Paul Mawdsley

Calvin, I don't know if anyone else is seeing this but I am watching as you inch your way back to being more centred, more real, more connected to your genuine insightfulness. IMO, this is where your strength is. There is some you say here I don't agree with and some I do agree with but I find my agreement or disagreement to be of little importance. It is your journey that is important. I am getting a sense of you returning to a genuine struggle to see for yourself and use your own thinking to understand, rather than just throwing stuff out you have spent little effort considering simply to get a response. You are showing the angst of an artist striving to tap into his unconscious flow and genuinely give form to his vision. I say keep struggling to create your inner vision, keep working to make it clear, keep striving to find the words that communicate it accurately to others and check with their feedback to see how clearly your message received. I see a gift and a passion in there. Keep it focused and develop the skills to release them. Paul

I'm definitely siding with Tony and Brant on this set of exchanges. When someone holds a seemingly untenable position, and a position that doesn't fit well with what I have heard from them in the past, without showing signs of reflecting, questioning and evaluating their position in the presence of peer opposition, I start to question the motives for their position. Right now, Calvin, I am questioning your motives in these exchanges. Are you motivated by an inner search for the truth or are you motivated to engage others and draw attention to yourself to raise your sense of self-importance? My gut is telling me to back out of this exchange because it is becoming an energy sucker. Calvin, you seem to have lost the drive to put the work in yourself to seek the truth. This is starting to feel like someone projecting helplessness to get others to do all the work for them and make them feel important. Please prove me wrong. Paul

I don't like the word "judging". What do we mean by it, "evaluating"? People say, "Don't be so critical." Like critical thinking? My point was about judging before understanding. I see judging as the black and white evaluations we make about right or wrong, true or false and good or bad. These are all rational judgments. Beneath these are emotional judgments based on: for me or against me. When we tie our sense of self to maintaining our inside story with ourselves being elevated, our emotional judgments are in a position to subvert our rational judgments. Our need for a story that can fill the void of our damaged self-esteem sets the emotional judgment of "for me or against me" to weed out information that doesn't fit our story. This puts our emotional needs ahead of what is true, what is right and what is good. It puts emotional judgment before understanding.

Calvin, sorry my jumping off point was unclear. When I was talking about "caring about people," I was simple giving context to my perspective on caring about what others think. From my perspective I don't agree that the reason I care what other people think is because I "believe they can judge whether [i am] living correctly or not." Quite frankly, I don't care what someone thinks or judges about me when they haven't taken the time to see and understand me. Their thoughts and judgements are not of me but are of some fictional character they have in the stories in their heads. I honed this perspective while in a relationship with a woman who started to go through cycles of seeing me through projections of relationships in her past. The irony was that the safer I made her feel, the more she started reliving past traumas by projecting ghosts of relationships past onto me. She would cycle from giving me the deepest sense of visibility in my life, in some moments, to feeling like she was seeing someone else completely in others. As crazy making as it was, it was an amazing learning experience. I learned the importance of having a broad base of friendships feeding back to me a strong sense of how I am perceived and the importance of having a strong inner sense of who I am. I am now very certain about when someone's view or judgement of me is off base. Her crazy didn't become my crazy...almost, but not quite. Paul

