The Ecological Self
a Self-Realizing Metaphysics that could profoundly Reshape our Civilization toward Purposeful Regeneration
Freya Mathews wrote The Ecological Self in 1991 as a work of Metaphysics.
She believes this extremely high level human thought order determines our destiny:
The way we think the world works…
shapes how we live in it.
And how we shape the world
back to us.
In other words…Metaphysics…
reveal our underlying assumptions about the world…what we believe to be the truth about our own existence…what we believe reality actually is…such that we overtly and subliminally live our lives to comport with our assumptions.
So, ultimately, Metaphysics are our most vital framework for establishing ethics, meaning, and purpose of life.
I believe this too.
If Physics is the ultimate empirical-theoretical way to understand reality as subject matter experts do…their understanding leads us to the Metaphors we philosophers-typical people craft to encapsulate what the experts understand; thusly, Metaphysics, then, reflect our ultimate cognitive-psychological way of understanding reality…our conscious, even unconscious, embodiment of the de rigeur Metaphors…and how then we express what those Metaphors mean through the way we live our lives.
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#Realism reality exists independently from the mind, regardless of our perceptions or beliefs.
#Idealism reality is constructed from the primacy of the universal mind’s perception.
#Materialism reality arises from materiality and material interactions only, including: thoughts, emotions, consciousness.
#Dualism reality is divided into the properties of mind, completely distinct from the properties of matter.
#Monism reality is, ultimately, manifestations of a single, unified substance or principle, like the ocean and its waves.
#Panpsychism consciousness is intrinsic to everything, it is not just an emergent property exclusive to complex organisms.
#Ecologism reality is the tapestry of relationships, the intricate-delicate interconnectedness of all living and non-living things on Earth, the network of species vital to the health whole of the whole.
#Empiricism because the human mind at birth is a blank slate, all knowledge and understanding is acquired through sensory experiences/reflections on those experiences.
#Rationalism the human mind intrinsically possesses foundational truths-ideas, regardless of sensory experience.
#Solipsism no one can understand anything beyond their own consciousness.
#Existentialism individuals are born into a universe without inherent meaning and must create their own purpose-values through their choices and actions.
#Determinism our destiny is predetermined by a pre-set universal mechanism or unbroken chain of causality that extends throughout time.
#Taoism much like the river gently flows around obstacles, striving to live in harmony with the natural order is the primary quest of life.
The very fact there’s so much daylight between our Physics and Metaphysics right now, is the long-fermenting catalyst for the Metacrisis…this dissonance is deadly.
For Mathews, a Metaphysic definitively characterizes any philosophy, and her particularly held Metaphysic is a ecocentrically fashioned Monism, heavily influenced by her deeply internalized reading of Baruch Spinoza’s rigorous and profound text: Ethics / 1661-1675.
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Spinoza’s Metaphysic is, ultimately, understood by the notion of conatus: whether mind, matter, or the profound cosmos overall…everything has an intrinsic inclination to preserve and enhance itself…suggesting everything in Nature is innately drawn toward improvement, abundance, and positive evolution.
Monistic Universe: positions the entirety of our reality as a single substance, a total unity, mental/mind and physical/matter are created from the same…pebbles, trees, buildings, animals, stars, horse carts, people, the cosmos…as not separate entities but mere modes of this underlying unity.
God-the Unknown and Nature are synonomous.
Determinism: everything in the universe is causally determined by prior causes and the laws of nature, with human free will as a misunderstood illusion.
Ethics: understanding the necessary order of the universe and aligning oneself with it to preserve and enhance our beingness is the greatest virtue.
In general, Spinzoa’s monistic, mind-matter as a singular-substance-Universe…in which God-the Unknown and Nature-Reality are synonymous…with all life forms intrinsically motivated by self-preservation and higher order complexity…is the base by which she cultivates her own notion of the Universe.
Her take is a much appreciated update and divergence from Spinoza’s emphasizing how much we gain by recognizing the link between our current suffering and our misalignment with the true Universal order. This schism is what spawned the metacrisis…and is due, largely, to the fact that we’ve never questioned the half-truth/erroneous way things are sold to us 400 years ago by The Enlightenment experts…an era Spinoza is a outlying-contemporary of. We’ve just not recognized the invisible pathway it led us down, nor did we pay attention to more recent scientific discoveries, like General-Special Relativity or Quantum Theories, as they’ve have never been properly socialized-enculturated for the past 100 plus years.
