Decentralization? Horizontalization? Descalification?

Decentralization? Horizontalization? Descalification? Modernity’s story can be summarized with the term decentralization. The materialist reduction of reality to passing time and physical space has divided us from the natural, spiritual center (the Nothing-Infinite Eternal) that binds all that which is into a whole. Indeed, in and of the manner in which hierarchical domination strips us of our goodly natural order (Meng Zi 2A2), we can say that the story of the Artificial Worldview is one of decentralization—hierarchical domination severs us from the natural, spiritual center upon which balance rests (the natural, spiritual center which, when rested upon, provides balance). Hierarchical domination breaks the stone of our natural, spiritual center into jagged sand: “24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27) Hierarchical domination decentralizes us, and this hierarchical decentralization is amplified by the materialist reduction of reality to passing time and physical space (not only is our natural, spiritual rock shattered by hierarchical domination—we are told that it never existed). I worry, then, that decentralization seems to be such a central theme in anarchist political thought. “In life, or in the living systems within which humans exist, there are counter narratives to the abuse—there are stories about how living together ought to be, about what it could be, and about who and what belongs to and revels together in what Cornell West so eloquently refers to as the funk and stank of life. These are the stories, smells, tastes, joys, and pains that explore the potential of community and the power of a decentralized locally sovereign existence.” (Lupinacci 2016, p. 4) 1 Beyond the limitations of the term sovereignty (which may be seen as implicitly assuming the relationship between hierarchical domination and order asserted by the Artificial Worldview ), Lupinacci’s call for decentralization mirrors a similarly troubling trend in the Geographical literature. All be it waging an important battle against the hierarchical presumptions of the Marxists, Springer (2014) seems to couch the Anarchist struggle in terms of decentralization and horizontality. 2 1 My commentary: To say ‘funk and stank of life’ rather than ‘funk and stank of life in this world’ seems to naturalize oppression (which seems likely given West’s Abrahamic spiritual orientation…). 2 I have heard particularly rousing critiques of this the term sovereign from colleagues who work in the field of ‘Indigenous Food Sovereignty’. “In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) introduced the concept of the ‘arborescent’ to describe a vertical, tree-like ontology of totalizing principles and binary thought. They contrasted this with the notion of the ‘rhizome’, which is marked by a horizontal ontology, wherein things, ideas, and politics are able to link up in non-hierarchical patterns of association.” (Springer 2014, p. 402 “Scale sets things apart. Its vertical ontology attempts transcendence by standing above materiality, meaning that scale is literally a dis-traction.” (Springer 2014, p. 404) Springer’s (2014) perspective—which rises in part from the ontological perspective propounded by flat-earthers (proponents of a ‘flat ontology’) like Thrift (1996; 2000; 2007) who called for the outright dismissal of scale in favor of viewing society in terms of ‘the durability of social relations’ (Agnew and Duncan 2011, p. 301) and Marston (2000; Marston et. al. 2005), Jones and Woodward (2007) who proposed a ‘flat ontology’ that eschews horizontal and vertical ‘predetermination’—provides a very useful critique of Marxism’s hierarchical dogmas and the ‘inability of the socialist left to think beyond stateregulated capitalism’, (Springer 2012a) but in the end Springer’s vision (at least as expressed in this article) still seems to envision the radical in terms of an abandonment of verticality for horizontality and an abandonment of centralized power for localized power. Springer’s (2014) stated goal is to “think in terms of rhizomic alternatives to life beyond an allegedly inevitable centralized authority.” (Springer 2014, p. 404) My goal is to differentiate between natural centralized authority (the Nothing-Infinite Eternal), which is indeed an inevitable centralized authority, and artificial-hierarchical authority, which is by no means inevitable or acceptable. Look to the sun and you will see a centralized power from which the many grass roots of the world derive their energy-order . Look to the forest and you will see arborescent order in the trees. It seems a particularly grim side-effect of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) philosophy that the term arborescent, whose etymology traces to the Latin ‘arbor’ (tree) and ‘arborēscō’ (becoming a tree), would come to hold such a derogatory implication, but, then, what could be more Modernist than reducing ‘trees’ and the process of ‘becoming a tree’ (sic. the natural order) to something derogatory…. Look to a three dimensional object to find that it has a natural center, which, when rested upon, provides balance. Look to the mustard seed and the morning mushroom to see that scale is real: 3 4 “Now if water has not accumulated to sufficient depth, it does not have the power to carry a large boat. Pour a cup of water into a depression, and a mustard seed will be as a boat in it; but put the cup into the water, and it will stay put, because the water is too shallow for the size of the boat…. …Small knowledge cannot reach great knowledge; those of little experience cannot comprehend those of great experience. 3 The term authority rises from the Latin auctor (‘originator, promoter’). The only true authority is the origin, the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and its emanations force, form and consciousness. True meaning and virtue, for example, are derived from the sympathy or antipathy of a manifestation with the Nothing-Infinite Eternal (01∞)—01∞ is the only true authority when it comes to meaning and virtue. Artificial modes of hierarchical authority, in being rooted in privation of the 01∞, are anything but authoritative in the true sense of the term (which does not connote hierarchical dominion or any of the illusion of separation that makes will-to-domination and thinking the that of hierarchical dominion possible)… 4 See Luigi Fantappiè’s notion of ‘syntropy’ to elucidate this assumed connection between the energy of the sun and order (http://www.syntropy.org). How do we know this is so? Morning mushrooms do not know the passing of days an nights, mayflies do not know the passing of spring and autumn. This is because they are short lived.” (Zhuang Zi 1999, p. 51-52) “Little understanding cannot come up to great understanding; the short-lived cannot come up to the longlived. How can we know this is so? The morning mushroom can understand nothing of the alternation of night and day; the summer cicada can understand nothing of the progress of the seasons. Such are the shortlived.” (Zhuang Zi 2016, p. 8) “A question of scale In our everyday lives, we experience three spatial dimensions, and a fourth dimension of time. How could there be more? Einstein’s general theory of relativity tells us that space can expand, contract, and bend. Now if one dimension were to contract to a size smaller than an atom, it would be hidden from our view. But if we could look on a small enough scale, that hidden dimension might become visible again. Imagine a person walking on a tightrope. She can only move backward and forward; but not left and right, nor up and down, so she only sees one dimension. Ants living on a much smaller scale could move around the cable, in what would appear like an extra dimension to the tightrope-walker.” (CERN 2012) Scale is relative to the observer, to boundaries of relative infinity (‘infinity membranes’) established by the scale from which something is observed. (Barnesmoore 2015) Scale, like verticality and centrality, is part of the natural order. Scale, like verticality and centrality, is not the problem (though I whole heartedly agree that many of the socially constructed categories by which we comes to know scale are at best limited-obfuscating and often violent). The problem is not natural orders like centrality, verticality and scale—the problem is the enlivenment of these natural orders by the will-to-domination. A natural center from which balance becomes possible is necessary, but an artificial center (i.e. a center that was