We live. How well we live depends on our appreciation (sensitive understanding) of our home in the world. There seems to be deep changes in our world. It is as if while I am soundly sleeping I am moved to a new location. If the new location is very different I cannot proceed on the basis of memories. I must learn again. I face the unknown.
Facing the unknown can be a terrifying experience. It is not surprising that we invent all sorts of reasons to avoid it. We create frightening myths. Such myths may be based on current truths, but to serve our avoidance needs, they become myths.
Myth 1:
One such myth, allegedly based on the Mayan calendar, predicts that the end of life on earth will occur in December 2012. That is certainly frightening enough to be shoved aside. We can choose to not believe it. A former MIT classmate now lives in Mexico and is far more familiar with the Mayan calendar than me. He informed me that Solstice 2012 marks a Shift into a New World Age Cycle; an essential part of this transformation process is for humanity to re-connect with Nature’s wisdom that we may find balance, harmony and life-affirming paths for the evolution of human culture.
I am impressed that much of the now current new age thinking aims to find balance, harmony and life-affirming paths for the evolution of human culture.
Myth 2:
This myth is based on the seeming ability of technology to solve all our problems. I say seeming ability because there are problems technology cannot solve. Artifacts and living entities function by incompatible principles. Artifacts are assemblies of parts. Living entities grow as wholistic single entities. When artifacts fail to function they can be taken apart and reassembled, perhaps with some new parts. Once done there is no creativity in the way the parts function.
When a living entity fails to function it cannot be taken apart to be fixed. Instead we rely on it, as an organism, to have enough internal creativity to cure itself. The basic skills to fix an artifact are based on physics as a fundamental science. Thus there are many myths in defense of physics.
In physics there is a standard model of twelve fundamental particles and their interactions. There may be holes in the model suggesting a new particle that would fill the hole. Usually the particle is found. But in the case of the Higg’s Boson, it remains hidden after years of effort to find it.
Why is the Higg’s Boson called the God particle?
“The popular nickname for the elusive particle was created for the title of a book by Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman – reportedly against his will, as Lederman has said he wanted to call it the ‘Goddamn Particle’ because 'nobody could find the thing.'
“God particle is a nickname I don’t really like,” says Archer, a plasma physicist who has become a popular science presenter. “It’s nothing to do with religion – the only (theoretical) similarity is you’re seeing something that’s a field that’s everywhere, in all spaces.”
I also don’t like that its name has been reduced to mislead its meaning.
However, I am pleased to see that Archer said it has nothing to do with religion. We hear of people who confuse the God particle with God and fear for their religions based on the existence or nonexistence of the God particle.
Our work at TAI is to develop metaphysics to understand a changing world. Metaphysics is a theory of what can be meaningfully asserted as the most general character of that world. The dominant worldview has been based on substance metaphysics, i.e., matter. Thus we ask, how does life happen? In spite of all the effort, money, research and technology dedicated to answering the question, I see no meaningful or coherent results. Indeed, given the characteristics of matter it is absurd to think that it can account for self-acting entities. To understand self-acting entities requires a different metaphysics based on a domain of life, not matter.
Basically metaphysics specifies what it is reasonable to look for in a new domain of inquiry. Based on matter we might look for the action of forces. Based on life we look for the action of values. For example a manager wants his company to reorganize. He might then think about what forces he has to force change. For example he might give orders to change, or perhaps award prizes for obedience. But of course he is dealing with living entities. The conditions of life tell us it will not work. We’ve sometimes asked managers what role they think force can have. Most say none, but that they too often like to think it does. On the other hand, a wise manager recognizes that his people are all-autonomous and will enlist their aide in creating a new vision.
The new metaphysics for life, also called organismic metaphysics, shows what is involved and how it all functions together.
Skye Hirst, Ph.D. provides executive and personal coaching and writes a blog on www.autognomics.org.
Skye’s blog on life with Norm, her husband and partner, lessons and challenges of learning about living and loving together. Norm and Skye are co-founders of The Autognomics Institute and continue together to do research on life as creative organisms, bringing their insights on creative processes to audiences and new leaders for the emerging shifting living consciousness. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.