Further, she shapes Spinozan fundamentals into a much more vital, relevant Ecocosmic Metaphysics by emphasizing the interconnectedness of all living-nonliving things and our imperative to start embodying the intrinsic value of Nature.
Mathews successfully delineates and argues her holistic framework through an abbreviated context of humanity’s philosophical-social-historical dynamics along with a fluid curation of select scientific discoveries, including the most recent 21st Century breakthroughs. She then walks us through her sensemaking and imagination literacy around these evolutionary landscapes toward formalizing her proposed way of understanding the world that she invites us all into.
I champion it.
Part 1 | So how do most of us think the world works now?
What Goes Up must Come Down · Time is Money · Dog Eat Dog · The World is a Rat Race · Survival of the Fittest · Don't Gum Up the Works · If it ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It · Ghost in the Machine · You’re only as Good as your Last Performance · Move Fast, Break Things · Kill or Be Killed · If You Don’t Do It Somebody Else Will · Cut Your Losses · We’re All just Cogs in the Machine · Hurry, Hurry, Hurry · Speed-Efficiency-Convenience Rule ·
These are literally cultural conditioning pills we swallow down whole each time we hear or repeat them. Lots of them are inspired by Capitalism, but Capitalism was built on top of the Mechanistic-Materialist Physics conceived of in The Enlightenment.
Of utmost importance is to first realize that the current way we do understand the world is a huge blockade to procuring any other way. Our current modern western civilization, at every level: acts from, reflects back, and lives to a 1696-ish understanding of the world steeped in the somewhat primitive Materialist premise of classical science, first laid out 400 years ago through Newtonian Physics, heavily influenced by Rene Descartes and Johannes Kepler:
At its most essential,
reductivist state,
the majority of us think…
the World is made of atomistic-mechanistic particles, devoid of life force or any moral significance,
that aggregate together like
reality’s fundamental building blocks toward comprising all the things we observe everyday.
Upon the full, unequivocal acceptance of Newton’s mechanical materialism conception of how the world works by the empirical-theoretical scientific community…as detailed in his Principia Mathematica in 1687…the, then, political scientists-philosophers of the day like: John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Voltaire picked it up to translate-enculturate Newton’s paradigm, ripe with a fantasy of predictability, rationality, neutrality, and fundamental inertness, into the social fabric at every level of organization-operation, including our political-governing institutions.
So, through their collective desire to not only rid society of pervasive, crowd-generated superstition, as well as elevate their own professional status, they deployed their conceptions of how the world really works as an overarching mechanical metaphor to manifest individualism with respect to a then very cohesive, granted, asymmetrical societal make up, ultimately, going further toward reframing humans as wholly distinct from Nature…which Christianity clergy exploited, as well.
Along with amply implicating human superiority over Nature…never ventured previously…and an underlying conclusion that everything is random and devoid of purpose…there new Enlightenment birthed a Mechanistic Metaphysic sparking ideas that would become full blown:
liberalism, secularism, materialism
in contrast to the norms of:
hierarchal, spiritualism, mysticism
as the foundation of everything.
This was an unprecedented ideological flip away from anything before it. In general, whether animistic oriented indigenous conceptions or mysterious-supernatural western ones, put forth by likes of alchemists, mystics, and witches, the majority of the collective-human-consciousness was anchored in reverence-respect for Nature which is how they understood the world to work.
What these men did was redirect human-metacognition at a vast cultural scale, away from identifying with and honoring the imperative of Nature to a new understanding of the world that put humans above Nature, with a dual-goal to both dissect and subjugate Nature to their will-control. Thusly, exalting themselves within the moment and projecting forth onto subsequent generations the powerful metaphor of:
Conquer Nature…
through whatever Man-Made Means necessary.
So deeply embedded we are…right now…within this way of approaching-understanding the world…some 400 years later…it’s proven to be, literally, Earth shattering.
In the 21st century,
we all still understand the
world’s working-ness
through a 17th century, rationalist,
reductivist, masculine-mind.
Exclusively.
