The Rise and Fall of the ‘Human Being’
<table><tr><td>The concept of a ‘human being’ is, in effect, a[n intentional and unintentional] plot by ‘political authorities’ to keep us ‘in our place’.
It is a Western concept that has been very effectively ‘globalized’.
It’s earliest beginnings can be traced to Parmenides who said, essentially; “There are only two choices, EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’ and once we have established ‘what is’, there is no point in further discussing ‘what is not’.” Parmenides added that while we mere mortals can never make up are mind and are always going with the fuzzy logic of both ‘is’ and ‘is not’ at the same time, the Gods would never have it that way. Parmenides was referring to the worldview of those like his contemporary Heraclitus, that saw opposites as being conjugate aspects of the same thing;
<em>"We step into and we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not."</em></td><td><img title="I am not human. I am WORKER!!!" src="http://anarchistnews.org/files/pictures/2012/treechophuman.jpg"></td></t...
Essentially, Heraclitus sees ‘things’ as ‘dynamic figures’ in a ‘dynamic ground’, ... resonance-features within a transforming relational space;
<em> “All things are an exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.”</em>
Heraclitus, not Parmenides, was the philosopher of choice of the pioneers of modern physics such as Mach, Poincaré, Bohm and Shroedinger, who similarly saw ‘things’, not as ‘things-in-themselves’ but as resonance features within a continually transforming relational space [‘spatial-plenum’ or ‘energy-field-flow’ or ‘spacetime continuum’].
But the standard Western belief tradition has grown up siding with the views of Parmenides that one must choose between EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’ because ‘the Gods/Authorities wouldn’t have it any other ways’. This is where western justice is ‘coming from’ and why we need an ‘authority’ to judge in the sense of discriminating between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ the case.
Of course, the aboriginal tradition goes with the Heraclitean view of BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’. That’s all you can do if you see ‘things’ as ‘strands in a relational ‘web-of-life’. You can’t present conflict in terms of ‘Crazy Horse’ versus ‘the community’ as in ‘John Doe’ versus the ‘People’ if you regard ‘Crazy Horse’ as a strand in the relational web of ‘community’. That is, the majority of the strands in the relational web has no monopoly on ‘normative behaviour’ that they can use to define the dynamics of a minority of strands as ‘abnormal’ and ‘offensive’, as if the majority was ‘just sitting there minding their own business’. The dynamics in a relational web are innately interdependent/relative so that it is impossible to impute the source of disturbance to a minority or single strand. Conflict is innately relational.
But the path of BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’, while it is the view of aboriginals along with pioneers in modern physics such as Mach, Bohm, Schroedinger etc., is not the common belief in the now globally dominant Western culture. The prevailing belief in the modern world is EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’, as in EITHER ‘guilty’ OR ‘not guilty’. The majority of participants in the community, by way of juries or by way of appointing judges to act for them, get to determine, absolutely, whether a particular local ‘being’ EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’ guilty of a crime ‘against the people of the community’.
Thanks to this notion of local, independent ‘being’ of each individual in the collection of individuals we call ‘the community’, the community gets to make absolute judgements of EITHER ‘is guilty’ OR ‘is not guilty’ of ‘an offence against the people’. This means that the majority is never guilty or complicit. The majority is the assumed ‘normative standard’ for ‘correct behaviour’. The majority is the foundation for the absolute ‘authority’ that judges whether behaviour EITHER ‘is correct’ OR ‘is not correct’.
If the absolute powers of a Central Authority, vested by the majority decide to cancel the land reserve treaty with the Cherokee nation and force them into a ‘Trail of Tears’ vacation of their lands, and one or more of them reject this, they are judged by the Authority to be guilty of a criminal offence against the people. None of this mealy-mouthed strands-in-the-relational web stuff that drags the majority into the dirt together with the minority so that all you could ever end up with would be that ‘conflict developed within the relational web of community’, so that all you could ever do would be to seek to cultivate, restore and sustain balance and harmony in the relational web; i.e. we would be deprived of dividing the community up into ‘the guilty’ and the ‘innocence’ so that we could resolve things by ‘punishing the guilty’ while affirming the righteousness and innocence of the majority.
