The Game of Becoming

Part 43 of Prisoners of the Real

Although history illustrates that one civilization may be buried beneath the foundations of another, this isn't always the case. Sometimes only the ashes remain. If human society is to be rescued and transformed, moving from the aggressively “rational” to the receptively Dionysian, many of our psychic road maps will have to be redrawn. Dionysian capacities are latent possibilities. But they may or may not become actualities.

One step toward the necessary change is honest reflection concerning our fundamental assumption about ourselves. The heart of the rational thesis is the belief that humans are essentially self-serving beasts. This belief has produced fear of our neighbors, and led to wall-building and extreme defensiveness. It has been safer, or so it has seemed, to turn control over to impersonal structures than to trust human nature. Gradually, each village, city, state and nation has come to look upon its neighbors as threats, "aliens," competitors who will either dominate or be controlled. Domination means defeat. And defeat, at the hands of the dehumanized beast called the enemy, normally means destruction.

Fear has given power to elite competitors who claim that control over others – in other words, victory – is the only route to independence and security. But in a hostile world, independence actually turns out to mean isolation. And the "rational" people who achieve the mastery they seek so diligently through self-discipline, ethical neutrality and mechanical effort find at the end that a beast confronts them still. The arrogant dragon has become themselves.

But this beast, who also whispers that everyone else is a brute, is no more than a nightmare image brought into the "real world" by our own minds. It is imagination run amok within a psyche that fears imagination and other natural impulses.

And yet...it can be changed. Reshaped by human will into a pleasing form.

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Trust and love aren't merely options that we can take when we have finished with hard-nosed business dealings in the "jungle.” They are demands of the self for warmth and aceptance and "irrational" emotions.

To this rational managers reply, "Of course, that may be so, but it is also important to be prepared for the unexpected. We have to watch out for those who have rejected their better angels. That's why we need a strong defense to ward off predators, and an aggressive offense to push 'em back." Some also argue that intuition, while acceptable in those not in positions of power, is no substitute for facts. And after all, they will add, it's no crime to guard your flanks, lock up at night, keep a weather eye out, or even to get ahead of the game. "You see," they claim, "the name of the game is winning."

But is it? Just as we teach our children about the value of competition we also tell them that it isn't winning but how you play the game that really matters. Perhaps our task then is simply to figure out what the game of living really means to us as individuals and as a group of potentially beautiful beasts.

There is a life's work for all of us.

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In the end, the purpose of the game isn't winning. It is playing well. In order to do that in any group experience, as most athletes know, you must work both against and with competitors. The most exhilarating moments aren't those in which you devastate an unwary opponent, but rather occur when the outcome remains in play. Then you feel a dynamic tension of united opposition, a cooperative exchange in which the elation of winning emerges from the excitement generated along the way.

Overcoming the fear that others will dominate us, let us down, steal affection like some finite commodity, and rob us of time, we must begin to build a new faith. Neither time nor love is finite. When our boundaries expand far enough beyond our physical borders, they can become infinite. Dragons need not be fire-breathing beasts. They can breathe life-sustaining warmth if they wish, if they are convinced that is their purpose.

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When Konrad Lorenz wrote On Aggression, many readers confused the word "aggression" with "violence," even though the ethologist emphasized that most animals actually avoid killing. He subsequently realized that in translating his title from German the connotation of the word "aggressivity" had been lost.

Lorenz' insight is that animals and humans do seek some sort of dominance, in the form of a drive that differentiates all of us as individuals. "If you lack personal aggressivity," he wrote, "you are not an individual. You have no pride in yourself and you are everyone else's man." The collective enthusiasm that, unfortunately, produces war is also the motivator for our most creative achievements. "Without the instinct of collective enthusiasm, a (human being) is an emotional cripple; he cannot get involved in anything."

The point is that aggressivity is actually a potential force for spontaneous invention, and doesn't necessarily imply hostility or evil. But when aggressivity lacks purpose, dominance can produce devastation. Purpose tells us where we are heading, and when we have arrived. Its absence leaves us roaming the planet, searching for victories we won't even recognize.

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The key to our purpose is intuition, more reliable as a guide than analysis alone has been. The Dionysian approach – spontaneous, lunar-centered, reflective rather than reactive – rests upon the naturally aggressive nature of any inspired idea that struggles to impose itself upon reality.

Intuitive processes demand intimate involvement with the subject of one's attention. You can't be a detached, disinterested observer and maintain the necessary intellectual sympathy. Centuries ago rational men resigned themselves to watching and reacting to what they observed. They called it the "practical" path. In contrast, the Dionsyian path is a "romantic" alternative, one that recognizes the value inherent in the infinite variability of individual acts.