We’ve all inherited this 400 year old mechanistic mental model biased to me-first, exploitative-will,
and superiority over Nature. But none of us realize this as it’s always been this way. Auto-loaded in the preset headset we’re born with.
Fish don’t know they’re in water.
This redirect away from Nature as Source, played seamlessly into the notion of Christendom, with the Catholic Church/Papacy ever aspiring toward increased socio-political power and stature. This organized, also, rational-masculine-minded-religion-collective then leveraged Descartes’ Mind separate from Matter paradigm…
where the conflation of
Mind-Psyche-Spirit-Heaven
vs
Matter-Body-Material-Earth
birthed a Dualistic Metaphysic*
which, over time, has been
fully subsumed as our
Western Cultural Norm.
Hence, why we consider
Earth-Nature less than
Heaven-Spirit.
And why we can, therefore, treat Earth…our precious, profound planetary home…as the utilitarian stock house / rubbish bin we do. Not to mention how destructive and pre-occupying our body struggles are. This dualistic metaphysic, actually first put forth by Plato/400 B.C., that we still labor under-live to is destroying us.
And even with all this explication nascent to The Enlightenment ‘s impact on us, still in full swing today, consider what had to have been the presumptive origins by these male scientists back then. With so much complexity involved in unearthing the secrets of Nature…they elected to objectify and divide Nature up into random parts in order to probe Nature…their way. Conforming it to their thinking way…which effectively concealed-deformed Nature’s essential way…in order for them to achieve their predisposed hypothesis…such that they could claim progress and gain notoriety through their proclamations. Sound familiar?
And I have resisted using the term Mother Earth…nor referred to Nature with the pronoun ‘her.’
If you look at The Enlightenment’s wins as: gas turbine, battery, vaccines, materialistic-mechanical physics, secularism/rights of individuals…no one can deny these are huge. But our colossal loss from The Enlightenment, is our divorce from and, subsequent, contempt of Nature/the Mother, far bigger…and more profound than the wins.
So although Enlightenment Era
wins did advance us…
its singular loss will soon extinct us.
At this point in humanity’s journey, the only way to redirect our deterministic-collective-metacognition back toward the greater good…is to yank this exclusively masculine-rationalist-reductivist default way of understanding the world by the roots…excise its cellular level perspectival dominance which has been/is slowly and rapidly destroying every authentically meaningful remnant of Nature or human culture we still possess…for almost half a millennium and counting.
Part 2 | How might we understand the world differently?
Such a tall order given our psyches are subliminally encased in only one way of seeing things, and the entire world reflecting that one way back, both physically-mentally. A self-fulfilling prophecy for billions of us still in the drift.
What’s hugely important to be aware of, even before we dive deep into Mathews’s new conception, is old stuff we should know but don’t:
-as a society, our institutional scientific breakthroughs/advancements have been, not just, obscured from the public domain but blatantly omitted from any socialization-enculturalization, in the spirit of empowering humanity, for the past 100 years. We should all have assimilated some sense of a post-Newtonian-not-just-mechanistic-worldworks-perception-default since at least the 1920s. But, instead, we’re all stuck in billiard ball causation mode regarding how we think the world works…even as gobsmackingly sophisticated AI rolls in to take our jobs away. It is a perfect storm with odds that the machines we’ve literally been imagining all this time, do finally close the door behind us. It is insane. We’re still in the dark about why we should care to absorb a bit about Einstein’s Relativity plus we’re dark on Quantum. We’re dark on 100 years worth of mind-bending stuff which means we’re ensnared in the even older instructions! Trust me when I say…if we really absorbed what these paradigms indicate about our big picture…we would think about our lives-the world differently. And if enough of us thought differently…our world would be different. And I’m not even including discoveries form the last 50 years like Michael Levin’s bioelectrics/regenerative medicine or Suzanne Simard’s Mother Tree Theory or even the ancient indigenous concepts which the last 100 years of physics has finally proved…anathema to how The Enlightenment disproved them. NOT.
-so beyond what average people suffer…from their 400 year old, antiquated, biased way of understanding the world outlined in Part 1, due to all that we’ve missed out on in the last 100 years mentioned just above, there are an additional two monumental, existential unknowns humanity also still currently exists in the dark about…including the experts:
1 a matter related unknown…
not only are physicists still driven to resolve the Physical Nature of the Universe with one elegant theory that would bring all the disparate ones together, like: Relativity, Quantum, Big Bang, etc…into the Theory of Everything…because they’ve never successfully proved one...
