Paul David Adkin's Blog, page 27

From Khaos to Being, via Sapiens

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The original Greek χάος comes from the verb to gape and is therefore the dark emptiness, the black abyss in the yawning mouth of the Universe.

In Greek cosmology this was the word used to describe the state of non-being prior to creation. Our modern cosmology could use the term to describe the state of non-being before the Big Bang, but it doesn’t – probably because the concept is hardly a very scientific assumption; the void of Khaos would imply that there was space before the Big Bang, rather than the more generally held notion of space and time being created by the Big Bang. What’s more, chaos, as it is usually spelt, has come to mean other things, which is why we write it as khaos.

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For us, our interest in Khaos lies in the idea of a moment when non-being became the process of becoming that leads to Being, and an affirmation that such a moment was not the Big Bang. In fact, it took place millions of years after the Big Bang. The shift from a state of non-being to the process of becoming Being was a very quiet development, more like an unheard oozing than any noisy leap or an explosion of light.

Being has always been a slow process of becoming, an evolutionary unfolding, rooted in perception. It began with the first bleeps of perception from the first perceiving micro-organisms, and has developed into those complex life-forms capable of understanding and communicating their awareness, self-consciousness etc., that we call Sapiens.

“In the beginning was the word …” The process to Being started with the naming of things. Being is the product of an unveiling. The Creation is not a creation as such, but a discovery or reaffirmation of the existence that would otherwise be pointlessly trapped in the yawning mouth of Khaos.

From the original notion of Khaos came the cosmological notion of a primordial state in which our cosmos in potentia is waiting to be formed in the yawning mouth. From this notion came the erroneous assumption that such a formation could only be managed by a Demiurge, the Creator, while in fact that creator is Sapiens. The Creator is all of us. Creation occurred when the yawning mouth of humanity spat out the first word.

The creator is Sapiens, and humanity (homo sapiens) is a part of that Sapiens entanglement with Being itself. Each time we utter or think a word we are taking part in the divine process of becoming that is embedded in all Being. The difference between the Universe and the Void, flows through us.

This placing of Being in the language of Sapiens, means that being is not just what is observed, understood and perceived, it also exists in the language of potential and conditionals. Being is what is, what has been, and what it could and will be. Being rejoices in us: not just in itself reflected in our perception of it, but also in our vision of its own potentials.

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Let us not be mean with Being. Give it all our love – our appreciation, understanding and preservation – and all our desire for the unleashing of its most incredible potentials, guided by our own unlimited imaginations.

ON HAPPINESS

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Let us make it quite clear: Happiness is not our goal.

But how could happiness ever be a goal in the first place? It is illusionary to assume that happiness can be searched for and then found, and if this sometimes does happen it is always brought about by accident rather than via any law of cause and effect. Happiness is always only a possible emotional result of something else that has occurred or has been striven for.

That is not to say that happiness is impossible, and we do believe that a strong, enduring kind of happiness can be found through fulfilment. This is the happiness given through the satisfaction of getting important things done; or of being in the process of doing important things; the satisfaction from the feeling that one is on the right course.

There is nothing new in this idea, but the anti-human historical process of civilisation has pushed fulfilment away from any universal purposiveness toward subjective profit-making ideas of pursuing the right course. It is in the interests of our System of Accumulations that the fulfilment of one’s right course will trample over the rest and perpetuate the competitive elements of all societies that allow social injustice and economic tyranny to thrive in an almost uncritical environment. Thus, we find ourselves driven by the right course of the nation or the empire; or the family or the company we work for; or a placing of the right course in some god’s will. But really, the subjective decisions we make when deciding on our own course of action are hardly our own decisions at all, but products of constant, systemic propaganda.

Our proposal for finding happiness, is to abandon your own pseudo-subjective course in order to anchor it in humanity itself: redrawing our right courses from a cosmologically-centred, Sapiens’ point-of-view. In this way happiness is found through a universal purposiveness, which is possible for all, and because of that an authentic happiness that can be durable and life-fulfilling.

ON HUMAN HISTORY

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Human history: the study of that which has never been allowed to be. It would have to begin with a description or definition of what it could have been.

Human history is a fantasy tale: a story of constant distraction away from the human; the constant narration of other histories over the authentic human one, but often in the name of the human one.

An authentic human history would be one of displaying the constant undermining of the greatest potentials; the constant befuddling and confusing of the common human experience so that it always appears as something that needs competition and bloody conflict in order to achieve the tremendous meagre crumbs that we are told have been won.