Calvin, I disagree. Here you may be speaking for what you see inside you but my experience is very different. I care about people because I enjoy connecting and learning from them. I get pleasure out of interacting. I enjoy getting a sense of how they feel, see and think about the world...including their sense of me. I run my own business and enjoy the process of marketing and sales because I am very good at putting my authentic self, my values and my vision out there and seeing how people respond to me. I'm also good at listening to other people's feelings, vision and values so I give them a sense of validation and visibility that earns their trust. This is all part of the process of connecting. I run a specialized renovation company where I typically work closely with people for 3 to 4 weeks. This gives me a chance to step inside their lives for awhile and get a sense of what the world looks like through their eyes. I truly enjoy learning by allowing people inside and taking a look at the world through their relative perspective. It is true that there are people, or sides of people, out there who are oriented to judge first, who live through the stories they have created for themselves, or through the stories they have adopted from their culture, and see us through a lens that must defend and elevate their sense of self at all costs...even at the cost of seeing the truth about reality, themselves and others. This is a sign of them being broken inside. Yes, there is a lot of broken people out there. I find AR's story on this to be part of the problem and a distraction from personal growth. Fuck the "second hand morality" bullshit! That's just another story created to defend and elevate the self while judging others. The answer is to stop the approach of judging before understanding and pull back the covers to set truth and understanding first. It is to deal with the problem where it really exists and where we do legitimately have control: in the damaged parts of our own self. In my personal life and in my business life I open to empathy and understanding first, through a layering process, because I open to information first before my stories take shape. We shape the emotional, behavioral and philosophical space we share with people whenever we engage in any form of relationship, at any level. I do everything I can to keep the people who put judgement, defensiveness, self-elevation and power games ahead of empathy and understanding out of my life. I turn away clients who do this just as I have distanced myself from personal relationships that do this. There is no way of engaging people, who approach life from a place of judgement first, with openness, empathy and creating a healthy, mutually shared space. They will not enter any form of engagement without controlling the space of the relationship. The void where their self-esteem should be demands this control in shared space. I choose truth and sanity and walk away from these people. I choose caring, connectedness and truth so I remain open to those who can meet me in a shared space where this is safe to occur. And I have my protector-self and warrior-self to push those out of my inner layers when I accidentally let the wrong people through. I choose which people and who's insides, including their feeling, vision and thoughts about me, I allow through. I choose from a place of being open to the truth about me while being alert to signs of brokenness and controlling behaviour in them. This is putting empathy and understanding first while protecting the self. What I say to my kids every week is: What you feel, what you see, what you think and what you want is important because it is yours. This is the starting point of healthy psychology and of any healthy moral code. Lose this and your insides are broken. Break your insides and you become one of the people who put judgement, defensiveness, self-elevation and power games ahead of empathy, understanding and connectedness. You become one of the people that needs to be defended against. Paul PS: No one else's feelings, vision, thoughts or wants should ever be seen as a replacement for our own...ever. Other people's perspectives and stories are information we need to include inside our perspective but they should never replace our perspective. So much parenting is wrong because it is built around using shame and blame and guilt and intimidation and stories to replace a child's insides with the parent's. This has been the cause of so much damage. No parent or teacher or religion or philosophy or guru should ever be allowed by our culture to do this without being severely challenged.

The Bohm-DeBroigle theory is at odds with Special Relativity which is well supported by experiment. Never said they weren't at odds. In fact, I specified where they are at odds: Bohm's theory requires non-linear non-local effects. On the surface non-locality breaks the rules of a relativistic universe. However, if our reciprocal whole-to-part view of causality can show how non-local effects can emerge from from local (relativistic) interactions, then we can see there is no conflict between the Bohm-de Broglie causal interpretation of QM and relativity. Bob, please try to understand what I write before you try to negate it. There is no fun or growth in correcting misunderstanding. The geometry of a sound wave is different to the geometry of atmospheric pressure and is different to the geometry of wind currents, tornadoes and hurricanes. Does this mean these different geometries are not all emergent from a field of air that makes up our atmosphere? The EM field contains the geometry of electromagnetism and the geometry of light waves. Just because no one has been able to relate the geometry of gravitation to the EM field, this doesn't mean that this is not from where it emerges or that they do not have a common field of origin. Maybe I need to use a more fundamental and general term like energy field from which the EM field and other field geometries emerge. It might be that EM is more analogous to currents and gravitation is more analogous to pressure; different geometries in the same energy field. I do find it interesting to note that the causation of a pressure field tends to draw objects in that field together. While it is actually a field of push, each object in the field creates a push shadow and, from the outside, it looks like the objects suck. The concept of zero point energy in the EM field suggests there is a fundamental push in the energy field. If we start with the picture that the field has a push instead of objects having a pull, does the universe, or the geometry of gravitation, look any different? If it does, which is the better fit with general relativity?

Calvin, What if there is some reality in the view that "others have a more accurate view of reality than we do?" I have always had a lot of confidence in my view of the objective universe. I have never doubted my ability to see it and make sense of it. However, I have also always had the sense that I was missing something very important that some people could see and understand in a way I couldn't. The events in my personal life over the last 4 years have changed this. I have learned to see the half of the universe that I could only feel or sense was there before. Actually, MSK, right here on OL, has always struck me as one of those people who could sense the world in a way that I struggled to see. It's an ability to pull back the covers and see inside the world of hidden motives, feelings, visions, thoughts and agendas, which are read between the lines. It's the ability to read more in the tones, the non-verbal cues and the spaces we create around us, that shape social dynamics from the unconscious flow of our beings. While I don't always agree with Michael's take on things in this inner social space, I do believe it is his capacity to see this space and his ability to shape this space, from values of honesty, decency and a demand for mutual respect, that gives OL its form and subtly shapes every interaction here. I have certainly noticed that Michael has no time for people, or sides of people, that come from a place of self-elevating, self-serving power games. Our interactions have freedom within the limits set by the values of OL. These are Michael's values from his vision of inner (and inter-) social space. I like it here because of the space he has created. I don't think Objectivism attracts many people who are gifted in these inner social spaces. Objectivism and the Objectivist culture can sometimes look like a special program for objectively gifted kids with stunted emotional/social skills. OL's values are a breath of fresh air against this backdrop. If other people have a vision into parts of reality that we don't, this does not mean that our view is unimportant or that their's is more important. Learning through empathy is a very powerful tool. With a strong sense of self we can accept seeing through someone else's eyes as a means of connection and as a means of driving our own growth. Just last week I wrote an email to my ex-girlfriend thanking her for all she has helped me to see. She is truly gifted in emotional/social space. I never let go of the importance of my vision while opening to the value of her's. She helped me to see the half of the universe I was missing. My life has fundamentally changed because of this. Paul