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The Receptive brings completion to the Creative.
And feels the pulsing rhythms of matter in space
which is nature.
Creativity is the light power of consciousness;
thinking and seeing.
Receptivity is the dark power of what is inside;
unconscious and
Invisible. What I cannot see may feel threatening.
By yielding, the dark mystery is revealed.
My Creative spirit soars to Heaven and leads with
energetic ideas.
As I am Receptive and absorb them in practical and
Earth-bound work.
A doubled Earth signifies fixed lasting conditions
and mysterious
Powers within that have strength to bring Creativity
to birth and nourish it devotedly.

-- Adele Aldridge, I Ching Meditations

The image of harmony within duality is the root of many knowledge systems. The first two hexagrams of the I Ching illustrate the need for both aggressive creativity and intuitive receptivity. The hexagram on which the meditation above is based, the six broken lines known as K'un, The Receptive, says that although The Creative begets things – ideas, plans, machines – they are brought to life through the complimentary action of The Receptive, which helps us to act in conformity with our situation. This bespeaks an attitude of acceptance.

As Richard Wilhelm explained in his commentaries on the Chinese oracle, the "superior" person allows him or herself to be guided, learning from each situation what is demanded and then following this intimation from fate. This calls for both effort and planning. The Receptive is a planner who uses solitude to discover plans that grow from unique experiences.

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Both formal and intuitive knowledge are valuable in building humane institutions. As Bergson wrote, instinct and intelligence, manifested through voluntary and reflex actions, embody two views of a primordial, indivisible activity which can become both at once.

"As a rule," he explained, "they have been developed only in succession...one of them will be clung to first; with this one we shall move more or less forward, generally as far as possible; then, with what we have acquired in the course of this evolution, we shall come back to take up the one we left behind." Of course, cooperation would be preferable, with each one intervening when circumstances require. But the signs don't point in this direction. For several centuries we have relied on the rational, the predictable, the efficient, the material, the absolute. Therefore, it is likely that, as we fully realize the physical and psychic costs of this approach, we will turn – perhaps too much – to the intuitive, the spontaneous, the romantic, the spiritual, the relative.

Still, there is always hope. If we are wise the pendulum will not swing too far this time around from the cool, harsh light in which we now stand toward a fiery darkness. If we are wise the rational and Dionysian will not become antagonists again.

The two are, after all, complimentary opposites. They could fuse into a new synthesis of intuition and analysis and create a community of subjects, a flexible whole in which science and art merge, in which infinity is glimpsed in its temporary structure, and through which we humanize our machines rather than allowing mechanisms to destroy us.

In such a New World, we would replace static order with dynamic tension, re-energizing the dialectic of spirit and matter. In that world, Apollo and Dionysus unite to play the endless game of becoming.

Until then, let us dream.

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Originally posted on June 3, 2010. To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

