Symmetry, Democracy and Being

All natural things - including our selves - are the result of complex electromagnetic dynamics at the micro-scale (what the consciousness researcher Paul Nunez, who has a degree in physics, prefers to regard as "field equations" between atomic charges - otherwise known as molecules) which stabilize in the production of an enormously complex symmetrical structure.

Think about this. All things that exist in the universe are the result of symmetry. This viewpoint is inexorable - it is being generated by all sorts of scientists, some coming from a background in physics, others, in biology, and some, like myself, from psychology.

This point underlies everything that exists: symmetry is stable - asymmetry i.e. undemocratic practices of governance - do not last, because they are not based upon such principles. In a non-democratic society, all sorts of energy and resources are spent on destruction, exploitaiton and manipulation - and most pernicious of all, there is a self-replicating dynamic - roughly in the mode of Dawkins concept of the "meme" - that colonizes the minds of Human beings who manage to cross the threshold into the higher classes.

I'd like to explore what exactly it means to be a member of a secret-society, from the perspective of the sciences i.e. from a perspective of reality.

The human system functions just as all other natural systems do, except we have arisen to the level of mind, something which grew and evolved from innumerable volleys of positive feeling, back and forth, such that each individual experienced its Self as being worthy of attention.

The feedback loop of consciousness works roughly like this: when an individual has a desire to act, it's desire - its want and yearning - is put into a situation of evaluation by the party who exists on the other end - the party who the speaker implicitly seeks to persuade into agreement. In chimps and apes - no such yearning is much tolerated, as chimpanzees, with small brains and very little in the way of cognitive understanding, simply express the harshness of the ecology they exist within.

As a brief aside - the chimp and bonobo express how important ECOLOGY is to the evolution of function: because of WHERE the bonobo has evolved - protected by the congo river to the east, and forests all around them to the north, south and west, the bonobo has evolved in a context with less predators - the two chief being the African cats, the leopard and the lion. Because of this protection from the harshness of Africa's predators- the bonobo has undergone what biologists call "peadomorphy" or "neotinization" - where, because of the relaxed environment in which they live, the bonobo - the biological system that they are - has been able to spend more and more time developing the affects associated with childhood - play, joy, fun, and, as many bonobo researchers learn, sex.

The environment thus acts as the control factor on the evolution function, serving to 'naturally select' what a dynamical system like an African ape will naturally incline towards under relaxed conditions: positive emotions.

The Baboon expresses a similar dynamic, but unlike the Bonobo, which is an ape, and unable to process unripe fruit, and thus, not being to live outside the lush forests of western Africa, the Baboon CAN process unripe fruit, which means it can survive in many harsher environments, and indeed, the Baboon reveals its harshness by the size of its canines - and the dimorphy between the sexes - large males, smaller females.

Human Symmetry

I find all of this incredibly enlightening, as we may be able to advocate for an ethics - a good, responsible and powerfully spiritual ethics - without any invocation of philosophy or religion - simply by studying the dynamics of our species evolution can we realize what our evolution ENTAILS.

Above all, the modern study of dynamical systems like animals - particularly humans - reveals how co-dependent body and mind are, with both emerging from the SAME EXACT DYNAMIC.

This means that dualism i.e. a complete separation of mind from body, is wrong; similarly, materialism - which denies the existence and reality of mind, is similarly wrong. Rather, something like a non-dual dualism, a co-arising reality, of perhaps an "original symmetry" - emerges in the world through the temporal unfolding of symmetry. In the book, Beyond Physicalism, edited by University of Virginia psychologist Edward Kelly, offers some compelling metaphysical models to make sense of the way Human systems work, and indeed, the most likely candidate is something like a "panentheism" - with God, or "Pan" (whole), existing WITHIN the part - the world.

The biologist Andreas Wagner, in his terrific book The Arrival of the Fittest, points out how philosophy is returning to Plato's "ideal form" - but this time with a lot more specificity - and, unlike Plato, the physical world can't be regarded as a mere "shadow". Plato paid insufficient attention to context - and, being himself an elite, was very partial to the aristocratic tenets of this culture he grew up within, which helps explain the lack of complexity in his thinking that was better captured by Aristotles study of cause and effect.

Wagner writes,

“Because life is built of molecules, we need to understand molecules to understand innovation: not only the genotype embodied in DNA, but how this genotype helps build a phenotype. And a phenotype like that of the human body is not just a string of DNA. It is a hierarchy of being that descends from the visible organism, its tissues and cells, to the molecular webs formed by metabolic molecules, signaling molecules, and many others, extending down to the level of individual proteins. New phenotypes can originate at each level. A mere thirty years ago, we knew little of this staggering complexity.” – Andreas Wagner, Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates; pg. 33, Current, 2014

And

“Unlike galaxies, which self-assemble through the gravitational attraction of cosmic matter, or biological membranes, which self-organize through the love-hate relationship of lipid molecules with water, genotype networks do not emerge over time. They exist in the timeless eternal realm of natures libraries. But they certainly have a form of organization – so complex that we are just beginning to understand it. And this organization arises all by itself. And as with galaxies and membranes, the principle behind their self-organization is simple: Life is robust.” – Andreas Wagner, Arrival of the Fittest, pg. 176, Current, 2016