Nah, I tend more to the plasma physics view of the universe as being cyclical between integration and disintegration.

No. The inner purpose of each individual organism is to attain, maintain and increase integration. I'm saying this is a force shaping evolution itself from inside individual organisms. This tendency towards integration can be seen as the opposing force to the second law of thermodynamics.

I feel so used and cheap! :-)

Bob, I didn't expect you to get what I was talking about. I was distinguishing from teleology. You have completely missed the point. Paul

That it is. Hume pointed out that causality is mostly in our heads. Ba'al Chatzaf Causality is just as much in the world or just as much in our heads as gravity. We have the same issue pointing to gravity as we do pointing to causality. Without a concept of causation we don't discover our concept of gravitation. Physics has only thrown out the plans and box of tools after building its house and now says the plans and tools never really existed. I find this jaw-dropping!

Calvin, You seem to have an impressive nose for finding important patterns in the chaos of life's inner experiences. I enjoy reading your perspective on things because you are very good at pointing the way to interesting issues as you strive to make sense of things for yourself. I hope to find more time to respond over the next few days. Paul

In the purely physical world (and that includes the purely biological) there are no purposes. There are events and processes. We abuse the language sometimes. We say the heart is -for- pumping blood. The fact is the heart pumps blood (it so happens that way) As long as we do not let our abuse of the language mislead us, then no harm is done. Ba'al Chatzaf Ba'al Chatzaf All life has the built-in drive to attain, maintain and increase integration. While science must see through a lens of observing and measuring from the outside, people can have perspectives beyond the confines of the scientific lens. We can say, more philosophically, that from inside an organism the drive to attain, maintain and increase integration can be conceived as a sense of inner purpose to actions. We can also consider the possibility that this drive is more fundamental than evolution itself, as the physical roots of this drive for attaining, maintaining and increasing integration can be found in plasma physics in the interaction between EM fields and ions. If we include this in our thinking, we must inject another force into the shaping of our evolutionary history, beyond random mutation and natural selection. The drive to survive and the drive to procreate can both be viewed as emerging from this drive to attain, maintain and increase integration operating within a context of random mutation and natural selection. Bob, I am not using purpose here in the sense of conscious goal directedness but in the sense that an organism will be attracted to do more of what works and less of what doesn't from a principle built within its physical nature that sets an internal goal for the organisms actions. The "purely physical world" is not just the world as seen through the lens of science. I believe in a purely physical universe but, viewed from within one of those purely physical organisms I call me, I see and experience things that science has no way to observe and measure from the outside. One such thing is a sense of purpose (as in an outward conscious goal directedness) and another is a sense that I am built around the principle of attaining , maintaining and increasing the integrity of the organism (as in an inward unconscious goal directedness that shapes behaviour). As I look around me I can see that all organisms share the latter. Science is a lens with limits, not a means of producing an absolute authoritative perspective. Even though insights into relative perspectives (Einstein's guiding vision) are required to shape an accurate scientific account of the universe, science cannot include the relativity of individual perspectives within its lens. This is what is missing in scientific accounts of the universe. There is an inner purposefulness that science cannot observe which needs to be accounted for in scientific accounts. Paul

Qualifier: Jumping in here without reading the full thread. It is the nature of the relationship between parent and child that is being questioned here. It is not enough to just fucus on physical processes when defining the nature of a human relationship. The relationship between parent and child is fundamentally different to the relationship between host and parasite. While part of the picture may look the same, seeing the bigger picture reveals the differences. Michael is taking a bigger picture perspective and is well fed by a healthy dose of common sense. He has taken a very conceptual frame of reference. Let me try the same theme from a more practical (inside the thing) reference point. There are times, as a parent, that I have felt like I am being treated like my kids' slave. Kids have a way of pushing boundaries. These are just moments and they are brief because I have an unconscious alert system built to draw my attention to feelings of being used. I have had the discussions with my kids about the difference between my role as a parent and them treating me, or the maintaining of our shared space, like I am their slave. My job as parent is to nurture their growth from dependence to independence by handing them responsibilities that are a match for the independence and freedom they naturally seek as they develop. They love the freedom and independence but would equally love to go without the responsibilities. If I allow this, I would be creating a master/slave relationship. The relationship between slave and master is very much the same as the relationship between parasite and host. One is using the other's resources without the other having a practical choice, at least in the mind of the host or the slave. And this choice goes against the core motives and intentions of the host or slave. A parent has choice (within his or her nature and the nature of his or her culture and environment) and gives resources from a place of intrinsic core motives and intensions. In my mind, this difference nullifies the claim that a fetus, or a child, is a parasite. It is also the story that stops me, as a parent, from becoming my kids' slave. I've seen other parents who carry other stories about their role as parents who do live as host to parasites or slaves to masters. Their mistake.