2 there’s also a mind related unknown…
the persistent problem psychologists-social scientists seek to resolve…well known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness…which is just as illusive…just as holy grail.
All to say, we know a great deal about how the world works but not even the smartest people alive know exactly how it really works.
And, not only, but the community vibe in both the Physics and Psyche camps are preoccupied with the notion that the excalibur for both might be related :] Such that if-when we discover what’s really going on in the world, at the most fundamental levels of our existence, matter-mind, as per each of these goal-specific pursuits in totally separate realms of our understanding right now, our matter-minds will blow.
We’ll look back on the early 21st Century, or whenever these discoveries are realized,
like it was 700 B.C.
All to further contextualize the question we started with…in that it’s so much easier to understand the world in a different way IF we understand, 1 modern scientific concepts the explain our physical reality…and 2 digest-express those concepts into meaningful relevant metaphors that inform-comport our everyday to that reality.
And, also, to underscore why Mathews assumes a Monistic Universe feels like the better starting point…than one where our Physical World has little or nothing to do with our Psychological one, like Rene’ Descartes’…I think therefore I am…which helped lead us humans to put ourselves at the Universal center and we’re clear on how that’s going.
So given Part 2’s main question, there’s credence in a couple of Einstein quotes:
"If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving it." Mathews’s Part 1, summarized above, starts to do this.
‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Although wise and insightful, Mathews’s resolve in The Ecological Self is, in fact, grounded in the curation of more recent scientific theories. She reasons that offering up a new way of understanding the world that does not reference science in any way will have low sell-in probability, if at all…given science is the thought stream we afford the most credibility to now…due to our 400 years of conditioning in it.
So Mathews says…let’s start where we are:
‘If Monism is to become the basis
for a new worldview, it needs
the sanction of science.’
Then maybe we can kick science aside when our ascent is accomplished? Or maybe better, we can redirect the power of science to cultivate something more than just observation variables…and quantifiable measurements?
Not to mention, we’re swimming in different days from Newtonianism, as modern science offers no grand closed system synthesis of how the world works like he proposed. And to at least realize that although Newton did, in fact, nail a lot of concepts accurately…concepts we sublimate into our everyday life…still deemed as true…much of his theory is wholly inadequate…and even wrong.
Just to highlight…that exactly because we only understand the world through a partially correct, 17th Century, masculine-rationalist mind, means we only experience what that specific-mind-genre thought was important…therefore, we’ve been swimming in water that’s, at least, 50% opaque…all our lives.
For 400 years our reality
has been obscured by half
of what we
could-should be experiencing.
And just to put a pin in it, if we had culturally contextualized Relativity and Quantum Theories since their discoveries by Einstein/1905 and Planck/1900…just as we did Newtonian physics in the late 1600s…such that our auto-default went toward metaphorically envisioning vibrant, life-force-laden, mysteriously indeterminant images for the last 100 years…our world just might look more like an off-the-rails Solar Punk Celebration Festival…
instead of being groomed in a Rube Goldberg contraption for the past 100 years, based on antiquated knowledge bases, that led to our production of mundane, glass-steel, hodgepodges, almost certainly, installed by a controlling, closed-system-minded, masculine-energy-dominated Global Elite who propagates this cliche’ aesthetic on every continent now. Rational. Mechanical. Predictable.
Part 3 | So, what would it be like to understand the world through The Ecological Self metaphysic?
MATHEWS’S EXISTING SCIENTIFIC THEORY CURATION TO SCAFFOLD HER METAPHYSIC
Breaking free of The Myopic Enlightenment as we must…Mathews speaks to many accepted scientific theories throughout her book with ample authority toward weaving her own…but for abbreviated sake here are the two primary theories she proposes our acceptance-assimilation of:
-GEOMETRODYNAMICS…GMD going forward and
-COSMOLOGICAL PANPSYCHISM...CP going forward.