rendered as center through hierarchical domination) from which hierarchical domination emanates (and from which the potential for balance is thus negated) is unnatural and must be destroyed. The desired end state, however, is not decentralization (the nihilistic existence without orientation-balance presumed and produced by post[most]modernism and its affiliates) but a return to the natural, spiritual center by which balance (in human existence and beyond) becomes possible. Verticality is natural and necessary, as we can clearly observe in the form of the tree and—at a more human level—in the parent-child (don't run into the street…), teacher-student (if you are going to journey through a new body of literature it would probably be good to journey with someone who has already read the literature) or guide-guided (if you are going to journey through the Himalayas for the first time it would probably be good to journey with a guide who has already scaled the peaks…) relationship. Artificial Verticality, however, which comes to be when a vertical relationship (parent-child, teacher-student, etc.) relationship is enlivened by the will to domination, is unnatural and must be destroyed. Scale fits the same pattern—it is an expression of the natural order, and the problem comes when scalar relations are enlivened by the will to domination (and the associated notion that smaller scales are inferior to larger scales) and, or when we construct artificial scales for the sake of naturalizing, normalizing and legitimizing hierarchical domination. We need to stop destroying the natural order, and calls for abandonment of scale, verticality and centrality that do not clarify the distinction between the artificial scale, verticality and centrality that are produced by hierarchical domination and the natural scale, verticality and centrality that are essential to the functioning of the natural order of things serve to amplify rather than heal humanity’s troubled relationship with the natural order. David Harvey seems to encapsulate this problem in arguing that “…in some sense ‘hierarchical’ forms of organization are needed to address large-scale problems…” (Harvey 2012, p. 69) Rather than distinguishing between artificial, hierarchical modes of organization and naturally centralized modes of organization (which are indeed necessary for addressing large-scale problems), Harvey (in his dogmatically Marxist manner) reduces centralized power to hierarchical power (i.e. he presumes that centralized power must be domineering, that it must create order through domination of the periphery). Harvey is right to note that centralized power is key to solving large-scale problems, but he fails to realize that hierarchical centralized power (i.e. centralized power when manufactured through hierarchical domination and used to enact hierarchical dominion over the periphery) is, in destroying the natural order, the cause of our large-scale problems, An imbalance between verticality and horizontality and between center and periphery has surely been formed by hierarchically enlivened vertical relations hierarchical production and enactment of centralized power, but the solution is not turning away from centralized power (via decentralization) and vertical relations (via horizontally reductive politics) but in returning to naturally centralized power and natural vertical relations. The solution is not to accept Harvey’s dogmatic reduction of vertical relations and centralized power to hierarchy and thus dismiss vertical relations and centralized power, but to heal the conscious beings of earth of the wounds that have been inflicted upon them by hierarchical domination—to fill the void of natural order from which the potential for the will-todomination (and thus hierarchical domination) become possible. Returning to a balance between ‘vertical and horizontal’ and between ‘centralized and localized’ does not require abandonment of vertical relations or centralized power but a return to natural order in vertical relations and centralized power so as to allow for reciprocal harmony between the vertical and the horizontal relations and between the centralize and the localized power. We must open the mystical pass so that we can be from both perspectives (be both local and global ) without either interfering with the other (this interference is necessitated by hierarchical production and enactment of vertical relations, which interfere with both the natural order of vertical relations and the natural order of horizontal relations, and hierarchical production and enactments of centralized power, which interfere with both the natural order of centralized power and the natural order of localized power). (Cleary 1999) Returning to the beginning of the circle—decentralization—we might say that, while decentralization of power in time and space may in some senses be a desired outcome as argued by Springer (2014), this decentralization of power in the manifest world can only occur through returning to the natural order of centralized power (where power is centralized in the natural, spiritual, unmanifest center—the true authority—of all that which 5 5 Again, the true core is the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and the true periphery is the created-manifest—core and periphery (centralized and localized), like the history of philosophy (Corbin 1960), ought not to be understood in reductively spatiotemporal terms. This is not to deny that core-periphery relations have, through hierarchical domination, been manufactured across historical and geographical lines in our world (in economic terms the core-periphery model is quite elucidating), but to argue that the true ‘point’ from which centralized power emanates exists beyond time (which is to say that it is not, in reality, a point!). is). For power to be decentralized in the manifest world without degrading our ability to treat large-scale issues in manifestation we must return to the natural order wherein power is centralized in its natural balance point (the Nothing-Infinite Eternal). Centralized power is the glue that binds us together into a cohesive whole that can address large-scale problem (think global environmental degradation), but that glue must be formed by spirit, by our shared roots in the natural order of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal, by the true authority, and not by hierarchical domination, the artificial orders produced therein and false authorities who attain their purported authority through hierarchical domination. Harvey and Smith (2010), as Springer (2014) notes, go amiss in “remaining committed to a geography of centralization centered on the state” (p. 405) and its hierarchical form, but Springer also seems to miss the way (at least in this particular publication) by valorizing decentralization of power in the manifest world (localization of power) without overt reference to the recentralization of power in the natural, spiritual, unmanifest, authoritative center from which the natural order emanates that must accompany decentralization of power in the manifest world if we are to become able to work with other conscious beings to address large-scale issues like the global environmental crisis. No manifest thing is ‘self-sufficient’ in relation to the true, unmanifest, spiritual, natural center (the Nothing-Infinite Eternal) from which power, order, love, beauty, truth, reality, etc. emanate—all manifest beings are in a sense self-sufficient in being rooted in the Nothing-Infinite Eternal (though as with all beings we are dependent upon the natural order in which we are embedded…)— hierarchical domination, in severing us from the natural order (Meng Zi 2A2), constrains the potential for self-sufficiency and the potential for our natural, reciprocal, harmonious dependency upon the natural order and the Nothing-Infinite Eternal (by rendering us as dependent upon an artificial, hierarchical center that strips us of our natural intimacy with the Nothing-Infinite Eternal). Hierarchical vertical relations must surely be destroyed if we are to restore the natural order of horizontal relations of which our world has been deprived by hierarchical systems of domination like capitalism and democracy, but natural vertical relations must also be restored if we are to truly restore the natural order of horizontal relations (which are naturally balanced by vertical relations). Given Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) attack on our noble tree friends, let us use the natural order of the tree to