Without the concept of ‘being’ or ‘human beings’, we would be stuck with this ‘relational web’ notion wherein a person BOTH ‘is guilty’ AND ‘is not guilty’ at the same time and where the majority who are not making a disturbance are BOTH ‘innocent’ AND ‘not innocent’ at the same time. Without the concept of ‘being’ or ‘human beings’, the community would be stuck with ‘restorative justice’ in which good and evil or guilt and innocence is seen to reside in everybody by way of the interdependent connectedness in the community understood as a web of relations.
There is no such things as ‘human beings’ in a physically real sense. The concept of ‘being’ is innately dependent on the concept of ‘absolute space’ [Euclidian space] and ‘absolute space’ is an abstraction that should not be confused for ‘physical reality’. Quite a few comments have been made on this, such as the following ones;
<em>‘Space is not Euclidian’ … “Space is a participant in physical phenomena” … “Space not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.”, … “the recognition of the fact that ‘empty space’ in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials g(μ,ν), has, I think finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty.”… “Relativity forces us to analyze the role played by geometry in the description of the physical world.” . . . “A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone” —Albert Einstein”</em>
<em>“Space is another framework we impose upon the world” . . . ” . . . here the mind may affirm because it lays down its own laws; but let us clearly understand that while these laws are imposed on our science, which otherwise could not exist, they are not imposed on Nature.” . . . “Euclidian geometry is . . . the simplest, . . . just as the polynomial of the first degree is simpler than a polynomial of the second degree.” . . . “the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry.” . . . Henri Poincaré, ’Science and Hypothesis’</em>
No Euclidian absolute space, ... no ‘human beings’. [i.e. no ‘things-in-themselves’]
Instead of human BEINGS aka biological ORGANISMS, we have human BECOMINGS aka biological ORGANIZINGS in the continually transforming relational spatial-plenum. Here the quantum logic of BOTH/AND comes into play and we are not forced to make a choice as to whether the human EITHER ‘is material’ OR ‘is not material’, since space is no longer understood as an absolute container inhabited by EITHER ‘emptiness’ OR ‘matter’, but is understood, instead, as a continually transforming relational, spatial-plenum [energy-field-flow] that manifests energy-resonance-features formerly known as ‘material bodies’.
In the ‘relational space’ view [the BOTH/AND quantum logic view], we no longer need a ‘central authority’ as we do when we think in terms of the human as a ‘human BEING’.
The need for a ‘central authority’ arose when we opted for the abstract notion of ‘being’ and portrayed the human as a ‘local, independently-existing thing-in-itself with its own locally originating, internal process driven and directed development and behaviour.
It is only when we start off with this abstract model of a ‘human BEING’ that we are forced to impute the existence of a ‘central authority’ within this ‘BEING’ to explain how it jumpstarts ‘its own development and behaviour’. That is, once we notionally split it out of its web of relations within the relational space it is a resonance feature or ‘organizING’ in, all of the outside-inward orchestrating/shaping influence on developing form and behaviour IS LOST in a mentally explanatory sense, so that in order for our purporting of ‘BEING’ to the human to hang together logically, we are forced to invent a notional ‘INTERNAL CENTRAL AUTHORITY’ as the local internal source of direction of development and behaviour.
We call this INTERNAL CENTRAL AUTHORITY’ the ‘intellectual centre’ or ‘mind’ that purportedly resides inside the ‘BEING’. We examine the nuclear magnetic resonance precessions inside the brain and make synthetic colour coded videos of them and claim that this activity in the brain somehow proves that this is where the ‘mind’ lives. This way, we don’t have to refer to or depend in any way upon the energy-field-flow the human is a resonance-feature in, for the dynamics of human development and behaviour. It all jumpstarts from right in there in the ‘INTERNAL CENTRAL AUTHORITY’ or ‘centre of intellection’ or ‘central processing unit’, or so they say,... and if you buy that, I suspect you are also in the market for a cheap bargain in bridges, like in the New York metroplex.
Those who are celling this notion of ‘being’ are having to make up all kinds of stories to explain development as ‘all genesis and no epigenesis’ [no ‘outside-inward orchestrating influence on development and behaviour of their ‘BEINGS’]
Even though Einstein and Poincaré have been screaming out ‘space is not empty’ and <em>“Relativity forces us to analyze the role played by geometry in the description of the physical world.”</em> mainstream [scientific] thinking continues to encourage belief that everything is directed inside-outwardly by a ‘central authority’ or ‘Directive centre’.
