Thursday, December 16, 2021

The Misapprehension of the Nature of Nature Pt 2 - Nature is Cosmic

In the previous post on the misapprehension of nature, in point 7 the question was raised "is the misapprehension of the nature of nature just another example of "the sun revolves around the earth"?

But wait. Isn't nature biological? Organic? (As opposed to inorganic.) And limited to Earth? (As far as we know.) How can a rock, which is "dead", be part of nature?

Can a rock roll? Isn't everything moving? The clouds sure, but a mountain? A geological wave in continuous motion? Not to us, it is beyond our own range of apprehension. It's moving continuously but we can't see it. We have technological instruments that extend our biologically installed range of apprehension. Can we measure the continuous movement of mountains? Nope. We can measure pre-quake and pre-volcanic tremors (seismologically), but cannot measure the continuous movement of the geological wave that is a mountain. But even if we could measure it, is remains beyond our range of apprehension, which is a function of the biological limits of any given species.

The idea that somehow everything can eventually fit into our technological range of apprehension is the innate narcissistic hubris that limits our capacity for progress. We want to think technological capacities are limitless. Freud said something to the effect: the biologically instinctual fear of death is at the root of all neurosis.

So then our unshaken faith that every problem can be conquered by technological progress is a collective neurosis? What if there is a collective delusion and denial that technology creates as many problems as it solves?

Inorganic minerals are nature too. We have minerals in our bodies (vitamins and minerals). Without them we would not exist. An exact level of minerality is one of the many preconditions for the phenomena of biology. Since we are unaware of any other biological planet in the known universe we may assume all of the many preconditions for the phenomena of profuse biology are exact.

Many exact preconditions occurring simultaneously on a planet. Quite obviously the odds of that occurrence are de minimis. 

So can we say then that literally everything that exists everywhere in the cosmos, known and unknown, is nature? And profuse biology is a subset of nature?

There is a saying in psychology "the unconscious knows everything". Is that merely a metaphor meaning the unconscious knows everything it needs to know for individuals to heal and be well? Or literally "everything"? Isn't everything (omnipresence) a definition of god?

Well if the unconscious does literally know everything we don't "know" that it knows. We would all be omniscient (and then omnipotent). But we are not, nature needs limits and boundaries to exist. Structure is only possible as a result of "stress interface". We think of stress as only a bad thing, but nothing would exist without it. Stress then is an example of an exact precondition, not to little, not too much.

Is the function of technology ultimately to reduce stress levels in humans? It's an interesting question. To go from couch potato to fit and healthy we must reintroduce physical stress levels. "Optimal" health then is produced by another exact precondition of stress levels. Interestingly correct levels of physical stress reduce emotional stress levels.

The belief that technology is the solution to everything is a pendulum swung too far in one direction. It seems uncorrectable because we cannot conceive of technology as anything other than the solution to everything. No worries, nature will correct that overshoot even if we can't.

We are the product of nature, not it's creator, which is the fundamental misapprehension.

But perhaps "the unconscious" is not a "bounded" phenomena. If mountains are not a bounded phenomena (in continuous movement), why would the unconscious be? The entire range of the unconscious, then, is beyond the range of human apprehension. And that limit gives our minds "structure", hence functionality.

Meanwhile we "know" everything is everything. But in this "post god" scientific world let's remember the value of the structures of nature, and let's remember that the bounded structures nature takes allows functionality, and that the random disruption of those natural structures is potentially self-destructive, to the individual biology, and to Earths biological structure. 

Let's remember that we ourselves are wholly the product of nature.

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