problematize the valorization of horizontal over vertical relations. The horizontal order of a tree’s root system is essential—it gives the tree stability—but the horizontal order of the tree’s root system would be subject to death and decay without the vertical order of the tree truck and the sunlight the tree is able to access therein. Trees without roots (water-blood) fall down and die, but roots without trunks, branches and leaves (sunlight-breath) are similarly doomed to death and decay (see Mann 2016 for discussion of the spirits of blood and breath). Chopping down all the trees so that their roots can thrive is as paradoxical as eschewing all vertical relations so that horizontal relations can thrive; what we need to do is fill the void (of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal, of love) from which the will-to-domination becomes possible so as to remove hierarchical vertical relations from our world and thus allow natural vertical 6 6 There is an interesting dimensional quality to this return to centralized power in the unmanifest world. Rather than a manifest center existing in the middle of, next to, above, beside, below, etc., the unmanifest center permeates all that which is (it is within all of manifestation). relations, natural horizontal relations and a harmonious relationship between natural vertical relations and natural horizontal relations to reemerge. Calls for manifest decentralization of power must be accompanied by calls for a return to intimacy with the unmanifest center of power if we are to avoid the nihilistic, unmoored decentralization prophesied by post[most]modernism. Calls for horizontal relations must be accompanied by calls for a return to the natural order of vertical relations upon which the natural order of horizontal relations is dependent. Calls for dismissal of artificial conceptions of scale must be accompanied by calls for a return to natural (relativistic) conceptions of scale. Challenging artificial, hierarchical authority must be accompanied by valorization of the natural authority of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal. If not, we simply compound the destruction of natural order that forms the root of the social, political, economic, religious, environmental, etc. woes facing humanity. “One of the crucial questions to arise from this centralizing rhetoric is to ask, as Ward (2001 [1973]) did, ‘who is to plan?’ Harvey (2012: 83) addresses this issue when he suggests that ‘Relations between independent and autonomously functioning communities have to be established and regulated somehow . . . But we are left in the dark as to how such rules might be constituted, by whom, and how they might be open to democratic control’. This is all well and good, and I do not dispute that these are issues that should form the domain of contestation within an agonistic public space. Yet the problem with centralization – which is the preferred alternative of most Marxists – is that such an organization of human landscapes actually licenses the privation of the majority by unfairly giving some form of advantage to a privileged minority who takes it upon themselves to plan for others (Breitbart, 1975). If planning is the sublimation of politics, as Newman (2011) contends is the case, then it becomes absolutely central to the questions that surround the nature of our collective organization. While Harvey (2012: 83) asks worthwhile questions about the structure of autonomous, horizontal, and anarchistic sensibilities, he shockingly declares that ‘rules must not only be established and asserted. They must also be enforced and actively policed’, a suggestion that lets slip a perhaps unconsidered degree of authoritarianism.” (Springer 2014, pp. 406-407) The above recourse to the question of ‘who’, like all such subjectively reductive conceptions of order, misses the point. The natural order is already established. It regulates itself. The rules (better to say principles, nothing-infinite potential forms of order that manifest in relation to environment) are already established. The problem comes, as noted, when an individual or group seeks to assert themselves (rather than the Nothing-Infinite Eternal) as the authority (the centralized power) from which the order of relations between communities must rise and to enact this power through hierarchical domination. If we accept the Nothing-Infinite Eternal as the authority (and attain a state of being that is intimate with the Nothing-Infinite Eternal, which is a much more difficult task in our present world…) that guides relations between communities (that exerts centralizing power, which is to say love) we can (at least to some degree ) circumvent the above cited barriers to centralized power. Anarchism, in short (as I have argued [Barnesmoore 2018]), must—if we are not to be left adrift in the hopeless, meaningless, chaotic, orderless, etc. world of post[most]modern nihilism—be developed the from Natural Worldview as the NothingInfinite Eternal and its natural order must replace the Archons of Society and their artificial, hierarchical order as the centralized power from which order emanates. We 7 7 We cannot, of course, ever truly transcend the subjective (nor should we wish to), but there are surely varying degrees of sympathy and antipathy our subjectivities can hold with the Nothing-Infinite Eternal. already share the centralized power that is necessary to facilitate order in relationships between communities of conscious beings—we just need to recall the intimacy with that aspect of Self, which has been stripped from us by hierarchical domination. When the center of power exists beyond space and time, it may rise from grass roots around the world—these grass roots may appear like a plethora of decentralized movements when viewed from a reductively historical and geographical perspective, but in Truth—when viewed from the Nothing-Infinite perspective—these movements are united by the one, true, central authority (i.e. by the Nothing-Infinite Eternal, its emanations force, form and consciousness and the natural order that rises from this eternal root). Decentralization in creation; Centralization in the uncreated. 8 Wu-Wei (無爲) Two stories from Zhuang Zi—that of Cook Ting and Khing the Carver—usefully illustrate the effortless nature of Wu-Wei. “Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. As every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee — zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music. ‘Ah, this is marvelous!’ said Lord Wen-hui. ‘Imagine skill reaching such heights!’ Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, ‘What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now — now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and following things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.’ ‘A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.’ ‘However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.’ ‘Excellent!’ said Lord Wen-hui. ‘I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!’” 8 I think, for example, of grass roots social movements in Jamaica lead in part by musicians like Chronixx and Kabaka Pyramid and grass roots social movements in Canada lead in part by indigenous activists like Dawn Morrison and Eddie Gardener. When viewed from reductively historical and geographical perspectives these seem to be decentralized social movements, but when viewed from the unmanifest perspective we see that these seemingly decentralized social movements find their center of power in the Nothing-Infinite Eternal, its emanations force, form and consciousness and the natural order that rises from this eternal root. We must open the mystical pass to see from both the Nothing-Infinite and Finite (Geographical and Historical) perspectives without either one interfering with the other. (Cleary 1999) These movements are both decentralized (from a the finite perspective) and centralized (from the perspective of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and the natural order). 9 (Zi Z 1968, pp. 50-51) “Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand Of precious wood. When it was finished, All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be The work of spirits. The Prince of Lu said to the master carver: ‘What is your secret?’ Khing replied: ‘I am only a workman: I have no secret. There is only this: When I began to think about the work you Commanded I guarded my spirit, did not expend it On trifles, that were not to the point. I fasted in order to set My heart at rest. After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success. After five days I had forgotten praise or criticism. After seven days I had forgotten my body With all its limbs.’ ‘By this time all thought of your Highness And of the court had faded away. All that might distract me from the work Had vanished. I was collected in the single thought Of the bell stand.’ ‘Then I went to the forest To see the trees in their own natural state. When the right tree appeared before my eyes, The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt. All I had to do was to put forth my hand and begin. If I had not met this particular tree There would have been No bell stand at all. What happened? My own collected thought Encountered the hidden potential in the wood; From this live encounter came the work Which you ascribe to the spirits.’ (Zi Z 2004, pp. 127-128) Wu-Wei, then, is a pure expression of what has traditionally been understood as leisure in 9 Zi Z 1968, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson, Columbia University Press. the western tradition (Pieper 2009)—an active expression of what can be understood as the passive, contemplative aspects of the human epistemological process. “The unique and original relation to being that Plato calls ‘theoria’ can only be realized in its pure state through the sense of wonder, in that purely receptive attitude to reality, undisturbed and unsullied by the interjection of the will.” (Pieper 2009, p. 112) One must direct will towards conscious evolution in order to attain ‘theoria’, but in ‘theoria’ the will is transcended for Wu-Wei (effortless action) and the pendulum swings back towards inevitability. The answer to Springer’s (2014) question of “Who decides when it is necessary to go beyond autonomy and impose authority?” (p. 407) and “How is such an imposition of rule meted out?” (p. 407) must be answered through the lens of Wu-Wei and the virtue ethics tradition—the decision to go beyond autonomy and impose authority should not be made, it should come as an effortless response of form to form (to the relative sympathy or antipathy of a given manifestation with the Nothing-Infinite Eternal). In Virtue Ethics, McDowell (1979) argues, “although the point of engaging in ethical reflection still lies in the interest of the question ‘How should one live?’, that question is necessarily approached via the notion of a virtuous person. A conception of right conduct is grasped, as it were, from the inside out.” (p. 331) Van Norden (2011) makes a similar argument: “In order to understand what is distinctive of virtue ethics, it is easiest to begin by explaining what the alternatives to it are: consequentialism and deontology. Most simply, consequentialism and deontology emphasize what kinds of actions one ought to do, while virtue ethics is about what kind of person one ought to be.” (Van Norden 2011, pp. 57-58) “To put it another way, consequentialism and rule-deontology are theories about right action, while virtue ethics is a theory about good character.” (Van Norden 2011, p. 61) St. Thomas makes similar notes on the nature of virtue: “In the Summa Theologica we find St. Thomas propounding a contrary opinion: ‘The essence of virtue consists in the good rather than in the difficult.’ …Kant’s compatriots and disciples—they held that virtue meant: ‘mastering our natural bent’. No; that is what Kant would have said, and we all of us find it quite easy to understand; what Aquinas says is that virtue makes us perfect by enabling us to follow our natural bent in the right way. In fact, he says, the sublime achievements of moral goodness are characterized by effortlessness—because it is of their essence to spring from love.” (Pieper 2009, p. 33) In good Anarchist form, in short, the questions posed by Springer (2014) ought to be answered (effortlessly) by the virtuous subject (which raises the far more complicated question of how to develop a society that allows people to grow into virtuous subjects, which is to say subjects who are intimate with and effortlessly express [emulate] the natural order ). 10 10 The first and most simple answer to this question of is to purify our world of the many hierarchical structures that beget the death and decay of the natural order and thus constrain our potential for developing intimacy with the natural order in everyday life. Wu-Wei and Planning While engaging with some of Robert Eno’s translations of Zhuang Zi (below) I discovered a glossary of Chinese terms he developed to accompany the translation. The definition he provides for the term Wu-Wei (無為) struck my mind as particularly interesting in relation to Ward’s (2001) question ‘who is to plan?’ “Wu-wei 無為 (non-action, non-striving) The spontaneous action celebrated by the Daoists, by virtue of its unplanned nature and its abandonment of self-interest, was action that effortlessly responded to instinct or impulse. The word wei was used to denote consciously planned action, the end result of some effortful initiative.” (Eno [No Date]) Wu-Wei (leisurely action) and its epistemological counterpart Leisurely Contemplation (intellectus [Pieper 2009]), then, are in a sense incommensurable with the very notion of planning. Leisurely Contemplation and the effortless action (Wu-Wei, 無為 ) rendered possible therein are in one sense typified by their lack of rational planning. In being as receptive to being and allowing the forms of manifestation to inscribe their essence upon our being we seek a state of mind (like that of Zhuang Zi’s Cook Ting) in which rational planning is no longer necessary, in which we act through silent, instantaneous response of the forms inscribed upon our being to the form of the environment we inhabit (as Cook Ting moves his knife through the empty spaces between the Ox’s joints without recourse to thought in the linear, ‘rational’, sense of the ratio. Planning, then, should be replaced by effortless, ‘thoughtless’ harmonization of context with the eternal forms of manifestation. 11 12 13 “Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao. It is the beginning of folly.” (Lao Zi 1972, p. 14) To presume to know the future is the beginning of folly, and the use of ratio to plan for that ‘known future’ is folly itself. Instead, we must work to allow the essence of things (the eternal forms, emanations of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal) to inscribe themselves upon our being through leisurely contemplation of and active emersion in the natural order so that we can consciously-thoughtlessly-effortlessly respond to actual (rather than imagined) 11 “The Middle Ages drew a distinction between the understanding as ratio and the understanding as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive, logical thought, of searching and of examination, of abstraction, of definition and drawing conclusions. Intellectus, on the other hand, is the name for the understanding in so far as it is the capacity of simplex intuitus, of that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye. The faculty of mind, man’s knowledge, is both these things in one, …simultaneously ratio and intellectus; and the process of knowing is the two together. The mode of discursive thought is accompanied and impregnated by an effortless11 awareness, the contemplative vision of the intellectus, which is not active but passive, or rather receptive, the activity of the soul in which it conceives what it sees…. The simple vision of the intellectus, however, contemplation, is not work. If, as the philosophical tradition holds, man’s spiritual knowledge is the fruit of ratio and intellectus; if the discursive element is fused with ‘intellectual contemplation’ and if, moreover, knowledge in philosophy, which is directed upon the whole of being, is to preserve the element of contemplation, then it is not enough to describe this knowledge as work, for that would be to omit something essential. Knowledge in general, and more especially philosophical knowledge, is certainly quite impossible without work, without the labor improbus of discursive thought. Nevertheless there is also that about it which, essentially, is not work.” (Pieper 2009, p. 28) 12 Leisurely Contemplation, intellectus, is by no means the only way of attaining intimacy with natural form (as is made clear by Cook Ting, who becomes intimate with the form of the Ox through years of butchery). 