Below the meta crisis

 I have been listening to various conversations about the meta crises we are in. An interesting metaphor I heard from Jordan Hall was that we are on a train on tracks that are leading us straight for a waterfall / cliff. The tracks / train being our biologies, our cultures, and our environment. Other conversations have talked about the meta crises issue from an energy perspective, multi polar traps, biological / evolutionary drivers. What I have not yet heard about is a perspective from a basic time / space perspective.

• Time - each one of us has a certain tempo to our being. As a species, we operate in a certain range of frequencies as far as information processing, sense making, .... go. Our neo paleolithic time frequencies have not kept up with the pace of development of our technologies. In particular, our modern industrial and digital environment.
• Space - we are being of a certain size. We operate, sense reality at that scale. We are mostly sensorily unaware of the micro, meso scopic structures that make our reality possible. Similarly, we are most unaware of the large scale patterns that guide our existence - solar weather, galactic orbit, climate patterns, ...

Some simple thoughts on the weighty matter.

Meta-crisis and Metaphor

 The metaphor / model one uses determines in some measure how one understands and how one tries to resolve an issue. Let us take our situation, the anthropocene. One can look at it as the "reality" trying to form a complex, adaptive structure. Our societies and civilizations are all attempts of this endeavor. So, far they have come and gone. An organism ( super organism ) requires some basic functions such as decision making. Part of this task is relegated to what we call the "neurology" of an organism. When an organism is forming, certain cells migrate / morph into becoming part of the neurology - the modular part of the neurology that makes the "higher" level decision for the organism. Our tribes, societies, civilization have selected certain types of cells (individuals, groups) to be part of the neurology that makes decision for the organism. At this point in our develop, that selection process is inappropriate to the context. The context requires a more caring, systemic, holistic, ... perspective / cells / individuals / groups for good / wise decision making. We don't yet have a way to change the selection / formation process for our super organism to select cells / individuals / groups better suited for our current situation.

Layers, Structure, and Semantics

 Layers of narrative structure:

• Story
• Story as a design object of author
• Genre of stories as possible designs
• Cultures in which such stories aris
• Biologies in which such cultures arise
• Chemistries in which such biologies arise
• Physics in which such chemistries arise

If you accept any layer of the structure as the final layer, the bottom turtle, then that becomes your dogma.

Narratives as evokers:

• what the story evokes in the reader
• what the author intended the story to evoke
• what the culture evoked in the author that is reflected in the story
• what the biology made salient in the culture to create stories to amplify that salience
• what the chemistry allowed the biology to experience
• what the physics allowed the chemistry to form

Layers of semantics:

• story as stopping point (sp) - dogma
• possible story lines as sp - dogma
• possible stories as sp - dogma
• possible cultures as sp - dogma
• possible biologies as sp - dogma
• possible chemistries as sp - dogma
• possible physics as sp - dogma

How does one get beyond these layers, when there is no final turtle in turtles all the way down:

Bathe in infinity -> dogma