Before briefly delineating these, it’s important to remember that presently physics consists of a range of theories explaining different aspects plus levels of reality, but has no master singular solution to describe how it all works together:
-Microscopic Scale Reality is explained through Quantum Theory…radically non-Newtonian. Max Planck originator.
-Macroscopic Scale Reality is explained through General Relativity Theory…closer-in to Newtonian…but breaks down at the microscopic level. Einstein originator.
What’s interesting to realize is that both of these theories carry clear intimations for a SUBSTANCE MONISM: the Universe as one, indivisible, whole…not that oxygen/hydrogen atoms don’t exist…but they are NOT FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS…they serve more like eddies on the river surface…the emphasis is on a seamless Universe full of activated features.
Fritjof Capra, Austrian-born American author, physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist, as well as founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, CA adumbrates Quantum Theory this way:.
‘In contrast to the dualistic-mechanistic Cartesian view of the world…
the modern physics worldview can be characterized by an: organic, holistic, ecological, systems view.
No longer perceived as a machine made of a multitude of independent particles-cogs, the Universe is one, indivisible, whole with interconnected parts,
only understood as
patterns of a cosmic process.’
Further, regarding Quantum Theory, are its two primary, differentiating Principles of Indeterminism:
-Interconnectedness/Non-Localizability: a particle’s location nor momentum cannot be verified, as any particle’s identity may subsume or reflect the properties of an indefinite number of other particles.
-Intrinsic Dynanism: particles exhibit random fluctuations of energy levels absent of any extrinsic source…far from inert…particles are spontaneously restless in and of themselves.
The point to share, just this much, is to highlight how oppositional the attributes are between Quantum vs Newton-Descartes paradigms and how incredulous it is that our 21st century only absorbs-reflects 50% of what our reality actually is.
So whether it’s due to the counter-intuitive, brain-scrambing wave-particle behavior, the abstractions, mathematical complexity, or just the limited direct impact Quantum Theory currently bears upon our everyday perception, it just has never permeated public consciousness to the same degree as Newtonian billiard ball physics has.
Now back to The Ecological Self’s first foundational theory…
GEOMETRODYNAMICS / GMD. GMD supports a Monist Archetype, for according to this theory, spacetime is what everything is made of, is the world’s physics, and it is intrinsically dynamic-changeable:
-Locally it stretches, ripples, curves
-Globally is expands…holistically like a balloon
So spacetime is like a ubiquitous field-substance that’s everywhere, all-encompassing, indivisible and with interdependent parts richly differentiated by reason of its variable curvature in different areas…energy is simply the curvature of spacetime. It possesses DYNAMICAL GEOMETRY properties.
Point being, GMD is: spacetime, geometry, matter, energy, momentum, gravitation as all in ONE…IN SIMULTANEITY. So the definition of the Cosmos is a unified system composed of nothing but DYNAMICALLY CURVED SPACETIME. Mathews cites J.C. Graves: the cosmos that is spacetime is NOT a passive arena, but the SOURCE of all interactions. It is NOT a collection of things…IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS REALLY REAL. ONE COULD CALL IT A PURE SUBSTANCE. AND IS THE ONLY SUBSTANCE THERE IS. IT IS NOT THE SUM OF ITS PARTS. SPACETIME IS OUR WORLD FIELD.
Physicists needing to understand it, separated the Gravity and Electromagnetic Fields…but ontologically they are just distinctions of SPACETIME’S DYNAMIC CURVATURE.
One of the most important features of the holism of GMD is the fact that bodies are no longer precisely localizable, as they were within the framework of atomism. In other words, GMD like Quantum is nonlocal, nonseparate, interconnected…THERE IS AN INTIMATE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE LOCAL AND GLOBAL FEATURES OF ITS GEOMETRY.
So, not disconnected apathetic billiard balls, the Universe is, in fact, a holistic, self-contained PROCESS, not subjected to extrinsic forces…it is not a plurality of independent things…you cannot understand its wholeness through its parts.
If we haven’t already, here’s where we ditch separating subjects…or at least roll them all back together into one after we dissect each :]
Still hammering on its holism within the GMD framework, the Universe’s intrinsic dynamism demos the complementarity of SUBSTANCE AND PROCESS, along with the two Indeterminism Principles of Quantum: nonlocality-interconnectedness / intrinsic dynamism.