13 Again, this is not to say without consciousness but to say without the objective stage of consciousness that we know as ‘our thoughts’. Thoughtless, in this sense, is to say silent expression of human consciousness rather than no expression of human consciousness. Thoughtless means silent understanding, not no understanding. changes in the world we inhabit. We cannot plan for the future until it actually arrives (in which case we will be responding, hopefully consciously-thoughtlessly-effortlessly, rather than planning). We must actually see the future come to be if we are to allow the essence of things that has been inscribed upon our being to respond to said future and harmonize it with the uncreated (with IS-FFC). Planning, then, should be oriented towards responding to present realities and creating future realities rather than towards planning for future realties that we presume to know. Let us respond to the present and create the future rather than creating the present and responding to the future. “I have never heard of him initiating anything; he always just harmonizes with others…. He harmonizes but does not initiate…” (Zhuang Zi 1999, p. 82) “He must have been a man whose powers were perfect, though his realisation of them was not manifested in his person. Duke Ai said, 'What is meant by saying that his powers were complete?' Zhongni replied, 'Death and life, preservation and ruin, failure and success, poverty and wealth, superiority and inferiority, blame and praise, hunger and thirst, cold and heat; these are the changes of circumstances, the operation of our appointed lot. Day and night they succeed to one another before us, but there is no wisdom able to discover to what they owe their origination. They are not sufficient therefore to disturb the harmony (of the nature), and are not allowed to enter into the treasury of intelligence. To cause this harmony and satisfaction ever to be diffused, while the feeling of pleasure is not lost from the mind; to allow no break to arise in this state day or night, so that it is always spring-time in his relations with external things; in all his experiences to realise in his mind what is appropriate to each season (of the year): these are the characteristics of him whose powers are perfect.' 'And what do you mean by the realisation of these powers not being manifested in the person?' (pursued further the duke). The reply was, 'There is nothing so level as the surface of a pool of still water. It may serve as an example of what I mean. All within its circuit is preserved (in peace), and there comes to it no agitation from without. The virtuous efficacy is the perfect cultivation of the harmony (of the nature). Though the realisation of this be not manifested in the person, things cannot separate themselves (from its influence).'” (Zhuang Zi 1891) “‘Still water is the most level thing in the world; it can be used as a model, inwardly manifesting evenness while not flowing outwardly. Virtue is the cultivation of completeness and harmony.’” (Zhuang Zi 1999b, pp. 83-84) End- State “Marston et al.’s (2005: 422) proposal for a human geography without scale has many resonances with anarchism, not least of which is its ability to embrace the rhizomic notion of a processual politics that is conceived through its actual practice: ‘flat ontologies consist of selforganizing systems, or ‘‘onto-genesis’’ . . . where the dynamic properties of matter produce a multiplicity of complex relations and singularities’. This mirrors an anarchist politics of direct action insofar as its energies emerge not out of service to an end-state theory of predetermined results, which is the shared philosophical domain of Marxism and neoliberalism (Springer, 2012[b]), but it is instead embraced because of a desire for openness, disordering, and process itself, out of which future possibilities may emerge (Ferrell 2001; Springer, 2011). Metaphors such as ‘jumping scale’ rub Marston et al. (2005) up the wrong way precisely because they impart a sense that politics should operate through vertical hierarchies, rather than around multiple sites of horizontal activity and autonomous resistance.” (Springer 2014, pp. 408-409) I do not wish to defend Marxism or Neoliberalism, and in the case of these dogmatic strains of economic theology end-state theories are surely tied to predetermined, manifest results, but I think we can defend the notion of an end-state if it is understood in indeterminate rather than predetermined terms. Let us say, for example, that our desired end-state is ‘intimacy with the natural order’ and ‘the capacity to effortlessly express the natural order in our actions (virtue) and our understandings (wisdom)’. This end-state is, most literally, a ‘state of being’ (where ‘state’ should be read as it would be in the context of ‘states of matter’. This state of being, like any such form, manifests in relationship to its environment of manifestation, and (accepting that it is folly to presume future environments) so we can say that while we have a Nothing-Infinite conception of the state of being that marks our desired end-state we do not have a definite, predetermined conception of the results that state of being will produce in the environment that exists when the process of attaining this desired end-state-of-being is ‘complete’ . Without seeking to defend cases in which the notion of ‘jumping scales’ does presume hierarchical relations between the different scales (which rises not from scale itself but from the perversities of the Artificial Worldview and its assumptions concerning the necessary relationship between order and hierarchical domination in which the conceptions of scale assailed by Springer, Marston, Woodward, et. al. were developed), it seems that ‘jumping scale’, while surely relativistic (and in a sense ‘subjective’ in being relative to the position from which the subject observes), is not a purely subjective figment of our imaginations. Ouspensky’s work on the notion of relative infinity, as read by Barnesmoore (2015), provides a useful lens with which to understand scale as a part of the natural order rather than as an artificial construction of human imagination (in the denigrated, denigrating sense with which Modernists use the term imagination as synonymous with ‘not real’). The essential concepts of the analytic are as follows: ‘Relative Infinity’ (which is to say infinity defined by the perspective of the observer, where cells are infinitely small and require a microscope to be viewed by the human eye and galaxies are infinitely large and require a telescope to be viewed by the human eye); ‘Infinity Membrane’ (the boundary, established by an individual’s perspective, between the relatively finite and the relatively infinite—the size at which something becomes to big or too small to be seen by the human eye); ‘Plane of Dimensional Consistency’ (planes of dimensional consistency, from the human perspective, include the cellular, the human, the galactic, etc.); ’Dimensional Incommensurability’ (the inability of one scale to be neatly fit into another as can be observed in attempts to transcribe a three dimensional sphere onto a two dimensional plane—it is a sphere, but you can no longer throw it). 14 14 It seems unlikely that this process, in being a manifest process that is subject to the motion, change, difference, etc. of passing time and physical space, is ever truly ‘complete’ (completeness in any perfect sense implies a lack of motion, which is to say eternity). (Barnesmoore 2015b) Ouspensky (1922) outlines his conception of ‘dimensional incommensurability’ by comparing three and four dimensional objects: “…Motion in the fourth dimension lies outside all those directions which are possible in a three- dimensional figure. We regard a line as an infinite number of points; a surface as an infinite number of lines; a solid as an infinite number of surfaces.” (Ouspensky 1922, p. 34) “By existing, every three-dimensional body moves in time, as it were, and leaves the trace of its motion in the form of a time-body, or a four-dimensional body. Because of the properties of our perceiving apparatus, we never see or sense this body; we only see its section, and this we call a three-dimensional body. Therefore, we are greatly mistaken in thinking that a three-dimensional body is something real. It is merely the projection of a four-dimensional body - its drawing, its image on our plane. A four-dimensional body is an infinite number of three-dimensional bodies. In other words, a four-dimensional body is an infinite number of moments of existence of a three-dimensional body - of its states and positions.” (Ouspensky 1922, p. 49) “It is quite clear why this is so. A four-dimensional body consists of an