From Oppressive Freedom to Freedom from Oppression: The Natural Re-Inclusion of The Dislocated Self
BY ALAN D.M.
RAYNER
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
Deep in the heart of much human psychological, social
and environmental distress is an oppressively singular rationalization of the
individual 'self', analogous to a cardboard cutout model. This 'free agency' is
a paradoxical artefact of the objective abstraction of the material 'content'
of nature out of spatial context. It is dislocated from the receptive space of
its natural neighbourhood, and so held to be 'independent' and fully
responsible and culpable for its own behaviour. But at the same time it is
confined within an imaginary 3-dimensional structural frame, where it is
embroiled in a relentless 'struggle for existence'. This artefact is sustained
in human cultures by the desire for power over sources of fear, which leads to
the imposition of definitive 'barriers to love' that provide a false sense of
security and control.
All movement is thereby reduced to the translocation
of independent bodies in discrete numerical intervals of distance and time, as
a reaction to or effect of the imposition of causal force or action. In life forms, this
causal force must be situated on one side or other of a fixed bodily boundary, either
within some
internal executive control centre or in the external environment: the
so-called 'nature or nurture' dichotomy.
In natural fluid flow, however, boundaries are
transitional, ever-forming and reforming places of dynamically coupled
relationship and distinction - not places of severance, which isolate subject
from object. Here, self-identity forms from the complex dynamic involvement
of
local and non-local realms and so cannot be extricated from its natural
evolutionary neighbourhood.
As modern human life becomes more and more demanding in terms of the variety of competencies that we[1] each have to acquire as individuals, so our fear of involvement in relationships with one another and the natural world seems to grow apace. It is as though civilisation's escape from 'the Jungle out there', whence our animal nature evolves, leads only into an even more perplexing 'Jungle in here', full of mythical constructions of our own making that rule our lives far more oppressively than any 'Lion King'.
This conundrum arises because in attempting to make life more comfortable, convenient and predictable, we have tried to extricate ourselves from involvement in natural processes by means of a simplifying method that ironically only serves to obstruct and complicate this involvement. The method consists, quite literally, of a very particular and partial way of seeking precise factual Knowledge about the world: our much-vaunted objective rationality. It is deeply embedded in the very foundations of many of our philosophical, mathematical, scientific, theological, historical, linguistic, governmental and educational endeavours. It has led much of our thinking and practice to become unrealistically definition-driven and hence deterministic or stochastic (fate- or chance-based). It lies at the root of much psychological, social and environmental damage and distress. Not least of its damaging manifestations has lain in the development over the last 30 years of 'sociobiology', based on the application of the definitive neo-Darwinian concepts of 'individual selection' and 'selfish genes' to all kinds of social organization, human and non-human.
Much as we may yearn for more naturally simple and sustainable ways of living and loving, objective rationality makes us Fall out of correspondence with our natural human neighbourhood (cf. Taylor, 2005). Far from making us 'impartial' in our observations and judgements, as many might think, it actually leads us to take a very partial - selective and prejudicial - view of our world and one another. We define 'things' as discrete objects that cannot be anything other than themselves and use this as the basis for the divisive logic of the excluded middle – 'to be or not to be'. Through this logic, we inevitably set everything in opposition to everything else because, by definition, there is no way in which anything can be both 'A' and 'not A'.
In effect, objective rationality reduces Nature into a cardboard cutout model in which every distinct form or 'figure' is excised from the 'ground' of its dynamic spatial context and re-located within a fully framed stage set as a cast of independent 'actors'. Due to being isolated within their own boundaries and 'individual property', these actors are somehow magically animated entirely from within, whilst being pushed and pulled about by purely external forces. Their interrelationships can only be transactional - a set of equal and opposite actions and reactions distinguished as 'cause' and 'effect' in a linear time frame. There can be no bodily sharing of common space, no room for the inductive receptivity of Agape (loving openness to other).
This is the cold, self-referential, cubical cubicle world of Newtonian mechanics. The position and momentum of independent material bodies are plotted within a fixed Euclidean (3-dimensional) structural framework of x, y, and z co-ordinates stretching to infinity, with void space abstracted as constant empty background and, like time, divided up into equal, discrete intervals. As Henri PoincarŽ (1905) recognised, it makes for great mathematical convenience, but cannot adequately represent the natural dynamic relationships of more than two distinct forms moving under one another's simultaneous mutual influence.
In actuality, the notion that any thing can be defined as a discrete object is inconsistent both with contemporary scientific findings implicit in quantum mechanics, relativity and non-linear theory, and with our everyday human experience of dynamic relationship with one another and nature. Ultimately, this is because space, as an omnipresence of structural absence, permeates everywhere - nowhere has any evidence been found for the existence of an indivisible solid particle or discrete structural limit that absolutely isolates one part of nature from any other. Indeed, were there any such limit, we could have no knowledge of what lay beyond or within it.
Nonetheless, we persist in trying to apply such definition to everything, including our own self-identity and personal property. As we do so, we sentence ourselves to a loveless life in adversity in which we are up against 'it' and against 'them', forming alliances only through our identification of common enemies who we can take sides against. We sacrifice our capacity for love to an oppressive struggle for power that can only be resolved by the elimination of one or the other. We 'take arms against a sea of troubles' in the vain belief that we can 'by opposing, end them'.