Reframing Reality: Finding the Words

Part 27 of Prisoners of the Real

If relationships between human beings, not to mention between humanity and nature, are to be transformed so must the language used to describe them. We simply can't expect to change and evolve without more fitting forms of expression.
      Abraham Maslow, who provided the intellectual foundation for what became known as humanistic psychology, understood this dilemma. The archaic language of science couldn't encompass his new view of human nature. How could the subjective and private nature of a peak experience, for example, be adequately discussed in an "objective" or analytical way? The formal, academic style of psychological journals, he realized, was inconsistent with the unconventional and highly personal ideas he was pursuing.
      "Journals, books and conferences," Maslow wrote, "are primarily suitable for the communication and discussion of the rational, the abstract, the logical, the public, the impersonal, the nomothetic, the repeatable, the objective, the unemotional. They thereby assume the very things that we 'personal psychologists' are trying to change."
     Maslow's approach, a 'third force' combining Gestalt theory and health-and-growth psychology, demanded a more personal language, one that acknowledged and respected the inner world. Like many artists and a growing number of scientists, Maslow saw that the worship of facts had become the disease of "enlightened" humanity, and turned to personal testimony in the hope of sharing the fruits of his quest. If a philosophy of science that included experiential knowledge was to be constructed, he concluded, communication would have to candidly express its assumptions.
       "Most of our 'objective' work is simultaneously subjective," he noted near the end of his life. Since the external problems that we usually approach scientifically are often also our internal problems, Maslow believed, our solutions are also self-therapies in the broadest sense.
       Acutely aware of the depersonalizing effects of extreme rationalism – flight from impulse, emotion, and the personal – Maslow traced the cause to the Aristotelian framework. The separation of subject and object discouraged fusion and forbade integration. "Respecting the rational, verbal and logical as the only language of truth," he wrote, "inhibits us in our necessary study of the non-rational, of the poetic, the mystic, the vague, the primary process, the dreamlike."
       Despite his warnings and those of other subsequent critics, however, most discussion and literature in the field of psychology, leadership and organization theory since Maslow has remained impersonal and "objective." But a gradual transformation has been underway in the fields of journalism and fiction writing. Over the last haf century both forms of expression have provided increased space for speculation. In journalism, the process began during the 1960s, just as fiction was drifting away from social realism. The so-called "new journalism" that emerged was a break with the reporting of isolated events. Reporters began to consider society as a whole.
       Adopting techniques of literary realism, journalists developed devices that gave their writings an immediacy and emotional impact missing in "objective" reporting and surrealist fiction. For a time subjectivity returned to reporting under the banners of "advocacy journalism" and the non-fiction novel. According to Tom Wolfe, a move from news reporting to this field led naturally to the discovery "that the basic reporting unit is no longer the datum, the piece of information, but the scene, since most of the sophisticated strategies of prose depend upon scenes." The old rules no longer apply when a journalist takes this leap, said Wolfe, "it is completely a test of his personality."
       Speculative reporters turned from the "objective" concerns for verification, specificity and readability that dominated conventional journalism to the uniqueness of each experience and the writer's own observations and intentions. The presentation ranged from the polemic to the dramatic, as these media pioneers pondered their subjects in various aspects and relations.
       This journalistic revolution didn't significantly alter the way the mainstream press dealt with events. It did, however, subtly expand the range of permissible expression, paralleling trends in documentary film making, where the subjective point of view became a powerful tool, as well as in non-fiction writing. As the 1960s began, few authors dared to bring their personal experiences into the consideration of issues in areas such as politics, sociology, and psychology. Today "testimonial" touches are commonplace. In certain fields, notable pop psychology, they have virtually become a requirement.
       Meanwhile, speculative fiction – an outgrowth of science fiction and fantasy – moved from the margins to the mainstream. The merging of surrealism and sci fi began with writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula LeGuin, Samuel Delany, Harlan Ellison, Romain Gary and others who explored current and potential realities. Since then speculative fiction has become a highly popular genre, often affirming the view that the arithmetically predictable model of the world is only one of many possibilities.
       Among the most direct early expressions of this view was Colin Wilson's synthesis of H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells and his own theory of evolutionary existentialism in The Mind Parasites. With this breakthrough novel, Wilson attacked both the notion of "objective" reality and the assumption that humans have only a few avenues of interaction with the external world. 
      Wilson's story follows two archeologists who, gradually drawn into research on psychokinesis (PK), discover that throughout human history "mind parasites" have been holding us back. The parasites have infected the best minds on the planet with "a deep feeling of psychological insecurity that made them grasp eagerly at the idea of science as 'purely objective' knowledge." Through the "direct action of mind upon matter," however, humanity begins to fight back:
       “There was immense exhilaration as our minds combined, such a sense of power as I have never known before. All at once, I knew what is meant by the phrase: we are 'members of one another', but in a deeper, realler sense than before. I had a vision of the whole human race in constant telepathic contact, and able to combine their psychic powers in this manner. Man as a 'human' being would cease to exist; the vistas of power would be infinite.
       “Our wills locked like a great searchlight beam, and stabbed out at the moon...It was suddenly as if we were in the middle of the noisiest crowd the world has ever known. The disturbing vibrations from the moon were transmitted directly along the taut cable of force that stretched between us.”
       With the combined will of a group, says Wilson's tale, even the moon can be moved. Ultimately, the beams of psychic energy that the parasites have for so long been directing at the Earth are pointed away into space. PK is also used to shield the Earth from these destructive emanations, and even to push the moon toward the sun, so that its "bodiless inhabitants might once again be free."
       Mixing philosophy, myth and science fantasy, Wilson created a mood of existential realism, the novelist's version of Alfred North Whitehead's speculative philosophy. In Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead explained that such a philosophy "guards our higher intuitions from base alliances by its suggestions of ultimate meanings, disengaged from the facts of current modes of behavior."   
       Our discussions cannot be restricted solely to evidence provided by the five senses, Whitehead explained, or by acts of conscious introspective analysis. The sources of evidence must include also language, social institutions and action, fused together through a language that interprets the other two.
       The evidence of language is delivered through the meaning of words, the grammatical forms, and other meanings miraculously revealed in great literature. These insights, said Whitehead, provide us with new meanings, linguistic expressions for meanings as yet unexpressed, a triumph of dramatic intuition over temperamental skepticism. In Whitehead's view, as long as the imperfect nature of language is recognized, it can be a convivial tool rather than a master. In particular, speculative expression can reestablish the human circuit of instinct and intelligence, asserting that inherent flashes of spontaneity are valuable parts of human wisdom.
       Or, as Whitehead put it, in judging the rise, culmination and decay of social institutions, "we have to estimate the types of instinct, of intelligence, and of wisdom which have cooperated with natural forces to develop the story. The folly of intelligent people, the clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes."