infinitely great number of threedimensional bodies; therefore, they can have no common measure. In comparison with a four-dimensional body, a three- dimensional body is analogous to a point as compared with a line. And, as a point is incommensurable with a line, as a line is incommensurable with a surface, as a surface is incommensurable with a solid - so a three-dimensional body is incommensurable with a four-dimensional one.” (Ouspensky 1922, p. 53) If we extract the general form of relations from this example, we can understand that planes of dimensional consistency and their borders of infinity (infinity membranes) are incommensurable with each other. If we attempt to transpose a three dimensional object (say a sphere) onto a two dimensional space (a plane) we are left with a cursory sketch in which many of the essential qualities of the sphere have been stripped away—as noted above, you can not throw a two dimensional ball (which is to say that 4 dimensional motion is not possible for a 2 dimensional object)… Ouspensky proceeds to apply his conceptualization of dimensional incommensurability to our capacity to understand ‘life phenomena’ and ‘thought phenomena’. th nd “This proposition - that life is not a complex of mechanical forces -is also confirmed by the incommensurability of the phenomena of mechanical motion with the phenomena of life. The phenomena of life cannot be expressed in formulae of mechanical energy, nor in heat calories or power units. And the phenomenon of life cannot be created by artificial physico-chemical means.” (Ouspensky 1922, p. 105) “For our observation, life phenomena are very similar to phenomena of motion, as they appear to a twodimensional being; therefore they may be 'motion in the fourth dimension'. We have seen that the twodimensional being will regard as movements of bodies the three-dimensional properties of motionless solids; and as phenomena of life the actual movements of bodies proceeding in a higher space. In other words, motion which remains motion in a higher space appears to a lower being as a phenomenon of life, and motion which disappears in higher space, becoming a property of a motionless body, appears to it as mechanical motion. The incommensurability for us of phenomena of life and phenomena of 'motion' is exactly the same as the incommensurability for a two-dimensional being in his world of the two kinds of motion, of which only one is real and the other illusory.” (Ouspensky 1922, p. 105) “Starting from this, it is possible to presume that those phenomena which we call phenomena of life are motion in higher space. Phenomena which we call mechanical motion are phenomena of life in a space lower than ours, whereas in a higher space they are simply properties of motionless bodies. This means that if we take three kinds of existence - two-dimensional, ours and a higher one, it will prove that the 'motion' observed by two-dimensional beings in two-dimensional space is for us the property of motionless bodies; 'life' which is observed in two-dimensional space, is motion as observed by us in our space. And further - movements in three-dimensional space, i.e. all our mechanical movements and manifestations of physical and chemical forces, such as light, sound, heat and so on, are only our sensations of some properties of four-dimensional bodies, unknowable for us; and our 'phenomena of life' are movements of bodies of a higher space which appear to us as birth, growth and life of living beings. If we presume a space not of four but of five dimensions, then in it 'phenomena of life' will probably prove to be properties of motionless bodies - species, varieties, families, peoples, tribes and so on, and possibly only 'thought phenomena' will appear as motion.” (Ouspensky 1922, p. 106) The implications of this movement are immense and in many ways dimensionally incommensurable with the plane of dimensional consistency in which linguistic representation occurs as a result of what Spinoza (2002, p. 26) calls ‘the poverty of language’. For the sake of our argument, however, it is enough to understand that, while there is surely a subjective (and indeed often obfuscating) quality to the categories we use to describe scale (local, national, regional, imperial, planetary, etc.), scale itself is a constituent of the natural order (it has an inherent, eternal quality of reality, a Nothing-Infinite Eternal order that, though it expresses itself in terms relative to a given perspective, is not reducible to the subjective constructions by which we attempt to understand scale in materially rational terms) and thus should not be ‘expunged from the geographical vocabulary’. (Springer 2014, p. 408) Reality is not confined to our subjective, materially rational constructions. Scale is real, even if the subjective, materially rational constructions (‘categories’) by which we attempt to describe it are (intentionally or not…) divorced from reality. Suspending Subjectivity? No… “Woodward et al. (2012) contend that subjectivity actually becomes suspended though the unanticipated connections and interactions that emerge from a site ontology, allowing for autonomous spaces to open up both organizationally and politically, as the material immanence – the here and now of prefiguration –makes the site the legislator of its own assembly, wherein subjectivity no longer conditions the political schemata.” (Springer 2014, p. 409) Subjectivity is not suspended—not the subjectivity that rises from our Worldview—it is starkly impossible to think the that of the Natural Worldview when we are isolated within the Artificial Worldview—subjectivity always conditions our schemata, whether we are aware of it or not…. Calls for ‘suspending subjectivity’, moving ‘without ontological assumptions’ or other such abandonments of the foundational assumptions (the Worldview) and norms of feeling, thought behavior and being that rise from these foundational assumptions simply illustrate the stark impossibility of thinking that imposed by the banally invisible fetters formed by Worldview and associated norms of feeling, thought, behavior and being. Even if the subjectivity of the individual observing the political schemata could be suspended (again, it is not possible to escape the conditioning of our sensory experiences by our Worldview as evidenced by the dogmatically materialist assumptions concerning the nature of reality that undergird the flat earthers’ ontology …), 15 15 Their whole argument presupposes the Colonial Modernist Worldview’s reduction of reality to passing time and physical space, its anti-essentialist denial of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and its emanations Force, Form and Consciousness. The perverse, historically manufactured subjectivity of Colonial Modernity and its materialistic dogmas (the reduction of reality to passing time and physical space and denial of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and its emanations) are already presupposed in the point at which Woodward (et. al. 2012) seeks to suspend subjectivity… Subjectivity is acceptable up to the point at which our understandings of reality have been so perverted that it seems possible to presumptively write subjectivity out of reality. All they are actually doing (notably with the same zealous fervor as their colonial antecedents…) is attempting to normalize and naturalize the perversities of their own subjectivities and the Colonial Modernist Worldview from which they rise by assuming (but surely not stating) that their dogmatically materialistic Worldview (the assumptions by which we can conceptualize the order of a ‘site’ as rising from the materiality of that site itself rather than the interaction of force (environment), form and consciousness) is real and others are not. “The overall assumptions of modern rationality remain largely intact, and even geographers doing ‘postcolonial’ studies remain largely unwilling to step out of their epistemological frameworks for a moment and consider different ways of understanding the world… The colonial mentality holds: the modern worldview is ‘real’ even if it is socially constructed; other worldviews are not. Thus the critical turn has yet to decolonize the discipline truly and still leaves us in a disenchanted world without inherent values.” (Herman 2008, p. 76) The Cambridge Social Ontology Group provides a distinction between philosophical ontology and scientific ontology that sheds light on the violence of the flat earthers’ ontology: “The group distinguishes between philosophical ontology, the study