy to our leaders and we pray that the Causal God will help them to make the ‘right assertive decisions’.   Unlike the native who would ask the leadership (i.e. God, the ‘chief’, himself) to be a ‘fractal’ warrior for inner-outer harmony on all scales, … we of the western culture ask instead for hierarchical protection for our purely masculine-assertive way of life, … by strengthening the regulatory shell that isolates us from the inner-outer dynamic with the enveloping world, and allows us to persist in the masculine-assertive goals and priorities of our ‘ideal state’ without ever having to be sensitive to or conscious of the 'feminine-inductive’.

The consequences of depending on ‘time language’ are profound.   As Gabor observed, causality is implied in the time language, and as systems authorities Russell Ackoff and Jamshid Gharajedaghi observe, the notion of temporal cause gives rise to a particular purely-assertive (all assertive content, no inductive container) conception of ‘God’.  They observe in their discussion ‘On Purposive Systems’;

"One thing is taken to be a cause of another, if it is both necessary and sufficient for the other.  The exclusive commitment of cause-effect has three important consequences. First, because identification of causes provides [supposedly] COMPLETE explanations of their effects, the environment (container) is not required to explain anything.  This environment-free concept of explanation is reflected in such natural laws as that of "freely" falling bodies, which applies only in the absence of an environment.  It is also reflected in the predisposition to conduct research in laboratories, places from which the environment can be excluded.  Secondly, causes themselves require explanation.  This is done by treating them as effects and finding their causes which also must be explained.  Is there no end to this regression?  Given the MECHANIST'S assumption that the world is completely comprehensible, the answer must be 'yes', there has to be a 'first cause'.  This was generally taken to be God and naturally, He was then taken to be the Creator.  God alone is uncaused, and therefore, not subject to explanation.  He must be accepted on faith. Third, because of the assumed comprehensibility of the world, everything other than God has to be assumed to be the effect of some cause, and therefore to be DETERMINED by that cause. Such determinism leaves no room for choice, hence purpose, in the natural world."

The banishment of the feminine-inductive in the educational, management and regulatory practice of western society thus tends to imply a CAUSAL GOD or MASCULINE-ASSERTIVE GOD, … a God that is ‘all assertive content and no inductive container’.   It is from this ‘time-language’ based worldview, .. a worldview that is purely ‘masculine assertive’ and ‘causal’ that the role of national government degenerates into one of maintaining a regulatory shell around an ideal state where one can focus purely on masculine assertive achievement and be indemnified from interference from inner-outer dynamic with the enveloping world.  This is not an option for the weaker countries of the world, nor for those who believe in a God who is immanent in the enveloping container of space, … who engages in the feminine-inductive influencing of space as well as in the masculine-assertive of material agents.   In the native orientation, for example, the traditional role of government is self-similar (fractal, as in natural ecologies) in its acceptance of the need to engage with the inner-outer dynamic at the level of nation, community, family and constituent; i.e. at all nesting levels one is a ‘warrior for community harmony’, … seeking to tune in to and help to sustain outer-inner dynamical harmony (community-constituent harmony).   In the manner of the skilled pool player and the friendly freeway driver, there is an awareness that one’s assertive actions, in the deeper view of things, constitute the enveloping dynamical geometry of space that constitutes opportunity-to-act, … and thus the constituents of space co-create their enveloping opportunity-to-act by being in touch with the inner-outer dynamic.

Meanwhile, the shift towards the regulatory shell around the ‘ideal state’, … the purely masculine-assertive state, … seems to be intensifying in the wake of September 11th.  If one starts in the third world and travels to the United States, one goes through what are like a series of ‘airlocks’ representing different degrees of isolation from the inner-outer dynamic with the enveloping world.  In the conflict-torn parts of the third world the constituents are open and exposed as the ‘isolation’ provided by the regulatory shells is either non-existant or ineffective against the powerful external dynamics of the enveloping global economy and global politics.   As one crosses borders in the direction of the ‘first world’ and the United States, as one passes inside of the regulated shells, one can both sense and observe the rising degree of isolation from inner-outer dynamics within the more powerful regulation now being maintained by the national governments.

Since the least powerful in the world have no way of putting up an ‘isolating shell’ they are forced to deal with the inner-outer dynamic.   It is the most powerful in the world who determine whether the ‘ethic’ of global regulation shall be one of cultivating harmony in the inner-outer dynamic, as in natural ecologies, … or whether it shall be one of protecting the ‘ideal state’, … the purely masculine-assertive state where one can become unconscious of and insensitive to the inner-outer dynamic with the enveloping world, … an ethic which ultimately leads to the imposition of the ‘ideal state’ of the most powerful nation on the rest of the world.  The current governments of the US, Britain and NATO, in the wake of September 11th, are clearly opting for the protection of the purely masculine-assertive ideal state rather than the cultivation of inner-outer dynamical harmony.