Next: Glimpses of Uncertainty

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

The Process: Time, Participation, Enabling

Part 42 of Prisoners of the Real

Time: The Dionysian guide lives in the immediate, nonlinear and simultaneous present, where work is performed at the fitting or suitable time. In short, work is timely, and the clock is de-emphasized. Decisions about what is fitting, along with the duration of work, become matters of individual responsibility or collective dialogue.

You might say that time turns from a line into a point, manifested in the present-centeredness of experiences and the desire to remain receptive to patterns of activity. The Dionysian leader knows that any action, at any point, can bring another cluster of acts into existence. Conscious of this quantum probability, she sees individual events as integral parts of a patterned whole. At each moment all things are possible. As I type these words, it becomes a different computer screen. The relationship between the blank page and the page with words is not temporal. The two are separate entities within a patterned whole.

At every moment each of us can create a totally different world. Every action alters the pattern of the whole.

Participation: These comments stress the Dionysian leader's use of a wide variety of resources to reach collectively established goals. As a result, fluidity of personnel becomes crucial, both in terms of re-arranging relationships and allowing free movement into and out of the group.

We have reached a moment in world history in which the reality of impermanence often provokes a fanatic quest for things that don't change. Many institutions rigidify in the mistaken belief that internal stability can modulate fluctuations in the "outside world." Dionysians respond, on the other hand, by openly acknowledging the temporary nature of all structures and systems. In practice, this means matching knowledge and skills with specific purposes and objectives. Once these have been achieved or change radically, however, the system and its sub-groups also shift.

The matrix approach to organization is a way to enhance participation through frequent changes in personnel relations and the shared pool of information. In this approach participation depends on the congruence of individual and collective purposes, the specific knowledge and skills people bring to the group, each member's contact with outside groups and her or his integration into a sub-group. In short, people select one another as they find their purposes for coming together. They aren't asked to contribute specific amounts of time but rather to commit themselves to certain goals. Thus, one person may be part of more than one group.

Such a situation can be valuable to both groups, since interactions will tend to increase and relationships between purposes may be more fully understood. However, it must be said that this kind of "circuit-making" participation calls for small groups. In fact, most Dionysians believe that human beings function best in small societies where problems remain of a manageable size. That is not to say that these concepts are inapplicable to the enormous urban societies of our time. But the Dionysian thrust is clearly away from creation or maintenance of empires of any kind, based on the evidence of history that they inevitably promote violence and war.

Opposition to violence doesn't imply complete rejection of conflict. On the contrary, Dionysian guides may even lead their groups toward conflict, confident that group values can be clarified and realized through the dynamic tension of opposition. In the search for harmony, peace is not confused with liberation. Peace can be imposed through repression – in many organizations implemented through forms of "group-think" – rather than being promoted through expression. Liberation, on the other hand, is possible only when dissent and disagreement aren't just tolerated but also encouraged. Put another way, liberated participation calls for the unity of opposites.

Enabling: The Dionysian leader replaces control with guidance. She acts as an enabler who assists organizational peers to understand the whole, break free of boundaries, and create new realities for the group. The guide introduces variety and change, offering comfort and occasionally some needed direction to individual or group activity. Rather than reigning supreme as some post-industrial headman, the leader is the group's shaman and critic. Convinced that end-states are merely the product of images brought into the world of matter through group will the Dionysian leader concentrates more on the creation of conceptual frames of references and the designing of means than on refining images as actualities. She or he may participate in that work as a part of one or a number of sub-groups. Yet it is the image and not the leader that directs the group.

The nature of Dionysian collectives supports changes of role, and the managerial role is not exempt. At one point or another almost every group member serves as a manager. This change, like most others, will depend on history, current perceptions, and the nature of the specific tasks that lay ahead. The shifting of managerial roles will decrease the destructive conflicts that result from one person's constant assertion of authority and dominance. When a Dionysian leader has the opportunity to observe someone else in that role, she or he is able to compare the new manager's actions with her/his self-image. That experience will promote further growth and change.

