In regard to material limits and ecological constraints, invisibility carries no cost. We became adept at measuring what is static and missed what is alive, whether it is becoming more capable of sustaining life over time — or less, whether a system is regenerating, holding, or eroding.
The tension you identify between empirical rigor and existenital consolation is sharp. When people encounter predicaments that resist technical solutions, the impulse to elevate one explanatory lens into a cosmic principle makes sense psychologically even if it doesnt clarify strategically. I've noticed this pattern in energy descent discussions where teh metaphor becomes ontology and suddenly biophysical constraints get filtered through Jungian archetypes. What gets lost is exactly what you name: residual agency at smaller scales and the cultural forces that still shape response patterns.
I appreciate ya. Language was/is the first, the primary interface, and capturing the language is the first play of any PR, 'superorganism', 'network ecosphere', that we 'connect' and 'process' information, and many other analogical leaps criscrossing the tech and biology spheres the examples. The English language is spoken by more folks worldwide than any other, yet native speakers are only 25% of the total. It's not adapting well to, as you say, "a worldview asked to bear more than it was built to carry". Language is also the storehouse of culture.
I wonder whether the "stance capable of holding explanation, responsibility, and uncertainty in tension" isn't ideology, but language. The science we know was born in this object-oriented language, and we need a relation-oriented language to address "the unresolved tension our understanding has revealed". I don't know how or whether this is possible...maybe we can learn to speak differently to each other of the living world, and how to be here as a relation, rather than as an object.
I enjoy the metaphorical ontologies for what they are, but this is a good reminder that some people take them too far and too literally, eg Wetiko.
I have yet to delve into McGilchrist’s daunting theories, perhaps because I’m instinctively skeptical of his grand theories of explanations that some people, eg William Rees, are huge fans of.
Personally, I enjoy learning from each myth, but they’re all greeted with realism and my alarm bells sometimes go off early (eg re Wetiko).
The way I’d put it is that our limited brains have no way of truly understanding themselves. We make headway, sure, but we’re almost infinitely complex and have barely scratched the surface.
One of the greatest wisdoms is the ability to look at complex pictures and reduce it to the critical components; to reach the correct conclusions about what we must do. I don’t mean reductionism; more like “to the best of our limited understanding”. That’s what I try to do, and why I haven’t bought fully into one scientific mysticism story, perhaps apart from the notion of free will being logically incoherent nonsense - which explains a lot 😝
Good comments, Jan. As I say in the piece, we need to be careful about confusing myth and metaphor for mechanism. I think it's a pretty human urge to look for a simple Grand Narrative--one to rule them all. To my mind, learning how to hold things in tension without trying to resolve everything is the project at hand. Your understanding of 'free' will helps in this regard!
In regard to material limits and ecological constraints, invisibility carries no cost. We became adept at measuring what is static and missed what is alive, whether it is becoming more capable of sustaining life over time — or less, whether a system is regenerating, holding, or eroding.
https://open.substack.com/pub/maxwilbert/p/the-problem-with-limits?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
The tension you identify between empirical rigor and existenital consolation is sharp. When people encounter predicaments that resist technical solutions, the impulse to elevate one explanatory lens into a cosmic principle makes sense psychologically even if it doesnt clarify strategically. I've noticed this pattern in energy descent discussions where teh metaphor becomes ontology and suddenly biophysical constraints get filtered through Jungian archetypes. What gets lost is exactly what you name: residual agency at smaller scales and the cultural forces that still shape response patterns.
Yes! Jungian archetypes is another great example of what I'm getting at.
I appreciate ya. Language was/is the first, the primary interface, and capturing the language is the first play of any PR, 'superorganism', 'network ecosphere', that we 'connect' and 'process' information, and many other analogical leaps criscrossing the tech and biology spheres the examples. The English language is spoken by more folks worldwide than any other, yet native speakers are only 25% of the total. It's not adapting well to, as you say, "a worldview asked to bear more than it was built to carry". Language is also the storehouse of culture.
I wonder whether the "stance capable of holding explanation, responsibility, and uncertainty in tension" isn't ideology, but language. The science we know was born in this object-oriented language, and we need a relation-oriented language to address "the unresolved tension our understanding has revealed". I don't know how or whether this is possible...maybe we can learn to speak differently to each other of the living world, and how to be here as a relation, rather than as an object.
I enjoy the metaphorical ontologies for what they are, but this is a good reminder that some people take them too far and too literally, eg Wetiko.
I have yet to delve into McGilchrist’s daunting theories, perhaps because I’m instinctively skeptical of his grand theories of explanations that some people, eg William Rees, are huge fans of.
Personally, I enjoy learning from each myth, but they’re all greeted with realism and my alarm bells sometimes go off early (eg re Wetiko).
The way I’d put it is that our limited brains have no way of truly understanding themselves. We make headway, sure, but we’re almost infinitely complex and have barely scratched the surface.
One of the greatest wisdoms is the ability to look at complex pictures and reduce it to the critical components; to reach the correct conclusions about what we must do. I don’t mean reductionism; more like “to the best of our limited understanding”. That’s what I try to do, and why I haven’t bought fully into one scientific mysticism story, perhaps apart from the notion of free will being logically incoherent nonsense - which explains a lot 😝
Good comments, Jan. As I say in the piece, we need to be careful about confusing myth and metaphor for mechanism. I think it's a pretty human urge to look for a simple Grand Narrative--one to rule them all. To my mind, learning how to hold things in tension without trying to resolve everything is the project at hand. Your understanding of 'free' will helps in this regard!