It is as though we are driven to abstract definition by a perception of something, which is reinforced in its turn by our definition-driven accounts of nature and ourselves. So, what could this 'something' be? Ultimately, I think it is our perception of 'something wrong', a fearful aspect of Nature and the nature of ourselves that has us run for cover but in the process of covering 'it' up predisposes us to conflict. It is whatever we perceive that brings pain, death and uncertainty. We may define it as 'Evil' and often as 'Darkness', which we contrast absolutely with 'Good' and 'Light'. We split both Nature and the nature of our 'Self' into two, each of which rages against the other. In doing so, we alienate what are as naturally vital to each other's co-expression as the ridge and trough of a wave.
In other words, by thinking that there is something wrong with Nature and/or human nature, and trying to define it in order to eliminate it in terms of absolute Knowledge of Good and Evil, we actually manufacture something wrong. We construct intellectual facades within which to single out the human 'Self' from its natural neighbourhood, and attribute to this dislocated entity a paradoxical and oppressive 'free agency'. We set about trying to perfect this agency by eliminating its imperfection, in much the same way that Darwinian individual selection is held to enhance competitive fitness. The actual effect of such selection is, however, to open the way for eugenics and holocaust in the pursuit of an unattainable 'ideal', some future 'end' or 'goal' deemed to be desirable in terms of prescriptive 'values'.
In the midst of such self-imposed, definition-driven free agency, our distress grows ever more palpable. We feel alone in our struggles and vacant in our isolation - unable to trust or love any that would be our rival. So we look elsewhere to satisfy or mollify our animal cravings.
A Matter of Habit: Barriers to
Love
Once we define ourselves as free agencies that have something intrinsically wrong with their nature, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy that traps us in recurrent loops of obsessive and compulsive behaviour. We simply cannot see the hidden potential that our definitions wittingly or unwittingly exclude, and so get caught in the crossfire of a vicious circular war of one definition against another. We may hence feel compelled to take sides on behalf of our idealisation of freedom or security. Alternatively, we may seek a way out of this war by retreating further into our sense of meaningless isolation, and/or through various forms of escapism, that serve only to entrap us ever more deeply. These are the burgeoning forms of self-oppression that our modern culture has come in many instances to define as 'addictions'. Many, if not all of them are correspondingly treated as if they are illnesses, 'something wrong with us'. But many of them may more realistically be understood as desperate attempts to replace the hidden potential that our definitions exclude: they are symptoms of 'something wrong for us', which originates in absolute definition.
So what is this 'hidden potential', which addiction to absolute definition obscures from our view? I think it is no less than what goes missing when an objective frame is imposed upon Nature and around our selves. It is 'the' indefinable, all pervasive, receptive, 'Mother-Space' of Nature, everywhere. In another word, 'it' is 'Love'. When we liberate ourselves from Love, through our assertion of free agency, we subject ourselves to an extraordinarily powerful form of oppression; a liberty we impose both upon others and ourselves, which drugs our consciousness into compliance. We join the crowd that declares in unison, 'we are all individuals', even though some non-conformist at the back may say 'no, I am/we are not'. The crowd is very hard of hearing when it comes to appreciating the need for receptivity. It therefore perpetuates its own prophecy of individuals struggling to be the best conformists - dedicated followers of fashion, hooked on prescriptive definition. These individuals paradoxically need prescriptive moral codes and laws to govern the selfish extremes of behaviour that they assume would arise from their free agency in the absence of natural loving influence. As Richard Dawkins (1989) once put it: 'let us try and teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish'!
Getting Out of the Habit:
Warming the Boundaries of Cold Geometry
If objective definition gets us hooked upon oppressive notions of freedom and security within fixed 'barriers to love', what gets us 'unhooked' is clearly to relax these definitions through the natural inclusion of receptive space (Rayner, 2006). In this way, the fixed boundaries of objective form are transformed into fluid dynamic distinctions of ever forming, deforming and reforming complex identities of 'one within other', not one or other, or even one and other. Each of these identities can be thought of as a local 'somewhere' that is a dynamic inclusion of non-local 'everywhere'; they are distinct flow-forms, not discrete fixed forms. They cannot therefore have independent fixed 'executive centres' of local government; they can only have dynamic local foci of spatial influence, like our bodily 'centre of gravity' or the 'eye of a hurricane'. These are simultaneously both sources and sinks for energy flow betwixt inner whirls and outer whirls in the universal, non-linear whirl of the indefinable cosmos. Their boundaries are transitional places of dynamically coupled relationship and distinction - not places of severance, which isolate subject from object. They cannot be physically extricated as discrete entities from the natural evolutionary neighbourhood of the non-local field flow that they both locally include and of which they are dynamic inclusions. Such extrication is an artefact of mental abstraction, not a physical reality.