The term "guide" is often used to describe spiritual leaders. "Guiding is an ancient and honorable role," Robert Masters and Jean Houston once noted in a study of consciousness-raising process, "and the guide re-emerges now, at a critical point in human history, to perform services never more urgently or more profoundly needed." The research of Masters and Houston outlined a variety of guidance methods, many of which can be applied by Dionysian leaders. As guides, for example, Dionysians ought to observe others closely and clearly communicate what they intend to say. They should remain alert to non-verbal communication, be able to receive and utilize gestures, facial expressions, and other non-verbal cues. The researchers have also warned, however, that guides can easily turn from enabling to "ego-tripping," and therefore suggest that other members of a group not repress their perceptions if or when this occurs. The changing of guides from time to time will also reduce this danger.

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The Dionysian leader is an idealist system-changer who uses an ability to move inside of what she sees in order to inspire others and herself. Posing challenges for choice, she widens the boundaries of experience, accepts the timeliness of activities, harmonizes the system with the environment by changing both, observes perceptions of others and promotes satisfaction toward the end of invention.

As an organizational guide, she is an antithesis to the dominance of routine-operational modes of management. The potential to move from rational to Dionysian management exists within all of us. As structural decay in rational collectives, from the nuclear family to the nation-state, leads to annihilation and regeneration, the Dionysian spirit is revived.

"When rationality is not possible," wrote William Thompson, "because the institution of reason...overloads the mind with data without meaning, the institution perishes in its own excremental productivity. Once the individual is without an institution, he (sic) can ascend to suprarational levels of imagination, intuition and creativity or descend to the levels of subrational panic." The promise of Dionysus is our freedom to choose the hopeful option.

Next: The Game of Becoming

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

The Process: Info & Communication

Part 41 of Prisoners of the Real

Information: The two phases of Dionysian process rest on the continual revealing of meaning through the sharing of qualitative information. Two types of information are sought: some relates to philosophical issues, some to practical affairs. The first is ends-oriented, the second oriented toward means, as the ideal choice becomes real.

The use of dialogue and testimony, general searches prior to directed inquiries, and associational techniques for brainstorming aim at expanding the group's tolerance for ambiguity. The inspired idea, which may come from the guide or any member of the group, initiates an interactive process during which each person follows a different path beyond the borders of current experience.

The idea, a synthesis of past observations and reflective "seeing," is a reference point to which everyone can relate as they develop their own meanings and strategies. Depending on a person's history and belief system, individual purpose-finding may move one either toward increased order or chaos, unity or individuation. The guide poses questions that enhance variations in viewpoint. Common information bases will be discovered along the way, leading to sub-group searches during the system-building phase.

In the diagram on the left, the vertical axis from chaos to order may also symbolize the point at which purpose is defined and accepted by the group. Boundaries are most permeable at this point, and the group is most aware of its internal similarities and differences, as well as its environment. As purpose-finding gives way to system-building, the scope of information admitted gradually narrows – first through individual searches, next through directed searches, and then through the designing and testing of programs. When a group of programs is synthesized and approved, the group has refocused the inspired idea and made it an operational reality.

At this point, two things occur. First, the idea and the new reality – the purpose and the program – are compared. Second, participants start to move toward firmer roles based on their experiences up to this point. Roles fall between the poles of generalization and specialization. Some people seek to vary their tasks, perhaps moving between sub-groups or acting as liaisons between them, or between the group and its environment. Others prefer to focus on one or a limited number of tasks, giving undivided attention to the skillful application of technique. As work proceeds, the "generalizers" and "specializers" move toward realization of the inspired idea, oriented either to the process or the product. The cycle is complete when some new idea emerges from the mingling of these orientations.

The information generated during purpose-finding is matched with both emerging processes and products. Information gathered during system-building is a common resources for both specializing and generalizing behaviors. The guide acts as a gateway, widening and narrowing the channels of information as the work continues.

Communication Styles: Interactions in a Dionysian system are most effective when they stress uniqueness, attraction, and intentionality. Images and languages developed for the specific moment in group life tend to increase inventiveness. At that point all communication is viewed as ultimately subjective. Nevertheless, it must help to highlight the peculiar nature of the current system – in other word, its uniqueness – as well as providing inducements that attract people to participate in various activities.

Interactions with a unique orientation include descriptive dialogue that indicates tone, feelings concerning the setting, or the physical appearance of the subject, and eyewitness accounts of particular events. The use of superlatives and adjectives is encouraged, but can occasionally be superfluous. On the other hand, comments may also be delivered in a staccato fashion, abrupt and using few words. In written form, this may involve phrases punctuated with periods and dashes.

Attraction can be enhanced in several ways. Information might be presented in a strictly chronological order that provides details but postpones conclusion. An emphasis on situation tends to incite cumulative interest. Forms of parody might also be tried, or a mixture of sayings, current expressions, poems or songs. With either approach, figurative devices are valuable – metaphors, similes and figures of speech. There is a danger that the discussion can become trite; the line between a sharp epigram and a cliché is, after all, somewhat hazy. This type of interaction can also be somewhat habituating.