It’s too late now to believe in a historical process for humanity. There needs to be an entirely original idea that goes beyond that of humanity itself as a species. It is time to begin a new, authentically historical process toward an evolved human species full of real human potential – it’s time to start writing the book of Sapiens History.

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“What can mankind do?”: the question comes from André Gide at the turn of the 20th century. It should have been phrased, what can humanity do as humanity?

Once we see how depressing the answer is to this fundamental question—for as soon as we indagate in the idea of human history we realise there has never been one – we see an immediate need to rectify the mistake. It’s time, long overdue, to do justice to humanity and infuse it with an authentic historical process.

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How much love for everything non-human: all these animals and plants; these rocks and landscapes, and yet … How much hatred we have for humanity itself. But of course we must hate it, because unlike nature and the non-human it has not been allowed to grow naturally. Humanity has forever been lacerating itself, uglifying itself, disdaining and hating itself.

The Metaphysics of Evolution

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How far back does natural selection go? Is it just a biological phenomenon or can we attribute natural selection to the creation of the biological itself? Could we even go so far as the first beginning? Was the Big Bang an act of natural selection?

If so, what choice did the sub-atomic-particle intuition behind the Big Bang have when it made that natural selection? Simply choosing between To be, or not to be would have been satisfactory enough to start something. This could have developed into an intuitive but unexpressed sub-atomic longing for Being or Becoming? – implying a choice between the forever static or the always changing – and may have evolved into the particle-affirmation of Becoming into Being Known – the Being which is loved: appreciated, understood and preserved. In other words, an intuition which longs for an evolution into a state of being that is capable of understanding and appreciating that its own existence is the reason for that existence and hence the reason behind everything that it does, which would be a full and purposeful kind of existentialism (intuited at a sub-atomic level of course – despite the profound philosophical consequences of these suggestions, we are envisaging primitive decisions being made here in the same way that primitive DNA makes primitive decisions).

BUT HOW CAN THIS IDEA HELP US?

The inanimate singularity of the Universe, does not know what it does until what it does has succeeded in creating a Sapiens entity within it which is capable of interpreting what is going on. Only with the creation of Sapiens can intuitive forces become real by being known (because Sapiens entities are the only ones capable of knowing).

If this idea of a Sapiens partnership with the Universe were accepted as a truth, and became a purposeful interpretation of reality, then doors would be open for the history of humanity to radically change from an anti-human process to an authentically human historical process, because it would be the first time that human history and human purpose would be projected in a truly omni-human way.

Ingrained in this simple, metaphysical idea, is that knowing is the essential purpose of all life.

Once a human (Sapiens) partnership with the Universe is accepted, it opens the possibility of a new kind of civilisation through the creation of an authentically-human, purposeful driven empire, fuelled by the universal purpose of Becoming into Being Known – i.e. into being loved; i.e. appreciated, understood and preserved.

Some Tests: Macauley’s Trial

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Wayne Macauley is one of Australia’s greatest ironists. He writes from within the great bubble of Australian society in order to reveal the soapiness of that bubble. Some Tests is Macauleyan irony in its purest form, and the soapiness is everywhere.

Some Tests is also Macauley’s most Kafkaesque work, a comparison which Macauley himself could not complain of, for Kafka runs thick through all his work since his adaptation of “The Hunger Artist” in the early 80s.

Some Tests is in fact a kind of mirroring of Kafka’s The Trial. His heroine, Beth Own, a nemesis of Joseph K.: Macauley changes the sex of the protagonist; the personality is inverted; K. is arrogant and pseudo-cynical, but Beth is polite and complacent; where K. struggles to resolve the procedure against him, Beth Own has a passive, existential acceptance of what is going forward. But the most disturbing thing (for Australians) about this comparison, is that Macauley makes his Kafkaesque style work just as well in the Melbourne suburbs as it does in Kafka’s Prague; and it makes just as much sense in 2017 as it did in 1915.

But how can that be? What similarities can there possibly be between Melbourne in 2017 and Prague in 1915?

Of course, the central theme – death – is universal. It is not an Australian question but the human condition that is under scrutiny here. Some Tests brings the death theme that is in The Trial right into the foreground. Kafka’s universe is grey whereas Some Tests is full of pastel-toned primary colours. There is always an arrogant tension in The Trial where everything seems utterly incomprehensible, and everyone appears hell-bent on making everything more difficult and complicated than it should be, but Some Tests is tuned with the sweetest, polite people, full of understanding and always helpful. Yes, things are moving in an illogical manner, and things do seem more complicated than it should be, but the Australian bubble is a very soapy place with as many illogical trials as Kafka’s universe, and that is what Macauley’s irony reveals.