Our Universe is analogous to a small whirlpool in a limitless blob of jello…with the jello being the Universe. As this ubiquitous substance it can be described
to inhabit t-w-x-y-z axes…
everything is jello.
The t is time and the w is gravity. Altogether this
jello Universe is thought of as
a plenum ontology.
So the whirlpool(s), representing literally each separate thing we humans perceive in the world, is nothing but a multi-dimensional energy differentiation within
the jello-substance that is ubiquitously: time-gravity-all directions.
Why the structure of spacetime is more stable at the macro- than micro- level is a question which GMD does not explain. But the GMD hypothesis that quantum phenomena are disturbances in the structure of spacetime does go some way towards explaining why change at the quantum level cannot be predicted-measured from a knowledge of purely local factors. In short, it throws a bright beam onto the mystery of quantum indeterminacy.
So rather than an infinite abyss of whirling atomic particles…we are eddies in an all-pervasive medium analogous to a dense fluid…where the currents-waves are ‘forces’ and the votices are ‘matter’. Humans, the, are complex ripples propagating ourselves from its depths. Our patterning signature arises from this Universal Medium.
So why aren’t we all the same…whether all us humans or humans, giraffes, daffodils, ants?
Are individual things really real, or does individuality belong exclusively to the realm of apperances, with no ontological basis? What principle of individuation, if any, does GMD prescribe?
SUBSTANCE AS PARTICLE
Unlike Newton’s individuals ‘built’ out of atoms due to a behind-the-scenes bricklayer where our identity is a function of the arrangement of logically, mutually independent, discrete parts…where the substance as particle is the main event…motion, change, process is what happens to substance. Even though it holds together as a dynamic relation the extrinsic forces happening to the atoms do not inform its identity.
SUBSTANCE AS SYSTEM
The new view is a fluid continuum-open system which cannot be carved up into separate chunks. O-pen Systems IMPORT AND EXPORT Therefore, discreteness and unity, if they are to have any status from an individuation view point, must be functions of something other than a mere closed system of substance as separate particles. The continuum functions with form, pattern, organization. Meaning the nature of the parts is not independent of the nature of the whole: parts-whole codetermine each other…this matrixed relational paradigm performs as flexibly-systemically due to both internal-external variables…bringing out its dynamic exchange within itself and the environment to sustain at a steady state…to possess stability. Involved in achieving this stability at a biological level, is the feedback loop processing known as homeostasis…like when our body temp rises to an alarming level we start perspiring to cool it down. Another bio feature is equifinality. The phenomenon where similar outcomes are reached through different pathways or starting conditions within an open system…basically, multiple routes achieve the same end result. Like in embryonic development different genetic or environmental factors can lead to the formation of the same body part in an organism. Or how similar landforms can either be manifest by water erosion over millions of years, or carved more quickly by a series of glacial advances-retreats.
In these ways, Open Systems achieve the same final state from different initial conditions because their intrinsic drive to develop toward a steady state is ‘foreseen’…the notion that their is a viscerally preordained blueprint for the form-pattern Nature/the Universe will take no matter what’s thrown at it in the processing phase.
So it can be stated that both homeostasis and equifinality phenomena in Nature’s reality…are goal-directed. These adaptive processes perpetuate existence...through an open-networked system thematically featuring the parts as expressions of the whole’s vision.
[COLLAPSE THE 2 ABOVE INTO ON POINT]
SELF REALIZATION
Another way of phrasing Nature’s phenomena to perpetuate as a parts-whole processing is self-realization. It’s in respect to this essential purpose that mechanical systems differ from organisms. A speed governor only controls the variable speed mechanism of the many-parts engine…with no goal to regulate its overall viability. But an organism not only has built-in governors monitoring every part: temperature, blood pressure, oxygen levels…it monitors these particulars in service to the whole’s integrity. Each-all are imperative to preserve the variables its stability depends upon, so we can say the system is devoted to its own realization.
Closed System machines wear themselves out.
Open System organisms self-realize.
Open Systems source from the
perpetual whole in order
to perpetuate themselves.
And regarding the application of self-realization to non-living systems…say like a rock, Earth’s strata…two things to consider. One, the definition of non-living and two, are they really self-realizing too? Mathews points to the fact that reproduction is only one strategy for self-realization. The Earth is considered a living organism, and maybe you could say the Big Bang was its birth.
