The Map of the Journey We’re On

The structure of the cosmos seems to clearly communicate that some local relationship economies bear fruit and some do not. In other words; we can count the seeds in an apple, but not the apples in a seed if it is cultivated properly. Of course there are many conditionals in that cultivation, but this is the general theme.

Cultivating opportunity depends on any number of contexts, but is rooted in recognizing and applying that which lends nourishment and protection to that which satisfies first basic needs, then nourishes some expanded potential, this latter aspect requires some abundance to service growth. This means actively cultivating the opportunity in the environment. (which happens to be one of our needs that satisfies us once it is met) Diminishing or destroying potential, or being exposed to antagonistic factors that are beyond our control can thwart or destroy that potential.

This need to cultivate motif sets the tone for the relational economy we must negotiate if we are to realize our full potential: Are we participating, or basking in an environment that nourishes and protects the cultivation of our fullest potential? If not, what, if anything, can we do about it? These are the questions we must ask to have any chance to realize our opportunity.

Some of us are infected with pathogenic structures, and or environments, either physical, mental or both, that prevent us from realizing our potential. Sometimes, even though we have the opportunity to bend our activities more directly toward growth, we are nonetheless inclined us to actively participate in activities that do not nourish and defend that fruitful relational engine that leads to our full potential. Self sabotage is common among us. It comes in many forms such as learned helplessness, or lacking the courage to sever parasitic and predatory relationships and forge new mutually beneficial ones that are more nourishing and protective of not only our potential, but that of the interdependent community that emerges from that fruitful relational soil.

To reorient a self defeated life we must recognize that engaging in parasitic or predatory activities such as developing or maintaining social relationships with persons who do not nourish and defend our potential, but feed on or stagnate it, or failing to cultivate the opportunities within our reach must be replaced. We must find and develop mutually beneficial relationships and activities to the degree we are able to cultivate them. That means we look for valuable things to bring to the table, and we also look to invest that contribution where it has an opportunity to return more value than it consumes. This is the recipe for a reality that is more inclined to work in our favor. Engaging in the pursuit of short term pleasures at the expense of long term satisfaction, or staying in social relationship climates that will never nourish our potential and the like is a recipe for a reality that is more likely to work against our favor.

There are any number of complex variables that can go into the barriers to potential, some of which are outside our local control, but the segment that is within our control is our only opportunity, and it is that climate which we must devote our abilities in order to cultivate our most satisfied potential. This is no different from any other organism, and it is one of the foundational statements made by way of how the cosmos is structured as far as I can tell.

I could be missing something(s)

We are Social By Nature

 We are be social creatures. The elements we’re made of hunger for specific kinds of relationships in specific contexts. This relationship economy, built on the need for the satisfaction of specific hungers within specific ranges defines our nature. Every atom with which we are constructed has specific hungers for specific relationship. Our nature is social to the core, our biological structure reveals this at many levels. Every cell and organ depends on the others. It is the community of social relationships that defines us.

 

When we cultivate the availability of, and tend to servicing a certain nourishing order of things, we can be satisfied; conversely, if we violate this necessary order we suffer from instability – and if a critical nourishing relational pathway on which we depend is throttled or destroyed we can lose the integrity on which we depend to exist as a biological being.

Our brains are built on the same social principle. In terms of perception, contrary to some beliefs, we are not primarily logical creatures that are also social and emotional. Even though we appear to use logic as the currency of social influence, our peculiar use of logic as a method to persuade is a polite fiction at best. The evidence does not suggest logic is an effective tool, except in social circles where logic is valued highly or some corresponding social-emotional connection is associated with the logic – and this is the point: “Social-Emotional Bonds” are the key.

The fact that our emotional and social traits trump logic is born out by the evidence in many ways. One example is the way we sincerely and passionately disagree with out-groups in ways that conveniently agree with and support the validity of our in-group. This difference is despite the similarity of our basic biological sensory and processing equipment. This suggests something other than biological differences as the cause. Of far greater weight than our brain’s capacity for logic is the emotional-social aspect of this fatty organ sloshing around our skull. When our social hungers are either wounded of starved, particularly at critical developmental periods, all kinds of pathologies can result.

Addiction may be one of those pathologies. Here is an interesting TED talk by Johann Hari about the potential causes of addiction.