Yet perhaps the greatest unifying element between The Trial and Some Tests, is the ubiquitous nihilism that permeates both suburban Melbourne and bureaucratic Prague. Both K. and Beth are looking for an explanation and both Kafka and Macauley know that such an explanation is impossible in a system that is deeply nihilistic.

Macauley is also focussing on society within the biopolitical world, as Foucault called it, in which the State controls not only our social life but takes possession of our control over our physical bodies as well. Of course, biopolitics wasn’t invented by Foucault, he just put a term to the phenomenon, and Kafka’s society suffered from the same malaise on different levels, but the idea of biopolitics is probably more unsettling in the so-called democratic world and the perfect societies like Melbourne’s suburbia.

In the sense of perfection, Some Tests turns Melbourne into a new set for Huxley’s Brave New World. Australia is the lucky country, think Australians, but there is something existentially wrong in the Utopia they live in. So wrong that the Utopia is really a Dystopia. The suburbs of Some Tests sits at Fukuyama’s The End of History and Beth Own is a personification of Nietzsche’s Last Men. Beth’s world is a polite and nice place to be in, but nothing else. Struggle is not really struggle anymore, for there is no authentic purpose behind the struggle, and that creates an existential vacuum that turns the paradise into a purgatory. Beth Own has a lovely family, but that is not enough. She is really biding her time until death comes. She might as well get it over and done with as quickly as possible. Within the nihilistic scenario, we have to think of Beth Own as happy with her fate.

ON THE STRUGGLES BETWEEN EMPIRES

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All successful attempts to resist Power have eventuated in a succumbing to Power under another guise. After resisting Darius and Xerxes the Greeks were swallowed up by the economic tyranny of Athens. That brought about armed resistance from Sparta, who were victorious in a very debilitated way until all Greece succumbed to Alexander. He marched them all off in ordered phalanxes through Asia … already we must ask, where is the freedom here? … Alexander’s empires were replaced by Rome, which transferred itself into a monotheistic power by adopting Christianity, inspiring a monotheistic-power reaction in Asia via Islam. This was resisted by crusaders wanting to expand the freedom of their markets to the silk spice routes, the provoked a counter-resistance by Islam, who tried to liberate themselves from Christian aggression by pushing into Christendom, which …

It’s the same song over and over again: and there is always the same call to defend one’s freedom. Freedom from the usurper or the invader. But the lesson to be learned from this, is that the liberation is always only ever won at the price of another subjugation.

Power has never been defeated, it has only changed its appearance. Call it tyranny, empire, monarchy, dictatorship, communism, democracy – it is all the same thing: Power.

LOVE, THE REAL & THE IDEAL

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Reality is out there, but first it must be brought into view. But what, or more correctly who, can carry out this viewing, if not some biological form blessed with the gift of perception. And what good is being perceived if that which has the power of perception is incapable of appreciating that reality and understanding it in a meaningful way.

The capacity for appreciating, and a desire for understanding derived from that appreciation, is a kind of energy unique to Sapiens species. It is the result of a creative evolutionary process, an evolution unto the power to know and be known, a process possessing such an energetic vitality that we think it is suitable to describe it as a kind of loving, the love to know things. It may well be the same power of transference that we often use the term ‘love’ for, for all kinds of love are desiring processes of trying to know, and wanting to be known. To know one must understand, and there is nothing more vital in the success of human relationships of any level of complexity, from couples to intricate societies, than that of understanding. However, the connections between love and understanding are often not made at all when the term is expressed, producing the many vague forms that the term is used for at all levels of life.

So, if (A) reality is that which has been perceived and the understandings that have been made from that perception; and (B) the perceiving-understanding element in the Universe is the Sapiens species; and if (C) this process of wanting to know is part of what we call love, then, we can affirm (X) that the Universe without Sapiens is a loveless place, but also (Y) that the Universe with Sapiens is a reality embedded with love.

Love (the desire for understanding), is, partly, a power of transference and partly the capacity to receive information in order to make a deciphering of that information received. Love, therefore, may be felt, and confused, emotionally, but its basis is fundamentally intellectual.

And if love comes basically from transference of information, then this is also the foundation of all physics. From quantum particles to the couple in love, unto the stars and galaxies, there is a constant and necessary transference of information going on.

Love is not only that which is desired, it is also that which is needed for reality to take place at all.

In evolutionary terms, from the microcosm to the macrocosm, the highest form of transference-evolution resides in the middle of the cosmological map – in life. And in the Sapiens entities that have evolved in life.

If appreciation and understanding are evolutionary high-points in the development of transference, then love is a result of becoming that is, we believe, still becoming; still developing.

