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There is a place where Science and Philosophy intersect. I´d like to explore that with you through this presentation. You see, discrimination between the real and the apparent involves serious consideration of the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness, therein (the world of things, plants, animals and men – and even ‘gods’, as manifestations in a fabric I’ll call The Divine Ground). Such a quest, not just for knowledge in itself, but for its significance, is a path in Life, the following of which leads an individual to identifying her/himself with their eternal Self. It is not hard to think of such a discovery of Truth as being the end and purpose of having life on Earth, However, I will leave that for you to consider, for yourself!
I will ramble a bit in this article towards casting a glance over the landscape, as it were, before turning to an image/text series to give the matter fuller attention.
Getting sick is something that happens to one – and for a reason! It´s a very personal thing because it happens with regard to who one is and how so. Like, if I have a headache it´s me that has it for some specific reason and not you for some other reason. Now there´s a point of view that says sickness is not so much something to fight, but rather to ‘listen to’ for something one’s body is ‘trying’ to tell one through that. So, there´s that headache, for example, perhaps due to stress on the job, a pressing issue, or too many late nights. Yes, a pain-killer might be of immediate help. But, if one doesn’t back off, take a break, pay attention to the stresses and strains that give one headaches, something else will settle in, get entrenched and make its way into becoming some chronic condition specific to one and the whys of how one is who one is. In this context, illness can be a teacher that helps one learn and grow in negotiating life.
I don´t want to make more of an issue with this, as I’m just bringing it up with regard to something similar concerning the Dark and the Light, which is what this presentation is about – the Dark not being so much something ‘evil’ one has to fight, as something that calls one to bring the light that is in one to bear upon it. This might take a lifetime of letting one´s light shine, as a doctor in the face of illness and infirmity, a lawyer measuring up to injustice, or the more general fact that one´s nature and temperament have one ever having to deal with things with regard to how one is oneself and not as someone else.
There´s something about the Web that´s also like this – the Dark Web being a “terra incognita”, in which our world-wide-web is but a colonization; an oasis of light in that unknown; an established, small “terra firma” in a ‘we-know-not-what’. ...and we have the same problem in both worlds, the real and the virtual, of the light of truth in the face of the darkness of ignorance and the contention with bad actors and their abusive practices.
There is special import to this in these times, in the face of political, societal and geo-political ‘evils’, upheaval, disorder and injustice. Let´s look into this a bit, here, en route to the matter of the light we carry within us, that each of us can turn to in facing off against the Dark (the Light about which the image/text power point series will have things to say).
There´s something disconcerting about needing a code word to get into the internet, a virtual world in which people mill about restlessly colliding and bouncing off one another, when one doesn´t need one for the purpose of everyday tasks, like taking a book out of the library, shopping at the supermarket, going to a restaurant, or planning a holiday with a travel agent.
You and I can go into the web for some innocent search, as easily as a bad actor can, like some denizen of the web’s depths, to promote a far-reaching scam that could easily affect us personally, or hacking into banking on a larger scale, bureaucracy, governmental services and infrastructure in ways that threaten society as a whole and its being a playing field for asymmetrical warfare as much between ourselves as geo-politically!
The realm of info-tech we have created has become a strange bed-fellow, whose ministrations we can no longer live without. Yet, the satisfaction of its needs has irredeemably destabilized and undermined the real world in all sorts of ways. This is a ridiculous situation in which Info-tech oils the wheels of commerce, finance, governance, industry, trade and geo-politics, at the same time that it pin-points the damage perpetrated by living the way we do (with its help!), whilst also being home to whatever kind of mischief bad actors concoct. We may be the peak species we pride ourselves on being, in this phase of the cycle of Life on Earth. But we are the least intelligent of species, in our destruction of one thing after another about it that makes Planet Earth our home!
As a ‘tool’ left-brain reasoning has the capacity for turning on itself endlessly, extrapolating ‘this’, ‘that’ and then the next thing. This is what has us looking for Life and Consciousness in the image of ourselves and our understanding of things. However, we don´t seem to be able to recognize that LIFE is more than that. Yes, left-brain activity is intellectual. However, being partial, it is not whole-brain activity. So, there is no basis, there, for calling intellect intelligent! At best its job serves intelligence. This is also something the image/text series will look into.
Looking into the business of Life not being able to exist without there already being Life which supports and nourishes that, we can begin in a light-hearted way with why there are dogs for fleas to live on! Though there are all sorts of incomprehensible things to living on a dog, as far as fleas are concerned, of course (for example, the hazardous paroxysms of their grooming themselves, or their being groomed!), could fleas be aware of what we would call the pulse of life in the veins they suck at? Well, in lieu of the simpler central nervous complex they have, they certainly don´t have a sense of the likes of the dog’s brains, heart and its more complex nervous system!