Wagners work is consistent with the work of other scientists-philosophers working out of the famed Santa-Fe institute, like Harold Morowitz, Stuart Kauffman and Brian Goodwin, Wagners work has clear political implications for the societies we live within: as Wagner writes, we have a "form of organization" that is not arbitrary, but fundamentally related to the way and manner energy is processed from the lowest level, to the highest level. I often post a figure of a pyramid, with three tiers of systems dynamically connected to one another: the first is primarily chemical-metabolic; the second, a transformation occurs where a mind is generated via the evolution of the neuron and the generation of front-back symmetry, and left-right symmetry. This higher level symmetry "feeds into" the lower level metabolism, but in this new higher modelling

...the organism is made into a model of self-other relations - also, just as in the body, based upon a system of correlation.

The highest level is psychological, where instead of the external world - and an organism acting and being within it, the mind itself becomes "the environment" - and so, the organism finds symmetry by learning what it has to do to increase the occurrence of positive states, and decrease the occurrence of negative states.

Symmetry in mind, then, is a process based on empathy, compassion, and awareness of what is of actual benefit to you.

Self and Other is intricated into the same loop: my selfish interest entails pursing the others good - since what I do to the other will feedback upon me.

The Neolithic

And so, with the emergence of capitalism, came the emergence of a systemic asymmetry between the "owners" of the infrastructure projects - the fields which are worked to grow food, and the roads and other technologies developed and privatized by the individuals who claim control over it.

All of my writing at this website is primarily interested in pointing out that what is happening on Earth - what all of us are here talking about, is a function of ECOLOGY - an Earth process that takes up the Human born into this world, and leaving the Human to the already existent social world around it for an "explanation" for its advantages or disadvantages.

Today, we are seeing quite clearly where this elitist philosophy will lead us: to the extinction of Homo Sapiens - a real possibility, and even, quite plausibly, to a severe interruption, even the extinction, of all life on this planet.

And why? Because the elites at the top use trauma and sensuality to perpetuate themselves - both of which produce high amounts of entropy. For instance, the creation of wars works to traumatize local populations and thus render them 'war-like'. Local environments are destroyed and polluted all towards the pursuit of "divide and conquering" - as if this procedure were infinite - as if the planet on which we currently live wasn't telling the elites "you can't do this forever", because the very chemical conditions the body relies upon - and to which it literally extracts usable order from - is being changed, perhaps irreversibly, by the transformation of fossil fuels to power industry - to power their military machines - to power a lifestyle of consumption and extraction.

If Humans overcome this - and I believe we will - its not because the elites are simply "evil" - a narrative I prefer not to indulge in; but rather, because they are ignorant animals doing what ignorant animals like us do when we do not have enough information to order our lives in realistically intelligent ways. That is - the world of ancient times did not afford an understanding of our existence in this world that present-day science can offer. Furthermore, as science beckons us with real understanding - and an amazing sense of the awesomeness of the world we exist and are made out of - the practices of the "masters of mankind" are, in the words of Naomi Klein "changing everything " - giving any real thinking person plenty of reason to see the way and manner the world works to be obnoxiously cynical - evil - and completely and utterly insane.

Perhaps we need to look at synergy with symmetry, and ecopsychology with being, because democracy with destructive industrialization practices is the path to an unhealthy evolution. Just how important do you think ecology is to the human function? Our separation from nature is also wrong.

...the needs of the planet are the needs of the person, the rights of the person are the rights of the planet.

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Reading through this I was reminded of the quotes that I've linked below. I hope they offer, at least, some useful insight, in whatever context you choose to apply them.

"Truth is simple. But for the very reason that it is simple, people will not take it; because our life on earth is such that for everything we value, we have to pay a great price and one wonders, if truth is the most precious of all things, then how can truth be attained simply? It is this illusion that makes everyone deny simple truth and seek for complexity. Tell people about something that makes their heads whirl round and round and round. Even if they do not understand it, they are most pleased to think, "It is something substantial; it is something solid; for it is an idea we cannot understand; it must be something lofty." But something which every soul knows, proving what is divine in every soul, and which it cannot help but know, that appears to be too cheap, for the soul already knows it."

"Learning is one thing and unlearning is another, and unlearning means rising above what we call worldly learning. Very often what we call knowledge keeps our soul away from the knowledge of itself, a knowledge which is most essential because the knowledge acquired by learning is very complex. People think that if it is simple it cannot be truth, they value what is complex. But in this way by one's own tendency one covers over the truth in oneself which is one's own being."

"Man loves complexity and calls it knowledge. A great many societies and institutions in the world which call themselves occult and esoteric and psychic and by various other names, knowing that everyone is interested in complexity, cover the truth; and instead of covering it with one cover they cover it with a thousand covers to make it more interesting. It is just like customs which were followed in ancient times when people came to worship and asked the priest how they should do it, and he would say, "How far do you live from the shrine?" And when they said, "Two miles," he answered, "You must come on foot to the shrine and walk around it a hundred times before you may enter it."