Michael, Love your story of stories. I find myself immersed in this social lens in every facet of life right now. I'm finding it especially interesting to think about the difference between people who make the stories more important than facts and those who make the facts more important than the stories. There is very interesting psychology and social dynamics in this difference. Have you created a discussion anywhere to open up the story of stories? Paul

For my part, Tony, I assume all of us are coming from a place of authentic decency, understanding and a desire to participate in writing on the page we share. I have a well tuned antenna that alerts me to signs that this ain't so. To borrow from Michael, my story of you tells me you are decent and genuine at the core, and you have valuable insights to contribute. It also tells me you are weary of being misperceived and you have a sense of justice that doesn't like to see other's misperceived. When misperception and misattributions arise you have a warrior and protector at the ready to defend and fight. The best dialogue emerges from a social space we create together where authentic decency and understanding are assumed, when we have an openness to the flow of evidence for reevaluating our perceptions and attributions, and when there is a sense of mutual trust that grows and gives the warriors and protectors a rest. I see no slight in presenting images, ideas and information. For the longest time I struggled with seeing other people's metaphors. My thinking was incredibly literal. While this gave me a weakness with metaphors, it gave me a strength with creating more precise models of the world. This is a big part of what drove me to think the way I do about causality and the ways it is expressed in physics and psychology. I didn't want just a metaphorical description of things. I wanted to actually see the causal dynamics, in my imagination, of what happens inside an atom, or a light wave/particle, or a tornado, or my psyche, or my brain, etc. Now I have learned to play in the land of metaphors like everyone else, but I still like seeing through my causal lens. The way I have come to see it, there is no dichotomy between linear/local and non-linear/non-local causation. The challenge is in seeing inside the reciprocal whole/part dynamic. The principle is this: the action of the parts gives form to the whole and the form of the whole limits the degrees of freedom of the parts. The parts act linearly and locally but do so in the context created by the shape of the whole, which exists and acts non-linearly and non-locally from the perspective of the parts and sets limits on how they can act, thus giving them only specific possible actions that can fit predictable probabilities of being taken. It's like the parent seeing a world of options to buy shoes for their child to go back to school. The parent has a particular budget and style in mind and wants to influence the child without pushing or pulling them because this will lead to a fight and rejection. So the parent brings it down to three choices: the white ones, the red ones or the blue ones.The child sees themselves as choosing so doesn't feel pushed or pulled. The parent has already controlled for budget and style. The parent also knows there is a high probability of choosing blue because it is the child's favorite colour and can see a probability distribution of 60% for blue, 30% for red and 10% for white based on knowledge of the child's inner drives and tastes. The parent has given shape to the system in which the child acts. The child is acting locally and linearly from her own motives but her behaviour is being shaped by the whole system the parent has created. (Btw- once you teach the child how to read the effects of the contexts and the whole systems in which they are embedded, the parent can't get away with this control system anymore. This works well for a 4 year old but is damaging when applied to an 8 year old. An 8 year old will feel manipulated because they are starting to sense the parent's control of whole systems.) This is fundamentally different to an action-reaction view of causation. Causation is about why things behave as they do. When we think of the proverbial billiard balls, we see the actions of one ball being the result of the collision with another. What we have found from careful observations, though, is that action-reaction descriptions of the universe don't account for certain types of actions like the action of a photon in the double slit experiment. In fact, this observation led to the throwing out of causal thinking from the roots of modern physics completely, which has broken the use of visualizing causal dynamics as a tool of physics. I came to see the causal dynamics of whole/part causation by visualizing how and why the particles in a vortex behave as they do. I realized that a particle would take a path defined by its existing linear action in the context of the spaces available for it to move. It will tend to travel in straight lines through spaces of least resistance. Since all the other particles in the system limit the space that our particle can move into, they limit our particle's degrees of freedom. Since the form or shape of the whole system is created by the nature and actions of the parts, the form of the whole system determines the degrees of freedom of our particle and, thus, defines the options and probabilities for its action. This is the essence of reciprocal whole/part dynamics. Non-linear and non-local effects emerge from local and linear actions in whole systems. "...it's a tiny arc of a huge circle going past your visible horizon and coming right round to bump you on the ass." ;-) Paul PS: If you apply this to Bohm's causal interpretation of QM, you get a local and linear explanation of non-local and non-linear effects that doesn't contradict relativity and opens the door to visualizing the causal dynamics of QM from the basis of complex patterns in the EM field. It also opens the door to a new way to visualize the gravitational field as emerging from the EM field with the formation of matter.