of features common to all phenomena of any domain of reality, and scientific ontology, interpreted as the study of specific phenomena of a domain. Thus for the social realm, philosophical ontology is concerned with investigating the manner in which social phenomena depend necessarily on human[s]… Scientific ontology oriented to the political is itself the product of millennia (at the very least) of historically manufactured subjectivities that actively divide us from the goodly order of our human nature (which is to say reality beyond social construction). In any case, as is the won’t of slavish colonialist subjects of the Artificial Worldview, these calls for ‘suspending subjectivity’ (like calls for suspending ontological assumptions) ought to be read as calls for ‘naturalizing, normalizing and enforcing the Worldview from which the subjectivity (and ontological assumptions) of those calling for subjectivity to be suspended rises’. “The overall assumptions of modern rationality remain largely intact, and even geographers doing ‘postcolonial’ studies remain largely unwilling to step out of their epistemological frameworks for a moment and consider different ways of understanding the world… The colonial mentality holds: the modern worldview is ‘real’ even if it is socially constructed; other worldviews are not. Thus the critical turn has yet to decolonize the discipline truly and still leaves us in a disenchanted world without inherent values.” (Herman 2008, p. 76) In any case, our central argument remains the same—we do not have to live on a flat earth to transcend hierarchy—we need to excise the will-to-domination (and thus hierarchy) from the natural order of vertical and scalar relations—we do not need to (yet again, in perfect Modernist form…) ‘solve our problems’ by attempting to destroy the natural order (of vertical and scalar relations). “…Scale is not synonymous with hierarchy.” (Springer 2014, p. 410) To conclude, I should note that I agree with most if not all what I understand in Springer’s (2014) argument and that my issues with calls for decentralization, descalification and horizontalization may rise from the way that I am reading the text (and, more importantly, the way that I fear the text may be read by dogmatic, nihilistic, post[most]modern readers) rather than the deeper discursive meaning intended by Springer (in which case he has my apologies for an unduly antagonistic reading). “…Decentralized organization can be understood as grounded in the material practices of the present” (Springer 2014, p. 413), but it should also be understood as grounded in the true, natural power center (the true authority, the Nothing-Infinite Eternal) shared by all that which is. If we are to be materially decentralized, then we must be spiritually centralized (and indeed this ‘middle way’ seems to provide balance between the natural order of nothing-infinite unity and natural order of manifest difference that together produce the ‘whole’). Again, we must see from both the finite perspective (in which decentralization is surely an admirable goal) and the nothing-infinite perspective (where centralized power IS) by opening the mystical pass. (Cleary 1999) “Politics do not require authority any more than we actually require the concept of scale in human geography.” (Springer 2014, pp. 413-414) Politics do require authority, as the social domain is concerned with the nature of such existents as money, gender, markets, technology, social relations, the corporation, care, regions, community, power, authority, trust, cooperation, testimony, institutions, norms, rules, custom, convention, collective practice, profit, output, income, wealth, identity, individual, social evolution, development, human flourishing, probability, society, economy, and so forth.” (Cambridge Social Ontology Group 2016) By denying the aspect of reality (the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and its emanations Force, Form and Consciousness) from which the order of philosophical ontology (‘features common to all phenomena of any domain of reality’) emanates, the flat earthers reduce all ontological questions to ‘scientific ontology’ while simultaneously rendering their dogmatically materialistic assumptions concerning philosophical ontology (materiality as the feature common to all phenomena of any domain of reality where the only domain of reality is assumed to be passing time and physical space) as banally invisible (i.e. as unproblematically real). Geography does require sensitivity to the natural order of scale, but politics requires the natural authority of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and the natural order (for example, the authority of the Nothing-Infinite Eternal and the natural order are necessary for attaining a shared understanding of virtue, which is necessary for harmonious relations with other conscious beings) rather than the perverse, artificial authority of the ‘Archons of Society’. Harmony in culture, society, politics, economics, religion, etc. requires order, and order requires authority (the origin of order), but neither natural order nor its authority are dependent upon the artificial, hierarchical authority of the elite class (indeed, natural order and our connection with the author of natural order are destroyed by hierarchical domination as illustrated by Meng Zi’s [2A2] farmer from song who pulled on the sprouts in his field to ‘help them grow’ and only succeeded in killing the sprouts). Politics do require authority, but that authority exists within and manifests (all be it to varying degrees) from everything. Politics do require authority, but there is only one authority and it is to be found within rather than in the external force of hierarchical domination (which, in fact, serves to sever us from the one true author[ity]). To reduce our analysis to the manifest world of passing time and physical space (which seems to be implicit in calls for material decentralization that are not accompanied by some reference to our natural, eternal, spiritual center, to the authority upon which virtuous political order is indeed dependent) is to simply cede the battle for Worldview to the Colonial Modernist incarnation of the Artificial Worldview. The Anthropocentrism (human centric) and Androcentrism (male centric) qualities of the Artificial Worldview’s Paternalist and Colonial-Modernist incarnations surely lie in the root of oppression and exploitation in Modernity , (Plumwood 1993; Lupinacci 2016) but the problem is what we have centered on (human and male rather than the Nothing-Infinite Eternal) and not centrism itself (which would not have the same oppressive and exploitative implications of we centered on the true ‘center’ [try to think of the term center outside the 4 dimensionally limited nature of human senses like eye-sight…] of all that which is). That being said, we need to realize the truth of Springer’s (2014) assertion that we do not need artificial, hierarchical authority before we can begin to escape its clutches and return to an existence that finds its center (authority) in the Nothing Infinite Eternal, its emanations Force Form and Consciousness, and the natural order that rises from this (the one true) authority. 16 th I should probably clear up a few points for the contemporary reader (especially those whose unconscious biases cannot bear someone with my biological and gender identity [the dreaded straight white male… ] traits speaking about sexuality and gender in anything but the materialistic [i.e. Colonial Modernist], anti-essentialist, nihilistic, post-truth, post-reality 17 16 The problem, in short, is not centric thinking but centric thinking oriented by an artificial center. There is but one natural ‘center’, and it exists prior to time and space and cannot be aptly understood with a Cartesian, 3rd-4th dimensionally reductive conception of the term ‘center’. The center of everywhere is nowhere, but that it not to say that the center of everywhere does not exist. The true center does include everything. (Barnes and Sheppard 2009) 17 To be fair, I have deep-seated unconscious biases against white men as well. Especially old white men… It is a reasonable bias in this world, but like all such biases (be they rooted in actual trends or not) it does not hold up as a universal law and I don't quite fit the mold (thus my ostracization from normative, hegemonic white male culture along with all the spaces where my biological identity marks me as an ‘eternal’ outcast…). terms that dominate the contemporary academy…). First