At the level of the individual, those who would put the value of the feminine-inductive in a natural primacy over the masculine-assertive are facing increased isolation from their enveloping fellows.   Psychotic breakdown is on the rise in these individuals as is the use of drugs to inhibit sensitivity and consciousness of the feminine-dynamic so as to bring the more sensitive ones, … the ‘miner’s canaries’, … in line with the ‘normality’ of the majority and conformity with the quest to pursue the goals of ‘the ideal state’, in a purely masculine-assertive mode while suspending one’s consciousness of being immersed in an inner-outer dynamic.

From air conditioned cars and homes to regulatory shell structures that detach the constituents of community from their enveloping inner-outer dynamic, … modern western man is designing technology-supported shell-spaces wherein he is free to pursue his/her masculine-assertive purpose without fear of having to respond to inner-outer dynamical influence.   In the modern western nation and in the modern western neighbourhood, … the inner-outer perturbations, rather than being responded to and engaged with, … are being seen as the responsibility of the regulatory shell structures to the extent that trouble in the enveloping space of one’s neighbour’s may be dealt with by dialing 911 rather than personally engaging.   We have come a long way from the traditions of the indigenous people where this engagement with the inner-outer world dynamic was a sacred responsibility and where being a warrior for peace and community harmony was the most respected of traditions.  Today, we struggle so that we can make the space for our children, our family, our community and our nation to ‘enjoy’ detachment from the inner-outer world dynamic so that we can pursue, in a purely masculine-assertive manner, the development of our ‘ideal state in its own right’.

Our biggest challenge today seems to be one of reviving the consciousness of the most powerful so that a more natural ‘break-down’ and ‘renewal’ can recommence.   In this endeavor, masculine-assertive approaches are unlikely to do the trick and a feminine-inductive approach will have to be found. Rather than being visualizable in the ‘time language’ terms of activist plans and programs along a progressive time-path, the inductive approach will involve inner-outer transformation, as may come through the incoming flow of the new generation of youth (who have been given the sacred space to become their authentic selves) as they permeate into the positions of power bringing ‘inside’ more conscious and more open minds with a greater appreciation of dipolar balance; i.e. a greater appreciation of the feminine-inductive-masculine-assertive community harmony approach to ‘global regulation’.

 * * *

Epilogue to 'Breakdown and Renewal in the Western World'

Dallas, December 1, 2001

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

After being repeatedly told by experts in the field of psychiatry and psychology that his anxiety attacks sprang from a 'chemical imbalance' that would require  him to take drugs for the rest of his life, ... my nephew is now saying that he suffers from a chemical imbalance that requires him to take drugs for the rest of his life, and that when he is on the drugs, he feels much better, just like he did when he was a child before his anxiety attacks began.

What is missing in this 'view' of 'breakdown' in the physiological system of an apparently very healthy, intelligent, sensitive person?

What if he were born a century ago in a peaceful and harmonious rural environment as my mother was?   What if he were an identical twin and his brother and he were placed from birth in separate environments, one in a New York black ghetto next to a crack house and the other in a stone age tribe in the jungles of New Guinea?

Could it be that the continually transforming, enveloping social-cultural environment has something to with our 'mental health', or do all our anxieties come from within as if we were fully detached from the enveloping world dynamic?   Could it be that as he grew up his anxieties emerged from the codynamic between his thoughts and actions and the collective thoughts and actions of the enveloping world dynamic, and that the 'chemical imbalance' was the 'result' rather than the cause? 

Pasteur finally conceded, after a lifelong argument with Antoine Bechamps, that Bechamp was right, that 'le microbe n'est rien, ... le terrain est tout' (the bacterium is nothing, the terrain [state of healthy balance of the host] is everything.).  That is the malady is NOT the result of a causal agency, it instead emerges from a 'de-balancing' of the natural 'ecological' balance between many interfering 'systems' that disproportionately 'opportunizes' a particular bacterium or chemical reaction or etc.   In the digestive tract alone there are more than 400 species of bacteria, that in the naturally balanced human system, participate in a resonant community-constituent codynamic that characterizes 'life' itself.   The biochemistry codynamic is equally complex in the diversity that must be in balance.   As the evolutionary biologist Henri Laborit observes in his work 'l'Eloge de la Fuite'  ('In praise of 'flight''), when there is a persisting field of tension between the dynamic of the individual and the enveloping community dynamic, ... it is time to move on (to 'take flight') to avoid the emergence of chemical imbalances and other pathologies in the human system.   If the person feels unavoidably 'trapped' in the tension between his thoughts and actions and the thoughts and actions of the enveloping community dynamic and can find no way (mentally or behaviourally) to escape from this tension, these are the ambient conditions that induce the chemical imbalance.   As Pasteur says 'le terrain est tout', .. we do no exist in empty space (though Newtonian science would suggest that we do), ... the dynamics of our thoughts and physical actions can only be with respect to our enveloping 'supersystem dynamic' the dynamical 'terrain' in which we are enveloped, immersed, included.

