“If the principle of local causes fails and, hence, the world is not the way it appears to be, then what is the true nature of our world? … There really may be no such thing as ‘separate parts’ in our world (in the dialect of physics, ‘locality fails’). In that case, the idea that events are autonomous happenings is an illusion. This would be the case for any ‘separate parts’ that have interacted with each other at any time in the past. When ‘separate parts’ interact with each other, they (their wave functions) become correlated (through the exchange of conventional signals) (forces). Unless this correlation is disrupted by other external forces, the wave functions representing these ‘separate parts’ remain correlated forever. *”
[* If the Big Bang theory is correct, the entire universe is initially correlated.]
Gary Zukav “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”
Came across this article from The Independent. Should we be pleased that mainstream “science” is at last getting around to recognising the mind-body connection? Someone pinch me please. Are we awake? Like, how on earth did we get to the place that divorces mind from body to this extent to begin with? Twenty years after physics demonstrates pretty incontrovertibly the non-separability of the entirety of existence (see previous Article of the Moment and quotes from David Bohm and Gary Zukav above and in the last post), medicine is still labouring under the delusion of the separability of a single human being!
Can you tell where your body ends and your mind begins in, for instance, a simple activity like responding to feelings of hunger by fixing yourself something to eat? Seems that old adage “divide and conquer!” is relevant here – break up the integrity of an entity and it can no longer maintain cohesion and function as a whole. No wonder then that you end up with assumptions like the sum of a healthy human being is merely a happy accident of good teamwork between its various component parts! In this context, the fact that our health-care system (health, from OE hal, whole) is falling apart and failing so many seems not so much unfortunate as inevitable. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men …
Why does the concept of taking responsibility for health problems get people so hot and bothered? Blundering blindly into a situation about which we have scarcely even the most rudimentary knowledge and awareness doesn’t mean we’re to blame for it! Though of course the idea of “blame” may be an inevitable corollary of the delusions of omnipotence that seem to afflict certain “experts” amongst us, but since when has the human race exhibited much collective intelligence concerning the nature of life? Rather, individuals who do have been consistently and systematically marginalised (or worse) throughout history in the interests of propping up the latest house of cards that claims to represent how it all works. The territory must defer to the map of it, and if it’s not on the map then it doesn’t exist. Whatever happened to reality itself? Ah, well that’ll be inadmissable anecdotal evidence, won’t it?
Francis Bacon – the father of the ‘scientific method’ – must be turning in his grave. He proposed a system of inductive enquiry for investigating the workings of nature (as opposed to the Aristotelian deductive method of his day) and “science” was born. What this means is that theories and models of existence are derived from observation of what happens, not the other way round, and continually tested in relation to what happens to make sure they’re a reasonable description of it. (Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy, also pursued the inductive method, which is how he arrived at his theories and principles.) If something happens which is not accounted for by the model, then the model needs to be questioned every bit as much as the event.
So much of what passes for “science” these days seems to lack even basic common sense, something that’s stood the human race in reasonably good stead for several millenia. But perhaps even that’s preferable to the overweening hubris that would have you believe that there are “experts” out there who actually know what’s going on. Notice how few animals got washed away by the tsunami?
Coming back to the article there’s a really critical point to this, particularly in relation to the closing paragraph. Take away responsibility and you take away response-ability. If people with serious illnesses learn that they have the power to influence their condition rather than remaining hapless, helpless and hopeless victims of it, then they have something to work with. If they remain in ignorance about such abilities, then how much more easy is it to succumb to the hopelessness which results in such a poor prognosis?
For more on this subject, see the essay on Vitalism from the General Essays section.
“Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul
Nor beauty born out of its own despair
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil
O Chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance
How can we tell the dancer from the dance? “
William Butler Yeats “Among School Children”