and foremost, let us account for the relationship between natural order and difference in manifestation. Natural order is an expression of Form. Form manifests in relationship to its environment of manifestation. Each manifestation of Form is different. Radical individualism of the sort often promoted by anarchists, then, is surely commensurable with the worldview asserted here. When we talk of the natural order of yin and yang as manifest in the human context, of masculine and feminine principles, we may assert a binary to understand the relationship between the active (sperm) and the latent (egg), between the creative and the restorative, between pollen and flower, but such conversations are of unmanifest essences and should not be understood as connoting any such simplistic clarity in manifestation. Each manifestation of the relationship between the active and the latent will be different. Each individual will have a different balance of the two polarities that form the binary of life, and that balance is surely not to be articulated by an individual’s biology (particularly by the role their genitals play in the reproductive process). The active (motion) and the latent (silence) are only understood as ‘binary’ for heuristic purposes, to understand the two polarities from which the circle of life emerges, but in essence and in manifestation the two are never actually divided. The climax of motion is silence, and the climax of silence is motion. (Cleary 1991) The same is true when we discuss Worldview. When I discuss the Colonial Modernist Worldview, there is no implication that all people who have grown up in Colonial Modernity are subject to the Colonial Modernist Worldview. When authors like Four Arrows discuss the Indigenous Worldview (the Natural Worldview), there is no presumption that all Indigenous peoples ascribe to the Indigenous Worldview or that all people who do ascribe to the Indigenous Worldview understand or express it in the same terms. Worldview is a Form. It is an unmanifest essence. There are surely coherent orders (of feeling, thought, behavior and being) that rise from a Worldview, but that order manifests in relationship to the individual and will thus manifest differently each and every time. We speak of Worldview in terms of the Form (the basic cosmological, ontological, teleological, etc. assumptions) from which the many and varied orders of a Worldview’s manifestation rise so that we may become intimate with the essence of a Worldview, so that we can differentiate the Natural Worldview from the Artificial Worldview and thus purify our world of the privations of the Artificial Worldview, but this manner of discussing Worldview should not imply that any manifestation of Worldview—any given individual’s Worldview—will take on the ‘straight lines of Modernist improvement’ (Blake 1906) that appear to divide Worldviews when they are perceived from a perspective that emphasizes their unmanifest Form. The forest is beautiful because the same forms manifest differently each time. If every tree in the forest looked the same… well… it wouldn't be a forest… it would just be some foul artificial replica that is apparently (and truly) fake… but this does not imply that the forest is without form… when we take the aggregate of the forest’s ‘crooked paths of genius’ (Blake 1906) we observe Form, order, the unitary fractal from which the multiplicity of the forest rises… when we take the aggregate of a river’s many, varied, meandering bends we find a circle… from unity rises difference… in difference we may observe unity… if only the modernist (materially rational) mind could hold the paradox of being as both one and many… but alas, we languish in Modernity… “…Ecofeminists insist that binary/dualistic thinking about both women and the environment inevitably lead to the devaluation of women, nature and nonhuman beings.” (Lupinacci 2016, p. 5) It surely does, but that is not to say that there is not to say that there is no Form of Duality. Establishing an artificial binary between humanity and nature surely leads to a state of ignorance and separation in which the devaluation of nature as inferior to and the rightful dominion of man becomes possible, for in truth we are a strand in the web of nature. Authoritarian (in the artificial, hierarchical sense of authority rather than the natural, Nothing-Infinite Eternal sense of authority) imposition of the dualistic relationship between the masculine and feminine principle upon people based on their biology, especially within the Artificial Worldview where the rational-masculine principle is accepted as superior to the emotional-feminine principle (where the rational-masculine is viewed as the rout to salvation from the ‘chaos’ of the emotional-feminine, where domination of the emotional-feminine by the rational-masculine is accepted as the path to salvation), but thinking about the active-creative and the latent-restorative principle in dualistic terms need not form an inevitable path to devaluation of women if we view the two principles as mutually constitutive, as emerging from the climax of the other, as both duality and unity (in which case we cannot view one as superior to or more valuable than the other as they are one), as never to be found without the other, as never to exist without the other, as never to be separated from the other by biological identity. if only the modernist (materially rational) mind could hold the paradox of being as both one and many, the paradox set by the fact that duality is both 2 and 1 (which means that it is 3, 2+1), and that the 1 is more consistent with both the Form and the manifestation of duality even if the 2 may be more useful for the heuristic purposes of identifying the qualities of the polarities that, when united (1), give rise to the ebb and flow of life… but alas, we languish in Modernity (in the 1, 2, 3, 4 of the Pythagorean sun cult)… would that we could remember the Natural Worldview (the 0, 1, 2, 3 of the Daoists). 0: The Nothing (latent). 1: The Infinite (active). 01: Nothing-Infinite Eternal and its Emanations Force, Form and Consciousness (the Uncreated). 2: Uncreated (without motion, eternal [no beginning or end], unchanging) and the CreatedManifest (with ‘motion’ , beginnings and ends, changing). 3: Uncreated and Created-Manifest, which is to say Nothing-Infinite and Finite, both dual (2) and unitary (1), 1+2=3. 18 When we open the mystical pass to see from both the finite and the nothing-infinite perspective (Cleary 1999), we enter the three—we can see 1 (the All) and 2 (the NothingInfinite Eternal and the Finite) at the same time. Its not Nothing and Infinite, it's the Nothing-Infinite. In the Eternal, the dual-principle rests in its natural unity (the essence of silence and motion as one). The androgynous. Better still, the hermaphroditic, as it is not 18 Not necessarily motion in the 4th dimensional sense of the term with which we are intimate through lived experience, but motion all the same. (Ouspensky 1922) a lack of the duality but the natural unity of the Nothing and the Infinite, of limitless latent potential and limitless activation, of limitless creation and restoration). It may be best not to transgress the tradition of secrecy when it comes to these topics, for you can only understand them from within (you must understand the mystery from within, from within the part of self that is the mystery, the part of self that—when we are intimate with it—makes it possible to experience the mystery from within). You are the mystery. Find yourself within yourself. Leave the sunlit path and travel into the bowls of the earth. The Mines of Moria await, but the Balrog was only ever a privation of reality—fill the void so that the beast recedes into the nothingness from whence it came. The Balrog, like the Dragon Smaug, is not real—both of them lack self-subsistence, a root in the eternal. To slay them is to slay the heart. To suppress the heart. To hierarchically dominate the heart. With greed goes generosity. With hate goes love. Fill the artificial void. Let generosity and love fill the void from which greed and hate become possible. Heal the dragon of the wounds by which it has been deprived of generosity and cast into greed. Bibliography: Agnew and Duncan 2011, The Wiley-Blackwell companion to human geography. Vol. 16. John Wiley & Sons. Barnes and Sheppard 2009, “‘Nothing includes everything’: towards engaged pluralism in Anglophone economic geography”, Progress in Human Geography 34(2). 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