A number of tools are available to make communication an accurate reflection of personal intentions. The epigram – a concise expression emphasizing tone or moral – has already been mentioned. First and second person address, particularly in written communication, indicates a personal commitment or identification with what has been written. Guides may also use devices to sustain interest, discussing subjects on a topical basis with indefinite details, putting personal conclusions aside until the end. Questions present problems of collective interest or matters likely to provoke debate. Although they can lead to sometimes unnecessary delays, they are perhaps the most valuable tools used by Dionysian leaders to open communication lines for ideational dialogue.

In addition to these approaches, the guide and others ought to note non-verbal responses and use them as background data – or even discussion topics. The point is to increase the socio-emotive responsiveness of group members as a means of making tasks both more fulfilling and more creative.

Next: Time, Participation & Enabling

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

Language Grooves & Quantum Potentials

Part 29 of Prisoners of the Real

In the Hopi language the distinction between past, present and future simply doesn't exist. Rather than distinguishing between tenses, Hopi concentrates on the validity of a statement – as fact, memory, expectation, or custom. Thus, there's no difference in this language between "he runs," "he is running" and "he ran." All are encompassed by wari, "running occur." An expectation is covered by warinki, roughly translated as "running occur I expect," which covers several tenses.

Hopi provides no general notion of time as a smooth flowing continuum proceeding at a specific rate. Rather than denoting categories of space and time, this language distinguishes the "manifest" – that is, accessibility to the senses – and the "unmanifest," including the future and the mental. Tenses are also irrelevant in Navaho, which instead emphasizes the type of activity.

Indo-European languages deal with both spatial and non-spatial relations through spatial metaphors such as duration, tendency, and intensity. Both a physical item and an idea, for example, can "falter." Balloons "swell," and so do thoughts and emotions. Both a person and a memory can "linger."

In Hopi, on the other hand, psychological metaphors are used to name physical things; the root meaning of "heart," for example, is "think" or "remember." While this language can describe all observable phenomena, the underlying metaphysics is entirely different, reflecting a mystical experience of oneness. Thus, Hopi and other languages provide alternative bases for valid descriptions of the universe without relying on the concepts of time and space.

In general, Indo-European languages obligate their users to distinguish between singular and plural, and to concretize and objectify the abstracts of the world. Reality is perceived as a complex of bodies and substances; non-spatial concepts are forced into binomial formulae. The objectified view of time is central to Newtonian physics, a view Einstein transcended in his theory. Although useful for the recording of history and the keeping of records, the notion of objectified time is oppressive when it promotes the assumption that time can be saved, that it is a finite object that runs out. Europeans, Americans, and the billions who live under the global influence of these languages measure standardized units of time and reward each other for the number of units worked, regardless of the differing subjective time experiences of each person. Unfortunately, this view of time also creates a feeling of monotony, with resultant behavioral effects.

Seeing life as expected and expecting existing patterns to continue leads to the sense that we are trapped. On the other hand, objectifying concepts can be helpful in a variety of creative experiences. In particular, the use of metaphors, through which objective qualities are attributed to subjective experiences, transfers qualities of spatial items to non-spatial concepts.

Or, as Hegel explained, in art the infinite becomes visible.

The importance of Whorf's hypothesis (see part 28) is not only the insight it provides into the diversity of linguistic systems and their impacts on categories of cognition. It also points to the very foundations of human knowledge. According to the classical, absolutist world view, the forms of space and time, and basic categories such as substance and causality, are universal. Physical science has used these categories to develop a system of knowledge that covers all phenomena and mental activities. However, modern science has for some time understood that this view is flawed. Euclidean space is only one form of geometry, and along with Newtonian time, doesn't always apply – particularly at the astronomical and atomic levels.

Time, according to relativity theory, is a coordinate in a four-dimensional system. And solid matter, says atomic physics, is actually a void interwoven by centers of energy. In quantum physics the determinism of classical physics is replaced by indeterminism. Obviously, the old categories have been modified. The absolute has become relative. Growing out of this change in scientific thinking is a realization that concepts concerning human relations and human nature must also be reconsidered.

In the language of the Wintu Indians, form is transient. Nature exists, and human beings can't affect it. They do not "come into being," but rather grow "out of the ground," and can influence their temporary, changing surroundings.

In contrast, English and other similar languages have led to the assumption that humans are separate from their environment, and controlled by external stimuli. The concept of separation from the environment is alien to Wintu, which recognizes individuality only as a manifestation in the consciousness of the speaker. In this world view, the idea of stimulus and response doesn't exist. The world is a mass in which each particular shares the qualities of the whole.