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The Sapiens relationship with the Universe, therefore, comes through love, and this is the highest form of relationship that exists in the evolving Universe.

This is not a mystical statement; its metaphysical conclusions have been drawn from our scientific perceptions of the cosmos and from evolutionary principles. Truth is in the real as we, the Sapiens, being that Real, with a capital R, into view. The Universe becomes and will continue to become as we unveil it by perceiving it. All meaningfulness is wrapped up in this process of becoming; all meaningfulness is contained in us. We are the centre of the cosmos. All real positivism is contained in this fact.

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There is another quality involved in love and, as such, in the Sapiens’ relationship with the reality of the Universe, and that is the desire for preservation which in its ultimate form is a longing for the eternal. In this way we can see love in the form of a triad: APPRECIATION + UNDERSTANDING + PRESERVATION = LOVE.

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SAPIENS CULTURE VERSUS THE HOMO-ECONOMICUS HERD

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With the devolutionary success of the Homo economicus, the herd virtues have also devolved into obsessions with what has been bought, or, what could be bought, or should be bought. Our herd virtues are stamped by brand names. Pride in the brands I wear and carry. Quality depends more on the label than the thing itself. Identity through association. The tribe of the club. Patriotism, the act of carrying the flag.

But while our civilisation is now that of the Homo economicus, we need to remind ourselves that this reality is just a fabrication. We don’t have to be here. In fact, the alternative to the Homo economicus could well be a return to our authentic nature, the Homo sapiens. An identity with Sapiens would actually be a revolution toward an authentic individualisation of culture and society and a liberation from our current herd mentalities. But a Sapiens individuality would not be the source of competition and rivalry that we see in the pseudo-individualism of the capitalist herd. rather it would be a rejoicing in human creativity and invention generated through the acquisition and utility of Sapiens’ knowledge gained and shared.

Under the herd instinct of the Homo economicus, the individual is reduced to, or exalted as, a model, a figure to follow and acclaim, but, above all, to model oneself upon. These models are often presented as examples of the herd’s own fantasies of freedom. As archetypes of success, the models are waved about like a carrot on a stick before the donkey’s mouth. Implicit is the idea that ‘one day, you could be like this too,’ and yet, at the same time, there is the notion that these models are the supremely privileged exceptions. As superstars, they are allowed to express their individuality freely, although this is also a great fallacy for the models are under continual scrutiny from the lenses of Paparazzi cameras.

For a Sapiens society, on the other hand, individualism would be seen as a creative gift that the society itself will benefit from. Sapiens society would have no fear of the individual and even the logical antithesis of the Sapiens’ rational-animal culture, irrationality, would not be feared but channelled into the much-admired field of creativity.

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However, individualism does carry moral values and, in a society that truly values individualism, the negative aspects will have to be controlled or rejected. Selfishness or haughtiness would be immoral in an authentically Sapiens culture. Sapiens is a natural trait of our species: knowledge is information and information implies sharing. Sharing, learning – building from contemplation. Not the contemplative life of the monastery-society, but a contemplation towards progress. Authentic history is an evolution of the entire universe – being is becoming and the mind of the Homo sapiens is an important part of that becoming, whereas the Homo economicus is an aberration, a step backward, a devolution of that process. To step forward again we need to re-establish authenticity … the authenticity of the Homo sapiens sapiens.

FAKE NEWS

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Found on http://www.politicususa.com/2014/08/16/rncc-fake-news-sites-fox.html Through Pinterest

When President Donald Trump brazenly whines about the Fake News of his media coverage he is unwittingly – as most of Trump’s disclosures are – proclaiming a very uncomfortable truth, i.e. the basis of all the news we receive is fundamentally fake. But that’s not what Trump is saying. He’s not proclaiming that all news in the media is false, only that which gives him a bad coverage.

On the HBO programme Real Time, comedian Bill Maher made the claim that viewers of Fox News (Trump’s favourite channel) when asked about Trump’s ties to Russia said they knew nothing about it, because, concluded Maher, on Fox News  they don’t talk about the Russia-gate enquiry; and as such, Fox’s news is fake by omission. On the other hand, Trump and his supporters, argue that the rest of the media use the same tactics of falsity through omission, by never talking about all the great and wonderful things his administration is doing to make America great again.

Both Trump and Bill Maher are right … and wrong. Falsity-through-omission is perpetrated by all the mainstream media outlets at all levels and, practically, all the time, and so they are right. But what neither trump nor Maher see is that the truly grave omissions in reporting are not the one’s spurred by ideological interests, but rather the great omissions concerning the structural organisation of our civilisation that ignore the root causes of all evils. Lack of systemic criticism and the complete absence of systemic culpability is where the Fake News really resides.

