Guido Dalla Casa
Holistic Vision of the World
When it comes to ecology and nature protection, take care of " Visions of the world" it seems like something more abstract, or less practical, than giving advice on waste disposal or forest conservation, but it's only because talking about "worldviews" has effects that last much longer. However, these are aspects that touch behavior and attitudes much more in depth, compared to the most immediate practical suggestions of petty ecology.
Premises Let us summarize some foundation of current knowledge incompatible with the Jewish-Christian cultural background and with the dualism of Descartes: - Neither the Earth, nor the Sun, nor anything else are at the center of something: the stars are all equally grains in the sea of Infinity. There is no center of any kind. - Humanity is an animal species appearing on one of the many planets only three million years ago, against the three or four billion years of life on Earth and the fifteen or twenty billion years since the presumed birth of the Universe, assuming that the Everything is not something that has always been cyclically pulsed. So the alleged "King of Creation" would arrive a little late, while his so-called "kingdom" was waiting for him with little impatience. Moreover, it takes a good presumption to think of "improving" what took four billion years to become what it is. Humanity is part of everything in all of Nature. The vital phenomena are the same in all species. - Western culture is only two or three thousand years old, industrial civilization is two hundred years old: these are completely insignificant times. Even the concept of progress has a very short life, no more than two or three centuries; obviously we can live even without this fixed idea. The division between prehistory and history is only a mental scheme of our culture, which serves to nurture a certain vision of the world. There is no reason, nor any scale of privileged values, to consider a culture better or worse than another. Note then that it is used to call "history" what has happened in the last five thousand years to Western civilization and the entire life of the Earth, ie four billion years and five thousand human cultures, is liquidated with the only "prehistory" label. - Essential mental functioning, behavior, are essentially similar in all animal species close to us. Most of these are non-conscious phenomena. - Quantum physics has demonstrated the intrinsic impossibility of describing material or energetic phenomena without considering observation; this means that, without the mind, matter-energy is meaningless, it is in no way describable, it is "devoid of reality", it is only a kind of wave of probability. Newton's mechanistic physics remains only the practical function, even if in our basic schools there is no trace of the profound change that has taken place. From this picture a very ancient and widespread conception is born: animism. A form of "mind" must be everywhere, it is inherent in the universal, if we want to avoid the paradox of the "observer" that determines the so-called reality. The distinction between spirit and matter falls completely. The Great Spirit and the spirit of the tree, of the Earth, of the river, of the bison return to the memory. There is another legend to be debunked, that of the so-called neutrality of science, or the independence of science from metaphysical conceptions. The official science often resorts to real intellectual acrobatics while not leaving the Cartesian paradigm, which it considers "obvious" and "acquired". Thus it finds itself in way without exit, and sometimes it is forced to deny or not to consider the facts not framed in that conceptual scheme, in order not to question the premises: and then it must make whole categories of phenomena of macroscopic interference disappear, or non-distinction, between spirit and matter, with the excuse that they would not be "repeatable". The serious difficulties of physics come from the desperate insistence in wanting to frame modern knowledge in the Cartesian paradigm. Yet even today, to appear "modern", many people love to call themselves "Cartesian" or "rational", not knowing how to defend the thought of the nineteenth century. The ideas of the French philosopher are accepted by the great majority of people simply because what we breathe from birth appears obvious to us, which means that it does not appear to us at all. But the primacy of the rational on the emotional and on the intuitive is only a prejudice of today's western culture. Opposites Western culture sees everything split in two: this is already a source of anxiety; not only, but he considers the two parts "opposite" and he lives them in a schizophrenic way, he does not consider them two indivisible poles, two sides of the same coin, two aspects of the same thing. He thinks that a "pole" is better and he wants to make the other pole disappear. Some scientists are even desperately searching for the magnetic "monopole", that is, they want to "discover" a north pole without the south pole, which has been impossible until now. But perhaps even the monopoly will be a creation of the mind. Even in magnetism it seems that someone considers the north pole "a little more beautiful" than the south pole. If we want to use the terminology of Taoism, the West wants a Yang-only universe: the Yin must be abolished; as if this made sense. However, in this way only anguish is caused. The West wants the serene without the rain, the one-way time and not the cyclic one, it wants the competition, the supremacy, the affirmation of the ego, the progress towards the future like a semirect. He wants life without death, Being without the Nothing, activity without passivity, doing without meditating, growth without diminishing. Journalists of the economic world do not even mention the decrease, they want to exorcise it by calling it "bending", which is another thing. As if it were possible to have the mountains without the valleys. This view of the world as a complementarity of Yin and Yang and not as a pursuit of a single pole is basically the philosophy for which it was very difficult for technological progress and industrial civilization to be born a thousand years before in the West. As for death, let's see how it came. Two or three billion years ago, the Earth was populated with microorganisms that reproduced dividing into two: so they did not die. There was a genetic heritage available that could be renewed only very slowly through some mutation. It was very difficult to create new organisms. To allow the emergence of variety, beauty and spirituality in life you had to have many new forms and organisms: then mix everything in a much