project_groworld_divine

Only Nature is divine, and she is not divine…

If I sometimes speak of her as a person
It’s because I can only speak of her by using the languageof men,
Which imposes names on things
And gives them personality.

But things have no name or personality:
They just are, and the sky is vast, the earth wide,
And our heart the size of a closed ﬁst…

Blessed am I for all I know.
I enjoy it all as one who knows that the sun exists.

Alberto Caeiro -Fernando Pessoa heteronym

Nature VS Nurture
David S. Moore, The dependent Gene

Human Nature is imagined to reside within our bodies, to be that with we are born, that which exists independently of our experiences. In contrast, Nurture, is imagined to arise outside of our bodies, usually understood to comprise our experiences. This is sort of a problematic concept.

Every breath we take, every meal we eat, every scene we see is assimilated into the very structures and functions of our bodies, literally becoming us.

Our bodies and minds are built from ‘scratch’ through the mutual actions of those natural elements that are within and around us.

Nurture is also Nature.

We are certainly Natural, but we are also completely embedded in Nature.

Our ‘innate’ abilities are a result of the culture we live in rather than a biological result.

Biology has an inflexible view of Human Nature considering our plasticity and flexibility.

Humans mistake the Cultural for the Natural.

An aggressive response to an attack is not learned it is biological.

Emotion are designed to protect each of us as individuals. When they get extended into generalized rules that spread within a group - imitation.

Morality can emerge without instruction. Innate domains arrive with no need for instruction. Moral domain only arrives with extensive instruction.

Humans are learning machines and everything we do is a result of learning.

We are all products of socialization so we should respect the difference and appreciate people with different values.

Most of us have an intuitive sense that the answer to understanding ourselves is hidden in the origins of our traits.

Our traits emerge from the mutually dependent activity of both genetic and environmental factors.

If intelligence is largely genetic, perhaps we are wasting money by pouring public founding into schools.

A school environment allows every student to reach his or her genetically preordained intellectual potential. Sandra Scarr

The characteristics of an animal – be it a clone or a naturally produced – are determined by the mutual interaction of the animals chromosomes with the unique environment in witch the animal develops.

Despite recent technological advances that have allowed for gene discovery, genetic engineering and cloning, all genetic activity still always depends on the environmental conditions in witch development occurs.

Trait development – We maintain that it is theoretically impossible to determine how much of a trait is caused by genes and how much is caused by environmental factors.

What Nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly and kindly. Francis Galton

Statistics fundamentally changed how scientists could make sense of their observations of Nature.

Incomplete Nature
Terrence W. Deacon

We have been looking in the wrong places about consciousness. We always try to look for correspondence with the physical world we forget about what it is not there.

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection and Claude Shannon’s Theory of Information are based in paying attention to what is intrinsically not present in everything.

Without spiritual knowledge one can not know oneself as a conscious Human being.

Nature of convenience
Next Nature

Nature is a collective delusion.

Both in Art and Nature the replica are now just as good if not better than the original. Walter Benjamin

The new nature comes to you, it became virtual with an on and off switch.

Nature development in Time
Louis Le Roy

Complex structure in Nature have the ability to develop on the course of time.

Complex Ecosystems grow from initially simple forms.

Development of complexity and creativity within Nature.

The more information one processes the more order one produces.

If in one place order is created, chaos will arise in the other.

Entropy grows toward a maximum state of equilibrium, in course of time, a greater number of chaotic situations develops than those initially regulated.

IF each system tries to accomplish the situation of highest entropy then the aim of evolution is just progress along a road without ever reaching a destination.

Simple forms are inhuman’ as these do not find any echo in the way in witch Nature is build up and how Human observation perceives the world. Benoit Mandelbrot

Because the moment one determines a simple form as definite one simultaneously cuts off the possibility of this form developing into its maximum complexity.

Ecosystems that are not open to change cannot claim to be ecological.

As that of mans sense of space and time degenerates, he will be increasingly less capable to function as a natural machine in a complete manner.

The activities of man generate, exactly like Nature, from initially simple structures, organized complexity which is intensified, without, however, ever reaching the maximum, in order to develop in a creative fashion.

From the day when man, with the salutatory development of mental skills, started to distinguish himself from other forms of life on our planet, did the most prominent and important scientists presumptuously try to understand the secret phenomenon time, in their search for the meaning of life.

The One-Straw Revolution
Masanobu Fukuoka

…“Natural Farming” to mean that Nature would farm while he sat and watched.

Strictly speaking, the only “natural” farming is hunting and gathering. Raising agricultural crops is a cultural innovation which requires knowledge and persistent effort. The fundamental distinction is that Mr. Fukuoka farms by cooperating with Nature rather than trying to “improve” upon Nature by conquest.

Mr. Fukuoka believes that Natural farming proceeds from the spiritual health of the individual. He considers the healing of the land and the purification of the human spirit to be the one process, and he proposes a way of life and a way of farming in which this process can take place. (We are what we eat)

His great contribution is to demonstrate that the daily process of establishing spiritual health can bring about a practical and beneficial transformation of the world.

Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and every action is a futile, meaningless effort.

It is believed that there is nothing more splendid than Human intelligence, that human beings are creature of special value, and that their creations and accomplishments as mirrored in culture and history are wondrous to behold. - Looking for a denial to this thought.

I could see that all the concepts to which I had been clinging, the very notion of existence itself, were empty fabrications. My spirit became light and clear. I was dancing wildly for joy. I could hear the small birds chirping in the trees, and see the distant waves glistening in the rising sun. The leaves danced green and sparkling. I felt that this was truly heaven on earth. Everything that had possessed me, all the agonies, disappeared like dreams and illusions, and something one might call 'true nature' stood revealed.

If you think there is life on this side, then death is on the other. If you want to get rid of the idea of death, then you should rid yourself of the notion there is life on this side. Life and death are one.

Everything returns to nothingness.

They simply live in Nature and apply themselves to their daily work.

Whether or not Natural agriculture could stand up against Modern science.

Farming as simple as possible within and in cooperation with the Natural Environment, rather than the modern approach of applying increasingly complex techniques to remake Nature entirely for the benefit of human beings.

Almost everyone thinks that 'Nature' is a good thing, but few can grasp the difference between natural and unnatural.

I wonder how it is that peoples philosophies have come to spin faster than changing seasons.

It seems that the limit of scientific development has been reached, misgivings have begun to be felt and the time for reappraisal has arrived.

Nature does not change, although the way of viewing Nature invariably changes from age to age.

The World has become so specialized that it has become impossible for people to grasp anything in its entirety.

No matter how hard people try, they cannot improve upon naturally grown fruits and vegetables. Produce grown in an unnatural way satisfies people's fleeting desires but weakens the human body and alters the body chemistry so that it is dependent on such foods. When this happens, vitamin supplements and medicines become necessary. This situation only creates hardships for the farmer and suffering for the consumer.

Until now the line of thought among modern economists has been that small scale, self-sufficient farming is wrong – that this is a primitive kind of agriculture – one that should be eliminated as quickly as possible. Each field must be expanded to handle the changeover to large scale. This way of thinking does not only apply to agriculture – development in all areas are moving in this direction.

If 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. There is just a quarter-acre of arable land for each person in Japan. If each single person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 ¼ acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making his country a happy, pleasant land.

Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament. Fast rather than slow, more rather than less – this flashy “development” is linked directly to society's impending collapse. It has only served to separate man from nature. Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.

Mahayana natural farming arises of itself when a unity exists between man and nature.

Hinayana on the other hand is pursuing the way of nature. It self-consciously attempts, by “organic” or other methods, to follow nature.

If you ask whether the use of fire and salt in cooking is natural or unnatural, one could answer either way. If the diet of the people of primitive times, eating only plants and animals living in their wild state, is “natural”, then a diet which uses salt and fire cannot be called natural. But if it is argued that the knowledge acquired in ancient times of using fire and salt was humanity's natural destiny, then food prepared accordingly is perfectly natural. Where do you draw the line between the natural and unnatural?

People find something out, learn how it works, and put nature to use, thinking this will be for the good of humankind. The result of all this, up to now, is that the planet has become polluted, people have become confused, and we have invited in the chaos of modern times.

What is wrong with an economic grow rate of 0%?

The more pople do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing desolation of natur, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about humanity's trying to accomplish something. Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a “movement” not to bring anything about.

The Green Alternative
Peter Bunyard and Fern Morgan-Grenville

Green means concern for life on earth. Not just concern for one's own family or friends, for a community or the hole human race, but concern for the process of life itself and everything that nurtures and sustains that process. One can only care for other people by caring for the earth.

Everything depends on this: our quality of life, our ability to serve others or to fulfill our own potential, the very capacity of the human race to survive. To be Green means to have that understanding at the forefront of one's ideas and actions.

If the world were made up of isolated fragments there might be some justification for us to ignore problems in the other continents. But through trade and communications, whatever we do, make, or desire has an effect on peoples and species of all kinds, however far removed from our temperate island.

We must learn that nothing happens in isolation.

We are part of Nature and we are dependent on the stability of nature for our own survival.

It is peoples actions which will decide the kind of future we will have – or indeed whether we have any future.

“We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle on the water. How then can you buy them from us? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people, holy in their memory and experience. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. He is a stranger that comes in the night, and takes from the land whatever it needs. The earth is not his friend, but his enemy, and when he's conquered it, he moves on. He kidnaps the earth from his children. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind a desert. If all the beasts were gone, we would die from a great loneliness of the spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts happens also to us. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth.” Chief Seattle, of the Divamish Indians 1855 – when US government was forcing the purchase of his tribes land

AUTOPOIESIS, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY
Humberto Maturana

Theory of about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.

Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition.

To what extent human social phenomenology could be seen as a biological phenomenology?

Poiesis is a Greek term that means production. Autopoiesis means auto-production.

Living beings are seen as systems that produce themselves in a ceaseless way. Thus, it can be said that an autopoietic system is at the same time the producer and the product.

