martin's notebook

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Agenda for a New Economy

Agenda for a new economy (2nd edition), is a book written by David Korten, a well known writer,activist and speaker on economic and related social-ecological issues.

Toward a responsible Capitalism

This section of my Wiki notebook will summarize some of the main points relevant to the neweconomy. It also will contain ideas and links that come up in discussions. Discussions are held here:http://theosnet.ning.com/group/new-economy. The Pages files over there contain more info on thebook Agenda for a new economy.

One has to become a member of theosophy.net in order to be able to subscribe to the study group.Membership is free. Non-members have read access to the discussion and pages. If you want tocontribute to this Wiki, drop me a mail through the contact form here.

Prologue

Part One: The case for a new economy

Chapter one: Looking upstream

Chapter two: Modern alchemists and the sport of moneymaking

Chapter three: A real-market alternative

Chapter nine: Greed is not a virtue; sharing is not a sin

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Prologue: a question of values

Summary

The author refers to the Wall Street meltdown in 2008, and its consequences. There have been acouple of authors (Dean Baker, William Black, Charles Morris, Kevin Phillips and Gary Weiss) who havedocumented how Wall Street institutions have been corrupted, even before the crash.

There is as yet no national conversation on essential questions, such as:

Are Wall Street institutions so vital for US interest that it justifies the showering them with trillions of●

dollars at the expense of the tax payer?

Is it possible that these institutions are built on an illusion and in reality have detrimental effects on●

society (economical, social, environmental)?

Are there other ways to provide necessary financial services that are more effective and cost less?●

David argues for no, yes and yes, respectively. It is all a matter of values we believe the economyshould serve. Is the economy to serve a few wealthy people or all of us? Is the goal of economy tomake money or to serve life? The way it is now organized is a path to collective suicide (think of thebiosphere). New institutions are needed to replace the current ones on Wall Street.

Two schools of economic thought

Market fundamentalism and Keynesianism are the two best known schools of economic thought.David briefly refers to these and calls for an honest public examination of above mentioned questions.He believes that this will lead to "a unifying political consensus that, rather than repair and restrainthe Wall Street institutions that have brought down the global economy, we can and should replacethem with institutions that serve our real values and are appropriate to the needs and realities of thetwenty-first century."

He has written the book in the hope "that it may help to provoke and frame such a conversation".


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Part I (Ch. 1-4)

David points to the cause of the economic crisis we are undergoing now: the illusionary belief thatmoney is wealth. It is a mere number created on a balance sheet. Yet we believe it is something withintrinsic value.The major failures of our economic system can be traced back to this misconception ofmoney as wealth. The consequences have now become dire: destruction of the middle class, nature,and the social fabric.

Money is not a storehouse of value, but of expectations. Wall Street has been allowed to assumecontrol of our economy and we now see the results of that mistake. The author calls Wall Street anillusion factory, that creates phantom wealth unrelated to real wealth. This is known as "counterfeiting,a form of theft". And the stunning fact is, that it is a legal form of theft, which makes it a perfect crime.When things go wrong, the tax payer has to pay the bill.

Our hope lies with Main Street real-world economy, where people produce and exchange goods andservices that meet the real needs of families and communities, and where exists a "natural interest inmaintaining the health and vitality of their natural environment". This is much in line with the vision ofAdam Smith, according to David Korten.

A real wealth economy will require a complete "bottom-to-top redesign of our economic assumptions,values, and institutions". (quotes are from the book Agenda for a new economy)


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Chapter one

Chapter 1: looking upstream

Summary

The phantom-wealth casino economy shows systemic failure, as evidenced by:

- an economic crisis caused by a financial system that favors speculation over investment inproduction of useful goods and services. This causes unpayable debts for governments and thecommon man, decimates pensions, and causes bubbles in house prices that inevitably burst, withdevastating consequences all over the world.

- a social crisis of growing inequality between nations and within nations. The rich get richer. Thecommon man's wages fall relative to the cost of living. This undermines our health, communities andthe legitimacy of our governments. It erodes social cohesion and feeds violence.

- an environmental crisis: climate change, freshwater shortages, soil erosion, depletion of fisheries,created by the dogma of continous growth of consumption. This leads to climate refugees, socialbreakdown, and reduced capacity of the Earth to support life.

David Korten gives six criteria of true economic health:

"1. provide every person with the opportunity for a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life;

2. restore and maintain the vitality of earth's natural systems;

3. nurture the relationships of strong, caring communities;

4. encourage economic cooperation in service to the public interest and democratically determinedpriorities;

5. allocate resources equitably to socially and environmentally beneficial uses; and

6. root economic power in people- and place-based communities to support the democratic ideal ofone-person, one-vote sovereignty."

It goes without saying that we, individually, have to take an active part in realizing a healthy culture,that is a precondition to a healthy economy.


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Chapter two

Chapter two: Modern alchemists and the sport of moneymaking

Synopsis from the study guide:

'“Modern Alchemists and the Sport of Moneymaking,” looks at the reality behind Wall Street’s illusionsand the variety of its methods for making money without the exertion of creating anything of realvalue in return.'

My summary, with some additional comments between brackets:

{Since the credit collapse, banks are very reluctant to lend to each other. They don't trust each other.What toxic assets does they other have, they seem to think. A lot of electronic money traffic goes viathe central banks. The banks also severely restricted credit (loans) to customers, including businessowners.}

Business schools do not teach their students the nature of money. Can you believe it? Maybe theirteachers don't recognize that "money is only an accounting chit with no existence or intrinsic valueoutside the human mind".

Money is, or has become, a system of power. The more we get dependent on it, the more those whocan create money and can decide who gets it can abuse that power to control us. David tells us thestory of John Edmunds, a finance professor in the USA.

The latter wrote an article in Foreign Policy about the merits of securitization as engine of wealthcreation and how production of real goods and services is outdated. He effectively was pleading forcreating asset bubbles. Now, mind you, Foreign Policy is a respected magazine. The fact that theypublished this article shows how much perversion has crept into the minds of economists andfinanciers.

This has become the logic of Wall Street. A highly flawed logic, as the subprime mortgage debacle hasshown to all of us. Inflating bubbles always burst. The next one to burst seems to be the debt bubble,whether in the USA or in Europe, or both of these regions. The finance world is out of touch withreality, and this costs us dear. The end of the misery is not in sight. It will wreak more havoc than italready has done.

Banks have a right to create money with a keystroke and lend it out at interest. This makes it veryprofitable for them and makes Wall Street very powerful. This power should be limited, and used withgreat care. In chapter 7, David does discuss this further.

Then follows an important piece titled "from good debt to bad debt" that explains the logic of thedebt-based money system. Savings from working people are used to invest in enterprises thatcontribute to society's pool of real wealth. This assumes that the benefits of this operation are sharedequitably among those who contributed to it: savers, entrepreneurs, workers and governments (taxes;they provide infrastructure). Near the end of the 1970s, deregulation (see Ch. 5) caused a transitionfrom a servant system to a predator system, which is devoted to creating phantom wealth instead ofreal wealth (real products and services).



Consumer debt

"Money lent comes from an accounting entry, not from savings, and it is used to fund consumption,not production. The debt and the expectations of those who hold it grow exponentially, but actualproduction does not."

{Well, do you own calculations: if you want to understand how fast exponential growth is, start with 1.Double this, you get 2. Double this, you get 4. Double and get 8. Double and you get 16. And so on.After 10 steps we reach 1,024.

This is the story of the king and a peasant who played chess together. The peasant won the game andwas granted a wish for something as a prize. He asked that each succeeding field of the chessboardbe filled with double the amount of grains of wheat than the the preceding one. The king thought thiswas a very modest request, so he ordered this to be done. Soon, however, the chessboard was filledwith so much wheat that the king realized that all the wheat in his country could not fulfill the requestof the peasant. And so it is with compound interest. This causes unsustainable bubbles in house prices,assets, etc. The phantom money that results from the above practice has to go somewhere and thiscauses bubbles and inflation.}

{I described the exponential curve in my ebook. it is an insane growth pattern, never observed forlong in nature. It is unsustainable. An economy can never grow that fast. It would exceed theresources needed for that very quickly.}

"Borrowing for current consumption is bad because it creates no new value and creates debts thatcan only be rolled over into ever-greater debt that the borrower has no way to repay." As ishappening right now.

The language of self-deception: speculation is called "investment"; phantom wealth is called "capital".We fool ourselves by our use of language.

Wall Street's gain is "a net loss for the rest of society", because their "growing claims on the realwealth of society dilute the claims of others."

The social costs of this fall on all of us that have not the money to live "in splendid isolation from theresulting social and environmental breakdown".

A wealthy class needs a servant class. The very rich profit from what rests of the world's real wealth.That is the current situation. The author points to an alternative to phantom wealth capitalism: a realmarket economy (Ch.3).


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Chapter 3: a real-market alternative

The chapter starts with a beautiful quote from Martin Luther King jr.:

"Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom ofbrotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in ahigher synthesis…that combines the truths of both.”

Martin Luther King jr.

Summary

Many people seem to believe that the only alternative to the excesses of capitalism is the repressionof communism. This is a false idea. Both systems failed because "they created a concentration ofunaccountable power that stifled liberty and creativity for all but a few at the top." The synthesisalluded to is, according to David, a system that "roots power in people and communities of place andunleashes our innate human capacity for cooperation and creativity." Too much centralized powerdoesn't work well, as history has proven and current events show. A redistribution anddecentralization of economic and political power is necessary.

Wall Street versus Main Street.

Wall Street type of economy refers to "institutions of big finance and the captive corporations thatserve them". Their location can be anywhere in the world. The name is a symbol of a world of purefinance "using money to make money by whatever means for people who have money". Producingreal goods and services is only a byproduct of this activity. "Financial speculation, corporate-assetstripping, predatory lending, risk shifting, leveraging, and debt-pyramid creation" form the corebusiness of Wall Street. It does not create real wealth for society, as discussed in the previous chapter.

Main Street refers to the world of local businesses and working people "engaged in producing realgoods and services to provide a livelihood for themselves, their families, and their communities". It ismore varied in its values and priorities. Its enterprises are varied: from family businesses tocooperatives and locally owned corporations. Most of these businesses function "within a frameworkof community values and interests that moderate the drive for profit". Community service is a valuecommitted to by many Main Street business owners. This orientation distinguishes Main Street fromWall Street. David mentions the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) whose membersare engaged in building the New Economy.

Corporations

The problem with the corporate charter (the publicly traded limited liability corporation) is well known:



it "creates the legal capacity to amass under unified management the power of virtually unlimitedfinancial capital". The shareholders are exempted from liability beyond the amount of theirinvestment. The real economic power in the USA resides with Wall Street institutions that buy and sellcorporations as mere commodities. Any consideration of social or environmental nature is punishedby a hostile takeover or "a revolt of institutional shareholders". The result of all this is a global"capitalist economy destructive of both life and the human soul".

Freedom to commit fraud

David explains that the term free market "is a code word for an unregulated market that allows therich to consume and monopolize resources for personal gain free from accountability for the broadersocial and environmental consequences." Financial rogues and speculators profit from "subsidies, theabuse of monopoly power, and financial fraud". This increases inequality between people. Costs areexternalized to society. David's conclusion is that markets work best "within the framework of acaring community. The stronger the relations of mutual trust and caring, the more the marketbecomes self-policing".

The market alternative

Capitalism is not synonymous with markets and private ownership. David refers to the influential workof Adam Smith "Inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations". Smith articulates thedemocratic ideal of "a self-organizing economy that creates an equitable and socially optimalallocation of society's productive resources through the interaction of small buyers and sellers makingdecisions based on their individual needs, interests, and abilities."

Pages 49-50 of David's book detail some of the conditions of efficient market allocation. Theseconditions deal with the size of the influence of the sellers and buyers, distribution of income andownership (no extremes), completeness of information (no trade secrets), incorporation of all costsinto the sale price, balanced trade between countries, savings to be invested in the creation ofproductive capital. This refers to Main Street economy, rather than Wall Street! The latter representsa narrow class interest. Table 3.1 summarizes the above discussion. See p. 51 of the book.

Rules make the difference

When a market economy lacks proper rules, a framework that provides the context for daily decisionmaking, one gets capitalism. In the latter, liberty is being misused to concentrate economic power,monopolize resources and maximize the profits of the already rich. Costs are passed to the taxpayer.Wall Street is like a cancer that should be eliminated. It drains society's energies and produces verylittle of value. Adam Smith stresses the need for government interference in such cases of misuse ofliberty, in his book “The theory of moral sentiments”.

Main Street market economy facilitates "decentralized economic self-organization to optimize the useof local resources to meet local needs.




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Panentheism

Philosophy of panentheism: spiritual processphilosophy

Panentheism as a belief system deals with the idea of immanent and transcendent Divinity. Itcomprises about all religions, especially the mystical parts or formulations of these.

In my view, it is compatible with true science (not narrow scientism) as shown in my ebook (seearchives) and articles. I see spirituality, philosophy and science as three aspects of Life, which is awhole. Our concentration on parts has made us lose sight of the inherent relations between theseaspects. In my spiritual process philosophy, I show the interconnection of these aspects.

We have a lot of ground to cover, and I would like to invite all truly holistic thinkers to join me informulating a wholesome philosophy of life.

Some good ideas can be drawn from the works of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Neo-Platonism, Boehme,Whitehead, Peirce, and other philosophers like Sri Aurobindo, Vitvan and J.G. Bennett. Synthesis is thekeyword here, where ideas are compared and contrasted and integration is the result.

Topics

Oneness of Life

Matter and Spirit


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Spirit and matter: a false dichotomy

In the 17th century, Descartes formulated a strong dichotomy between mind and matter. The bodycame to be seen as a mechanical device, while mind, or spirit, was seen as something entirelyseparate from matter. Our current society still suffers from this outdated view of life. Since mind is soelusive, we tend to believe that in reality all is matter and mind simply is an epiphenomenon, that is,a product of matter.

What is matter?

One has to pose a question here: what is this matter that produces minds? Already in the beginning ofthe 20th century, there has been the discovery of the fact that matter is concreted energy. Quantumphysicists have shown this. Think of the atom-bomb if you doubt this statement. Matter is convertedinto energy in nuclear plants.

Later experiments have shown that photons can exchange information faster than the speed of light.The famous Alain Aspect experiment, which has been repeated by others, shows this amazing fact. Noexplanation for this phenomenon exists currently.

Science in turmoil

So, science is a bit in turmoil nowadays. Astronomers are also doubting Big Bang theories. Theresimply is too much evidence that things don't add up. The moral of the story is that we don'tunderstand what matter is, how gravity comes about, and how the mind comes to be. We, as anacademic community, have been sloppy in our thinking. Ignoring the first given fact of life, our ownexperience of self, self-consciousness, we are left empty-handed, so to speak.

An Ancient vision of life

Blessed will be the day that the scientific community will start embracing a life-affirmative vision ofthe world. Where struggle for life will be a minor part of our world vision and cooperation as a naturalfact of life will be seen as an all-important part of our understanding of life. When the universe is seenand experienced as alive, instead as a lifeless machine to be manipulated.

The Ancients had such a vision. This vision was replaced by the mechanistic vision which itself isbecoming outdated by modern research findings. It's time to reconsider our outlook on life! TheAncients believed that there is no dead matter. There is a substantial aspect to life, and this is tied toform, in manifestation. Form is a principle of individuation. It is tied to specific characteristics, aselection (or limit) from countless possibilities for manifestation.

Substance can potentially express all kinds of qualities. This has to do with evolution, a vast topicagain. Eastern philosophy carries a lot of insights about this, something I will discuss later, togetherwith some Western philosophers and mystics.




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Oneness of Life

All life is One. That is to say, all life is the unique expression from the Field of all possibilities. I am notsaying that all life is identical in a narrow sense. That would make us clones or copies of one pattern.Rather, I am saying that there are countless patterns or characteristics or possibilities or variationsinherent in the "universal fractal" that we, as individuals and as a people, are part of.

Consider this: how can there be synergies and harmonies when life-forms have nothing in common?Impossible! Look around you. You will notice structure and order in this universe. How does our wellfunctioning body and psychological functions come about? Whence our mathematical ability? Whenceour artistic sense? Ponder about this deeply. If all is well with you, you will feel a sense of awe andamazement.

No scientist or philosopher has ever been able to comprehend the phenomenon of life. Those whosuggest that chemical reactions explain everything simply have been lying to you, or, possibly, havesuch a narrow mindset that they cannot appreciate the impossibility of what they are stating. Manypeople are suspecting that our current educational practice has misinformed them about the natureof life. In addition, they feel they have been brain-washed into buying into a belief about competition,struggle for life, endless economic growth, etc.

In my series beyond_reductionism you can find basic arguments that demolish simple reductionism.

You see, science has not yet found a way to include qualities in her descriptive framework. It's allabout quantity, quantitative science. Qualia are a complete riddle to scientists, includingpsychologists, precisely because of their non-quantitative aspects. Our experience of daily life putsthese qualia in the center. Dismissing this experience means to dismiss our experience of life and oursense of self. The conclusion must be that current science denies the very faculty (powers ofabstraction, reasoning, etc.) that has given birth to scientific formulations. How ironic!

In the section matter_and_spirit I will sketch a different view of matter and spirit than is usual in ourcurrent sciences.


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Symbols in religion and mysticism

Christos

Heaven and Hell

Sin

Grace


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Christos

When Father and Mother, spirit (or Reality) and illusion (or maya), Brahma (or Purusha) and Prakriti(or Nature) join, their union produces the Son. In the Christian scheme they give the spiritual orprimordial Son the name of Christos; in the Egyptian scheme Osiris and Isis (or her twin sisterNephthys - the more recondite side of Isis) produce their son Horus, the spiritual Sun, physically theSun or the Light-Bringer; and so similarly in the different schemes that the ancient world has handeddown to us. (Slightly abbreviated from De Purucker's Fundamentals of the esoteric philosophy)

The Christos is a spiritual-divine Force that can manifest in everyone, in principle, especially in peoplethat have developed spiritual qualities of consciousness. There are many mysteries associated with it.

See also Alvin Boyd Kuhn's The Lost Light , an interpretation of ancient scriptures, Gerald Massey'slectures and James Morgan Pryse's writings on the restoration of the New Testament for moreinformation on the solar God mythos. The astrological key to the Christ story in the New Testament isapplied and explained in the above mentioned books. Psychologically speaking (this is another key),the Christos force works through the spiritual vehicles of the composite human being. This is aprofound subject matter, which is dealt with concisely in my ebook. See the articles section.


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Grace

What is the Grace of God? Who or What is God? These questions lead us deep into ontologicalquestions.

For a starter, I would like to point to the intricate monadology, sketched in my ebook. Similar ideascan be found in Proclus' Theology of Plato and other writings of his.

When one thinks things through, one will see that Grace involves issues of karma. What you sow iswhat you reap. And not only that: collective karma plays a role too, since the individual is embeddedin the larger human family.

As such, Grace can be seen as a kind of reward from the spiritual-divine spheres for the uplifting workone is doing for one's sisters and brothers. I have written about this in my article on the esotericbackground of the seven Sacraments, which you can find a link to in the articles section.


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Heaven and Hell

"In the Father's house there are many mansions". The Christian Bible alludes here to the manyspheres of being that exist in our solar system, from hellish types of spheres to highly spiritualspheres. Indian philosophy knows these too, as talas and lokas. Buddhist philosophy likewise portraysseveral spheres in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Other philosophies, like the Greek Neo-Platonism,and religions, like Islam, contain the same notions.

Roman Catholicism preserves some notion of Purgatory, besides Heaven and Hell. In it, souls of thedead are purified before they can enter Heaven.

A common experience of people on Earth is that we can make life into a hell, or we can create a goodatmosphere around us. Which of these is it that we want?


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Sin

The notion of sin is a moral one. It is usually associated with a religious belief system. There it meanstransgressing a law, given by God, or a God. The connotation of sin is a disturbed harmony, in one'srelation to (a) God, others, self, and sometimes including one's natural environment.

Eastern religions have a more impersonal view of sin. The law of karma (action, and the resultsthereof) deals with all kinds of actions. Disturbances will somehow be corrected, by self or by othermeans.

Philosophical discussion

In Jewish religion there is the notion of sin as missing the mark. It is like missing the target, doingsomething that misses the point. Another angle on this, is the notion of evil, which can be seen as aresult of conflict of wills, that is so prominent in current society. Extremists of all sorts are misguidedand blinded by their views, hating those who differ in some respect from them.


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Introduction

This wiki is the personal notebook of Martin Euser, psychologist and spiritual philosopher.

It deals with many topics pertaining to society in evolution and in transition. The left panel shows atree of topics. The original homepage of this site is here. You will find a search form for the entire sitethere. Chrome users may have to right-click on external links and choose to open these in a separatewindow.

The aim is to offer food for thought and tools to empower the individual within his or hercommunity. With the add/remove button on the bottom left of each page, you can create your ownPDF book of selected pages from this wiki.

If you want to comment or like to see material added to this wiki, please use the contact-form and Iwill see if I can fit it into the wiki.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/index.html



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Agents of change

The following list contains organizations that strive for social justice and sustainable economies. If youknow of an organization that you think should be on this list please let me know through mycontact-form.

Transition towns●

Do it yourself – A handbook for changing our world●

issues around fresh water and meat production Peta article●

Avaaz. This is a ten million+ member organization that addresses urgent issues worldwide through●

various actions.Network of Spiritual Progressives. Currently, they have half a million members. They promote a new●

bottom-line for our economy that includes caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity.David Korten. David is a well-known author and lecturer on social-economic matters.●

good stewardship/ecospirituality in the churches (the greening of religion)●

Reflections on Occupy Wall Street movement●

becoming involved in Slow Food (organization website)●

Fair Trade products●

participate in LETSystems to promote local currencies and local trade.●

Sustainable banking (put your savings on a green bank, one that invests in ethically responsible●

projects, that promote practices of sustainability, fair business, etc.Food Matters: a natural approach to preventing and healing diseases.●

Life styles of health and sustainability (LOHAS)●

Houses for the homeless California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture●

The Natural Step framework is the foundation for many sustainability programs in the United States●

and around the world.Solutions for Business, Solutions for Communities, Case Studies.●

William McDonough & Michael Braungart (Waste is food; cradle to cradle principle)●

Greenpeace●

http://www.amnesty.org Amnesty international●


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Do%20it%20yourself%20%96%20A%20handbook%20for%20changing%20our%20world.pdf

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes-natural-resources.aspx

http://www.avaaz.org

http://spiritualprogressives.org/newsite/

http://livingeconomiesforum.org/agenda2

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=reflections_on_the_occupy_movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food

http://www.slowfood.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LETS

http://foodmatters.tv/

http://www.lohas.com/

http://calearth.org/

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/our-approach

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/our-story

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/solutions-communities

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/case-studies

http://www.mcdonough.com/writings_new_perspectives.htm

http://www.greenpeace.org

http://www.amnesty.org


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Reflections on the Occupy Movement

The Occupy movement can be seen as a signal to society at large that things can not continue asthey have done for the past decades.

The financial crisis seems to have sparked it. There is an important question to be asked (andanswered) in this context. What is the goal, or goals, of this movement?

It seems that a variety of individuals and groups is participating in it, and each of them may havesomewhat different goals and ideas about how to reach those goals.

Broadly speaking, all of them want a fairer world, with equal opportunities for everybody and asociety that can fulfill the needs of its members.

One of the best thinkers on this subject matter I have found on the internet is Dr. Jeff Eisen. Hedescribes in his Omnius Manifesto how the accounting practices of companies should be changed toreflect the contribution they make to society or destruction they cause to the social sphere andecological domain. This manifesto must go viral, so if you resonate with its ideas, please send it toyour family, friends, co-workers, and any organization that works with sustainable ideas.

In addition, the New Economy working group has defined nine action clusters that need to be workedon. This group works together with David Korten, who is a well-known author and lecturer onsocial-economic matters. His book on multi-national corporations is well-known. He also published abook named Agenda for a New Economy. Much food for thought.


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http://drjeffeisen.com/omnius-manifesto

http://neweconomyworkinggroup.org/about-us/nine-action-clusters

http://livingeconomiesforum.org/agenda2

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=agenda_for_a_new_economy:start




Self-help basics

The following texts are for educational purposes. They are not meant to replace any therapy youmight need. The text is focused on general principles. You can apply these to your own life situation.

I will deal concisely with the following topics:

motivation and emotion●

perception and belief●

intellect (reasoning, learning, skills)●

visualization●

decision (will and intuition)●

boundary issues (assertivity)●

Notions from The Work (Byron Katie, cognitive therapy related) will be incorporated too. Once yougrasp the basic idea of how polarities are working in the mind, at once a whole field of possibilities forchange and growth becomes available to you.

Constructive or destructive decisions, positive or negative emotions: all these are examples of polarforces at work. A lot of ground is covered here.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:motivation_and_emotion

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:perception_and_belief

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:intellect

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:visualization

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:decision

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:boundary_issues


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:start


Visualization

In visualization, we use the power of imagination. This is a powerful faculty of the human mind tocreate or form images. These images have a dynamic, creative power. Humans act under influence ofthis power, so it is important to exercise and control this faculty in order to be able to conduct ouraffairs creatively and properly.

Ideal models

One technique to help accomplish this is that of ideal models. (See Roberto Assagioli, Psychosynthesis,p. 166 seq., see especially pp. 170-171; quotes refer to these pages)

This concerns the use of imagination to create mentally and emotionally, and then express this imageoutwardly by act. It is important to realize that within each of us there are already a lot of models atwork that prevent us to recognize our true nature. These models vary from projections of others on uswhat they like us to be, to our beliefs of what we are or should like to be or should like to appear toothers. It will pay off to go through the section on perception and belief and test your self-knowledge.The Byron Katie videos and links will assist you in that and help you to "debunk" these false modelsand beliefs.

Qualities

Now on to the technique of ideal models. Here, you visualize yourself as possessing the qualities youneed to develop. You focus on a specific quality or small group of qualities or abilities which you needin order to become a more harmonious person. This needs some self-reflection first. If you're stuck inthis reflection or got no clue, it might be advisable to get some assistance from a qualified therapist,preferably trained in psychosynthesis.

So, you visualize yourself "in possession of this particular quality or actively using that particularpsychological function. The visualization should be as vivid and alive as possible." You see yourself ina definite situation where you put the needed quality into action. You can imagine that you playsuccessfully a certain role, e.g., the role of a husband or wife, or father, or mother, or professional, ora social role.

This is a kind of psychodrama play technique in imagination. You do this with eyes closed, sitting on achair. Do not lay down, that would make you too passive. You need to do an active evocation ofimages. This exercise can be done often,s ay once a day, but we generally want to keep it short, vividand intense. You live the model (or role) in imagination and then play the role in reality. Do not careabout the results. Be somewhat detached. Some day you will succeed.

This is a very useful technique, if done with the proper attitude. It can be extended or modified overtime to include other qualities you want to develop. You build the blueprint of what you want to be, inaccordance with your possibilities.




In case of intense fear or phobias for performing certain actions which you need to do, it will be betterto consult a therapist. The above applies to qualities and situations you can handle yourself. It isself-help.

Implied in the above is the wise use of will in the form of intent. Wayne Dyer speaks about it in hisfree audio on intent as a universal field (unlock the power of intention).


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http://www.drwaynedyer.com/


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:visualization


Psychological boundary

Every organism has a boundary around it. Whether it is a cell, a plant, an animal or even a planet,they all have a boundary around them that protects them and filters out harmful influences.

Besides having an outer skin, humans also have a psychological boundary around them, whichregulates which influences can enter and which not.

Filters

Think of it as a membrane that has "pores" or doors in it, which can be closed or narrowed to onlyallow certain influences inside your mind.

You can also think of these pores as filters that allow certain frequencies or vibes to enter yoursystem, and keep others out. This way you can control psychological influences. It is a matter ofgiving or not giving value to those influences. More of this will be dealt with in the section that dealswith emotion, belief and perception.

If you are too open to the outside world, you basically let others control your behavior and reactions.That is not a healthy situation. You will have problems with asserting who you are and what you want.You then suffer from identity problems and feel overwhelmed by others.

Assertivity

You must be able to say no to others at a certain point, in order to maintain your integrity andself-respect. Otherwise other people may start using you for their ends, or they may think you're awussy. You also must be able to hear no from others. A related concept is that of codependence.

You will have to learn from life, through experience and observation, what works well for you ininteracting with people. In case of a poor boundary and inability to make decisions, follow anassertivity class or get some therapy to get this situation handled.


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependence


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:boundary_issues


Decision making

All organisms have the ability to make decisions, conscious or unconscious. From a single cellorganism that avoids acid environments all the way up to humans who can consciously choose to actfor a greater purpose. Think about that for a while. This ability is a defining characteristic of life.

From instinctual reactions to conscious, self-aware participation in society, there is a whole gamut ofdecision making.

We are concerned here with that part of decision making which is guided by the self-aware mind. Anoft repeated decision forms into a habit. One gets used to doing certain things in certain ways incertain circumstances.

Constructive or destructive decisions

The point that matters here is whether your decisions are constructive or destructive. This requiresthe ability to discriminate between constructive and destructive action. That ability develops withyour life experience, which gives you feedback on your actions.

You have to be able to observe the results of your actions. The good news is: you have this ability!Some call it observing ego, others call it being aware of your motives and actions.

This observational ability is crucial in changing bad habits. When one catches oneself in the act ofdoing something stupid or unhealthy, then it is possible to pause for a while and decide to change thishabit by substituting a healthy expression for the destructive one.

Conscience

Your conscience is involved in making important decisions. It tells you whether the decision you areabout to take is a healthy one or not. Do you listen to the still voice within? Conscience is somethingthat works with ideas and rules that you've been raised with. An important example is that of the"golden rule": don't do to others what you don't want them to do unto you. That looks like a verysensible rule to me.

Intuition

Another aspect to decision making is your knowledge of the world, your worldly wisdom, having"street-smarts" or a down-to-earth form of intuition. In other words, your experience with people andthe world counts heavily too when taking decisions.

I believe in a balanced approach. Both ethical considerations and life experience are important inmaking or taking decisions. If you neglect one or the other of these ( or are lacking in one of these)



you are bound to make bad decisions.

An important note is that bad decisions are better than taking no decisions at all. Why? Because onecan learn from these decisions what works and what doesn't. One needs to observe and reflect on theeffects of one's decisions.

Also, when one grows older, one's brain circuits mature. One gets capable of delaying gratification,especially from the age of sixteen and older. So, then there is more room for consideration of thesituation one is in. One can then learn to see each situation as a learning opportunity. This diminishesany fear one experiences in social situations.

Will

The topic of decision making is connected to that of will. Will is taken here as a directive principle inthe human mind. Decision making and the use of will have to do with freedom. You have a choice inmaking decisions, hence a certain amount of freedom. Using that freedom wisely is a mark of amature human being. A deeper introduction into the topic of will, decision and creativity can be foundin my article on the creative process.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/creativeprocess.pdf




Intellect

While emotions have a lot to do with your motives and drives in life, intellectual function usually isassociated with learning new skills, education, and culture. An overlap with emotion exists, however,in the beliefs you hold.

Right brain - left brain

There is also an experiential component to intellectual function, which involves more of a right brain(RB) processing than study does. The latter especially involves the left brain (LB), which is excellent inanalyzing things, organizing stuff and storing facts. It calculates probabilities, while RB is moreassociative, artistic, holistic, and seeing possibilities of a situation. Non-verbal cues, like gesture andtone of voice seem to involve RB function too.

Goals

Your intellect wants to control your world. It sets goals (more of a LB function) and plots ways torealize these goals. An important thing to realize is, that you do not control others. Example: youcannot force someone to love you. Using force (your personal will) egotistically, infringes on theboundaries of others. It leads to suffering on all sides, perhaps most of all on your side.Co-dependency is an example of partners infringing on each other's boundaries. Usually one of thepartners is dominant and the other submissive. Not the healthiest type of relationships!

If you feel kind of lost, you need to reorientate yourself, find a sense of direction. This may involve abit of study on your side to get a perspective on things. You can then start organizing (LB) your waytowards goals you set for yourself. If necessary, sit down and write down your needs and goals.

If you do have clear goals, but get stuck in realizing them, you probably need more experience in howto handle situations and deal with people. Some work on your "creative abilities" (RB) is needed: takean acting class (improvisation), get to meet new people, talk to others about your goals and ask themfor ideas and how they deal with situations, etc.

Beliefs

Last, but not least: your beliefs about the world, people, yourself, will heavily influence how you liveyour life, and how you perceive actions from others and yourself. More on that in the section onperception and belief.

From:




http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/ - Society in evolution

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Motivation and emotion

We are now going to have a look at the energetic part of the psychological processes within humans.Which are the motives that drive you on in life? Which emotions and feelings do you experience often?Is it fear? Anger? Love? Hatred?

How often do we pause to observe what we are thinking and doing? Which are the undercurrents inour psychological functions? Are you living in survival mode or do you live a fulfilling life? What is therole of beliefs, or world vision you hold, on your life? Time for some soul searching!

We will especially look at the so-called "negative emotions" of fear/anxiety and anger and what thesemean.

Anger

What is anger? It certainly has an energetic component. It also carries meaning: you are angry aboutsomething that happened or is happening or what someone is doing to you personally. Anger is asignal,or alert, that your psyche gives to you that something needs to be done about the situationyou're in.

It usually is a reaction to someone or something hurting you, or a sign that you have deeply feltunfulfilled needs. Anger is not identical to aggression - see below. Anger is a neutral energy. Itstimulates you to take a decision on something.

Now, if you remain passive to the signal your body or part of your psyche is giving you, what willhappen? You most likely will start feeling depressed and sad. That's the consequence of not taking adecision to act on the feeling of anger.

Again, anger is not aggression. The latter is a destructive way of using energy to accomplish one'sgoals. It goes without saying that infringing on the rights of others will backfire on you. You will onlyhurt others and they will likely try to hurt you in return, possibly leading to a vicious cycle of violence.No, you need to take a positive turn: learn to assert your needs. Find out what these are. Write themdown if necessary.

Find ways of positive expression of your energy. Learn to think in win-win ways. Love and friendshipare not scarce goods. They are in principle abundant. It's only a matter of tuning in to your deepernature: the spirit within. Learn to cooperate with others, the competition stuff is a win-lose deal.

Hurt is something you feel when someone outside of you does or says something which goes againstyour wish, needs, or beliefs about others and yourself. So, your boundary is involved in this, as ashield you can use against negative energy, and your beliefs are involved. The latter will be dealt within a separate note.

At this point we can say that assertiveness fosters well-being, because working constructively andpatiently with others and with/on yourself is bound to give positive results. It takes patience, delayedgratification, and some sense of direction. The latter is dealt with in the section on intellect.



Fear/anxiety

Note: in this section we do not deal with phobias and severe anxiety disorders. That is best dealt within therapy.

In today's world, many people are literally filled with fear. It may be fear of losing their job, house,partner or fear of losing their identity in a world of migrants and a globalizing economy. There is somuch to be afraid of..

The question in all of this is: does one allow oneself to suffer needlessly over things that happen andresort to the stance of hopelessness, helplessness, worry and regret, or possibly even worse, allowoneself to regress to impulsive behaviour, or does one take the decision to actually do what is neededand right in the given situation? The latter decision can be called courage. The appropriate responseto an actual loss is grief. It takes time to grieve. After a certain period, however, it is time to go onwith life. That is an expression of courage.

There is a beautiful story in the Bhagavad Gita, where Lord Krishna has a dialogue with Arjuna, whohis facing his enemies on the battlefield. Those enemies can be taken as the elements or propensitiesone has to deal with in one's own psyche. Arjuna has to face his dark side, his shadow, and do what isright. That is courage. If you do what is right in a given situation, your self-confidence will grow,because you then act in accordance with your deepest values. You feel whole. It makes for awell-integrated personality.

In order to see what is right to do in a given situation, one has to use one's observational ability.Some intuition and conscience is necessary. This is being dealt with in the section on decision making.

To conclude this section, I like to point out to the scientifically inclined readers, that all the dynamicenergies dealt with here, have polar aspects. Energies can be used constructively or destructively.Also, one can act on signals or not act. There are many connections to the principles that I haveoutlined in my note on process philosophy. It may open new fields of knowledge when theseconnections are patiently and diligently studied.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Process-theosophy2.pdf


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:motivation_and_emotion


Perception and belief

Today, it is increasingly being recognized that "we are (and become) what we think". Long ago,Gautama Buddha said something to that effect. After him, the famous emperor-philosopher MarcusAurelius said the same thing. And today, many respectable leaders in the consciousness movementare stating the same thing.

The deep reason behind this statement has been explained at length in my ebook, in the secondarticle, sections three and four, on thinking and changing one's thought-pattern. So, if you want todive into this, here is your opportunity.

Here, I want to deal briefly with perception and beliefs. Perception is taken to comprise all the phasesfrom sensory input to processing in the brain (the interpretation of data). Here we encounter theperceptive filters that are called beliefs.

What are beliefs? They are ideas we have about the world we live in, about people we meet, aboutfriends, family and lovers, about work, etc. These particular ideas are usually strongly charged withemotions. They hold important meaning to us.

The point is: do these beliefs hold us hostage, or are we flexible enough to inquire into our beliefs andmodify them, if necessary? You know, almost all of us are plagued from time to time with cognitivedistortions.

Luckily, there is free self-help available on the web today. I am referring to The Work, formulated byByron Katie, which is especially suited to deal with these distortions in the cognitive process. Thingslike jealousy, resentment, aging, suffering, and many more, can be inquired by her four questionsmethod, which involves turning around questions. (See the use of polarities here?)

On Youtube one can find many videosamples that illustrate her method.

Main page of Byron Katie: Where would you be without your story? Note that there is also a work onthe web coaching application for almost free there.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/ScienceSpir3dmil.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortions

http://thework.com/thework-jyn.php

http://thework.com/thework-jyn.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk_WRkjqqGk&feature=related

http://www.thework.com/index.php

http://www.theworkontheweb.com/bestsellers/thework/bk1.asp

http://www.theworkontheweb.com/bestsellers/thework/bk1.asp




Philosophy of life

A new integrative paradigm for science and spirituality

In the following page, you will find the beginnings of a powerful new paradigm for a scientific-spiritualview of life. Research is beginning to find evidence for this new paradigm.

The basic principles of this paradigm are set forth in my article on process-philosophy. Application ofthese principles to the human mind, or psyche, can be found in my article on the threefold gunas(qualities) expressing themselves in the human psyche. Another example of application is provided bymy article on creation philosophy, where the cycle of manifesting thought is being discussed. Mylatest essay on this paradigm is titled "Culture wars - Three perspectives on the world today".

Links: (Chrome users may have to right-click and open in separate window)

beyond_reductionism: Life scientists discussing the limitations of reductionism

The development of a spiritual process-philosophy

The threefold gunas in the human psyche (research of polarity and control hierarchy)

Philosophy and psychology of creation (use of will and visualization)

Culture wars - Three perspectives on the world today

Darwin's survival of the fittest under scrutiny. Cooperation between living beings is common in nature.

The esoteric background of the seven Sacraments

My ebook on integrative spirituality


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Gunasinpsyche.pdf


http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/CulturewarsThreePerspectivesontheworldtoday.pdf

http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Darwins-evolutiontheory-questioned.pdf

http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Hidden-Meaning-of-the-seven-sacraments.pdf



http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=philosophy_of_life:start


Ruminations on spirituality and belief(beyond dogmas)

Introduction

In this note, I will give some personal reflections on the phenomenon of religion, spirituality and belief.It is not a full-fledged analysis, but a quick survey of some important points concerning this domain oflife.

To begin this rumination, I will say something about my point of departure. In my opinion, it isimpossible to say much sensible about religion, without having taken a starting point. My world viewhas a spiritual basis. This has come about by my own life experiences and also by a prolonged studyof philosophy, science, and religion.

So, I take it for granted that there is more to this world than meets our senses. This stands to reason:did you ever ask yourself where your aesthetic sense or ability comes from? The deep sense ofwonder, awe, or appreciation of natural beauty.

In this connection, one could ask: what is a feeling? Questions such as these have occupiedphilosophers for millennia, and have led to aesthetic philosophy, process philosophy, and a whole lotmore. Yet, nobody seems to know how this aesthetic sense works precisely. This problem haseverything to do with the qualia problem, which turns out to be a very hard problem indeed.

The materialistic world view cannot offer solutions. Feeling, love, altruism, appreciation, mathematicalgenius, etc., all defy our understanding, and certainly that of the physicalist (1).

Taking a spiritual point of view is not gratuit. It’s not a free lunch, if one takes the matter seriously.There are many questions in this regard one has to ponder, if one wants to develop one’sunderstanding of life.

Some examples of questions:

does there exist a soul for the human being? If so, how does it interact with the visible world?●

is this soul immortal or does it perish at some point in time?●

what is the goal or purpose of life (if any)?●

is there a God?●

does hell or heaven exist?●

what happens after death? why do people and animals have to suffer?●

is struggle for life necessary? What about cooperation between organisms?●

is there order to this universe, and if so, how does it come about?●

can there be other levels of being, many of us are not aware of (but some of us are)?●

This is just a short sample of questions. Many more can be formulated, for example, in the ethicaldomain, but also in the social and psychological domains. How does one go about reflecting this typeof questions? One way is to take resort to sacred scripture. Related to this is studying philosophicalworks on religion and spirituality.



This is all very well, provided that one takes the trouble of contemplating the material offered in thesescriptures and commentaries. If one is contented with a literal interpretation of sacred scripture, oneincurs the risk of rigidity of opinion, being unable to cope with the problems that face our world today.

One only needs to think of the questions of climate change, genetic modification, euthanasia, abortion,unstable economic systems, and many other examples, to grasp this fact. Besides this, societieschange in the course of time, and old formulations of belief may have to be adapted to be of use anylonger. Humanity is slowly waking up to these facts. It will have to. It’s simply a matter of survival.

Then there is the matter of the perceived incompatibility of religion and science. For historical reasons,a divide has resulted between religious views (especially orthodox ones) and scientific views on life.You see, orthodoxy produces artificial boundaries between these two activities of the human being.The dogmas of the church could no longer satisfy the inquiring mind of the scientist and philosopher.That is entirely understandable. After all, if the earth exists much longer than, say, 6,000 years, thenthere’s a serious problem with a literal explanation of the Christian Bible.

And what about evolution theory? Nowadays, the Vatican has already made concessions in this regard.Yes, it says,there is evolution, but God has created the human soul. Smart move or the beginning ofthe end of orthodox Roman Catholicism? What you see here is that orthodoxy, what some have calledthe blue, authoritarian, meme (2), has to give way to new memes (3), some of which have a moreholistic character. In my opinion, it’s a slow, but sure process.

As to religion, philosophy and science, one could say, that these offer different angles or perspectiveson the world. Religion is concerned with questions of finality (whereto), philosophy with the why, andscience with the how. There is no reason why these three perspectives cannot supplement each other,and form a synergy. Indeed, my own philosophical work pertains to the confluence of spirituality andscience.(4)

I will move now to the next point of consideration:

Diversity of belief systems

Simple observation of human societies teaches us that there is a multitude of religions, belief systems,etc. This should be a serious point of reflection. Immediately the question arises: since there are somany differences between belief systems, which one is right? Can it be that perhaps none is right? Or,to think in a post-modern way, is it all relative: animism is equally valid and valuable as Christianity orBuddhism? Is it simply a matter of different memes and evolution of memes? And, very poignantly:are scientists and the scientific enterprise impregnated with belief as well?(5)

In the post-modern era, many today take their refuge to secular humanism, which generally isconcerned with this life, here and now. This, to me, seems a bit too simple a solution for thephilosopher to take. It seems to be a form of materialist philosophy, and thus will have difficulty withdealing consistently with the deeper questions of life, such as qualia, consciousness, conscience, etc.

There is, however, something as religious humanism too. It seems clear from these observations, thatthere is in fact little basis for feelings of superiority for religious believers. Why would Islam besuperior to Christianity, or vice versa? Why would Buddhism be a better philosophy than Druidry? Andso on. A little modesty and tolerance would suit people here. Can they give good philosophicalarguments why their belief is better than other beliefs? I hardly think so.



Postmodernism negates itself

This is not to fall into the trap of extreme post-modernism: all is but relative, no view is better thananother. This leads to nihilism. If we apply the logic of extreme post-modernism to itself, thanpost-modernism itself is but a view, not better than any other. It negates itself!

What, then, should be one’s attitude in these matters? Personally, I like the position that Socratestakes in Plato’s dialogues. He says: I know that I am ignorant of the true nature of things; I know that Idon’t know, whereas others think that they know how things are. A modest position indeed! And herewe come to my next point: there have been many mystics, or generally speaking, wise men andwomen, who had illuminating experiences in their life. These were deep experiences of unity with God,Nature, or Universe, whatever one wants to call it. They sometimes tried to write about it. Somefounded a new religion or philosophy. It is to some of these mystics, and to certain philosophers, that Iturn for study and contemplation. I will name some of them, to give an impression of the range ofideas and philosophies they cover.

First of all, I mention Neo-Platonism, which, in my opinion, is one of the finest systems of philosophydeveloped in our world. Especially Proclus must be mentioned. Then, Subba Rao, a somewhatidiosyncratic follower of Advaita-Vedanta. His lectures and writings contain some real gems. Manyothers could be named, such as the enigmatic Jacob Boehme, whose main books I have scanned andedited, the eminent theosopher Gottfried de Purucker, who has introduced the notion of relativity intheosophical literature, and later thinkers such as J.G. Bennett, who introduced many new ideas in thespiritual-philosophic field. Lately I have become interested in the work of Stafford Beer, amanagement cybernetician. His fractal, viable, model deals with matters of decision and control.Process-philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and Arthur Young must be mentioned too here.Some info on the latter can be found in my ebook.(4)

Process philosophy and spirituality

Spiritual synthesis: connecting views and ideas

There are many points of agreements in the writings of the mystics and process-philosophers Imentioned. Their works provide an opportunity for synergies. Their work can be a great help toanswer questions of the type I posed in the introduction to this essay. Indeed, a whole body of workexists that can be used in dealing with these questions. There is a lot of developmental work left,however, to come to these synergies, necessary to deal with ever new questions in a changing world.

You see, developing a spiritual, integrative, philosophy of life takes time. It must be a consistentphilosophy, capable of answering a good many questions. It must be uplifting and offer a path ofdevelopment. It should be of relevance to our current society, yet have components that are timeless.The enterprise of reframing the old philosophies, among which theosophical ones, is worthy ofparticipating in. It is something that our perplexed and unstable world needs.

Notes:

(1) Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-founder of evolution theory, clearly sensed the problems thesequalia pose for evolution theory.

(2) Clare Graves, Don Beck, and Chris Cowan: spiral dynamics.



(3) The phrasing of the term meme seems to stem from Richard Dawkins.

(4) See my ebook, blogs and notes on this point.

(5) Yes, they are. See the writings of Feyerabend (and others) and ponder about the consequences ofthis fact.

Tags: belief, science, spirituality, synthesis


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Religion, spirituality and psychology

Note: in this wiki notebook reflections, religion and spirituality have everything to do with daily life, asyou will understand when browsing and studying the many topics dealt with.

Subtopics

dogmas under scrutiny,musings on religion and spirituality (blog posting)

perception_and_belief, limiting beliefs - you see what you belief

spirituality, experience of the Divine, Mysticism

panentheism, immanent and transcendent Divinity. Comprising about all religions, especially themystical parts or formulations of these. Compatible with true science as shown in my ebook (seearchives) and articles.

psychology of the spirit, pneumatology,Vitvan, monadic model (ebook), objective idealism

symbols used in religious texts. Several keys for explanation of symbols exist. Some examples will begiven.

self_help, concise manual

Links: philosophy_of_life, archives, articles

External links:

The hidden meaning of the Sacraments

Threefold gunas in the human psyche (research of polarity and control hierarchy)

My ebook on spiritual science and psychology


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:dogmas


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:spirituality

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:panentheism:start



http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:psychology_of_the_spirit

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:symbols:start

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=self_help:start

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=philosophy_of_life:start







http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:start


Spirituality and Mysticism

Spirituality is a large topic. This section will focus on Mysticism. In my archives, you will find a largecollection of books from Jacob Boehme, a famous Christian mystic. I might write a little more about hisideas and experience of the Divine at some future point. For the moment, enjoy the subtle spiritualflow permeating his writings, while reading these.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=religion_spirituality_and_psychology:spirituality


Archives: Perennial philosophy, Gnosis, Boehme, Kabbalah,Neo-Platonism

The pagan origin of Christianity

List of Alvin Boyd Kuhn writings and Gerald Massey Lectures

The most important of Kuhn's writings are "The lost light" and "Shadow of the third century". TomHarpur has based his book "The pagan Christ" to a considerable degree on the content of these books.

Part one of James Morgan Pryse's book on the restoration of the New Testament

Astonishing research on the background of the gospels. (Hint: ancient Greek mystery plays involved).

My Jacob Boehme page

Free downloadable books in searchable textformat! All larger books of Boehme available (in English).

The Neo-Platonic School

The Enneads by Plotinus; The theology of Plato, and, The commentary on the Timaeus by Proclus;G.R.S. Mead on the Orphic theology

Esoteric philosophy

Fundamentals of the esoteric philosophy by G. de Purucker: a remarkable sketch of the basics of trueesoterism. The Eastern method of gradual unfoldment of teachings is employed throughout this book.Free download! Thanks goes to Eldon Tucker. Be sure to read my introduction to this book first!Html-version with figures.

Kabbalah

Alan Bain's Keys to Kabbalah

Original research on the Golden Dawn style Kabbalah. Includes Tarot pictures, 21 stages and 32 pathsof wisdom, culminating in Alan's diagram called "Jacob's ladder".

Integrative philosophy

My ebook on integrative spirituality and holistic science


http://meuser.awardspace.com/kuhnmassey.html

http://meuser.awardspace.com/JmPryseRestoredNewTestamentpart1.pdf

http://meuser.awardspace.com/Boehme.html

http://meuser.awardspace.com/neoplatonics.html

http://meuser.awardspace.com/neoplatonics.html

http://meuser.awardspace.com/Commentonfundeso.html

http://meuser.awardspace.com/fundeso.html

http://meuser.awardspace.com/keys_to_kabbalah.pdf



Contains an experience based philosophy of life plus pages on Vitvan's Gnosis, discussion of ArthurYoung's process model and an intro to J.G. Bennett's systematics (Fourth Way extension)


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Last update: 2011/11/07 23:52





Articles and notes

Here you can find a growing collection of articles on a diversity of topics:

beyond_reductionism: Life scientists discussing the limitations of reductionism

On the development of a spiritual process-philosophy

The threefold gunas in the human psyche (research of polarity and control hierarchy)

Philosophy and psychology of creation (use of will and visualization)

Culture wars - Three perspectives on the world today

Darwin's survival of the fittest under scrutiny. Cooperation between living beings is common in nature.

The esoteric background of the seven Sacraments Sketches the true meaning of the Sacraments aspertaining to the Mystery Schools of the Ancient World.


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http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/CulturewarsThreePerspectivesontheworldtoday.pdf

http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Darwins-evolutiontheory-questioned.pdf





Blog and forum

My new blog and forum discussions at www.theosophy.net

See left panel at that page for links! You can become a member of this organization and participate indiscussions! Also see Agents of Change for a list of important organizations that are striving for socialjustice and sustainable economy.


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Last update: 2011/10/31 06:27


http://www.theosophy.net/profile/MartinEuser

http://www.theosophy.net

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=agents_of_change


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=blog_and_forum


Ecology, economy, and sustainability

In the following, you will find links to organizations that provide alternative ways of economy, andwork from a deeper understanding of how to proceed toward an ecological balance. See alsoreflections_on_the_occupy_movement for more links.

LinksNew Economics Institute (or E.F. Schumacher Society) develops new indices for well-being,●

sustainability, etc.Centre for Alternative Technology is concerned with our carbon footprint●

Transition towns●

Do it yourself – A handbook for changing our world●

issues around fresh water and meat production Peta article●

good stewardship/ecospirituality in the churches (the greening of religion)●

becoming involved in Slow Food (organization website)●

buy Fair Trade products●

participate in LETSystems to promote local currencies and local trade.●

Sustainable banking (put your savings on a green bank, one that invests in ethically responsible●

projects, that promote practices of sustainability, fair business, etc.Food Matters: a natural approach to preventing and healing diseases.●

Life styles of health and sustainability (LOHAS)●

Houses for the homeless California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture●

The Natural Step framework is the foundation for many sustainability programs in the United States●

and around the world.Solutions for Business, Solutions for Communities, Case Studies.●

William McDonough & Michael Braungart (Waste is food; cradle to cradle principle)●


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http://neweconomicsinstitute.org

http://www.cat.org.uk/

http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=transition%20towns&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CFoQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTransition_Towns&ei=cgKrTpqML5GSOsTG5NMP&usg=AFQjCNGuDUAxzg3WwzJS_8TQUOK4Uz9TyA&sig2=DtcI9vXMLtPuXoGj_OyisQ

http://meuser.awardspace.com/articles/Do%20it%20yourself%20%96%20A%20handbook%20for%20changing%20our%20world.pdf

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes-natural-resources.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food

http://www.slowfood.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LETS

http://foodmatters.tv/

http://www.lohas.com/

http://calearth.org/

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/our-approach

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/our-story

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/solutions-communities

http://www.naturalstep.org/en/usa/case-studies

http://www.mcdonough.com/writings_new_perspectives.htm


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=ecology_economy_and_sustainability:start


Beyond reductionism

This page will be dedicated especially to the limitations of reductionism. Reductionism is the beliefthat all phenomena can be reduced to states of matter. Wikipedia on reductionism

In 1968, there was a symposion in Alpbach, Switzerland, where many of the finest researchers on thearea of biology, psycholinguistics, and other areas, assembled to discuss the state of affairs of the lifesciences at that point of time.

I have written some blog posts on this topic, titled "Beyond reductionism". These are incorporated inthis wiki, as follows:

Piaget and Inhelder, part 1

Piaget and Inhelder, part 2

Paul Weiss on reductionism, part 1





(Under construction.)


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Last update: 2011/10/19 22:26


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism

http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=beyond_reductionism:piaget_and_inhelder_part_1


http://meuser.awardspace.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=beyond_reductionism:paul_weiss_on_reductionism_part_1








Paul Weiss on reductionism, part one

The living system: determinism stratified Paul A. Weiss* Rockefeller University, New York

* In references to the author's publications in the text, abbreviated to "P.W."

A summary of Weiss's main points, as far as relevant to the purpose of this wiki, follows. Emphasis islargely mine. This is a long article, from which I retain the headings of the sections, and add a few foreasier reading. The summary is split in five parts, and comprises the first half of Weiss's article.

Introduction

Need for the systems concept

Weiss stresses the need for the scientist to periodically step back from his detailed work and have alook at what others in science are doing in order to retain a sense of perspective and proportions. Hisconclusions and postulates are derived “from pragmatic insights acquired from the study of livingorganisms.” He wants to contribute to the marriage of inductive experimental fact-finding andtheoretical speculations to bring forth something fruitful.

His prime object here is to document that a number of basic controversies about the nature oforganisms and living processes, “(e.g., reductionism versus holism), readily vanish in the light ofrealistic studies of the actual phenomena, described in language uncontaminated by preconceptions”.

“In this light (1) the principle of hierarchic order in living nature reveals itself as a demonstrabledescriptive fact, regardless of the philosophical connotations that it may carry.”

and (2) there is a compelling necessity to accept organic entities as systems which are subject tonetwork dynamics, “rather than as bundles of micro-precisely programmed linear chain reactions”. Astrictly mechanistic, machine-like, notion of the nature of living organisms “presupposes a highdegree of precision in the spatial and chronological program according to which the innumerableconcurrent component chains are composed and arrayed” to “keep the bunch of separate processesfrom falling apart when faced with the fortuitous fluctuations of the outer world”.

Animal behaviour: systems dynamics

Jacques Loeb (1918) explained animal behaviour in terms of “concatenated reflex sequences”, and“particularly his proposition of tropisms as paradigms of a precise cause-effect machine principle inorganisms, epitomizes that kind of mechanistic preconception”. His thesis had two serious flaws.Firstly, that brand of naively mechanistic thinking already had become outdated in physics; secondly,“studies of the actual behavior of animals in goal-directed or other forms of directional performancesshowed none of the presumed stereotypism in the manner in which animals attained theirobjectives.”

“True, the beginning and end of a behavioral act could often be unequivocally correlated with avectorial cue from the environment; but the execution of the given act was found to be sovariable and indeed unique in detail, from case to case and from instance to instance, that it wasgratuitous to maintain that the attainment of essentially the same result regardless of the variety of



approaches is simply the blind outcome of a chain of seriated steps appropriately pre-designed byevolution to lead to that end.”

So, organisms are “not puppets operated by environmental strings”; moreover, the analogy ismeaningless, because the "environment" that pulls the strings of puppets in proper order is oftenanother organism with his brain.

Weiss' detailed study of the movements and tracks of butterflies assuming resting postures promptedhim to disavow the reflex chain theory of animal orientation as unrealistic. He proposed in its stead ageneral systems theory of animal behavior. (P.W. 1925). The basic tenets of the paper seem to havebeen largely borne out by later developments. That conceptual framework is set forth here.

Analytic thinking - an abstraction

To Weiss, the Universe presents itself as an cohesive continuum. However, most of us are used tolooking at it as a “patchwork of discrete fragments. This habit stems partly from a biological heritage,which makes focusing on 'things', such as prey, enemies, or obstacles, a vital necessity”; our culturaltradition plays a role too; and curiosity, “which draws our attention and interest to limited 'objects'.”These can be:

well-delineated patterns in our visual field;●

repetitive arrays of sounds in bird song, melody or human language;●

processes of patterned regularity, such as waves.●

Their reiterative appearance in relatively constant and durable form makes them the focus of ourattention; we give these a name, while the rest is simply "background". These named processes andpatterns are mentally dissected out because we happen to be especially interested in these 'things' orhave drawn our attention.They cannot be said to be truly isolated or "isolable" from the rest. [SeeWhyte, 1949]

The process through which we have come to treat a 'cluster of properties, called "parts", as ideallyisolated, is mostly empirical'. We think that 'objects' are independent of their environment, but this isour perception. The latter refers to the limited powers of discrimination of the observer and hisinstruments; Also, in speaking of "independence from the environment", we must allow that 'since"environment" is ubiquitous, we cannot test, hence never discount, "dependencies" upon anyof the features of the cosmic environment which are universal'.

Weiss mentions temperature or radiation as cases in point. Independence is not absolute, for all those“putatively independent entities are interconnected by the common environmental matrix,in which they lie embedded”. Those so-called “discrete items”, form part and parcel of each other'senvironment.

Summary

we have a habit of atomizing the Universe mentally into isolated parts. But we do also seeconnections between isolated items, and then sort those we deem "relevant" from "negligible" ones;this “obviously lets the judgment of the describer (or of statistics) intrude into purportedly"objective" descriptions of properties of 'objects'”.



Tags: Weiss, analysis, biology, cells, hierarchical, organization, perception, stratification, subsystems,suprasystems, synthesis, systems


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Paul Weiss on reductionism, part two

From analysis to synthesis

By looking from single objects to their interrelations with others, one reverses his direction fromanalysis to synthesis. By doing this, one discovers simple rules which describe the interrelationsbetween such entities and keep one's basic conviction that those entities can be regarded as havingprimarily an isolated existence of their own, and becoming just secondarily coupled, depending on"circumstances". "Circumstances", however, is merely a substitute term for "environment". This is adeliberate abstraction, but one which has brought science tremendous success over the last twomillennia.

“We have learned that if a finite series of modifications of an entity A is regularly associated with acorrelated series of modification in another entity B, a rule can be established from which all futurecorrelations between the two can be extrapolated without further experience. We then proceed tostudy A in its relation to C, and C again in its relation to B", and so in serial order, "to learn howdifferent parts of the Universe, erstwhile mentally dissected and separated, hang actually together.”

This artificial, but fruitful method of analysis, “adhering to the atomistic concept of Democrit, can thusbe partly reversed by putting two and two together - either physically or mentally in our imagination -linking by way of consecutive synthesis such coupled pairs into complex chains and cross braces,constructing compound real or ideal structures, the way a child builds bridges with an erector set.”

The point is this: biological thinking entails the idea that, given time, it “will succeed in describing andcomprehending, by the consistent application of this synthetic method, all that is within the Universein entities and properties and processes that are knowable to us, including the phenomena of life.”

Modern physics has already departed from “such a micromechanistic, naive picture of the outerworld”, but we are concerned not with physics but with living organisms. On the basis of empiricalinvestigation, we can assert that “the mere reversal of our prior analytic dissection of theUniverse by putting the pieces together again, whether in reality or just in our minds, canyield no complete explanation of the behavior of even the most elementary living system”

The living organism: a system

Life is process. “A living system is no more adequately characterized by an inventory of its materialconstituents, such as molecules, than the life of a city is described by the list of names and numbersin a telephone book. Only by virtue of their ordered interactions do molecules become partners in theliving process; in other words, through their behavior.” This involves vast numbers of disparatecompounds,so “all living phenomena consist of group behaviour, which offers aspects not evident inthe members of the group when observed singly”.

This fact is generally put aside by referring to living systems as "complex"; but the term "complex"need “imply no more than a haphazard conglomeration, whereas in the living system we finddistinctive orderliness of the complexes”. While there could be an infinite number of possibleinteractions and combinations among its constituent units in a mere complex, “in the living systemonly an extremely restricted selection from that grab-bag of opportunities for chemical processesis being realized at any one moment - a selection which can be understood solely in its bearing on theconcerted harmonious performance of a task by the complex as a whole.”



This is the feature that distinguishes the living system from a dead body, or a functional process froma list of parts involved in a process, or “a sentence from an alphabet, or in biological terms, ecologyfrom taxonomy.” “The rules of order which rigorously restrain componental interactions in suchco-ordinated fashion as to yield a harmonious group performance of the collective can only berecognized, appreciated and properly described once we have raised our sights from the element tothe collective system”. This means passing to a higher level of conceptualization.

Hierarchy of wholes and parts

The mention of "levels" brings Weiss to “the fundamental distinction between atomistic,micro-mechanistic terms of explanations on the one hand, and hierarchical concepts of organizationon the other. The difference is that the latter imply some sort of discontinuity encountered asone crosses interfaces between lower and higher orders of magnitude”. In the formerapproach one tries to reduce all phenomena to the properties of ultimate elements in their variouscombinations; that view is based on “the premise of a continuity of gradations all the way up from thesingle elements to infinite numbers of them”. To decide which one of these two contrasting views ofnature represents the reality of biological phenomena is “not to be left to a priori conviction, but is amatter of empirical study”.

“If co-ordinated group performances of a high order of regularity can be proven to be the blindresultant of a multitude of concurrent linear bundles of chain reactions minutely pre-set in spatialdistribution and pre-scheduled in duration and sequence, then the former theory could hold sway”. Ifnot, then systems theory would have to be granted a primary role for the treatment of organizedsystems; for the systems concept is the expression of the experience that there are patternedprocesses “which owe their typical configuration not to a prearranged, absolutely stereotyped,mosaic of single-tracked component performances”, but rather “to the fact that the componentactivities have many degrees of freedom, but submit to the ordering restraints exerted uponthem by the integral activity of the "whole" in its patterned systems dynamics.”

Weiss has put his finger on the sore spot which has hurt the protagonists of analytical-reductionistorthodoxy for a long time: the concept of wholeness. The reductionists have refused to look beyondtheir ultimate and most extreme abstraction, namely, the presumption of truly "isolated" elements innature.

They ask: what else could there be in the universe other than elements and interactions?. Weissanswers: “The interaction between a positive and a negative electric charge, or between the earthand a falling stone, can certainly be described, at least in first approximation, without payingattention to what happens in the rest of the universe. And if one watches a multitude of stones fallingto earth, the total result can still be represented as the sum of all the individual events.”

“But there is also another class of interactions, which of necessity escapes the elementarianobserver in his preoccupation with the smallest samples, because they pertain to properties peculiarto larger samples only of the universe, ignored in the communitive process which led to the conceptof elements in the first place. It is in that latter class that the empirical dichotomy arises betweensimple conglomerates and the type of ordered complexes which we designate as systems. In otherwords, systems are products of our experience with nature, and not mental constructs, andwhoever without being privy to that primary practical experience would try to abrogate them, coulddo so only by arrogation.”

Tags: Weiss, analysis, hierarchical, levels, organization, perception, synthesis, systems





Last update: 2011/10/18 23:47






Paul Weiss on reductionism, part three

Reductionism and holism

Weiss next tries to define basic criteria that mark a complex of parts for designation as a system. First,however, he talks about the controversy in biology between "reductionism" and "holism". The formerfinds its advocates in the field of "molecular biology". The latter term can be used to imply adeliberate “self-limitation of viewpoint and research to molecular interactions in living systems”. Thatis a pertinent and legitimate use of the term. If, however, molecular biologists “were to assume theattitude of a benevolent absolutism, claiming a monopoly for the explanation of all phenomenain living systems, and indeed were issuing injunctions against the use of other than molecularprinciples in the description of biological systems, this would obviously show a lack of practicalexperience with, or disregard of, the evidence for supra-molecular order in living systems.”

The term "molecular biology" was coined almost simultaneously by Astbury (1951) and Weiss*; “itwas to indicate, on the scale of orders of magnitude, the lowest level of investigation relevant to theadvancement of biological knowledge. But nothing in the nomenclature insinuated that it shouldassume the role of pars pro toto”.[the part usurping the role of the whole, editor.]

* Weiss proposed a hierarchical system of order according to functional principles in common to livingorganisms: Molecular, Cellular, Genetic, Developmental, Regulatory and Group and EnvironmentalBiology (see, for instance, P.W. 1952).

“It is one thing not to see the forest for the trees, but then to go on to deny the reality of the forest isa more serious matter; for it is not just a case of myopia, but one of self-inflicted blindness.”

In using the phrase "The whole is more than the sum of its parts", the term "more" is often taken as aterm referring to numbers. However, a living cell does not have more content, mass or volume than isconstituted by the total mass of molecules which it comprises. Weiss has shown in an article (P.W.1967) that the "more" (than the sum of parts) in the above tenet “does not at all refer to anymeasurable quantity in the observed systems themselves; it refers solely to the necessity for theobserver to supplement the sum of statements that can be made about the separate parts by anysuch additional statements as will be needed to describe the collective behavior of the parts, when inan organized group.” In going through this upgrading process, the observer is in effect only “restoring information content that has been lost on the way down in the progressive analysis ofthe unitary universe into abstracted elements.”

Weiss' neutral account may reconcile reductionism and holism. The reductionist moves from the topdown, “gaining precision of information about fragments as he descends, but losing informationcontent about the larger orders he leaves behind; the other proceeds in the opposite direction, frombelow, trying to retrieve the lost information content by reconstruction, but recognizes early in theascent that that information is not forthcoming unless he has already had it on record in the firstplace.”

The difference between the two processes, determined largely also by historical traditions, is “notunlike that between two individuals looking at the same object through a telescope from oppositeends.”



System operationally defined

Weiss then proposes an epistemologically neutral (pragmatic) definition of a system: it is “a rathercircumscribed complex of relatively bounded phenomena, which, within those bounds, retains arelatively stationary pattern of structure in space or of sequential configuration in time in spite of ahigh degree of variability in the details of distribution and interrelations among its constituent units oflower order.” The system maintains its configuration and integral operation in a rather constantenvironment, and it responds to alterations of the environment by “an adaptive redirection of itscomponental processes in such a manner as to counter the external change in the direction ofoptimum preservation of its systemic integrity.”