Once one breaks out of the indoctrination of pre-relativity science that we 'exist in our own right' as independent material systems, ... then we no longer have to feel like 'genetic defectives'.  But with the learned professors of our culture, in psychiatry and psychology repeating to more and more of us every year, that 'you have a chemical imbalance', ... 'you have a bipolar disorder', ... 'you are schizophrenic', ... as if 'le terrain' had nothing at all to do with it, ... we begin to believe it and thus to stop searching for an understanding of how our society 'really works' and how it is increasingly inducing mental and physical pathology in its constituents.

If one has 'found the answer' and that it is that 'one is defective', ... then there is no longer any need to 'fight the system' and one can simply take one's pills and 'join 'em'. 

But what does this do for the yet-to-come grandchildren, ... for the 'little ones still in the earth' as the native north americans say?  

If one discovers the source of the tensional imbalance between one's individual thoughts and actions and the thoughts and actions of the enveloping community, one can, by such understanding, dissolve these tensions.   This is the 'way' of the traditional native teachings that seek to shift the individual away from his balancing act with an enveloping western cultural 'terrain' that continues to 'go ballistic' and to re-develop balance within the enveloping dynamic of nature.   What this involves is the re-awakening of our natural perceptions and consciousness of the way the world 'really' works, rather than relying on the oversimplified way that the western culture teaches us that the world works (i.e. 'all masculine-assertive content and no feminine-inductive container').   This is achieved through the 'healing circle' and consciousness deepening rituals based on the  'medicine wheel', ... a wheel symbolized by the four directions of the spherical space we live in, four directions that imply the multi-directional azimuthal codynamics that we are immersed in, and that would have our minds and bodies move in such a manner that we are in inner-outer resonance with these enveloping multi-azimuthal codynamics.  The 'four quadrants of the medicine-wheel sphere also stand for the four colours of man (red, white, black, yellow) and the four aspects of man (body, rational mind, emotions, spirit) and the many directions in between the four include the two-legged creatures, the four-legged creatures, the things that crawl and the things that fly, ... the rooted things and the stony grandfathers, the earth, the air, the fire, the water, ... a rich 'terrain' that envelopes us with which is our natural reference for sustaining dynamical balance in thought and action.

The western culture ignores man's inextricable codynamic with the richly diverse enveloping world dynamic.   The western culture portrays man as an independent biochemical system enveloped by empty space whose thoughts and actions are in 'its own right'.   If the biochemical systems, detached and independent from its containing 'terrain' as it is portrayed to be 'goes wrong', ... there is no option other than that the problem must emanate from within the biochemical system.  This is the word of the Nobel prize winners in biochemistry and genetics, ... and of what value is the world of an old native elder who would refute the Nobel scientist and instead say;

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children that we have taught our children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.   This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected.  . . . One thing we know which the white man may one day discover: Our God is the same God.   You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him;  and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. . . .Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste."

This native teaching says that by sustaining our deep consciousness of our codynamic with our enveloping fellows we can find ways to move that create balanced opportunity for those around us.  In the manner of the skilled pool player and the friendly freeway driver we can discover that we are the enveloping dynamical terrain that we are included in and that to detach and do nothing is to do something, ... it is to infuse dissonance into the relative dynamics in which we are immersed.    We are the dynamical terrain that envelopes us, ... our actions relative to our fellows help to co-produce the common enveloping dynamic that we are all immersed in, as the friendly freeway driver easily perceives.

The sensitive person with the 'chemical imbalance' is picking up on the tension between the enveloping unnatural dynamic of community and the enveloping dynamic of nature, ... two enveloping dynamics that are rapidly diverging.   The good doctors of the western culture are telling us that the problem is 'inside of us' and are encouraging us to 'take pills' that will 'numb us' to the tension, so that we can forget about and let go of the ab-original pull of nature and instead fully embrace the enveloping dynamic of community wherever it is taking us (into war or into peace).

Perhaps the 'medicine', if it must be used at all,  has another, temporary moderating use, ... to facilitate the community engagement of love and sensitivity rather than 'numbing it out',  by using the drugs to alleviate the mind-troubling tension sufficiently that one can proceed with more natural and more basic means of dissipating the tension, by redeveloping our deeper perception and consciousness of our natural relationship with the enveloping world dynamic, ... to the point that we shall no longer need any medicine because we will no longer be in a field of tension but will have re-animated our thinking and our moving, ... so that instead of being in a state of 'balking' like horse who does not want to do the jumps, ... puts us into a natural resonance with the enveloping world dynamic, ... thinking and moving so as to open up balanced opportunity-to-move for our fellows, ... a mission pregnant with natural purpose that will engage us in co-inducing a societal shift in the direction of a renewed coresonance between culture-dynamic and nature-dynamic.

Chemical imbalances are signals that we must let go of our tensions and begin to put the dynamics of our thoughts and actions into the service of opening up and sustaining opportunity-to-move in a community-constituent coresonant manner.

The appended note, posted in the 'globalpeacecampaign' email discussion group,  is a 'follow on' to this 'le terrain est tout' theme and seeks to present the issue of natural consciousness in the terms of relativistic science.

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