It was more of a cliff than a diving board...and I already jumped. I just trusted that there was water below and that I knew how to swim. Turns out it didn't kill me and it did make me stronger. The cliff, the darkness and the chaos below was inside me. Now there is nowhere I am scared to go and there is nothing I can't see.

Tony, I have read and reread this probably a dozen times since you posted it. I had a general sense of what you were saying but had difficulty really getting inside it. I think I've been distracted and tired but also I was missing context. I didn't know what your jumping off point was. I went back and read what I wrote about sub-selves, and specifically The Executive self, and started to clue in. Each of our sub-selves has roots in a basic orientation of consciousness, or lens, that allows us to see the world from a particular angle. There are core lenses that can compete with each other for time and space in the psyche. We can often see these as conflicting. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, based on Jung's theory of types, strikes me as being based on some of these core lenses, the conflicts between them and the resultant pattern of owning and disowning that define us as we grow up. The details of this are best saved for another thread. I agree with you about the importance of self-awareness, of what we can call meta-consciousness (consciousness of our conscious processes). My daughter made the point a couple of years ago (she was 8 at the time) that she noticed how sounds and images and thoughts stayed in her head like an echo even after the moment had past. She was quite happy to hear she was not alone and that I experience this as well. This ability to raise awareness of experience echos allows her to question and think about her own insides and to build a picture of her own processes. She is incredibly intuitive in this regard, able to paint wonderful metaphors of her own insides. I think these experience echos are the roots of self-awareness and give birth to the sub-self we can call The Executive self. The Executive self is the complex of experiences, responses, thoughts and habits that grows from these experience echos and our raising of awareness to them. I also agree with you that as The Executive self grows it gives us the chance to open to new possibilities within. It gives us the chance to choose the principles by which we function as we come to see the principles by which we function. It gives us the chance to shape our own identity and be self-determining. This allows us to shape our functioning around what we learn feeds our nature. This makes us the engine and the driver of our own happiness. Paul PS: I am playing with the idea that the meta-consciousness lens competes with the more objective outward looking lens which gives rise to the introvert/extrovert divide. I like looking beneath the labels we give things to find the underlying causal dynamics.

