23– The Fallacy of “Separateness” …
Saturday, January 15th, 2011Our current Paradigm for the understanding of Reality (see Post 1) is destructive and reeks of Separation:
- Religions: Mine is the ‘True’ religion.
- Economies: Elite or exploited.
- Science: Microcosm or macrocosm.
- Politics: My country or theirs.
- Education: Nature is for us to exploit.
To this day, and to our great detriment, most of us cannot accept the obvious Fact that we are inseparable from Nature; that although each one of us is an utterly unique human being, we cannot exist without a species that is embedded in and dependent on Nature for its existence.
It is thus uncanny to see that this knowledge, so essential to our survival, is not of utmost importance in our educational systems. And that the reason for this, is because this knowledge goes against the interests of the powers that promote the fallacy of Separation.
In the first half of the 20th Century, Bell’s Theorem and the Notion of Complementarity in particular, undeniably proved 1- that physical separation between a whole and its parts is an illusion; we are made of myriad tiny components, yet they are bonded together into what we experience as the unbroken ‘me’ 2- that isolating something from its environment, although certainly possible, leads to aberrations (a neuron is not a neuron any longer outside its brain) 3- that uniqueness and wholeness are complementary properties of Nature … Galaxies, human beings, cells, atoms are unique entities and, at the same time, complements of a whole without which they cannot exist.
As components of an evolving species, human beings are conceived relatively equally, with a head, two arms, two legs, sexual organs, sensory systems, innate drive to bond and survive, etc., etc. And although utterly unique in the sense that each one of us is made of a particular set of components, all of us are intimately tied to the existence of a species that dictates the structural organization of our organisms; a species that affects us, is affected by us, grows, evolves, and gets into creative and destructive moods (think about the creative mood of the Renaissance or the suicidal mood of our current state of affairs). Humanity is particle-like in each one of us and wave-like in the sum of us. Not one or the other. Both at the same time.
But under a Paradigm that emphasizes Separation, the Fact that a thing is two things at the same time without losing its unity is inconceivable to us, yet this is exactly the nature of Reality. That is why, although constantly shifting between the pressures of our individuality and the forces, instincts, moods, and actions of the multi-billion organism to which we belong, we fundamentally remain the same self.
As highly evolved and intelligent as we consider ourselves to be, we are nonetheless in our infancy when measured against the universal evolutionary process in which we exist. We are still so far from the mature capacity to perceive ourselves as physical systems – made of systems and embedded in systems, systems within systems within systems. We are still so young, so terribly arrogant in our ignorance, so stubbornly chained to ancient fallacies that continue to dominate and deviate our understanding of Reality.
But all we have to do to see the fallacy of a Paradigm bent on Separation, is to look at ourselves, at the earth, at the world of the atomic particles we know so little about, to realize that we are complements of something greater than us; something that unifies us by giving us a unique yet homogeneous form, something that endows us with a forceful drive to survive and bond and adapt, something that can very well exist without us, but without which we cannot exist.
It is human nature to be afraid of change, to be terrified of the unknown, but change we must if we are to survive into the future. Humanity is not something separate from Nature, Humanity is alive and surging because of the interrelatedness of all of us with the natural world, yet if we continue to promote the absurdity of our sense of separation, Humanity might become a horrible aberration, or even join the endless list of extinct species.
Couldn’t we share the Knowledge that has been arrested by a few? Couldn’t we teach our children that separation in Nature is an illusion, an illusion that incites destruction, violence, hate, war, conflict?
Revised February 2018
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