Ironically, the process of ever-increasing abstraction in the exact sciences is bringing us toward a sense of reality and the world quite consistent with the assumptions of Wintu and other non-European languages. Developments in many fields, all running in the same basic direction, are moving beyond the immediate sensory present into a region where the fundamental connections between all living things can at last be seen. A sense is emerging that life on Earth represents a unity, that damage at one point can have effects everywhere else, and that we are all responsible.

The outline of a new and holistic world view can already be seen. As quantum theory suggests, mind – the participator – formulates the proposition from which matter is derived. Energy manifests itself as transient particles, material forms which can't be isolated from the wholeness of the entire universe. In addition, individual universe constructions form each other, each connected to all others in constantly changing patterns. It is a self-organizing process, beginningless and endless.

As startling as this may sound, scientific discoveries suggest that all possible histories of the universe occur and interfere with each other. Regions of constructive interference, the path along which we can move with least disturbance, provide the "classical" history of the universe as we know it in our usual states of consciousness. But as Einstein realized and Wheeler subsequently stated, there is one more question: why does any individual particle jump into the instantaneous world line at a particular space-time coordinate? It's a question that physics alone cannot answer.

The notion of quantum probability, however, does suggest a source: the will of the participator, expressed through creative ideas. All conscious systems, regardless of their location, contribute to the total quantum potential. The character of each event is a gestalt property of the wholeness of the universe. The volitional activity may be either active or passive. According to psychic research, sets of subjective states are linked with changes in the pattern of behavior in the body. Passive volitional states may even reach outside the body, impressing a coherent pattern on the movement of elementary particles.

Such revolutionary ideas suggest a gradual coming together of two distinct and, until very recently, apparently opposite views of reality. As the physicist Wolfgang Pauli once noted, both views have been vital to the history of human thought, though no genuine reality corresponds to either. One is the idea of an objective world, pursuing its course in space and time independently of any observing subject. This, of course, is the view of most modern science. The other is the idea of the subject, experiencing the unity of the world without the limitation of objective reality. This is the view of much Asian mysticism.

In the 20th Century we moved from the pure scientific view to a point somewhere between the two, realizing along the way that our language may be holding us back. To continue the search, language itself will have to change.

Note: Thanks to Jo Schneiderman for assistance with comparative linguistic analysis.

Next: Rediscovering Dionysus

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

The Language of Uncertainty

Part 28 of Prisoners of the Real

As harbingers of a new and more holistic consciousness, speculation in reporting, prose and fiction – all creative challenges to the dogmatic fallacy of a rationalism that confuses theories with clear and irreformable laws – help to replace "objectivity" with "relativity" in social thought.

Until recently physics, the natural sciences and, to a large extent, the behavioral sciences have restricted our vision to space-time concepts. In particular, the comprehension of all relations through the exclusive use of space concepts has manifested itself in our destructive materialism. But Albert Einstein's development of the special and general theory of relativity raised questions concerning the elimination of the psychical element, reasserting the observer's "frame of reference" and redefining the world as a four-dimensional continuum in which the absolute character of time, central to classical mechanics, gives way to the space-time continuum.

Since Einstein's breakthrough the scientific community has been rocked by a variety of new theories involving space-time possibilities, fundamental energies, self-organizing biogravitational fields, and the relation of consciousness to gravity. Perhaps the most revolutionary of the new theories is that consciousness is the hidden variable in the structure of matter itself. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics have thus brought science back to ideas explored two thousand years ago by Parmenides, and subsequently refined by the philosophy of Berkeley, the astronomy of James Jeans, and the work of Whitehead. The ultimate basis of being, they imply, is not sensory material but rather an ideal principle of form.

Along with the return of the doctrine of harmony, the boundary between the observer and the observed has been profoundly altered. The theory of relativity ushered in a fresh understanding of the structure of space and time; more recently, quantum theory has revealed that every measurement in the atomic field requires an act of intervention.

The implications of this new view of reality are extraordinary: quantum theory has established that the process of conceiving any experiment is an experience of an observer who is also a participant, inseparable from the world in which the experiment occurs. Anticipating Heisenberg's "uncertainly principle" more than a decade before immutable facts were replaced by mere possibilities, Alfred North Whitehead noted that each entity originates by including "a transcendent universe of other things." In the 1970s quantum physicist John Wheeler further developed this notion of unity and interconnection. The laws of energy conservation are not immutable, he found; instead, the point-like events of space-time spontaneously break down. Wheeler's "mutability principle," which transcended the conventional laws of physics, led him to conclude that, "There may be no such thing as the glittering central mechanism of the universe."

