monday morning motivator!: 16, balancing local and non-local

 

  

 

photo by pink sherbet photography

this message has been brought to you by the network

the idea of networks within networks, like chinese boxes or russian dolls, like solar systems within galaxies within Universe…these ideas have been filling my heart and mind since friday. the stretch of the network metaphor has blossomed like a mushroom, and threatens to continue to do so. and so, in the face of threat, i am just going with it. here’s a little list, and then we’ll see how this can guide me deeper into wholeness this week.

• body as network: cells grouping into organs grouping into organ systems grouping into the physical organism
• social groupings as network
• society as network
• humanity as network
• animal kingdom as network
• planet earth as network

okay. now we are back where we started. and of course we could take it back in the opposite direction, putting the cells under more and more powerful microscopes and of course getting more and more confused by what goes on.

stuff is just areas of intense activity

so with this networking thing as a starting point i have been exploring the place between energy, which is like a wave, and matter, which is like a particle. now, as people, we seem historically to be pretty much wedded to the particle point of view. we live in a world of stuff. and yet what is that stuff? the microscope pretty much destroys that pretty picture.

what i’ve been getting is that stuff is just areas of intense activity. areas where energy flows a lot. intersections of energy. nodes. in this way we can see that the areas in a network where there are lots of connections and intersections and such will seem much more real, tangible, particle-like. and the areas where there is less intersecting and communicating will seem empty, unsubstantial.

we can see this in the world of stuff as well. compare manhattan to the gobi desert. one seems empty, one seems full of life.

how does this relate to local and non-local?

hold on…i’m getting there. hopefully this morning!

the hub of the network

in Universe as network, we can see that there are an endless number of hubs, places where stuff seems to congregate, simply because there are so many lines of energy flowing through. and as we examine each of these hubs we find that they also have their own areas of greater and lesser concentration of lines of energy. the deeper we drill the more we find this pattern. this is the fractal nature of Universe.

this is also the fractal nature of our own existence. hubs within hubs, wheels within wheels, webs within webs. this is fascinating. it just keeps going on. you can search and pry forever and never to get an ending, a conclusion, a solid expanse of bedrock upon which to stand forever. bummer there, if you are looking for that thing. and astounding opportunities for adventure if you can wrap your head around infinity of time and space.

ground control to major tom

okay then. here we go. there is the local. here and now. it’s all relative of course. you might mean right where you are sitting now. and you might mean planet earth in the 21st century. whatever.

and there is the non-local. again this is definitional. and yet.

here we go!

for my own purposes i am going to define local as where i am, and non-local as where i’m not. if you were sitting right in front of me right now you would be local. and since you are probably not only sitting somewhere else, since you are probably sitting some-when else, then you are probably non-local. relative to me, the supreme hub of Universe!

starting small, the first thing that i see is that information and communication work very well in the non-local framework. from the moment we developed language we began to bind time, offering to the future the ideas of the present. writing, printing, voice and video recording; all of these technologies are greater permutations of this same basic time-binding function of language, to offer the future the ideas of the past. and with transport, offering there the ideas of here.

over the years we have managed to expand the reach and the speed of this time and space binding function of language until now we can reach practically anywhere practically anytime. we haven’t cracked the directionality of time, and i won’t theorize on that today, and yet…

at this moment in time i can send an instantaneous signal to virtually any place on the planet, and to any future time! this huge expansion of mobility in non-locality has transformed our lives…and is playing havoc with our sense of balance.

facebook killed face to face

and so whither the local experience? if we are spending all of our time in virtual coffee shops then when are we getting face to face? and what is the point of balance? or points, as we are of course in perpetual motion, through time if not through space.

and then there is the other side of this. while we are spending more and more time in non-local informational/communicative experience, we are also using more and more energy to engage with non-local stuff! how unusual is it to be sitting at a computer that was assembled half-way around the world from parts built and assembled in fourteen other localities all over the globe, wearing clothes from who knows where while sipping tea from…

you get the point. we have brought our continued existence to a virtual tipping point by living more and more in a world that is manufactured and shipped from multiple somewhere elses. is this what they meant with the leveling of the mountains and filling in of the valleys? or is it just what greg brown meant when he sang:

the whole world struggles to become one bland place

okay…so where is the balance?

well, to start with, we all have to find this for ourselves. and to continue with, we have to find a way to look at stuff as well as information. information, it seems to me, works very well with non-locality. stuff works not so well. and with both, there is the question of balance.

and that, my friends, is the question i am pondering this week!

Tags: balance, chinese boxes, facebook, greg brown, heart and mind, motivator, mushroom, planet earth, russian dolls, transform, universe, wholeness

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