The Biology of Possibilities, page 1

From a strictly logical, 'group theory' sort of perspective, the human beings generated by the knowledge associated with the values that constitute present day human cultures can be conceptualized as a lower level symmetry (group theory is a theory of systems based on broken symmetries) relative to a more "ideal" sort of symmetry. The difference between the ideal and the real doesn't exist in any sort of 'ontological space' besides that which we can infer from our present day situation. We recognize that we have the capacity to get along with one another in a less biologically stressful way, and yet, conflicts continue to arise, and belief systems stabilize around errant representations of actual reality.

Feelings, Meanings, and Symmetry

The feelings we feel represent the quality of the significance of our relationships with the world we relate with. Because we have different "ontological" feeling modalities of relation - the big three being: awe (mediating existential and metaphysical inferences), care (mediating inferences that resolve conflicts between different modalities, as well as being 'good in itself') and 'fun' (mediating 'play-based' relations, ranging from poking fun to the ironic). We usually just talk about these feelings as if they didn't need any biological explaining. We are the only creature driven by awe; we are the only one whose Seeking system is driven by existential and metaphysical inferences that emerge from "sensing into" the causal-relations between the world and yourself, and your own past on your present cognition. And your own reflection on your future. Metaphors control us; they are, I'd imagine, the closest thing possible to what we mean by the term "gods". They are vital meanings - pithy 'paths of least resistance' - which mobilize meaning between objects in the outside world, other people, and your own body. It expresses a "tensional integrity" - or 'tensegrity' - between all these different properties, with the humans in interaction being the prominent "evaluators", with the external world serving as a vital link.

Todays world is "cains" world. Thee is an acquisitive, materialistic, power-hungry, play hungry, "high emotion" hungry, neediness that runs beneath most of the cliches that control human communication in todays world. The metaphors which organize the cliches are stereotypical scenarios; waking up, getting dressed, taking a shower, etc, all has its 'metaphorical oomph', not merely in the basic mechanics of our movement, but also in the way we experience ourselves "doing it". We really do, and are, formed by a social logic of "being a person", that is symmetrical across the parties to a common cultural and value-laden interchange. This idea of there being a 'singular' body above the individual is the larger scale "metaphors", or what Jung called 'archetypes', that constitutes the virtual, "spiritual" attractor, insomuch as it constitutes the existential-narratives that govern the brains that exist within bodies. It is the narratives of our living - our "representation" of ourselves, expressed in the narrative forms we know best.

People who complain about the loss of tradition, i.e. "traditionalists", are unable to accept that the primitiveness of earlier cultures and their lack of genuine creativity and ability to expand the human cognitive universe is a function of an inability to maintain a coherent relationship to "what is happening in the moment"; their philosophical convictions are flamboyantly excessive, and fundamentally conflictual, with reality; all of this stems from a real history of emotional and social problems, and their competitiveness, which they usually lionize, and their lack of interest in understanding why they function that way, exposes a cultural and social narrative attractor which has a strong hold on their "ego", and it doesn't change until interpersonal exchanges of recognition 'build up' a change in the feeling dynamics within the feeling self. The person which operates this way keeps pushing themselves 'against the grain' of the universe's natural flux, allthewhile believing that something is 'wrong with it' (the universe) even though they clearly are a function of it, and not the other way around (they were born and developed in this world, were they not?)

Anthropology of the Ancient Past, and Possible Future

This understanding of social processes in terms of group theory, or the concepts of a higher symmetry, and a lower, "broken" symmetry, is meant to refer to the dynamism and 'range' of our emotional experiences. The question which matters is: how deeply integrated is the affective body with the conscious mind? What does that mean, and how does that happen? Reflection is an act of symmetry, insofar as the affective body state (right brain) is brought into sequentially organized psycholinguistic focus (left brain). We can represent our state rightly, or wrongly, and of course the former will yield longer term dividends because it is more properly aligned with 'lived realities' - it wont be guiding the self in directions antithetical to its interests.

There is a very good chance, and a very interesting story to be written, that 300,000 years ago humans operated very differently from how we do today. Cognitively and intellectually, our capacities were probably similar; but the referents of their living, their experience of reality, and their semiotic "metabolization" of what mattered, were probably far more sane, and also, profound, because they mediated a consciousness which is sorely absent today.

I am aware that no aboriginal group today supports this thesis, but then again, it is naive to think that aboriginal groups haven't been affected by the transformations that emerged at the end of the ice age - 15,000 years ago. The socioaffective footprint today is a traumatological one; and the state which seems "stable" in aboriginal humans is the "shamanistic" one - although there is no reason to assume that shamanism is the only 'natural' end point in human existential valuation.

Indeed, shamanism is individualistic; it is the left hand path, the romanticized confusion of taking your own evolving image of yourself as a 'genuine' other, or of knowing its you, but not caring that the motivation behind your action reveals a self that isn't properly governing itself. Shamanism is infamous for its ethical permissiveness; whether it be Eurasian, African, or Indonesian, all sorts of immoral things are sanctioned. More or less, it is the powerful worshipping their power.

There is another way - the way that celebrates the sociality of the self; which encourages speech, interaction, creativity, and metacognitively 'builds bridges' between minds by talking about states of self-experience with others, building 'symmetries' of confidence, trust, and alikeness, by doing so.

This sort of culture will generate a reflexive 'relaxedness' about them, which will potentiate each self by building a 'trust of the other', now generalized, that swimmingly expresses emotion without the sort of suppression that exists today. Enlivenment as a focus of self-experience, coupled with a mindful relaxedness, will constitute a pathway forward into a world of biological possibilities that today we call "psychic", but in the future will likely be understood in terms of quantum field theory which includes existing and still yet to be created frameworks of reality.