Given her parsing of all these existing knowledge bases is for answering: How might we understand the world tomorrow? Mathews is clear that Substance as System is informed with a special, self-referential, quality of purposiveness…and that the purpose embodied in the systems we experience everywhere is simply to exist. She point to Spinoza’s use of conatus: a powerful concept that describes the fundamental drive within all things to persist, to act, and to express their unique Nature
So Mathews equates self-interest, self-evaluation, self-realizing, purpose, integrity and the observed predisposition of conatus of all living things, with the Universe’s fundamental identity. Telos in Greek. Such that the notion of Nature/Substance as System is intrinsically agential to what is happening around us all the time. Nature is not Substance as Particle, sitting inert until extrinsic causation is applied.
In other words, the Universe intrinsically embodies the valuing of its own existence…often a paradigm we think is limited only to our own human consciousness. NOT.
That we humans are compelled to preserve and expand ourselves, is a trait we inherited directly from the Natural Universe itself.
She notes Gregory Bateson believes: the Universe’s self-realizing systems are open-systems inextricable to their environment…an overlapping matrix of systems such that the unit of survival under Darwin’s Natural Selection is NOT the individual or species…it is the organism-in-its-environment. The human embryo without a womb will never self-realize. If the enviro fails so does the organism. The systemic POV does not permit world division…such that the Principle of Individuation means the intrinsic presence of individuality and interconnectedness…simultaneously and always.
So ultimately, Mathews invites us to understand the world tomorrow through the following Metaphysic:
The primary substance of
the Universe is conatus,
intrinsically possessed of an impulse
for self-preservation and self-realization.
Given this, it goes without saying we are too…and it also reminds me of something else I stumbled upon recently…the newly coined word: Pronoia…opposite of Paranoia…an empowering mindset which has you believing that the Universe is perpetually working in your favor.
COSMOLOGICAL PANPSYCHISM ?
Part 3 | More insights
And in order to grasp even the qualitative outlines of GMD it’s necessary we briefly examine the central ides of General Theory of Relativity/GTR going forward…which explains the evolutionary history of the large-scale universe structure. It incorporates the quantitative predictions of Newtonian theory: gravitation as local approximates, but also demonstrates its incorrectness regarding large cosmological, scale predictions.
COSMOLOGICAL PANPSYCHISM
aims to describe the quantum behavior of spacetime itself, rather than just the matter within
(ntm the witches way considered all these subjects simultaneously, same as Nature actually works, but were all burned at the stake)
Conclusion
We must excise the old at the deepest level.
Cosmologically dispossessed, we are a culture clinging to a bankrupt worldview prescribed by our materialistic individualism, which filled the void when we psychically separated from Nature 400 years ago.
Cultivate the new in everything we do.
We can…and we must start now.
Atomism and its Ideological Implications
Geometrodynamics: a Monistic Metaphysic
System and Substance: Alternative Principles of Individuation
Value in Nature and Meaning in Life
Freya Mathews is the author of several books and over seventy articles on ecological philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. In addition to her research activities she manages a private biodiversity reserve in northern Victoria, Australia. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
*Plato was actually the first to propose a Dualistic Metaphysic…Descartes’ mind-body dualism was influenced particularly by Plato's concept of the soul and its relationship to the body. While Descartes developed his own distinct version of dualism, known as Cartesian Dualism, his ideas were rooted in and built upon earlier dualistic traditions, including those of Plato.
So if, indeed, the highest purpose of Nature is simply to exist….where does that leave us humans?
1 we keep living, eon after eon, with the intention of someday learning that there might be even more to Nature than that.
2 we keep living with the intention of experiencing the profound beauty of Nature. Not just the visual, or intellectual understanding of systems, or even capacities to ingest it to see New Aspects/experience alternate consciousness, but simply to marvel, contain wonder, hold space for its that immersing in the observation of and connection with Nature, to embody its conative essence, for ourselves with it
I will delineate each briefly, separately, and then their relevance in concert….but first…a broad brush of imperative post-Newtonian discoveries to ground. Basics we should have assimilated into our post-Newtonian worldworks-perception-default since 1916…110ish years ago.