Friday, December 21, 2007

Quantum to Cosmos – an expanding sense of place

14 Dec 2007, George G Clark

I have been chatting on the phone with a 91 year old lady about planting roses. This provided an interlude to watching videos about "Enlightenment 2.0 – Beyond Belief" from the Salk Institute[1]. I am thus keenly aware of other people's worlds. We live in such hugely different places. And the one thing our world views have in common is their smallness and parochiality.

Cosmic zoom – beyond the parochial

Cosmic

Universe

It

Solar system

It

Planet

It

Biological

Ecology

It

People

Them

Cultural

Cultures

Them

Tribes

Us

Psychological

Family

Us

Individual

Me

Biochemical

Organs

It

Cells

It

Macromolecules

It

Physical

Atoms

It

Sub atomic

It

Quanta

It

We box ourselves in. Causes and conditions conspire to programme both the conscious and the unconscious aspects of our minds (cognitive and affective).

The good news is that our programmes can be tweaked and even dramatically revised[2]. The bad news is that, at the personal level, the revision takes effort and is essentially counterintuitive.[3] But it is not impossible!

The boxing is in layers like the skins of an onion and 'you' are on the inside. It is possible to dissolve the layers one after the other until you are no longer constrained. This leads to reunion with the Oneness – the ultimate boon – the great and fearless peace of mind that passes all (rational) understanding[4].

At a crude level your standard world view can be seen as centred around Me, Us, Them and It. (see the third column in the box).

'Me' is the selfish individual that characterises the 'modern' person in the developed world. But we are social animals and thus are 'Us' at the level of family and tribe where relations can be more or less convivial and altruistic. Given our territorial imperative[5] we can be largely antagonistic towards people in cultures, creeds and nations which are seen as 'Them'. Outside those parochial constraints there is 'It' - the physical world at both macro and micro levels.

We, or at least some of us, now have the knowledge, understanding and technology to visualise 'It' in its micro and macro perspectives. This leads inevitably to uncommon sense and counterintuition but this is OK – we are evolving as a species.

Various Cosmic Zoom type presentations are available on the internet[6]. An easy one to use is Powers of Ten[7] – try it and see if it takes your breath away and helps peel a few skins from your onion.

The 'Enlightenment 2.0' crew would presumably be at easy peace with this perspective – at least intellectually[8]. The 91 year old rose grower might have other things to occupy her mind!


[2] Think for example of the paradigm shifts in science over the years – the world in no longer flat, and heavier than air machines can fly! And it was not all that long ago that we had the Divine Rights of Kings!

[3] This is why we have to 'practice' meditation for mindfulness

[4] Neural correlate = stimulation of the God Spot (or equivalent) – reference the brain scans of Olympic meditators.

[8] being Enlightenment thinkers they are keen to be 'reasonable'

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