quicker and more creative way. So Nature - which you can also call God - invented sex and death. That is why, since then, death has become useful and necessary to allow Life. Death is just the other side of life. Today the images born of the computer prevail, which some greet as non-mechanical, as holistic. But even if they introduce non-mechanical ideas of information and relationship, they are based - on an elementary level - on a binary logic, still on a SI-NO or full-empty dualism, then on a contrast. They also perpetuate the Cartesian division, renamed hardware and software. A vision of this kind can hardly be a starting point for merging or integrating the so-called two cultures, or an approach to integrate opposites. Quantum physics, on the other hand, admits a logic "YES and at the same time NO", "empty and at the same time full", and can accept non-quantitative and non-mechanical positions. With the universal indeterminacy one can integrate opposites by seeing them as complementary and co-present. This is not a trinary logic YES-NO-I DO NOT but of an indeterminate multiple possibility. Even distinctions as real-imaginary, discovery-invention, and so on, lose meaning. With the new approach we could emerge from the tangle of innumerable particles that are gradually "discovered": otherwise we will end up finding everything we are looking for, in order to find it in a certain way, that is, we can invent-discover who knows how many others " particles "in an endless sequence. By now all these "entities" have a mental content barely concealed by mathematical language. With a possible non-Cartesian conceptual refoundation, there would no longer be just a "physics" in the materialistic or prequantistic sense, but something more, making the distinction between physics and metaphysics, between "material" and "spiritual" knowledge even more evanescent. . Above all, in this sense, the new physics can be the bridge to connect the so-called "two cultures" and lead to a progressive disappearance of their distinction. Visions of the world Among the many "visions of the world" present in humanity is absurd that there exists the "true" or "just" because this would be an inexplicable asymmetry. Therefore the idea of "truth" is a characteristic that derives from the Cartesian view of the "objective" or "real" world that "is" in a certain way. The visions of the world are all equivalent and real as such and as manifested in some system of thought. There can not be the "true" or "right" one of the others. Otherwise, how could so many different visions occur and also continuously vary in time? Even religions (essential components of the world view) are all equally true or untrue. They constitute our relationship with the Invisible. We have already mentioned the concept of truth. The questions are very stimulating, so-called "definitive" answers only bring trouble. It is not a matter of asking oneself "Will not the other be right?" Because this presupposes that there is a "reason". Nor is it a matter of "always being in doubt" because this presupposes something certain and real on which to doubt, it means that one is in doubt about some "truth". The concept of doubt presupposes that of truth. It is different to abolish the true-false antithesis, considering the two terms as complementary and co-present. Thus the distinction between "the facts" and "the opinions" is illusory, because what are called "objective facts" are only the opinions of a human cultural model: in our world the opinions of Western culture are called real facts. In every culture a truth is formed, which however is as valid as any other. However, the concept of "absolute truth" and the consequent need to "discover it" can be assimilated to a cage, to an oppression. The universal appears as a spirit or a subject, depending on what is sought. As the physicist finds particles or waves depending on what he is looking for, so materialist cultures find matter, animist cultures find spirits. Any dispute over what is "right" interpretation is meaningless: it is this dualism, created by us, which gives rise to the problem, otherwise non-existent. Only in the absence of the concept of truth can one see something absolute, or non-differentiated. Truth is changeable and elusive, while variability is universal and incessant. Descartes condemned us to the truth, but already four centuries ago Montaigne had written: The concept of certainty is the most solemn stupidity invented by the human being. Moreover, these are not even novelties, if we think of ancient statements, such as: - "The Tao that can be explained is not the real Tao" (Lao-Tse); - "What I have to teach can not be taught" (Buddha); - Finally, to Pilate's question: "What is the truth?", Christ answered with silence. With regard to the integration of opposites such as "one who acts" and "the matter on which one acts", note that the same European languages prevent us from thinking of a process that occurs spontaneously, that has in itself its reason d'etre. We always think of "someone" acting, something "external" that causes events. We are not psychically equipped to conceive immanence; likewise we translate the term Taoist wu-wei, which means "spontaneous action according to the nature of things", as non-action. Every verb must have a pronoun by subject, an agent: so we are used to thinking that something is not in its place if there is not someone or something that assigns it to that place, if there is not a manager. The idea of a process that happens totally by itself almost frightens us: it seems to us that there is no authority. The idea of the God of the Old Testament and Cartesian dualism reappear everywhere. Stability and movement The ancient metaphysical divergence between Heraclitus and Parmenides, ie the contrast between becoming and being, is also a matter of complementary visions. Apparently, with the perennial and unpredictable flow, with the becoming and the laws of chaos, the dispute seems "resolved" in favor of Heraclitus, after 2500 years. The universe appears an incessant flow if we keep time as an autonomous variable. By adopting a four-dimensional approach, that is, by understanding time as a variable interconnected with spatial ones, we find ourselves in a different framework, which appears "immobile". In a Minkowsky universe - the mathematicians would say - the world seems parmenide, "immutable". But this is not about right or wrong vision. The dilemma is insoluble because it is inherently non-existent. These are complementary modalities that attract each other, not opposing positions. In one of the fragments of the same Heraclitus, it is written that the incessant change presupposes a motionless background without