William, I have to say your authentic self-disclosure and forthrightness creates a ground for an honest sharing of ideas and insights. And your treatment of my original question is truly impressive and validating. You have set a tone that can allow perspectives to flow freely, without the resistance created by defensiveness. Thank you. I will respond to each of your points with some thought and depth, hopefully equaling your self-disclosure and forthrightness. I take a very humble position on Determinism. In the 'macro world' determinism is a given. What comes before determines what comes after. Today is a product of yesterday. The past determines the future. My thoughts determine my action. That is so general as to be tautological, but that is what I see at the level of my own perceptions. I have never seen anything, perceived anything directly in which I came to doubt causality as a function of time. Because I am what I am (a man/human) I am carried away by the 'arrow of time.' From a human vantage, what preceded is the very best clue to what will succeed. While I agree with you that "what preceded is the very best clue to what will succeed," I do not agree that "determinism is a given" in the macro or micro world. To say everything is causal is not the same as saying everything is determined. (I think you can feel a sense of the distinction in this very sentence.) Determinism comes from a very particular view of causality and causal modelling that assumes actions are caused from the outside-in. Implicit in the concept of determinism is a sense that the actions of all entities are determined by the rules, the laws or the actions of something outside the thing that acts. The view of causality that has grown through Aristotle, Rand and N. Branden (ARB causation), and which has sparked my own thinking, starts inside the thing that acts: what a thing is determines what it does. Despite the wording, this does not fit within the framework of determinism. While it is completely causal, it opens the door for intrinsic or self-determining factors and sheds light on a model of the universe that is completely causal while not deterministic. There are two factors to be considered in causal processes: those that operate from the outside-in (as is understood in deterministic models); and those that operate from the inside-out (as in ARB causation). In my own thinking I have seen how ARB causation can account for the appearance of a deterministic universe but the reverse is not true. For the last 20 years or so, I have played with modeling the universe from the basis of the ARB causation and seeing how I can make it fit with the known evidence from physics, biology, evolution theory and psychology. I find it does a much better job explaining things. We have come to see the issue as a choice between determinism and indeterminism (between causation and randomness) or between physical determinism and supernatural determinism (between body and mind causation). I see these as false dichotomies. It's like choosing between politicians when there isn't one I would choose. Michael talks about the balance between form and content and the balance between top-down and bottom-up processes. I think I see things the same way when I say there is inside-out and outside-in causal processes and reciprocal whole-to-part processes. Determinism only views the outside-in part of the process and we conclude either that inside-out cannot be real or, when confronted with evidence that determinism cannot account for everything, we conclude that causality is an illusion. Interesting that you mention the arrow of time. I find it interesting that when the universe is reduced to mathematical descriptions we have trouble accounting for the arrow of time and wonder if time could be bidirectional. If we start with a physically causal description of the universe there is no such trouble. I take this to be a sign that we fundamentally live in a physically causal rather than a mathematical universe. My understanding is much the same as yours. Dark energy and dark matter are something predicted in order to make the standard model fit the facts. Whether these are something real or just an "epicycle" used to make an empirically challenged model fit the facts, only time will tell. I have read some things from the lens of plasma physicists that have me leaning very heavily towards the latter. Vacuum energy, or zero point energy as it was called when I first read about it, is something that is directly measurable and tangible and has powerful implications. One such implication is that there is energy implicit in the EM field that can cause action without an outside-in force or antecedent. Our ability to manipulate technology through what we know about the mechanics of the quantum world is distinct from our interpretation about the underlying nature of the quantum world. Ptolemy could make very accurate predictions based on his models but was very mistaken about the nature of the universe. I actually think the mathematics of QM is a very accurate description of our measured universe and a profound predictor. I have no grounds, nor the credentials, nor the knowledge to question the mathematics. I am satisfied that the peer review system does its job here. I do question the interpretations offered on metaphysical and epistemic grounds. The very fact that there is no agreement on interpretation alerts my antenna. That the disagreements centre around the issue of causality, starting with Einstein himself and his challenges to the Copenhagen interpretation, puts my attention on full alert. That some major players in the QM arena have wrestled with this-- including Einstein, de Broglie, Bohm and Bell, tells me that something important is missing in current interpretations. Despite the contribution and importance of these figures to modern physics (contrast with what you have said about Sheldrake), they have been pushed out by the powers who control the establishment and have become the heretics. Bohm presented a causal interpretation of QM but, thanks to Bell's Theorem and later experiments, had to accept the reality of non-locality. This non-locality runs headlong into conflict with relativity (this made Einstein reluctant to accept it) and is one of the major reasons it hasn't gained headway against the neo-Copenhagen interpretations. If a view of causation can be presented that can account for non-linear and non-local effects from entities acting in a linear and local way thru reciprocal whole-to-part causation, the door opens wide to Bohm's causal interpretation. I get it. There are some heretics I have read, who have had well respected contributions to QM and cosmology, who I think are worth taking the time to have a look at. I have mention Bohm in QM. There is also the astronomer Halton Arp who made a reputation for studying phenomena that do not fit standard theories, especially the Big Bang. For this he was excluded from the worlds telescopes. Hannes Alfvén and Anthony L. Peratt have made significant contributions to plasma physics and have presented an alternative theory to Big Bang cosmology which has gained little ground in a funding controlled political climate dominated by a Big Bang establishment. I am attracted to each of these "heretics" of science because their work has a better fit with my view of causality than does the established theories. I am not attracted to heretics for the sake of being heretic. IMO they are worth looking into and reading about. Again, here I would say I'm not a determinist but am a believer in strict causality. Causality and determinism are not the same thing. This may seem very disorienting. I'm still trying to make my perspective clear here. As I see it, determinism describes a world where the actions of an entity in a given moment are determined by the chain of interactions that preceded it such that there is never another possibility than the one that unfolds. This does not fit my sense of life, of reality or of causality. In me there is the possibility of creative volition fed by an awareness and understanding of my world that can change the course of my life should I orient myself to proactivity over reactivity. Determinism is defined by a reactive causation. I see the existence of proactive causation in the Aristotelian sense of energy intrinsic to the entity that acts. Proactive causation breaks strict determinism because there are both intrinsic and extrinsic causal factors. An account of only the extrinsic factors will never produce a full description of events. Starting with intrinsic energy produces a view of the universe that is a better fit with the facts than starting with a strictly reactive and deterministic model of causation. Since our view of causation typically takes shape subliminally, adopted on a unconscious level from the way others share their vision of the world or from how we connect the dots of our experience without focused thought, few of us ever come to explore or question its nature. It is hard to even imagine what the universe might look like through a different causal lens. Difficult as it may be, there is no way to assess an alternate view of causality without taking time to explore it, look at the world through its lens and test whether or not it creates a better fit to reality. In my opinion, the power of Aristotle's, Rand's and N. Brandens vision of the world came from the particular model of causality they carried with them that shaped their visions of existence. If I had the chance to ask Nathaniel Branden a question about his work, this would be the question I would ask him: how important was your model of causation in shaping your vision of human nature and of existence? (I write this thinking there may be a slim possibility that NB could respond.) Here is something I have learned. Once we challenge our implicit notion of causation and open to seeing other possibilities, we open to knew ways to thinking about these questions of QM, cosmology and Will. Michael has said we experience the world through the stories we carry inside. We need to take the covers off this story and look to creatively rewrite it to make it better fit all the facts. Causality is embedded in the language of the stories themselves. It is a story implicit in every story. It is the framework that gives shape to every story. This makes it harder to penetrate but not impossible. Causality is the sword for the philosopher just as measurement is the sword for the scientist. For each these are the standard of objectivity. Put simply I see the basic stuff of the universe as having the energy for action built into its nature as opposed to the idea that some ethereal energy is transferred between things (as in deterministic theories). In my mind this is a more realistic perspective than assuming the stuff and the energy are distinct and separate, leaving us in the state of dualism. I have found it quite amazing how easily this starting point creates a model of the universe to fit observations, even accounting for the emergence of relativity, gravitation, QM, life from inanimate matter and creative volition from more basic life forms. All this from a simple substance with a simple nature with a more complex model of causation. Parts with proactive causation combined with a reciprocal whole-to-part causation produces a non-deterministic worldview that is completely causal and can account for why relativity exists and why non-local QM effects exist. I figure this is worth exploring. Paul

