Category Archives: Psychological Musings

Reflections

Art, Photography, Psychological Musings

Last Sunday, Michele went to the annual National Bioneers Conference and we agreed to meet at the end of the day at the Tracy Taylor Grubbs Open Studio.

One of the things that is fun about going to the same Open Studio over a period of years is watching how the artist changes. Sure, sometimes they don’t change and sometimes they change all over the place at random, but, every once in awhile, the change is growth. It is like you – in this case, I – can see the artist try to solve the same, intellectual? metaphysical? problem in a variety of ways, getting closer – but, like Zeno’s paradox – never getting there because the search is really the endpoint.

I first saw this in a Jasper Johns show at the old San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at Marine’s Memorial – more accurately, it was pointed out to me on a tour put on by the  Stanford Art Department – and it seems to me this is what Tracy is doing. I have heard her talk about impermanence as a condition that interests her and, while I don’t want to speak for her, that seems to be central in what I saw last weekend (especially in her lovely iceberg paintings).

She also had on display some lovely little square images made by smoke that seemed to almost be frozen impermanence.

While Michele went to Bioneers, I took BART into The City and spent the later afternoon taking pictures of reflections.

I thought that a series of building reflections printed as small squares similar to Tracy’s smoke squares would be fun. But, sitting here, I think that these reflections reflect – sorry – my interest in what is reality vs. the distortion of reality as my projection. I see a scene – oaks and rolling, golden, hills on Highway 120 by Oakdale come to mind – and photograph it. Only when I look at the image, back home on my monitor, do I notice the power lines and towers, the dead, dry grass. What I saw is not what was there. Building reflections offer a similar distortion; the reflection on a building – so prominent in my mind’s eye – is often overwhelmed by the building I almost didn’t see.

With all that preamble, here are several reflections.

And a final picture from Southern California where the hold on reality may not be as strong.

 

 

 

 

 

Rupert Sheldrake and Morphic Resonance

Psychological Musings, Religion

 

Last Thursday, Michele took me to see a talk by the Right Reverend Marc Handley Andrus – the  Eighth Episcopalian Bishop of California – Healer Jill Purce, and  Dr. Rupert Sheldrake at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I really went to see Sheldrake who was the only one of the three that I had heard of. More importantly, I went to see him because Rupert – I think I can call him Rupert because that is how Michele, who met him at Hollyhock a couple off years ago, introduced him to me – is a genius at the same level as Alfred Wegener. Or Charles Darwin, for that matter. I first read Rupert’s Theory of Morphic Resonance a little more than twenty years ago and it has both enriched my life beyond any expectation and come to inform my thinking on almost every subject.

I have never heard or read Rupert describing The Morphic Field as being The Cloud, but I think that is an good description. Conventional Wisdom says that the universe is like a machine: its composition, morphology, and actions are all a result of mechanical processes built into the machine itself. It says we grow into who we become because of the DNA we have at birth. Morphic Resonance says that it is more complicated, it says that information is carried outside of us in a Morphic Field that is both influenced by us and that, in turn, influences us.

The Conventional Wisdom says that there are universal, unchanging, physical laws such as the  gravitational constant – known as the Big G – or the speed of light (299,792,458 meters per second). The problem is that, when tested, these constants change. Scientists, like anybody else who holds a strong belief, say that their belief is correct so the measurements must be wrong. But the constants actually do fluctuate and Rupert says that is because they are more like universal Habits that are not locked in. There was no gravity before the Big Bang  because there was nothing to have gravity on. After The Big Bang, a couple of particles were attracted together and they, in turn, influenced another particle to be attracted. Gravity was born, not as an Universal Law, but as a Habit. In other words, as the Universe unfolded, it developed the Habit we call Gravity. This process of the first two particles influencing another particles is what Rupert calls Morphic Resonance and it operates on everything and builds with repetition. The more similar any two anythings are, the more they Resonate.

( The Big Bang was first used by Fred Hoyle to bad mouth what he thought was a ridiculous theory on the life of the universe (the Big Bang is now considered fact, but then Hoyle thought it was ridiculous because it didn’t agree with his, then more widely accepted,  theory of a steady state universe). Last Thursday, I noticed that both Rupert and the Rt. Rev. Andrus referred to the Big Bang as The Great Unfolding so I will too.)

Another example of the Morphic Field influence is the formation of crystals. As crystals are formed by precipitating from a solution, we can tell what material the crystals are by their shape. Quartz, or fluoride, or tourmaline, or any crystal has its own distinctive crystalline pattern; not because of any mathematical or universal law that anybody has been able to fathom. The Habit of that material is to form in that distinctive pattern because, at random, the first time the material precipitated, it formed in that structure and then got in the Habit.

Everything Resonates and is both influenced and influences. We are corporal beings, mammals, and primates and, as such, we resonate with other physical matter – we are influenced by Gravity, for example – with other mammals, and other primates, in our behavior and morphology. Roger Bannister running a four minute mile enables future runners to easier run four minutes miles by changing the Morphic Field.

Conventional wisdom says that the universe – by analogy – is a machine with no purpose but Rupert says that the Universe and all its parts  are better thought of as  Organisms. A machine is non-thinking and can not self-replicate or self organize. An Organism – by definition – does self-replicate and self organizes towards the increasingly complex. Atoms form molecules, molecules form cells, cells form living things, and on and on until – so far – we have sentient beings. The Universe, and everything in it, is self organizing toward complexity, towards us.

Going to see Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, for me, was somewhat of a pilgrimage. What I expected was to go to a lecture in a classroom associated with the actual Grace Cathedral, but, it turned out, we were directed to the Grace Cathedral Choir area making it even more pilgrimage-like.