which movement could not be appreciated. Conclusions Let's try to sketch some conclusions. There is a reductionist approach aimed at studying the primary elementary causes of a phenomenon, which always assumes decomposable into simpler parts, and there is a holistic approach, which starts from the global properties of a system, which can not be reduced to the whole of its elements. The physicist constantly refers to the elementary particles, the DNA biologist, the sociologist to the individual, hoping to reduce the complex to the simple, and this is done for ecosystems. But the recent notion of complexity is different. Everything is worth more than the sum of the parts, because there are mutual correlations. Not only that, the way of choosing the components (which individually have no autonomous reality) is arbitrary, because it presupposes a preconceived conceptual framework, a prejudice. Reductionism arises from the dominant paradigm of the West, that is, from the idea that it is possible to break down anything, or event, into separate parts. The reductionist approach has been that followed above all in the last centuries and that has brought to the vision of the world and to the current way of life of the people of Western culture, or that have absorbed the values of this culture. The holistic approach is difficult for those born with the fundamentals of the first and is just beginning to manifest itself today in individual form or little more. So for now we can also consider ourselves free to imagine, or to hope. The passage necessary to implement and make habitual a new way of thinking is very difficult, even for those who were intellectually convinced. Each one can imagine in his own way the consequences that may derive from a possible statement on a general scale of the holistic approach. As an exercise, let us try to imagine a world in which: - opposites are only complementary aspects of the same thing; - death is simply the other side of life: Nature is made of both as inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon; - there is nothing to fight, nothing to prove, no competition to win or lose, there is no need for rankings or records. The very concepts of victory, defeat and challenge are useless; - there is nothing to conquer, manipulate, alter; - the concepts of reason and wrong, merit and guilt, are only dangerous superstructures of the mind, which excite violence and extinguish the smile; - there is no distinction between spirit and matter, between humanity and nature, between God and the world. The mind is widespread, universal, indivisible. We are not anything special or central. Since the idea of "objective reality" has disappeared, the concepts of truth and certainty become useless: with everything in continuous dynamism, the concept of truth tends to coincide with that of Nature and therefore, in a pantheistic vision, with the idea of divinity. It is good to clarify that this is not a static vision, a world in which the absence of the concept of "progress" involves an unchanging way of life, always equal to itself, or "waiting". In a sense, it can be compared to a river: it seems similar to itself, but instead flows, maybe even quickly. In the torrent there are never two moments in which the same water passes, which is continuously moving. The stones are there in the middle: they are not attacked or split, but left where they are. The water bypasses them, passes equally and descends towards the plain and the sea. It is not a matter of "not doing", but of acting according to the natural course of things, according to Nature. Thus one can continue to swing a pendulum by hitting it rhythmically, as long as the blows are synchronous with its frequency. Moreover, today in our world there is an obsessive invasion of terms such as struggle, battle, supremacy, competition, race, challenge, victory, defeat and the like: just read a newspaper to realize how many facts are interpreted with this scheme. In the new vision, we try instead to favor the cooperative and universalizing aspect towards the competitive and self-assertive one, today exalted in an abnormal way by Western culture; with another language, it is about recovering the "feminine" aspect of the world ... ... There is no need for "battles", but above all we need to understand, accept and smile. The "struggle for peace" is an ambiguous expression, because peace is a condition of non-struggle: it is an attitude. It is about making it universal. I repeat, this does not mean "doing nothing" or "letting go": the most useful action is perhaps that of spreading ideas, that is to oppose preconceived current ideas, perhaps with a smile. To actively contribute to making the idea of non-struggle universal is in any case an action. The world is not something to be conquered, but it is the whole of which we are a part. If we then have to try to "grow" something, let's try to improve our perceptual qualities to achieve a better harmony with the vital rhythm of the Cosmos. It is not that in a world of this kind there is "nothing to do" or "nothing to think about": you can admire the flowers and the trees, watch the moon and the stars, watch the birds fly and feel in tune with them , and above all to think, to participate in the universal symbiosis. If we abandon the mania of success and enjoy the pleasure of non-competition we will reborn the taste for life. In the conception that sees mind and matter as the only indivisible expression of Nature, we are certainly quite far from the idea of "brute matter" moved by something "external", from the idea of a world made for us and manipulated to our advantage (! ) and liking. The reality of today, due to the affirmation of a particular way of thinking in a human culture, the Western one, shows that the disasters caused by our species to the Global Equilibrium are of infinitely greater severity than those eventually caused by other living beings, but it is not just ethical considerations, because if the cultural premises do not change, the already enormous disasters will become irreversible. Even if Nature manages to restore a balance (as it does with other species, but on a much smaller scale), it will result in a much "poorer" situation of Life and Mind. The fact of not considering ourselves "special beings" or "in a central position" should not induce pessimism; on the contrary, it is a reason for happy serenity. Instead of the God-Person distinct from the world and judge of human actions, we find the immanent God-Nature in all things, and therefore also in ourselves, that we participate in it. Divinity observes itself even through the eyes of a marmot, or an ant, or the fascinating and mysterious sensitivity of a tree.