I appreciate your point, Brant, between linear and nonlinear thinking. There is an interplay between the two modes of processing. Linear focused thinking works better for separating out the parts and building from the bottom-up. Non-linear flowing thought is great for pattern recognition and pattern generation which is holistic and works from the top-down. When they work together they can each act as a guide for the other's processes. The holistic patterns we discover shape where the parts build to and the parts we have identified create the "dots" that our holistic patterns get shaped around. Again, we see reciprocal causation (and a balance in importance) between whole and parts, even in the way we think. It would be more accurate to say I champion the interplay between linear and non-linear thinking. I think it can be argued that it is the breakdown of this interplay and a separation of linear and non-linear thinking that is responsible for many a "haunted house." Religion, for example, works by breaking this interplay apart. Take the stories and the metaphors produced from non-linear thinking on the one hand, and the rules (shoulds) for how to think and feel and act that come from linear thought on the other, and see how powerful a hold you can have on people when you inject this as a control system into their souls. If accepted, it causes a complete breakdown of their own independent interplay between linear and non-linear thinking and a breakdown of their autonomous creative systems in the most fundamental parts of life. I look at the ancient Greeks as the height of balance between linear and non-linear thinking. Take control of a person's (or a culture's) stories, and take control of their creative volition (more descriptive than free will) by injecting rule following, and you stand as puppet master and they are your puppet. Power seekers are driven to be puppet masters and are drawn to these control systems at every level. The greatness of the Greeks was brought down by this program and the last two thousand years has been defined by it. It goes well beyond religion though. It is in our churches, our schools, our places of work. It is in our homes. It is a software virus running rampant inside us, shaping how we feel about and see things, past on through our empathic connectedness with those we need. Our culture still struggles today to break free of it. I know I have felt it and fought it all my life. Now I'm really starting to see it. I like the idea of the covers coming off. I like the idea of a world where we take control of our own stories and take control of our lives through creative volition.