Natural inclusion correspondingly opens up the creative evolutionary possibilities implicit in the dynamic relational involvement of interdependent flow-forms, not the stultification of independent free agents. Our awareness of natural inclusion hence enables us to participate in the release of a deeper spirit of natural communion and creativity, which liberates us from oppressive modes of thought and governance. In other words, we become free from oppression - 'unhooked' and 'unaddicted' - by accepting, and indeed welcoming our lack of absolute free agency in the inescapable pooled togetherness of our common space. Like William Wordsworth, we can appreciate that 'in nature, everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute, independent singleness'. Had the intended recipient of this message, Erasmus Darwin, and his grandson, Charles, been receptive to it, the oppressive notion of our evolutionary 'struggle for existence' might not have arisen, and we could have relaxed instead in the wonderful vision of the kinship of all life.
In effect, the natural inclusion of receptive space, like love, has a warming influence on our understanding of living in dynamic relationship. It melts geometrical 'form' from something frozen into a fixed interval of abstract time and space - a 'snapshot' - into somewhere continually unfolding and enfolding.
What we perceive through our explicit senses as 'form' is a 'derivative' of 'flow', i.e. 'flow-form', not the precursor of flow. Evolutionary flow is not the animation of temporarily fixed 'forms' (a temporal-sequential 'changing' from one form to another form, due to the imposition of external force in a three-dimensional box), but rather a continual process of 'forming'. This fluid dynamic geometry extends from microcosm to macrocosm and differs radically from the hard-line abstractions of Euclid. It is primarily non-linear or curved, due to the inductive receptivity of space, giving rise to spheres, ellipsoids, spirals and tubes. Linear structure emerges secondarily from this geometry, as in the cylinders formed by trees or the hexagonal arrays formed in honeycombs and the regular surfaces of crystals. This natural geometry is also 'nested', with smaller domains contained within and communicating with larger domains. The simplest form of expression of this geometry would be a set of concentric perforated spheres, but has the potential to become extremely 'involved' or 'complex'.
Community in Diversity: Our
Natural, Co-creative, Dynamic Neighbourhood
Hence we may begin to appreciate the
natural communion that is the essence of natural communities of diverse
flow-forms pooled together in common space. A forest is not a discrete
mathematical set of uniform trees, but a
seething variety of herbs, shrubs, trees, animals, fungi and bacteria that
participate in the fluid dynamic transformation of solar energy, water,
minerals and carbon dioxide into organic circulations of growth, death, decay
and re-growth. Like it or not, we human beings are inescapably caught up in
such circulations. So we might as well enjoy the ride whilst we may, rather
than forever try to close the door on their inspirations and expirations.
From Power Struggle to Loving
Receptivity
So the possibility arises of a very different understanding of the evolution of nature and human nature, which frees us from the oppression of our dislocated liberty, and allows our shared experience to prosper. We unhook from Darwin's 'preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life', and regain our confidence in 'natural inclusion' as the co-creative, fluid dynamic transformation of all through all in receptive spatial context. We seek not to perfect individuals through a process of competitive elimination, but share in the delight of perfecting complementary relationship, a process of learning how to hold our uniquely situated contributions in dynamic balance, where none gets absolutely out of hand. We ask not, 'what can I do about this' as a context-free agency, but 'how may I respond receptively in this situation?' We appreciate what it means to be involved, not complicated.
Is this 'natural inclusion' just another Utopia, an unattainable idealisation of human beneficence and social order? I don't think so, because it makes no pretence of regarding humanity as other than natural, or of regarding natural life as without pain, death and uncertainty. But I do think it's what can liberate us from those partial visions that fail to account for the vitality of what it really means to be human and natural and so have us chasing our tails forever in demented loops of individual perfectionism. It allows us to frequent a world where what may rationalistically be deemed to be individual imperfection – something wrong with us – is transformed into the dynamic foundation for our loving, receptive, co-creativity. I think it's simply what common sense really means - what comes from the absence of those barriers to love that we love to impose in the pursuit of unnatural power over natural influence.
That it's a tall order to let go of all that has driven our culture to addictive abstraction, I don't doubt. But all that's needed to resume our sense of natural inclusion is to relax, stop teaching ourselves that we are born selfish and allow ourselves to love our natural neighbourhood as the energy source-sink that sustains our complex identity. Transformation can be rapid, once the floodgates are open to receptive-responsive possibility. We include ourselves in the picture from which our objective eyesight singles us out, along with many others. We also recognise that to sever what's natural to improve our personal property, only serves to expose our personal property to view from elsewhere. Be careful with that axe, Eugene!
Dawkins, R. (1989). The Selfish Gene. New edition. Oxford University Press.
PoincarŽ, H. (1905). Science and Hypothesis. Dover Publications. Walter Scott Publishing Company
Ltd.
Rayner, A.D.M. (2006). Natural Inclusion: How
to Evolve Good Neighbourhood. Self-published on
CD.
Taylor, S. (2005). The Fall. Winchester, UK, New York, USA: O Books
[1] Throughout this essay I use 'we' and 'us' as collective terms for the common 'humanity' and 'natural neighborhood' of which I feel 'myself' to be a dynamic inclusion, even though the attitudes and behaviour I describe need not apply to all in general or anyone in particular. Often these terms may be read as 'shorthand' for 'many of us'.