Take the migration of salmon, for example. Are we going to consider that the movements of salmon are influenced by the geometry of the spatial relations they are situationally included in; i.e. that the concentrations of plankton in the currents they are swimming in, orchestrate their movements from the outside-inward? Oh, no, not us scientific thinkers who start from the notion of biological organisms as ‘local beings’. We claim that the movements of salmon are directed by an internal centre of directive authority and that there is an internal intellectual program in their interior called ‘migration’ that tells them where to go in an inside-outward asserting fashion. Well, no, scientists haven’t yet found the direction navigating equipment inside the salmon that would have to go with the explanation, but the check is in the mail so-to-speak since according to their theory of ‘being’, it has to be inside the salmon.
How about if we assume that the concentrations of plankton in the ocean currents orchestrate their ‘migratory path’ from the outside-inward. When these currents, which are themselves ‘relational-spatial resonance features’ vary, we don’t have to say that ‘the salmon are wandering about confused’, we can instead assume that they are doing what they always have been doing, letting their behaviours be orchestrated outside-inwardly by the spatial geometry of the flow of nurturance. After all, this is essence of Lamarck and Nietzsche’s and Rolph and Rudimeyer’s anti-Darwinist views of evolution is all about, and it is what Mach’s principle states; i.e. the behaviours of the inhabitants are conditioned outside-inwardly by the behaviours of the habitat.
Are Orca movements orchestrated outside-inwardly by fish school movements? Of course they are. Are reindeer ‘migratory movements’ orchestrated outside-inwardly by the trail of crumbs of ‘lichen exposures’ which vary by season and climate shift? Of course they are.
But we’re not going to find many scientists opting for this outside-inward orchestrative sourcing of behaviour. [Russian and American/Canadian/British scientists are currently fighting about how Inuits/Nenets (people of the deer) survive in the arctic; i.e. is it that their behaviours are orchestrated outside-inwardly by the movements of game, or do their movements all derive from internal accumulated knowledge and intellection?].
Scientists are not ‘allowed’ to let go of the ‘central directive authority’ concept because once one assumes ‘BEING’, one has no choice but to explain development and behaviour in an inside-outward asserting, all genesis, no epigenesis, manner.
Politicians are going with this same ‘science’ which assumes that ‘humans’ and all ‘biological organisms’ are ‘beings’. The aggregation of cells within a being is held together by a central authority, and thus the aggregation of human organisms must self-similarly be held together by a central authority; e.g. the central authority of the ‘community as a collection of beings’ that inhabit an absolute, non-participating space.
This model of the ‘human being’ which insists that ‘organization’ derives from a ‘central authority’ is about to collapse. The cracks in it are everywhere.
In biological cell research, cell development is no longer considered to be entirely inside-outward driven and directed by ‘genetics’. In fact, the ‘cell’ is no longer considered to be a ‘unit of being’ but is instead considered to be a ‘unit of perception’ in that the receptors on the external membrane allow outside-inward environment signals to orchestrate the activities of ‘effectors’ that work the inside-outward asserting development of the cell. This is in agreement with Mach’s principle, and with the concept of space as a continually transforming relational spatial-plenum, as in modern physics.
This ‘rethink’ of the dynamics of cell development and behaviour speaks to a general ‘rethink’ at all levels of dynamics, including that of ‘human collectives’.
That is instead of our insisting that there must be a ‘central directive authority’, as is essential if we conceive of the human as a ‘BEING’, we can instead acknowledge the physical reality wherein human behaviour is orchestrated outside-inwardly by ‘signals from the environment’. This reconceives the basic character of the human from ‘a unit of being’ to a ‘unit of perception’; i.e. a dynamic form that is the connecting confluence of outside-inward orchestrating influence and inside-outward asserting influence, and it does the same at the level of ‘community’. Only when we impute ‘local being’ to a community are we forced to explain the ‘organizING’ of community by way of a ‘central directive authority’. In the global flow of humanity, or in the global ecosphere flow, the ‘organizINGs’ are, in physical terms, the connecting confluence of outside-inward orchestrating influence and inside-outward asserting influence.