This is rather as is with us on Planet Earth. Though we have an awareness of things like ocean and wind currents as vital systems, weather patterns, Earth´s magnetic field, stuff about her geo-physical features and phenomena like her seismic convulsions and volcanic activity, we know little of such things as different, vital body-functions. As for what the equivalent of our, a dog´s and a flea´s central nervous complex is (or whatever it is that Life endowed Earth with, as Her ‘central complex’), the idea of wondering about that doesn´t seem to occur to us!
This matter is not just about different forms of life, but of incomparably and inexplicably different systems out into far celestial reaches, similarly sustaining the life of lesser systems within their sphere (with the systems those lesser systems contain in their sphere, etc., etc., etc!)
Last year (2024), in a Guardian newspaper survey of 40% of the climate scientists working within the IPCC fold, all registered degrees of concern with what was and what was not happening and the dismay of some for it having become too late, anyway! Unbridled, the climate crisis is rushing headlong and there is a failure of initiatives (national and international) at every level to meet common goals, bargaining, lobbying and vested interests watering them down at every turn.
Now there´s actually another issue at stake, for the matter is not just about climate change. Let´s look at this through the lens of a more recent crisis that´s come to light, the crisis of the planet’s fresh water supply.
The predicament of Planet Earth’s fresh water supplies has emerged to take its place alongside already familiar crises, like global warming, climate change, glacial and polar ice-melt bringing about rising sea-levels, and so on. In their reports on the global water crisis, the World Economic Forum and The World Bank cite,1 in 4 cities, world-wide are facing water insecurity; 4 billion people live in water scarce areas; 3.4 billion people lack safe sanitation (their only access to water being contaminated); 80% of global waste water is discharged without treatment, and 9 out of 10 climate events are water-related.
...and the causes of the water crisis? – climate change – natural disasters – conflict and war – waste-water – water-wastage – lack of data – lack of cooperation and coordination on shared water resources – lack of infrastructure.
By 2030, the global fresh water demand is expected to outstrip supply by 40%. This is actually a gross underestimate, a) because the problem is increasing exponentially, for, as is already clear with CO2 emissions, the models are inadequate in the face of the rate of increase (something that is evolving at a break-neck speed), even if every form of emission were to be immediately arrested, and b) because these crises are intricately entangled, their knock on effects being what are compounding, accelerating the overall rate of progress, shattering models almost as soon as they are made and defying prediction..
As an aside here, just imagine the already over-burdened demand for this water resource for a ‘new’ industry which necessitates an infrastructural requirement for the distilling of fresh water (much as crude oil is refined for petrol, diesel and aviation spirit) to provide the combustible for it, namely the water engine that the likes of motor manufacturing greats like Toyota are working on. The point is that technology serves but one purpose, feeding the explosion in goods and services that satisfy the way we lead life, the style of life that is the root cause of the chaos we wreak (Info-tech being the ultimate technology that has become inseparably entwined with it).
The despair scientists feel (climate scientists in particular, as The Guardian newspaper survey of 2024 highlights) exists because they see no hope. In these circumstances one might say we are facing Armageddon, with regard to the human presence bringing about its own demise. However, this is not about the end of the world. It is about being at a particular point in the cycle of Life on Earth. What do I mean by that?
Well, let me explain it this way! One of Earth´s life-support systems to have gradually come to scientists´ attention is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that is an arm of the planet´s oceanic circulatory system (its global heat transfer system).The research shows that the AMOC is shutting down. The evidence points to the polar melt, human activity is causing, that has produced the `cold blob´ in the N. Atlantic, which has been found to herald this. In bringing this to light, paleological research has also established the periodicity of this current´s closing down and re-starting, as a natural phenomenon in the scheme of Life on Earth. In this natural cycle the interval between shut down (its off-mode) and re-start is, on average, about 5.000 years (varying between several hundred and as much as ten-thousand years), the actual shift itself taking place within but a decade!
...and it´s not as if there are not other factors that are an integral part of the mix. In the release and absorption of the heat-trapping gas, CO2, the natural forces involved in carbon being sucked up by the oceans and forests, or released in long pulses, causing the ice caps to shrink or grow and influencing sea-levels (something speeded up by volcanic activity and the sun´s closeness, amongst other factors), is also one of Earth´s vital functions. So, as provocateurs of the CO2 build up right now, our activity is but an aspect in the larger play of one of Earth’s vital functions.
This is to say that, for all our sins, life in us and the consequences of what we are up to comfortably fit within the overall workings of Earth’s life and being, anyway!
In this context, a) the human presence, as a form of intelligence, is a phase in the unfolding of consciousness in Life on Earth. b) The intersection between Science and Philosophy is to do with the pursuit of knowledge involving something contemplative with regard to how we behave and conduct ourselves, in being co-habitants with other forms of consciousness, here on Earth. In which case, we need to be mindful of there being other dimensions to Life than those with which we are preoccupied. So, let’s turn to the image/text Power Point I have to explore this!