To live this dynamics in an autonomous way, living systems need to obtain resources from the environment in which they live. In other words, they are simultaneously autonomic and dependent systems. So, this condition is clearly a paradox. This self-contradictory condition cannot be adequately understood by linear thinking, according to which everything must be reduced to the binary model yes/no, or/or. When dealing with living beings, things, and events, linear thinking begins by dividing them. The next step is the analysis of the separate parts. No attempts are made to look for the dynamic relationships that exists between them.

Living systems are self-producing machines. No other kind of machine is able to do this: their production always consists in something that is different from themselves. Since autopoietic systems are simultaneously producers and products, it could also be said that they are circular systems, that is, they work in terms of productive circularity. Maturana maintains that as long as we are not able to understand the systemic character of living cells, we will not be able to adequately understand living organisms.

The structure of a given system is the way by which their components interconnect with no changes in their organization. Loss of organization would result in the death of the system.

Organization determines the identity of a system, whereas structure determines how its parts are physically articulated. Organization identifies a system and corresponds to its general configuration. Structure shows the way parts interconnect.

The moment in which a system loses its organization corresponds to the limit of its tolerance to structural changes. The world in which we live is the world that we build out of our perceptions, and it is our structure that enables us to have these perceptions. So, our world is the world that we have knowledge of.

If the reality that we perceive depends on our structure — which is individual —, there are as many realities as perceiving people. The observer is not apart from the phenomena he or she observes.

There is no competition (in the predatory sense of the term) between non-human living beings. When men refer to some animals as predators, they are anthropomorphizing them, that is, projecting on them a condition that is peculiar to humans.

Living beings are autonomous systems. Its conduct is determined according to their own structures, that is, according to the way they interpret influences that come from the environment. They are not subdued systems, that is, they are not unconditionally obedient to outside determinations. In human societies, the prevailing conditions are not only those provided by nature.

Design Fiction
A short essay on design, science,fact and fiction.
Julian Bleecker

The idea that science fiction does not merely anticipate but actively shapes technological futures through its effect on the collective imagination and Science fiction visions appear as prototypes for future technological environments.

Extending this idea that science fiction is implicated in the production of things like science fact, I wanted to think about how this happens, so that I could figure out the principles and pragmatics of doing design, making things that create different sorts of near future worlds.

How do you entangle design, science, fact and fiction in order to create this practice called “design fiction” that, hopefully, provides different, undisciplined ways of envisioning new kinds of environments, artifacts and practices.

Man a Machine
Julien Offray de La Mettrie

It is not enough for a wise man to study Nature and truth.

They have rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul.

If there is a God, he is the Author of nature as well as of revelation. He has given us the one to explain the other, and reason to make them agree.

Either everything is illusion, nature as well as revelation, or experience alone can explain faith.

Everything depends on the way our machine is running.

The soul follows the progress of the body, as it does the progress of education.

Such is the influence of climate, that a man who goes from one climate to another, feels the change, in spite of himself. He is a walking plant which has transplanted itself; if the climate it not the same, it will either degenerate or improve.

We catch everything from those with whom we come in contact.

The diverse states of the soul are always correlative with those of the body.

Nature seems to impose a singular condition, that the more one gains in intelligence the more it loses in instinct.

The imbecile does not lack brain, his brain will be deficient in its consistency.

Our weak understanding, limited to the coarsest observations, cannot see the bounds that exist between cause and effect.

The loss of one member or sense can increase the strength or acuteness in another.

What was the man before the invention of words and the knowledge of language? An animal of his own species with much less instinct than the others.

Man have acquired symbolic knowledge.

Man have used their feeling and their instinct to gain intelligence and the have employed their intelligence to gain knowledge.

Everything is the work of imagination, and all the faculties of the soul can be correctly reduced to pure imagination in which they all consist.

If the imagination, or let us say, that fantastic part of the brain whose nature is as unknown to us as its way of working, be naturally small or weak, it will hardly be able to compare the analogy or the resemblance of its ideas, it will be able to see only what is face to face with it.

Some say that there is in man a natural law, a knowledge of good and evil, wich has never been imprinted on the heart of animals.

A being to which nature has given such a precocious and enlightened instinct, which judges, combines, reasons and deliberates as far as the sphere of its activity extends and permits, a being which feels attachment because of benefits received, and which leaving a master who treats it badly goes to seek a better one, a being with a structure like ours, which performs the same acts, has the same passions, the same griefs, the same pleasures, more or less according to the way of the imagination and the delicacy of the nervous organization.

We were not originally made to be learned…Nature has created us all solely to be happy.

We respect the purse and life of others, only to save our own possessions, our honor, and ourselves.

Natural law is just an intimate feeling that, like all other feelings, belongs to imagination.

The sun, air, water, the organism, the shape of bodies, - everything is brought to a focus in the eye as in a mirror that faithfully presents to the imagination all the objects reflected in it.

To destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being.

The sun is as much of a natural product as electricity.

The universe will never be happy, unless it is atheistic.

Structures/Networks

connection / contrast and clash between plants and human structures.

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Sculpt with Nature