 

Further related articles:

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/morals-not-memories-define-who-we-are/

 

Happiness is Inside-Out

The whole world starts the lens through which we see it. Charles Swindoll once said; “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it.” Some of us look for happiness on the outside, some expectation we overlay on our world. While the outside is of some consequence, it it the inside that shapes most of what we see and experience. The same way a seedling must first develop in the darkness of the soil before developing the strength to show itself to the rest of the world, the soil from which our public identity emerges largely determines what we experience. Happiness is an inside-out journey.

The Wisdom of the Tree

A tree simultaneously stretches itself downward into the soil to draw the water and nutrients as it stretches up and outward toward the sky to capture the glow of sunlight and drink from the atmospheric delights that waft past its swaying branches. In so doing, the tree stitches the elements at its disposal together and if they are sufficient, it uses them as a vehicle to propel itself toward its full potential. A tree breaks the prior symmetries of certain structures, not for the sake of destruction, but to reassemble them into its own likeness – in its own form.

At its crest, the wave of self assembled organization that is the tree matures to relate with other trees and the creatures that call it home, and to cast its offspring to the wind in the hopes of making even more like itself. Like the tree, we need draw from places of nourishment to realize our potential. Like the tree, if we do not stretch ourselves to reach those nourishing places, we are destined live beneath the threshold of our full potential.

We have some measure of choice in where we stretch ourselves. Let’s make sure these places we cultivate our own assemblies are also those that nourish our potential – that contribute substance and strength to the canopy we all live beneath – this community of life we both live in and depend on.

The Origin of Success

The most profound forms of intimacy are based on relationships where the participants do their best to identify each others needs, and give each other their best. Wealth and strength emerges from the elements of giving that strengthen community. If we consider the fact that a thing as simple as a pencil could not exist unless many persons with many skill sets combined their gifts and shared we begin to get a picture for how wealth emerges from this community principle.[1]

From an economic perspective, we do ourselves no favors by clogging up the flow of values that cultivate each other’s success. If segments of our culture are aligned around exploitation the result is poverty. A diseased body is imbalanced, as is a diseased culture. Our values are the currency that drives these behaviors.

There is great value in the mutual stake in each other’s success. This need for a mutual stake in each other’s success does not negate the unpleasant fact that this organic flow can get ruined by one wayward greedy relational element the same way a forest can burn down on the power of a single spark. Community is strong, but it can be fragile as well. On a personal level trust and confidence grows from mutual trust born of actions that serve our collective needs. We must stand together and act in the interests of the whole biological community we are both in and of in order to realize our fullest, most satisfied state. In this sense, we are game players, not rule makers.

[1] For more information on this community principle read “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves” by Matt Ridley or “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E.”

Living an Intentional Life

This video is an blatant attempt to be slightly entertaining as well as informative on the topic of living an intentional life.

The Community Principle

“The Community Principle” is based on the premise that biology is a language that communicates a strong need and preference for multidirectional cooperative relationships to thrive and realize its full potential. The realization of our fullest potential depends on how much our environment and our personal commitments cultivate nourishing community.

The community principle applies to all human social relationships. The more our personal, business, institutional, environmental and governmental systems are aligned around this principle the more we contribute to the realization of our fullest potential. Commitment to community from the bottom up is the key. Top-down approaches burn up too much energy on compliance. We are at our best when we cultivate a commitment to community in everything we do.

The Difference between Significant and Notorious

We all have an inborn hunger to be noticed. As surely as we need food and water, we need some kind of social connection. Many factors including our developmental environment determine whether or not we will cultivate healthy constructive relational bonds, or destructive ones.

Those pictured as significant are as follows: Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr.

Those pictured as notorious are as follows: Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Kim Jong-Il.

Down The Rabbit Hole: Of what can we be certain?

It is deceptively simple to say; “question everything” and think this simple axiom is sufficient to power and calibrate the lens through which we peer at reality. If we ask a question and earnestly look for answers it seems to follow that our knowledge will grow. From this we might think; to render a complete and accurate image, we simply need to ask enough questions and use them as the basis of exploration. Questioning everything might sound like a good starting place, but if we question the question itself, some uncertainties begin to emerge. One of the chief issues is how assumptions can be so deeply embedded in the context of questions they can be hidden from view.

