"The Setup"
Anti-Mission Statement Mission Statement
I'm not so into writing a mission statement. I try to keep my thoughts as fluid as I can, hence titling this a "stream of consciousness". This is because I think I would much rather be an idea generator, than a conclusive agenda pusher. Not to say that I won't draw conclusions from time to time, I don't exactly know where this is going. I like to think of this as art, and art is a co-creative process. Co-creative with what? Mmmmmm I dunno. The universe? Our subconscious? With you, Gentle Reader? This is something that I would like to delve into. What exactly do we mean when we reference the universe (Universe)?
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| Michael Edward Place Father, Founder of Entohack 7G |
Inspiration
This blog is inspired by a young adulthood spent self seeking, and a proclivity for free-thought. These in large part were inspired by my Dad. There's a blurry line between nature and nurture in regards to our commonalities. I will draw the boundary for inspiration at my Dad for practical reasons. We could go on forever, peeling back subjective decision-making on how we cut up the world in an effort to uncover just exactly where these sentiments originated. Although, to the credit of nature, we did have an ancestral chemist who was championing open-source philosophy all the way back in 1908 (this was a wonderful, and recent discovery for both me and my Father. Here is a book for which my great grandfather wrote the prologue). The real tipping point for me in undertaking this blog was my stumbling upon an article about a recent scientific discovery--a fascinating form of communication between bees and flowers that we have yet to fully explain. It has been unearthed that bee colonies who are low in pollen, have their workers bite the leaves of flowers. Until recently, this action was a mystery. Why were these bees taking small precise chunks out of leaves, but not using them or carrying them away? They weren't even eating them. #unwokebeesbro. To my gleeful surprise, it turned out that this was a kind of wild barter. The bees are asking for an advance on their paycheck. As the article put it, "...neither benefits if they’re out of sync with each other, so they’ve found ways to communicate..." Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University of London wrote, "In a sense, the bees are signaling, hey, we need food. Please speed up your flowering, and we'll pollinate you." --This quote provided me with an immense sense of connection to the idea of "connected-ness".
Inspiration Continued
I picked up a book recently, Beyond the Doors of Perception: Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm -- Into the Dreaming of Earth, by Stephen Harrod Buhner. This was, as you will soon find to your lack of surprise, recommended to me by my father, recommended to him by "Kindle User, PhD" via an unbelievable Amazon review. "Listen, I am 73 years old. I have a PhD in literature from Harvard. I taught in the academic world Buhner describes. AND I have had those experiences in my life which opened the doors of perception. But I have never quite found a guide to the heart of the earth. If I could only hand down to my children one book from all the books I have read, it would be this book. It is like a map---though not the territory---a golden thread through the labyrinth." Where have you ever heard such a recommendation?! This book makes a case for consciousness being primary. Where, all of the evolution of the stars, from the moment where physics breaks down, all the way to our planet as it is now, bearing life, has been one big "plot". What for? Consciousness has been conspiring to achieve ever-greater ability to Experience. Well, maybe that's slightly (or highly) entwined with an idea that I like to play with myself. I think the two ideas are fairly aligned anyway. The book, to the extent that a few summaries and 30 pages could tell someone, is about the individual consciousness emergent in every living being. The immeasurable relationships between impossible co-conspirators. Connected. Impossible without one another. Hopelessly, and desperately, and vitally entwined. This notion, and more specifically the notion of plant intelligence, has been on my heart lately. I will talk more about the book once I've read it, as "Kindle User, PhD" did. If you haven't read the review yet, the skillful writing itself is worth the time.
The MEAT
There were two other recent ponderings which I can pick out with clarity, that have vitalized me enough to mobilize my thoughts, and actually share them with you. Both came from a podcast. Dr. Zach Bush on the "Highwire with Del Bigtree" opened my eyes to the notion that the earth is a Collective obsessed with holding life. Hence, "Obsessive Regeneration." I find this perspective to be essential in contending with our beliefs as to what the nature of Nature is. This is an approach laden with love, and devoid of fear. "Non-rivalrous", if you will. This was a concept passed on to me by Daniel Schmachtenberger and Eric Weinstein on a wonderful episode of the Portal. The true nature of Nature is not that of the Dragon. We do not live in a time where we must continue to play out our ancient, archetypal relationship with Mother Nature (and our own nature for that matter). We are not bound to the dynamic of Nature being some great and terrible unknown we must always suffer through. Suffering will always be present in Life, of course. There will always be a snake in the garden, and to make total eradication of snakes the goal is to miss the point. There is no case for utopia here. The point is, we live in a time where so many of us have the luxury to not be in fear. Water comes from a faucet, and whole foods are easily available if you care to look for them or grow them yourself. We are primed to Thrive. Now is the optimal, and necessary time for us to realize our place in the circular, physio-spiritual bio-economy. In short, our best bet to accessing that "connected-ness", and riding its wave toward a unilaterally better future, is by adopting a non-rivalrous philosophy in our approach to understanding nature, ourselves, and the best way to apply science. We remain rivalrous towards, and oblivious to, the reaching out that our Life Source (the earth) is doing at our peril. We turn a blind eye to this call for connection at our assured (but certainly not mutual) destruction. History truly holds that evolution is a game of rivalry--an egoic competition to spread genes. It's not difficult to make powerful critiques of nature this way. Not just nature--the irony in our gravest failure points screams to render this modern day, and each day that lead to it, unjust. These ironies are a trapping force of a pessimistically conclusive mind. Not that this perspective can't be borne of good intention either. Our philosophies may be rivalrous, and our practices parasitic, but, that does not have to define us as a parasite. To stop there, ensures that Life is unjust. We have the capacity to change that. By meeting reality on its terms. Truly, how can one define something not yet witnessed in totality? Not yet witnessed without filter? Rivalry is not the "realest reality", if there ever was such a thing. It seems the overwhelming meta-narrative on this planet, is that of obsessive regeneration. Rivalry is a necessary pattern that is loud, and boisterous amidst the matrix of intangible forces. But, it is not the Ultimate Truth of this total network.
What's he really getting at?
This wasn't a mission statement. But, there are 3 basic ideas, and one beautiful conversation between a bee and a flower that have prompted these words' appearing here. These ideas are: that the Earth is an obsessively regenerative place. That we need to adopt a non-rivalrous approach to interacting/interfacing with nature. And at the tip of the iceberg, that plants are conscious. Possibly (likely [definitely]) to levels beyond our comprehension, but not beyond our interfacing. "It is like a map---though not the territory---a golden thread through the labyrinth."
Attempted Cliffhanger...
I'll discuss the inevitability of life when I wrap my own head around that more...
“'It’s a very sophisticated type of communication,' adds Santiago Ramirez, a chemical ecologist at the University of California, Davis, who wasn’t involved in the study. 'It seems bees have cracked the code that causes plants to flower.'" We'll see if I can crack the code that causes life to bring forth this experience. Or rather, develop a working relationship with that code, like a bee. He doesn't require any demystifying, or functional understanding to get by.
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