There were about one hundred of us sitting sitting in the Great Quire listening to, what I am not-sure-to-call, a religious experience, a performance, or a lecture – a little of all three, I guess – and, while that was going to be the point of this post, I think I will continue it in a couple of days and a little more thought.

Uncarina decaryi

Politics, Psychological Musings

We have had a Uncarina decaryi – I have no idea what it’s common name is or if it has one, but it is in the sesame family – growing next to a window, in a light corner of the house. We have had it for, about, ten years, keeping it warm, feeding it, and it has done nothing to earn its keep. This summer, we cut it back – it had become too fleshy and etiolated , and put it outside to fend on it’s own for a while. A couple of days ago, it bloomed in the strangest way. Now it has big yellow flowers peaking out from under the leaves. If that doesn’t make you want to be a Republican, nothing will.

 

Pedaliaceae or sesame family

Dinosaur extinction and Thomas Kuhn

Psychological Musings, Science

A couple of days ago – maybe a couple of weeks by the time I get this posted because I keep getting interrupted by going to Tahoe and Pussy Riot – The Guardian had an interesting article on Thomas Kuhn, or, more accurately, his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I have never heard of Kuhn, but I think he has been a major shaper of my world outlook.

To quote directly from the article, But what really set the cat among the philosophical pigeons was one implication of Kuhn’s account of the process of paradigm change…. imply(s) that scientific revolutions must be based – at least in part – on irrational grounds? In which case, are not the paradigm shifts that we celebrate as great intellectual breakthroughs merely the result of outbreaks of mob psychology?

YES!  That is exactly the case. We in the West, at least my generation, have been brought up to believe in the Scientific Method (not as an ideal, but as a reality). We have been taught that part of what made The West great was coming up with a theory, testing that theory with experiments and observations -facts – and then, and only then, accepting the Theory. We are told that it is the difference between Evolutionists and Creationists. It may still be the ideal but it is not reality. In reality, scientists use the facts to justify their position even if they have to twist the facts a little.

It is only when the crowd’s idea of reality changes, when society as a whole changes, when the paradigm shifts, that the Theory changes. In most cases, the facts are known to not fit the Theory for a long time before the Theory changes. When I was in college, we had a required two year course in the physical sciences including Geology. At the end of the Geology section, the teacher presented the theory of continental drift  by Alfred Wegener. They presented all the facts that teachers now use – continents fitting together, biological dispersion, blah, blah – and it all seemed so logical to me, but the teachers dismissed it as This wild theory by some crazy German who thinks the continents are floating around. Ha ha.

As an aside, I now know that I am a sucker for almost any new theory (or almost any new thing that comes down the pike for that matter). My experience is that I am almost always right because today’s hair-brained theory is soon conventional wisdom and the new thing coming down the pike is the future. But I am old enough to know that I am not always right: right when I feel in love with Ferraris when Cadillacs were the gold standard, right when I got a BMW and people were asking me in gas stations if it was Japanese, wrong when I thought  Peugeot was the next BMW, but right when I thought Continental Drift just seemed right. End aside.

About 30, maybe 40, years ago, I started noticing bumper-stickers that said Shit Happens. About the same time, scientists first started proposing the Asteroid Impact Theory as the reason the dinosaur extinction came so quickly. Scientists knew the facts but didn’t come up with the theory until the concept of Shit Happens became the dominant paradigm. Until then, scientists thought dinosaurs had died off because they were stupid.

To circle back, I would postulate that good science only works because of mob psychology.

A rant on uniforms

Americana, Psychological Musings, Sports, War

Actually, not those uniforms although I find the whole Olympic rule that women Beach Volleyball players have to wear bikinis weirdly sexist (not that I am complaining, I love looking at young women in scanty clothing). The Olympics presents a squeaky clean, almost innocent image, and they put alot of effort in keeping it that way. At the same time the biggest Olympic women sports are sports that require scanty clothing, think swimming, diving, track, and – of course – gymnastics. Don’t expect to see much women’s fencing or rowing.

As an aside – an aside from uniforms that is – the Olympics are the biggest sexual free-for-all on the planet. There are 10,960 young, hyper-conditioned, attractive, athletes from around the world living together for two weeks. These Olympians are people who are very much in their bodies and, probably, very much into their bodies, all brushing up against each  other on a daily basis in tight  quarters, with lots of alcohol, other drugs, and – once their event is over – free time. Even in China, a fairly controlled place, the athletes went through their allotted 70,000 condoms. In Britain, a much freer place and more understanding host country, they are providing  150,000 condoms which is about 15 condoms per athlete. Watching Michele Jenneke run the hurdles, it is easy to believe they will be used.

End aside.

But that is not my rant, my rant is about camo clothing in the US Military. Obviously camo clothing is very helpful when Soldiers and Marines are on the ground and do not want to stand out.

But an Army general in a rear area command center, in Washington or Qatar, wearing combat fatigues just seems ridiculous. I am not one to worship the past, but I do pine for the days when the rear echelon – known in front line units as REMFs – commanders and support dressed as if they were going to the office, which, of course, they really are. But the military – and police, for that matter – has fetishized camouflaged fatigues and everybody is now in on the act, including the navy with blueish uniforms. It makes no sense at all. It doesn’t hide them on the ship and, of course, it shouldn’t and then – to make it even stupider – in the highly unlikely event that the ship did see combat and did sink, it makes it harder to find the survivors.

It seems sort of wacko that the Navy is building ten $700 million ships designed for operation in near-shore environments but – by the Navy’s own assessment – is not able to take on heavy duty shore defenses, but I understand that there is a lobby for that: I understand there is money to made.  What I don’t understand is why the crew running the ship should be dressed in pseudo- camouflaged fatigues. End of rant.