He then gives a simple formula to set a system in relation to the sum of its components by aninequality, which boils down to: A complex is a system if “the variance of the features of the wholecollective is significantly less than the sum of variances of its constituents”;

So, the basic characteristic of a system is “its essential invariance beyond the much more variantflux and fluctuations of its elements or constituents”. By implication this signifies that the elements “are subject to restraints of their degrees of freedom so as to yield a resultant in the direction ofmaintaining the optimum stability of the collective. The terms "co-ordination", "control", and thelike, are merely synonymous labels for this principle.”

To summarize, a major aspect of a system is that while the state and pattern of the whole can bedefined as known, “the detailed states and pathways of the components not only are so erratic as todefy definition”, but even if one could trace them, “would prove to be so unique and non-recurrentthat they would be devoid of scientific interest”. This is the opposite of a machine, in which “thestructure of the product depends crucially on strictly predefined operations of the parts”. “In thesystem, the structure of the whole determines the operation of the parts”; in the machine, it is theoperation of the parts which determines the outcome. Weiss points out that even the machine owesthe coordinated functional arrangement of its parts to a systems operation - the brain of its designer.

Comment

Biological systems show homeostasis: they try to keep (and restore) a state of equilibrium. Theorganism as a whole restrains the freedom of its components. A component gone wild (out of bounds)can cause the organism to die. The same applies to ecosystems. Humanity has to be a good stewardto the world it lives in.

Tags: Weiss, analysis, definition, hierarchical, levels, organization, part, synthesis, systems, whole



Last update: 2011/10/18 23:47






Paul Weiss on reductionism, part four

Hierarchy: a biological necessity

To stress the need for viewing living organisms as hierarchically ordered systems, ponder thefollowing facts. The average cell in the human body consists of about eighty per cent of water and forthe rest contains about 10^5 macromolecules [^ is symbol for exponent, editor]. “The human brainalone contains about 10^10 cells, hence about 10^15 (1,000,000,000,000,000) macromolecules”(give or take one order of magnitude). Could you actually believe that such an enormous number ofelements, shuffled around as we have demonstrated in our cell studies, “could ever guarantee to youyour sense of identity and constancy in life without this constancy being insured by asuperordinated principle of integration?”

Each nerve cell in the brain receives an average of 10^4 connections from other brain cells, and inaddition, “although the cells themselves retain their individuality, their macro-molecular contingent isrenewed about 10^4 times in a lifetime (P.W. 1969a). In short, every cell of your brain actuallyharbors and has to deal with approximately 10^9 macromolecules during its life”. But there is more.“The brain loses, on the average, about 10^3 cells per day, so that the brain cell population isdecimated during the life span by about 10^7 cells, expunging 10^11 conducting cross linkages.”Despite this ceaseless change of detail in that large population of elements, “our basic patterns ofbehavior, our memories, our sense of integral existence as an individual, have retainedthroughout their unitary continuity of pattern”.

When one looks at biology exclusively from the molecular end, one might feel satisfied by “calculatingthat a contingent at any one time of 10^15 brain molecules in intercommunication could numericallyaccount for any conceivable number of resultant functional manifestations by their mass. However,this misses the real problem.” It is redundant to confirm that which we already know to happen; whatscientists have to explain, is not that it happens, but why it happens just the way it does. 'And this isexactly where the above molecular computation fails abysmally, for it ignores the crucial fact thatcontrary to that "conceivable" infinite number and variety of possible kaleidoscopic constellations andcombinations, the real brain processes, taken as a whole, retain their overall patterns.'

The brain

This example has taken us up to one of the highest levels of organismic organization - the brain. ErwinSchrödinger wrestled with the same issue in his lecture series on “What Is Life?” (1945): the contrastbetween the degrees of potential freedom among trillions of molecules making up the brain on theone hand and on the other hand, “the perseverance in an essentially invariant pattern of the functionsof our nervous system, our thoughts, our ideas, our memories (and as for the whole body, of ourstructure and the harmonious physiological co-operation of all our parts)”. He was forced to concludethat every conscious mind that has ever felt or said 'I' .. is “the person, if any, who controls the'motion of the atoms' according to the laws of nature." Let us forget the implied brain-mind dualism,for the emphasis lies on the word "control" – 'the subordination of the blind play of atoms andmolecules to an overall regulatory control system with features of continuity and relative invariabilityof pattern; in short, the postulation of a systems principle'.



Subsystems

The integral systems operation, of the body as a whole, or of the brain within it, deals not directly withthe molecules, “but only through the agency of intermediate subordinate sub-systems, ranged in ahierarchical scale of orders of magnitude” (see the description of hierarchical order in cells below).Each sub-system dominates its own subordinate smaller parts within its own domain, restraining theirdegrees of freedom “according to its own integral portion of the overall pattern”, much like its owndegrees of freedom “have been restrained by the pattern of activities of the higher system of which itis a part and participant”.*

* Gerard (1958) and Koestler (1967) have endowed systems and subsystems of this description withsymbolic names, (Gerard: "orgs", Koestler: "holons"). Weiss fears that such terms might be naivelymisconstrued for “labels of disembodied super-agencies conceived as something that might after allsomehow some day materialize, distilled off and separable from the conservative dynamics, whosespecial rules those terms aim at categorizing.” The history of science shows the conceptual hazardsinherent in raising adjectives to the rank of nouns; “particularly, in the description of livingphenomena, where the temptation to personify nouns is ever present”.

Invariance

This picture of the organism is the lesson learned from biological study: the organism is composed ofcells, which are composed of organelles, which are in turn composed of macro-molecular complexes,down to the macromolecules and smaller molecules, which are the link to inorganic nature. “Theprinciple is valid for the single cell as much as for the multicellular community of the higher animal,and for the latter's development as much as for its homeostatic maintenance of physiologicalequilibrium in later life.” On each one of the planes or levels of this systemic hierarchy, “we encounterthe same type of descriptive rule summarized in the inequality formula outlined earlier; namely, thatany one of the particular complexes that show that high degree of constancy and unity that marksthem as systems loses that aspect of invariance the more we concentrate our attention on smallersamples of its content”.

So, at each level of descent, we recognize entities like organs, cells, organelles, macromolecules; orbrain functions, as expressed in concepts, thoughts, sentences, words, symbols, “but whosemethodical behavior on that level cannot be ascribed to any fixity of regularities in the behavior of theunits of next lower order”; knowing the properties of intermediary entities “would not permit us todescribe by sheer additive reconstruction the behavioral features of their next superordinate level inprecise and specific terms”.

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts" is translated by Weiss into a mandate for action: “a callfor spelling out the irreducible minimum of supplementary information that is required beyond theinformation derivable from the knowledge of the ideally separated parts in order to yield a completeand meaningful description of the ordered behavior of the collective”.

The reference to hierarchically ordered systems in terms of "levels" has to do with our habit ofthinking in spatial imagery. “In our imagination, we visualize the system as a whole on one plane; wethen dissect it mentally or physically into its components, which we display on another, a lower,plane”.

Yet, in reality, the system and its parts “are co-extensive and congruous, that nothing need bepresumed to have been disrupted or lost in the dissection process except the pattern or orderly



relations among the parts”. The "level" we are speaking of signifies the “level of attention of anobserver whose interest has been attracted by certain regularities of pattern prevailing at that level,as he scans across the range of orders of magnitude”.

The observer finds constancies on every level. It does not matter whether one uses a visual image orverbiage as a model of hierarchic structure as long as one realizes that this model is a simplifiedartifact “reflecting the inadequacy of our faculty for visualizing abstract concepts”. They all becomeequivalent, whether one prefers the layered structure intimated by the term "level" or “ArthurKoestler's tree scheme of reanastomosing arborizations” or Weiss' own preference for "inscribeddomains". The latter refers to a simple figure of his showing concentric circles which have in thecenter the label “gene”, then chromosome, nucleus, cytoplasm, tissue, organism with connectionsbetween all the circles (interactive relations among hierarchically ordered subsystems of anorganism). The whole is embedded in an environment.

Summary

So, the patterns mentioned by Weiss, are non-reducible to the components of the system. The finelytuned dynamics of a cell require sophisticated control-"mechanisms". The global correlations betweencell-groups in the human brain are unexplainable to the reductionist neuro-scientist. The need forsomething like an "information-field" as an originator of patterns is evident here. The brightestscientists already acknowledge this; others are still in the closet regarding this inevitable conclusion.The Nobel-prize winner, physicist Gerard 't Hooft also has started to muse about the holographicnature of our universe. Readers who are interested in these things may enjoy reading Michael Talbot'sbook "The Holographic Universe".

Tags: control, hierarchy, levels, non-reductive, organism, organization, pattern, subsystem,supersystem



Last update: 2011/10/18 23:47






Paul Weiss on reductionism, part five

Open systems

Weiss mentions here his use of escape clauses as "to all intents and purposes", "relatively bounded","relatively constant", "essential" in relation to the issue of the non-existence of wholly autonomous,tightly bounded, systems of any order of magnitude and complexity. He mentions the emphasisplaced by Bertalanffy (1945) on "open systems". True to his concept “of the primacy of continuity andinterrelatedness throughout the Universe”, he must consider all systems as "open" - ideally andtheoretically. Basically, all systems must be expected to be open somewhere somehow. For practicalpurposes, we might close them by empirical boundaries, subject to amendment.

Systems - theoretically founded

Having presented the case for the hierarchical organization of living systems in assertive form, Weisscomes to document those assertions in the form of a few illustrative examples, presented in two parts:a brief theoretical one and a more elaborate concrete one dealing with the living cell.

“On the theoretical side, there is a strictly logical test for the identification of a system. It rests on thenature of the interrelations between the units conceived of atomistically, through primary abstraction,as isolated, separate and autonomous”. Weiss then points to his previous discussion of analysis andsynthesis (see the erector set analogy). The synthetic insight, explaining things by addition, wouldapply only “for those particular cases in which our original primary abstraction has been empiricallyvalidated, that is, on the premise that the abstracted entities have actually been proved to berelatively autonomous”. “The fundamental distinction of a system is that this premisedefinitely does not apply as far as the relations among its constituents are concerned”.“Let us assume, for instance, a triplet of units, A, B, and C, each of which depends for its veryexistence upon interactions with, or contributions from, the other two. Then, obviously, we couldnot achieve a step-wise assembly of this triplet, the way we did before by first joining A to Band then adding C; for in the absence of C, neither A nor B could have been formed, existed orsurvived. In short, the coexistence and co-operation of all three is indispensable for the existence andoperation of any one of them.”

Empirical studies

Weiss mentions that in empirical studies, processes in living systems present themselves “as justsuch networks of mutually interdependent tributaries to the integral operation of the whole group”.Examples of systems of this type of "physical wholeness" can be represented by inorganicanalogies. “A self-supporting arch is one example. One could never close an arch by piling loosestones upon one another because they start to slip off at the curvature. In other words, an arch as aself-supporting structure can only exist in its entirety or not at all.” Human imagination has foundways of building arches piece by piece, by help of cements or of a scaffolding. “But those arecontrivances of a living system, the resourceful human brain, enabling a system to be synthesizedfrom parts, a feat which could never have been accomplished without such help from anothersystem”: System begets system.



Example

This conclusion leads to an example in living systems, namely, “the reproduction of themacromolecules in the living cell”. Although commonly referred to as "synthesis", this process isradically different from what goes under the same name in inorganic chemistry. In the latter, forexample, if chlorine and hydrogen are brought together, they will combine to hydrochloric acid, “evenif none of the end product has been present before”.