We live in a civilisation that preaches the virtues of competitiveness and successfulness. This is the motor of our lives and money is the oil-blood that keeps that machine working. From this point of view, when Trump stood up before the United Nations and told every member of those supposedly united countries that he was going to put America first and that every other leader should put their own country first, it was pure madness (how can we be united if we’re all competing against each other?) but it wasn’t hypocritical. Quite the opposite, Trump was proclaiming pure market-system ideology – compete and succeed, no matter what that the demands of that competitiveness are.

But the ideology that Trump so honestly adheres to, is also insane. Seen in the context of the United Nations and international diplomacy we immediately see the dangers behind it – such a doctrine leads to wars; and in the case at hand, a possible nuclear war.

Trump may or may not be criticised for making his honest claim, but what will never be criticised will be the system itself which Trump is just a loud symptom of.

And there are a lot more serious symptoms, not just Trump. Not only wars but all violence in societies stem from this structural emphasis on competition and success. Yet, when the media report this violence, there is never any attempt to put the blame where it stands, on the competitive market structure of the global economy world itself. Poverty is another result and poverty also intensifies violent conditions. But the media don’t report on that, or debate in their in-depth analyses on how the structure might be changed … and therein lies the great Fake News.

Crime in our civilisation is not an aberration in society, but an honestly determined expression of its values to be successful – no matter what – even if it means breaking the rules.

And, of course, there is our interminable problem of biodegradation that is also deeply embedded in the system itself. This is yet another manifestation of the violence perpetrated by competition and success. Of course, with the issue of climate change there is an awareness that things have to be done, but a great lack in reporting how the system of competition and success is incapable of making the adjustments that need to be made to halt the lethal degradation.

In a psychological sense, the media seems to be in a blind state of denial to the ugly truth. in order to clean the filthy pond we’re swimming in, we have to change the water – which means we have to stop swimming, get the water and filthy scum out of the pool, and find some clean water to swim in again. And that is a lot of hard work. Yes, Donald Trump himself promised to drain that swamp for us, but he is just making it murkier than ever, and, how could we expect a billionaire capitalist ever to clean up the neo-capitalist cess-pool?

The truth is: for humanity to succeed, we must clean out the competition and success and replace it with a new purpose based on the creative potentials of an authentic humanity that is allowed to be creative without carrying the burdens that competitiveness implies. We need a systemic revaluation, a vision of a different future, and … a revolution. That’s the real news.

OUR CLIMATE & COMFORT

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Superstorm Hurricane Irma

How much does our quality of life depend on the climate? How much of civilisation is the taming of climate, or the acclimatisation of our ‘civilised’ living areas? Part climatization, part sanitation … that which makes the cities ‘comfortable’ and for the masses to gravitate towards their ‘comfortable’ centres … What makes up the core of our lives is all a consequence of the process of gravitating towards comfort: the organisation of mobility and communication; the provision of security; and the chance to find work and the subsequent salary which will hopefully be generous enough to make life comfortable in the comfort-zone centre. For most people, civilisation = comfort. And real comfort depends on the acquiring of a good climate, or more correctly, the taming of climate through acclimatisation. So, we could declare from this that: civilisation = acclimatisation.

Yet, what price is paid for this climatization and sanitation? We now see only negative effects on climate itself that operate in a vicious circle that is spiralling civilisation into a rapidly spinning vortex that threatens to blow civilisation itself into the exact opposite of what it desires. The deeper our level of acclimatisation is, the greater is its effect on the deterioration of the climate. This deterioration creates more need for acclimatisation which creates more deterioration which makes more need for better acclimatisation …  until it all collapses.

in the struggle to be comfortable we make the world more inhospitable, until climate change takes on life-threatening proportions. Present scenarios are uncomfortable and the future promises to be more uncomfortable. Is this what we want? Of course it isn’t, and what is demonstrated by the lack of political or economic will to change this ridiculous cycle, demonstrates a) the levels of denial that societies are able to perpetuate; and b) the vicious cycles’ advantageousness for enterprises, especially the energy industries, that are making vast profits from the spiralling mechanism of climate degradation.

It is hard to fight the power that corporations wield, but that difficulty is augmented thousand-fold by the range of denial that is rife in society. We know what has to be done to preserve the comfortable in a sustainable way. We know what we want, and, to get what we want, we need to vocalise it loudly enough to change the hugely profit-making spiral of destructive-acclimatisation before it’s too late to ever be comfortable ever again.