Imagine starting adult life with a question like; “What do I have to do to become rich?” This question might be built on a hidden assumption about a connection between material riches and a satisfied life. Perhaps it was forged in the mind of a child who grew up in poverty and forged what appeared to be a logical connection between riches and satisfaction. An assumption like this could lead to a life devoted to tasks associated with acquiring riches that might never deliver the expectation of being satisfied. If the goal is the most satisfying life possible, a meaningful question might be “what leads to a fulfilling satisfying experience” before embarking on what to do to translate that vision to reality. In this case the question obscured more than it revealed because of the simplistic and hidden nature of the assumption. Most of us know a satisfied life must be cultivated on many fronts from resources to community to intimacy to self-worth and the like… Knowledge is like a biological ecosystem, there are predatory and parasitic forms of it as well as nourishing and essential forms.

By nature we limit our field of vision to those things which fit our assumptions. Assumptions are a focus mechanism for our ideological lens. They bring certain things into clear and detailed view, while blurring everything else out. Since assumptions collapse the field of possibilities to those which fit themselves, the visible field they render is self-confirming. It is also disconfirming of anything that does not fit the model. Things which appear self-evident to us may be a result of a hidden assumption. This can lead to a potentially sincere and inaccurate view. It can lead to inappropriate actions and unintended consequences. In effect, assumptions can dampen or destroy our capacity to navigate reality with effective intention.

Flaws, artifacts and inherent limitations in our ideological lens can also conjure up unreal ghosts that look convincingly real. Based on our perspective, we might be unrealistically fearful or fearless. We might devalue essential behaviors required to nourish ourselves or otherwise be unable to effectively cultivate a fulfilling life. Flaws, distortions, as well as hidden assumptions can produce a very convincing image that is completely incorrect and potentially destructive.

The same way radio telescopes reveal different images of the cosmos than optical telescopes do, the structural nature of our lens influences how we see our world. When we connect the general nature of lenses to our identity we see how we might form a self-reinforcing world view. We typically experience a social imperative to believe the norms of our native culture in order to be accepted. Because of our dependent state we can see the foundation for the general acceptance of cultural paradigms. We can also see the roots of the long term effects on vision these particular views imply. Where we start and what we use as detection equipment shapes what we see and this impacts where we can navigate and how we relate along the way. It is not news that some of us literally give our lives because of cultural points of view on nationalism, religion and the like. It is also not news that many people live well beneath their potential because of a self-inflicted or installed view, not because of any innate limitation. In these senses, what we believe really matters.

When we consider the inclusive and exclusionary properties of lenses in general and couple this with the effect of assumptions, flaws and artifacts we can see how questioning questions becomes a high value proposition if accuracy and high value answers is our goal. To illustrate the depths of these hazards more clearly we can look at some of the broader cultural questions humankind has historically grappled with: “Where did life come from?” is arguably a global question. Many different cultures have many different perspectives. If we’re not careful we might miss the fact that the question assumes life came from something at all. It might even seem ridiculous to consider any other possibility because from a perspective that life came from something it seems so obvious that life comes from something – but do we really know? Even more basic; Can we really know? Is it possible we just convince ourselves of the validity of our own biases as a result of the character of the lens through which we peer? This might explain why there are so many differing points of view throughout the world that are defended with such overt conviction and passion. This might also explain why any perspective differing from cultural norms are hotly contested as bunk unless it is carried in on a wave of rebellion, even among scientific communities.

Ideas are lenses. If we start from an ideological premise that biology comes from cosmic evolution we then look to the cosmos for causes. To be honest, we must first ask if an underlying assumption that life arose out of mindless cosmic bits of matter, energy, space-time and whatnot limits our field of view to this very possibility. If we start from an ideological premise that a divine or intelligent cause is involved in the cosmos and biology, we are likewise predisposed to see confirming evidence wherever we look. If we were even more honest than conventional cultural views typically embrace we might ask; “On what basis do we justify separating the cosmos from what we know as awareness and life?” The wider field of vision looks quite a bit murkier than the clarity that forms around a narrow band of assumptions.