Trying to get caught up a little... When I first came onto OL I would refer to the fictions each of us carry about the world and to seeing the world through lenses and to acting in the world from modes. This way of framing the story of me and my world is still very much at my centre. Much of what you are writing, Michael, about stories and modes sounds very familiar. I talked about having orientations of consciousness that could be related to different sub-selves. I could see that much of how we learn comes from our ability to immerse ourselves deeply and empathically into the perspectives of others, allowing us to experience the universe from a multitude of perspectives and orientations. I came to realize that much of what defines us as individuals is the pattern of owning and disowning that we apply to the different parts of our psyche. Much of what we disown to survive childhood is our authentic, separate selves so we can keep the love and connection we receive through our empathic connected selves. It seems one of the stories we all seem to adopt along the way is the story of shoulds. Rand talked about how just as what a thing is determines what it does, what we are as volitional beings determines what we ought to do. I am in absolute agreement with what I consider to be some of Rand's deepest ideas here. Shoulds that come from who and what we are, from how we authentically see and feel and think things, are the healthy shoulds. The shoulds that come from others, the blame and shame and guilt and judgement (meant to cut without understanding) that works via empathic connection on our perceptions, are the disgusting, manipulating controlling shoulds at the base of every power game which bypasses our immune system of awareness causing so much disease of mind. One of the most powerfully devastating shoulds we take in is the shoulds about what parts of us we should disown. It is literally a soul destroying virus injected into our minds. I have struggled to find a different story that allows me to be all of me. I never wanted to disown any part of me and I wanted to understand how to nurture wholeness of being for me and for those I care about. I found a story that guided me a lot in an Alanis Morrisette song, Everything: I can be an asshole of the grandest kind I can withhold like it's going out of style I can be the moodiest baby and you've never met anyone Who is as negative as I am sometimes I am the wisest woman you've ever met. I am the kindest soul with whom you've connected. I have the bravest heart that you've ever seen And you've never met anyone Who's as positive as I am sometimes. You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can't relate And you're still here I blame everyone else, not my own partaking My passive-aggressiveness can be devastating I'm terrified and mistrusting And you've never met anyone as, As closed down as I am sometimes. You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can't relate And you're still here What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go I'm the funniest woman that you've ever known I'm the dullest woman that you've ever known I'm the most gorgeous woman that you've ever known And you've never met anyone Who is as everything as I am sometimes I have come to see that when we embrace the different parts of the self from a place of understanding, instead of a place of judgement, we start to create inclusion instead of exclusion in the self. We can have the different parts of us, like the authority of the Big Shot or the objectivity of the Witness, all as part of us. Some parts I find myself centred around are the Explorer, the Adventurer, the Playful Child, the Entrepreneur, etc. Each describes a certain mindset, a specific orientation of consciousness that shapes how I process information, construct my stories and act in my world. I have found, by bringing in all these different and sometimes conflicting parts, a great deal of chaos is created as I shift from lens to lens, mode to mode, orientation to orientation. I've even found that once in a given orientation, it doesn't like to let go of control. When I'm in writing mode I don't want to shift to work mode. When I'm in work mode I don't want to shift to Dad mode. I call this psychological inertia. You can see it in the kid who doesn't want to stop playing to take a bath, and then doesn't want to come out of the bath to play again. I have allowed myself to live through and witness the chaos of allowing these different parts to flow in and out according to the needs of context and my inner motives. I guess I have been combining an Explorer with an Experimenter self. What has emerged is a need for an Executive self that monitors and manages and balances the flow between the sub-selves. This executive sees through a dialectical lens, allowing multiple ways of being and responding to a situation, to exist suspended in a superposition of possibilities. It then has the executive position of choosing amongst outcomes. I see this as being where much of the "free" comes from in free will. And this, ultimately, is the only way to step out of the story to find the truth hidden between the stories. It's a very powerful truth finder. Paul PS: WSS- I was hoping to respond to your post tonight bringing things back to the original thread but have run out of time. It is a priority.

It's funny, I see each of us struggling in our own way to get back to a calm, sstable centre so we can move forward again. It's very cool actually. I just dealt with my kids today after they had an escalation in conflict brought about by judging before understanding. The tool I used was to get each to listen to the other put blame and guilt and judgment aside, and find a place of understanding the other's perspective before judging. You could feel the tension leave the air. It seems to work here too. Lol. Michael, what you are saying about learning before judging is very similar to what I said on another thread about empathy before judgement. Things are getting interesting. I have so many posts I want to respond to with depth. Paul

Thanks Michael. I enjoy listening to your story. I enjoy listening to everyone's story. I am trying to point to what I think are the differences in our stories so we can go deeper to find the truths beneath the stories. I have not done any attacking or scapegoating in this exchange. I am also seeking the truth beneath Sheldrakes story with an I to deep truths I have explored and tested. I would like to respond more fully than I often have time for, with more care about misrepresenting my perspective of your story and others. I write many of my responses on my phone when I find a few minutes to write and don't always get the chance to evaluate my posts from the lens of how well they convey my intended view of your and other's perspectives. I do think my basic orientation to consideration and valuing other's views comes through though. Dialectics allows us to step out of our own story into a meta-perspective and hold our own and other's stories suspended on equal ground for evaluation. This is how I approach other people's views, from a dialectical lens. Are you including this truth in your story of me that is behind your vision, feelings, thoughts and responses? Or are you painting me with a different brush? Paul

Michael, I agree with Carols's take on this. I think you were seeing patterns in wss and drew a conclusion based on similar patterns you have seen in others in the past. I think there are other ways of interpreting these patterns. Personally, I don't think wss was coming from the motives you ascribe to him. Paul Some peer review with an alternate view.