“By contrast, the assembly of simple constituents into complex macromolecules in organic systemsalways requires the presence of a ready-made model of the product or, at any rate, a template ofthe same high degree of specificity, to guide the proper order of assemblage”. The best known case isthe transcription of genes or sequence of DNA parts into a corresponding sequence of ribonucleic acid(RNA), “the orderly array of which is then translated into a corresponding serial pattern of amino acidsin the formation of a protein”.

'Although this copying process of patterns and its various derivative manifestations, such as thehighly specific catalysis of further macromolecular species through the enzymatic action of proteins,is often referred to by verbs with the anthropomorphic prefix "self-", these processes are no more"self”-engendered than an arch can be ”self”-building; for in order to occur at all, they require thespecific co-operation of their own terminal products - the enzyme systems which, being indispensableprerequisites for all the links in the metabolic chains, including those for their own formation, thusclose the circle of interdependent component processes to a coherent integrated system. Only theintegral totality of such a system could with some justification be called "self-contained","self-perpetuating", and "self-sustaining".'

Comment

Note the strong argument against a simple reductionism here: the enzyme systems which arenecessary for their own production. Another strong point of Weiss is his criticism of the use of theprefix "self-". Terms like "self-engendered" are indeed anthropomorphic and hide the biologist'signorance about the control of the process of synthesis. It actually is a very funny term, and the samegoes for "self-organization". So, the biologist sees himself forced to use terms that one associateswith consciousness! Or .. is this "self" another term to state a tautology?

Tags: abstraction, anthropomorphic, coherent, foundation, interdependent, open, self-organization,systems



Last update: 2011/10/18 23:47






Piaget and Inhelder (beyond reductionism), part 1

In this series of postings, I will summarize and quote parts of some books that deal with the problemsof reductionism. The first book that draw my attention, was the famous book "Beyond reductionism",New perspectives in the life sciences, which is a report from the Alpbach Symposium held in 1968.Participants were, among others, Arthur Koestler [holons!], J.R. Smythies, Ludwig von Bertalanffy[systems theory], Paul Weiss, Jean Piaget[developmental psychology], Paul Maclean [three functionalbrains idea], W.H. Thorpe, Viktor Frankl.

The book breathes a fresh atmosphere. It is a lively report of the thoughts and research of many greatscientists, especially from the biology, psychology and linguistic departments. One can also see howcurrent academia have diverged from this line of thought, in favor of a more reductionist paradigm(as evidenced by molecular biology, and especially neuropsychology). There are many problemsfacing the reductionist paradigm. I will deal with some of these in this series of postings.

The first article concerns the lecture of Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder (University of Geneva), titled“The gaps in empiricism”. I will quote from a section of this long lecture. First there is an intro onbehaviorism, which I will skip. Then, an enlightening part on empiricism and mathematics follows (allemphasis is mine):

Empiricism and mathematics

“In so far as empiricism seeks to limit knowledge to that of observable features, the problem it hasfailed to solve is the existence of mathematics, and this problem becomes particularly acute when itcomes to explaining psychologically how the subject discovers or constructs logico-mathematicalstructures.”

“Classical empiricism, as argued by Herbert Spencer for example, considered that we derivemathematical concepts by means of abstraction from physical objects: certain Soviet schools ofthought share this view, though it is in fact not consistent with the theory of dialectics.

In contrast to this attitude, contemporary logical empiricism has well understood the differencebetween physics, on the one hand, and logic and mathematics, on the other, but instead of seeking apossible common source of knowledge in these respective fields it has maintained that there are twoentirely different sources. It has thus aimed at reducing physical knowledge to experience alone (theroot of synthetic judgments) and logico-mathematical knowledge to language alone (whose generalsyntactic and semantic features pertain to analytical judgments).”

“This view poses several problems. Firstly, from the linguistic point of view, while Bloomfield'spositivism (and even earlier Watson's behaviorism) aimed at reducing all thought and, in particular,logic to a mere product of language, Chomsky's transformational structuralism reverts to therationalist tradition of grammar and logic (in doing this, as we have just seen, he exaggerates to thepoint where he regards basic structures as innate).

In the second place, the great logician Quine was able to show the impossibility of defending a radicaldualism of analytic and synthetic judgments (this "dogma" of logical empiricism, as Quine amusinglytermed it). Moreover, a collective study by our Centre for Genetic Epistemology has been able toverify Quine's objections experimentally by finding numerous intermediaries between the analytic andsynthetic poles.



Finally, psychogenetically, it is obvious that the roots of the logico-mathematical structures must gofar deeper than language and must extend to the general coordination of actions found at theelementary behavior levels, and even to sensory-motor intelligence; sensory-motor schemes alreadyinclude order of movements, embedding of a sub-scheme into a total scheme and establishingcorrespondences. The basic arguments of logical empiricism are thus shown today to berefuted in all the linguistic, logical and psychological areas where one might have hopedto prove them.”

“As far as the connections between logico-mathematical structures and physical reality are concerned,the situation seems just as clear. It became clarified through experimental analyses of the nature ofexperience itself. While empiricists aimed at reducing everything to experience, and were thusobliged to explain what they meant by "experience", they have simply forgotten to prove theirinterpretation experimentally. In other words, we have been given no systematic experimental studyon what experience actually is.”

“From our prolonged and careful studies of the development of experience and of the roles which itplays in both physical and logico-mathematical knowledge, the following facts emerge.”

“It is perfectly true that logico-mathematical knowledge begins with a phase in which the child needsexperience because it cannot reason along deductive lines. There is an epistemological parallel:Egyptian geometry was based on land-measuring, which paved the way for the empirical discovery ofthe relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle with sides of 3, 4 and 5 units, whichconstitutes a special case of Pythagoras' theorem. Similarly, the child at the preoperatory level(before 7-8 years) needs to make sure by actually handling objects that 3+2=2+3 or that A=C if A=Band B = C (when he cannot see A and C together).”

“But logico-mathematical experience which precedes deductive elaboration is not of the same type asphysical experience. The latter bears directly on, and obtains its information from, objects as such bymeans of abstraction—"direct" abstraction which consists of retaining the interesting properties of theobject in question by separating them from others which are ignored.

For example, if one side of a rubber ball is coated with flour, the child discovers fairly early on that thefurther the ball drops in height the more it flattens out when it hits the ground (as indicated by themark on the floor). He also discovers at a later age (10-11) that the more this ball flattens out thehigher it bounces up; a younger child thinks it is the other way round. This is therefore a physicalexperience because it leads to knowledge which is derived from the objects themselves.”

“By contrast, in the case of logico-mathematical experience, the child also acts on the objects, but theknowledge which he gains from the experience is not derived from these objects: it is derived fromthe action bearing on the objects, which is not the same thing at all. In order to find out that3+2=2+3, he needs to introduce a certain order into the objects he is handling (pebbles, marbles,etc.), putting down first three and then two or first two and then three. He needs to put these objectstogether in different ways—2, 3 or 5.

What he discovers is that the total remains the same whatever the order; in other words, that theproduct of the action of bringing together is independent of the action of ordering. If there is in fact(at this level) an experimental discovery, it is not relevant to the properties of the objects.

Here the discovery stems from the subject's actions and manipulations and this is why later, whenthese actions are interiorized into operations (interiorized reversible actions belonging to a structure),handling becomes superfluous and the subject can combine these operations by means of a purelydeductive procedure and he knows that there is no risk of them being proved wrong by contradictory



physical experiences.

Thus the actual properties of the objects are not relevant to such logical mathematical discoveries. Bycontrast, it is just these properties which are relevant when—as in one of our recent experiments—thechild is asked questions about how the behaviour of pebbles (which stay where you put them) differsfrom that of drops of water.”

“The method of abstraction peculiar to logico-mathematical structures is therefore different from thatin elementary physical experiences. The former can be called a "reflective abstraction", because,when the child slowly progresses from material actions to interiorized operations (by "superior" wemean both "more complex" and "chronologically later") the results of the abstractions carried out onan inferior level are reflected on a superior one. This term is also appropriate because the structuresof the inferior level will be reorganized on the next one since the child can now reflect on his ownthought processes. At the same time this reflection enriches the structures that are already present.

For example, primitive societies and children are already aware of the one-to-one correspondence,but it needed Cantor to discover the general operations of establishing relationships by means of"reflective abstraction" and he needed a second reflective abstraction in order to establish arelationship between the series 1,2,3 … and 2, 4, 6 … and thus to discover transfinite numbers.”

“In this light we understand why mathematics, which at its outset has been shown to stem from thegeneral coordination of actions of handling (and thus from neurological coordinations and, if we goeven further back, from organic self-regulations), succeeds in constantly engendering newconstructions. These constructions must of necessity have a certain form. In other words,mathematical thought builds structures which are quite different from the simple verbal tautologies inwhich logical empiricism would have us believe.”

Tags: Piaget, abstraction, empiricism, logical, mathematics, physicalism, positivism, reductionism,reflective, refutation


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Piaget and Inhelder (beyond reductionism), part 2

No pure experience possible

“There is a second difference between physical experience and logico-mathematical experience ordeduction. Whilst the latter, proceeding by means of reflective abstractions, leads to progressivepurification (whose final stages are today those of the formalization peculiar to "pure" mathematics),physical experience is always a sort of "mixture". There is in fact no "pure" experience in the sense ofa simple recording of external factors, without endogenous activity on the part of the subject. Allphysical experience results from actions on objects, for without actions modifying objects the latterwould remain inaccessible even to our perception (since perception itself supposes a series ofactivities such as establishing relationships, etc.).

If this is so, the actions which enable us to experiment on objects will always be dependent on thegeneral coordinations outside of which they would lose all coherence. This means that physicalexperience is always indissociable from the logico-mathematical "framework"3 which is necessary forits "structuralization" This logico-mathematical device is in no way restricted to translating theexperience into formal language—as if it were possible to have on the one side, the experience itselfand, on the other, its verbal translation.”

[footnote 3. Establishing relationships or logical classes, functions, counting and measuring, etc.]

“This brings us back to the central argument of empiricism: that all knowledge should be related asclosely as possible to observable facts.”

Going beyond what is observable

“In reality, in every field—from physics to psychology, sociology or linguistics—the essence ofscientific knowledge consists in going beyond what is observable in order to relate it tosubjacent structures. Firstly, logico-mathematical structures must go outside the scope of what isobservable, i.e. what is furnished by physical experience in the broad sense (including biological,psychological experience, etc.). Infinity, continuity, logical necessity, the hierarchy of constructionsand of reflective abstractions are all unobservable realities according to the empiricist, and if they hadto be attributed to the simple powers of a "language", this language would have the surprisingproperty of being infinitely richer than that which it describes.

Secondly, in physics we might just be justified in regarding as observable features the repeatablerelations which functional analysis strives to translate into "laws", but on examination of the actualwork of scientists—and not the philosophical statements to which they so often limit themselves—wehave to recognize that their systematic and unceasing need to discover why things happen forcesthem to break through the barriers of the observable. In these last decades, measurement hasbecome a problem and researchers have often sought to identify the structures beforeattempting measurement.

To take just one classical example, no one would dispute that the very widespread success of theapplication of the group structures in physics means that physicists also subordinate what isobservable to systems or models which are not. Present-day achievements of structuralism in biologyalso provide an example of this and almost all the social sciences are proceeding along the samelines.”



“To sum up, the innumerable problems continually being raised by the nature of mathematics and itsapplication to experimental science have moved us further away from, rather than towards,the empiricist ideal of scientific knowledge.”

[This ends Piaget for the moment.]

Tags: Inhelder, Piaget, abstraction, empiricism, logical, mathematics, physicalism, positivism,reductionism, reflective, refutation


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