The nature of a perspective is built on a relative premises and this carries with it a particular spectrum of vision, focus, range and the like. Everything from that point outward, including supporting logic, is then built on or viewed through those premises. The objects that appear as a result of a set of premises can look deceptively like an objective basis for confirming evidence. Once the elaborate empire of verbal abstractions grow from a relative premise, it becomes difficult to distinguish subject from object. Our logic can trace connective tissues within an abstract network of coherency that generates an illusion of objectivity. With this in mind we might legitimately question if everything we see as objective might be subjective.

To understand how deeply perceptual relativity shapes our lives even in academic circles we can look at the following: There is an open secret in certain academic circles that scientifically explore the question of life and its origin. From this strictly scientific perspective we cannot yet agree on a shared definition of the word “life”.[1] This failure to perceive the boundaries of such a primary idea in the field has far reaching implications that profoundly affect the vision that flows from this primary lens. For instance; without a clear definition we cannot know whether there is a singular origin or multiple origins. We cannot understand the divide between life and non-life. Even if there was an agreed definition to the word life, we could not know if this definition would be the source of what we saw objectively as life. The entire discipline that deals with life origins might do well to ask an even deeper question; “What makes us assume that life came from the cosmos?” What if the cosmos comes from life? What if the cosmos is life?

The point here is not to make assertions as much as it is to illustrate the nature of our false certainty and point to some of the limits of knowledge itself. The reason this recognition is important is because before we can even phrase intelligent questions we must first understand that what we can know is relative to a frame of reference. Perceptual relativity is the key. We use frames of reference, but these can be challenged from other frames of reference. This makes perspective taking, seeking to understand each other from our individual perspectives, a paramount foundation to understanding beyond our own prejudices. Unless we can see from the frame of reference of another observer, we can never understand or uncover the value of the perspective they bring.

If we measure the value of a particular brand of understanding by its potential to contribute to our common experience of life we might easily miss the value of understanding our ignorance. How, we might ask, can understanding the profound nature of our ignorance be of value? How can it contribute to our shared experience of life? From this we can know how a sincerely erroneous view of reality can be formed and defended. This understanding can be a platform for tolerating what would otherwise appear from our individual perspectives as willful ignorance.

Another valuable vision that emerges from awareness of the range and limitations of knowledge is a corresponding understanding of how and why undeveloped minds tend toward blustery certainty while more mature minds tend to be more humble in their approach to certainty. This is because mature minds are more inclined to see across a spectrum of perspectives instead of the narrow confines of vision afforded by a narrow set of assumptions.[2] Mature minds are also more able to differentiate the fuzzy nuances between levels of certainty and what is factual. Many a certainty can get shattered as we experience life over time. This has a tendency to forge a less brazen and more valuable perspective.

Understanding our ignorance has other beneficial implications – not the least of these is the fact that fighting each other over what we know is not a matter of logic.[3] It is a matter of our values and these values can be destructive. One of the few things we can know with greater certainty among the otherwise ambiguous shadows our limited capabilities unveil is that despite our limitations, how we value each other does tangibly shape our experience of life. We can know that the more we value each other in a nourishing context of community, the more our common value rises, and the more we devalue each other the more our common value diminishes. It may be one of the many existential ironies that the clarity that arises from a premise of ignorance enables the broadest possible vision of all. Of course, some or all of this could be wrong…

---

[1] Since 1976, members of the Carnegie Institution of Geophysical laboratories have studied the origin or origins if life. They keep the field of researchers narrowed to those with a scientific perspective.

[2] For more information on this look up: “Dunning–Kruger effect” It refers to a bias that comes from the inability of the unskilled to recognize their lack of vision and conversely the ability of the skilled to recognize the limits of their knowledge.

[3] For more information on this look up: “Gödel’s incompleteness theorems” It basically says that there no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an “effective procedure” like math, a computer program, or an algorithm is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers. There are always statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system unless something outside the system is used as a mechanism for proof. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency. This means the need for outside help continues.

Self Respect

No matter how much we want to be, or think we are rule makers, or that we can hope for an exception, we are really only game players. Gravity works no matter how we feel on any given day. Relationship possibilities exist in a membrane of a fixed set of rules that determine the possibilities and the potentials. Relationship seeds only grow to their full potential in the right soil and the right climate. We can nurture the environment but we can’t control everything. We can’t rush the development process beyond its own growing capacity. To influence the game we have to know and respect the rules, and even though that is sometimes painful, it is the highest form of self-respect we can have.