ONCE WE SUSPEND OUR WESTERN HABIT OF IMPOSING ‘BEING’ ON THE ‘ORGANIZings’ [human forms/organizINGs] IN THE CONTINUALLY TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL SPATIAL-PLENUM, WE ARE NO LONGER FORCED TO IMPUTE THE EXISTENCE OF A ‘CENTRAL DIRECTIVE AUTHORITY’ AS AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT KEEPS THE ‘ORGANIZATION’ HOLDING TOGETHER’.
Once we liberate our thinking from this abstract notion of ‘being’ and its ‘either/or’ logical foundations, we can understand transformation of social dynamics as transpiring without any need for a ‘central directive authority’.
That is, we can revisit the evolution of social dynamics and see it, more physically realistically, in terms of the conjugate relation of epigenesis and genesis, rather than in terms of ‘all genesis’ and ‘no epigenesis’.
If your bus is going to stop and an angry demonstration is going to ensue if you, a white man, make a racist comment, then you are not going to keep on making racist comments. In the old view which sees you as a ‘unit of being’, one would say that your ‘central directive authority’ had revised its intellectual programs. But in the new-old view which sees you as a ‘unit of perception’, your inside-outward behaviour is evolving from outside-inward orchestrating influence or ‘signals from the environment’.
It is not about ‘learning’ in the sense of re-programming one’s ‘central directive authority’ and thus changing the inside-outward asserting [all genesis, no epigenesis] sole-sourcing of behavioural dynamics.
If one has a horse that has been ‘whip-trained’ running in a circle in a corral and one throws a stone at the horse, the horse will come immediately to your side. One says that the horse ‘HAS LEARNED’ how to behave, as if this behaviour is fully and solely directed by the central directive authority inside of its head,... but if one is not locked down by the concept of ‘being’, one could alternatively assume that the spatial region close to the person with the whip or the stone is relatively safer spatially, since the individual in the centre cannot wind up to throw the stone or crack the whip if you are standing right beside him. If another child is throwing stones at you, the safest place to be is right beside him where he no longer has room to wind up and throw a stone at you.
In other words, the dynamics of relational space have an outside-inward orchestrating influence on our movements. Only when we assume ‘being’ are we forced to explain all behaviours of the individual biological ‘being’, exclusively in terms of inside-outward assertive sourcing of behaviour, which originates in a notional ‘central directive authority’.
Does the abused wife climb back in bed/embrace with her abusive husband because she is sado-masochist, or is her movement outside-inward orchestrated, as she tucks in to the safest place in the house that she can find?
What does the child in such a household ‘do’?
<em> “Children model their behavior primarily on the behavior of their parents and other authority figures. Whether or not this behavior is effective at producing happiness doesn't prevent the child from modeling it; the modeling is not a result of reasoning, but is due to simple observation and imitation. This mimicry is illustrated in the old saying "Like father, like son," or now better put, "Like parent, like child." Whether parents are happy or not doesn't stop a child from imitating what he or she observes; children are like dry sponges ready to absorb the first water they come in contact with."</em>
When daddy gets abusive, she runs quickly to him to embrace him, just like the whip-trained horse. This is not a ‘learned behaviour’ that is sourced from some ‘program in the ‘central directive authority’ of the ‘human being’’, ... it is sourced outside-inwardly by the orchestrating influence of the relational space the child is included in.
Daddy does not ‘miss’ what is going on here. Once an emotional/relational bond is established, whip-training can commence.
Political authorities do not ‘miss’ what is going on here; once an emotional/relational bond is established, whip training can commence. People will run towards the police to avoid being abused by the police/authorities.
Not all cultures have this belief in the need for a ‘central directive authority’ because not all cultures see the ‘human’ as a ‘human being’.
Belief in the need for a ‘Central Directive Authority’ to keep a community hanging together stands or falls on the common belief in ‘being’ and in the human as a ‘human being’, a concept that has us see dynamical development and behaviour in terms of ‘all genesis’ [all inside-outward directed sourcing of development and behaviour] and ‘no epigenesis’ [no outside-inward orchestrative sourcing of development and behaviour].
We are currently experiencing the erosion of the intellectual foundations of colonialism, or, in other words, we are living in the era of the ‘fall of the human being’ as a belief-based concept.