Quantum theories represent a dramatic conceptual leap in the exact sciences, moving humanity toward a new synthesis of science, philosophy, and spirituality. We are rediscovering that mind is essential. It is both creator of matter and a function of it. As Wheeler conceived it, the universe may be continuously "brought into being" through the vital act of participation. This new concept, Wheeler noted, "strikes down the term 'observer' of classical theory, the man (sic)who stands safely behind the thick glass wall, and watches what goes on without taking part. It can't be done, quantum mechanics says."

The concept of relativity has also led to a revolutionary new concept of culture and language. It begins with the understanding that knowledge categories depend not only on biological factors and absolute knowledge but also on cultural factors. And culture in turn is interrelated with language, whose latent content is the intuitive science of experience.

According to Edward Sapir, whose linguistic research profoundly influenced the study of indigenous cultures, "human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society." In other words, language is not an incidental means of solving problems in "the real world." Instead, that world is "unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group." According to Sapir, "We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation."

Sapir defined linguistic expression as a self-contained creative symbolic organization that refers both to non-linguistically acquired experiences and to experiences defined through the formal completeness of the language and "our unconscious projection of its explicit expectations into the field of experience." Each newly acquired word is immediately categorized through the pre-existing linguistic organization. Categories such as plurality and singularity, mass and individual, subject and object, at first derived from experience, are later imposed upon experience through the linguistic system.

Most linguistic communication, in fact, is not the result of thought but rather experience in the symbolic mode of expression through habitual language grooves. Put another way, experience is not so much linguistically determined as habituated through the process of bundling together groups of experiences and giving them the same name.

Based on Sapir's theories, Benjamin Lee Whorf subsequently developed the hypothesis that "linguistic patterns themselves determine what the individual perceives in this world and how he thinks about it. Since these patterns vary widely, the modes of thinking and perceiving in groups utilizing different linguistic systems will result in basically different world views." Whorf’s hypothesis refutes the idea that everyone uses the same physical evidence to create the same picture of the universe. On the contrary, Whorf argued, it is our language rather than nature that suggests how we organize the spread and flow of events.

In English and other Indo-European languages, for example, sentences are a combination of parts, basic grammatical units such as nouns, adjectives and verbs. Each one can be separated from its properties and can involve active or passive behavior. This is fundamental to occidental thinking, the basis of our division of matter and form, as well as mass and energy in physics. In contrast, Indian languages such as Hopi or Nootka don't have parts of speech or separate subjects and predicates. Events are signified as a whole. Rather than saying that "a tree fell," Hopi use a single term, "fell (occurred)."

Looking deeper, English nouns referring to physical things are either individual or mass. An individual noun is one that can be defined by a concrete outline – a bottle, for example. When a mass noun such as water has an indefinite boundary, it must often be defined through an individual noun that denotes a body type or a boundary – for instance, a glass of water or a stick of wood. The definition of mass nouns can be further clarified as substances. But substances can't be discussed in an individual sense. Thus, in dealing with commonly used mass nouns, most Indo-European languages require definitions involving a 'formless' item plus a 'form.'

Plurality in numbers is described in two ways – the real and the imaginary. English conceives of 'ten cats' as a real plural. 'Ten minutes' is also real. Imaginary plurals, on the other hand, are based on the concept of cyclicity. Time is always manifested as a cycle – a day, a month, a year, and so on, and each cycle is a single object, pluralized on this basis. Although awareness of time is immediate and subjective, the habitual grooves of these languages transform the experience into something quite different. A length of time is seen as a series of quantities, like a grove of trees. Whorf called the quantifying of imaginary elements – things that aren't concrete – "objectification."

Indo-European languages also objectify phases of cycles such as summer and winter, using the binomial formula of formless item plus form in most cases. Phase nouns occur within the generalized concept of time, and can be either individual or mass, either "a summer" or simply "summer." However, if it wasn't objectified, summer would be a subjective experience of cyclic phase similar to an earlier phase in the ever-becoming-later continuum. Therefore, a binomial formula is used to apply the concept of formless and form to the idea of time. Summer becomes a quantity of time, and is itself a quantity – two summers, or a day of summer.

The verbal tense system of European languages further influences and emphasizes thinking about time. Past, present and future are visualized as points on a line of time. This concept is inconsistent, however, with the experience of time as a totality of consciousness felt as either earlier or later in the ever-becoming later continuum. Sensations, all those things experienced immediately, are called the present. The world of memory is called the past. And the realm of uncertainty, hope and foresight is known as the future. The present tense has another function as well, the "nomic." This deals with generalized statements of truth, such as, "We see with our eyes."

Next: Language Grooves & Quantum Potentials

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey