10.27
New reading this morning: "Leadership And The New Science: Discovering Order In A Chaotic World" by Margaret J. Wheatley (Berrett-Koehler, 1999).
A quote from Lenin - "freedom is good; control is better" - reminded me of a manager, of my close professional acquaintance, who might have put this over the entrance to his office. Although possibly in revised format: "control is good; complete control is necessary". Someone interested in the creative process might paraphrase this as "complete control is a form of dying to the creative life". To confuse order and control has dangerous repercussions, as it did the in the case of that particular manager.
To my primitive and unsophisticated eyes, the difference between quantum physics and Newtonian science, at the least as metaphor, is the difference between the domains of will and function. In the domain of will, decision & choice have actual effects, the universe mysteriously lines up behind the decision, and distance is no impediment to action. In the domain of function, events hold mechanical consequences (affective & mental, as well as physical). The seeming contradiction: we are not apart from each other, and yet our decision, our choice, is absolute: even the decision to maintain a seeming distance.
So, what science might be applied as a metaphor to the domain of being? Henri Bortoft's description of Geothean scientific consciousness is the first that springs to mind as I type this.
15.52
Being is a question of integration, the degree to which we "hang together", and act as if we were one person. Our commonplace assumption that we act as a single, indivisible creature on an ongoing basis, dissolves in front of an impartial, non-judgemental observation of what we are, and how we act, over an extended period of time. The key to practical action is the assumption of virtue: we may not be "fully integrated", but may we act as if we were? May we persuade the crowd that acts nominally under our name to act as a team, a group, and then a solo artist?
So, what might be considered a science of integrity, of wholeness? "The Wholeness Of Nature" (Henri Bortoft) springs associately to mind, ecology, the notion of Gaia, Teilhard de Chardin, et al. I associately recall a review from c.1955 of Mr. Bennett's "Dramatic Universe" (Volume One) which was generally positive, but considered the notion of a biosphere, of the planet as a single and increasingly conscious organism, a step too far for reasonable argument.
Other bibliophiliacal information: I closed the final pages on Peter Hitchens' polemic "The Abolition Of Britain" (Quartet 1999) at the Red Carpet Club, LAX, a companion read (with different sensibility) to Roger Scruton's "An Elegy For England", read on recent holiday with Toyah.
