1. May All Beings Be Happy: From Maxing Economic Wealth to Compassion and Wisdom in “I-I” Enlightenment, “I-We-
Thou” Relations, and “I-We-Seen” Sciences, Based on Various Skills in Varying Degrees in Various Divine Qualities
In my street, in my city, and on our planet, there are people with cultural heritages from Asia, Africa, Europe, North, Central, and South America, Australia, and Oceania.
Accordingly, in my work, I try to give appropriate attention to the life-affirming values thatcan be found within Primal (First Peoples), Oriental, Semitic, Modern, Postmodern, and
Metamoderncommunities, as independentidentities, as inter-independent parties, and as truly appreciated members of our one shared planet, altogether.
Xiye Bastida, an Otomi-Toltec woman from Mexico, in her life and work, like many people, struggles to hold her non-modern Indigenous values, which are in tune
with Mother Nature, with her modern values, which reduce nature into inanimate resourcesthat can be measured, turned into various technocraticproducts, and
monetisedby some businesses for their short-term profits and the economicgrowth of some privileged corporationsand nation-states. Nevertheless, Xiye gave a
courageousheartfelt speech at the United Nations in New York in September 2023. She defended the precious dignitiesof Mother Nature, highlightingHer simple
International Day of Peace 2023 | YOUTH EVENT PROGRAMME | United Nations
gifts of clean air, clean waters, and clean lands, & Xiye Bastida (xiyebeara.com).
Oceania — ConnectingClimate Minds
Now, with all thatsaid, let us look at the proposal.
We are lookingfor case studies from Oceaniathat will broadenglobal understanding of the intersectionof climate change and mental health. Relevant case studies could discuss:
A problem in a community, e.g. A population living in a coastal community already experiencing sea-level rise, where individuals are anecdotally reporting increasing rates of
depressionor anxiety.
An interventionin a communityor country, e.g. An NGO implementing a community-based intervention to enhance the psychological resilience of climate-affected populations.
A policy, e.g. A country or city passing a national mental health policy that has strong emphasis on addressing the mental health impacts of climate change.
A research project, e.g. investigating the mental healthimpacts of climate change using participatory methodsor combined health and environmental big data.
Please correct me if my impressions are inadequate, but this proposal engages with which understandings of climate change? mental health? non-modern?modern?
Non-modern Primal, Oriental, and Semitic communities have witnessed, and continue to lament, the ongoing destruction of Mother Nature over many decades, sorry, centuries.
Despite their heroic efforts, these communitiescontinueto see clean air become dirty air, clean waters become dirty waters, clean lands become dirty lands, as all sorts of modern
pollutioncontinue to intensify and interact in air, waters, lands, bodies, and minds, degrading and destroyingthe habitatsof many plants, many animals, and many human beings.
In contrast to the Love of Nature that can be found within various non-modern Primal, Oriental, and Semitic communities, many people in various Modern, Postmodern, and
Metamoderncommunities continue to authorisetheir selected knowledge claims based on what philosopherAlfred North Whiteheadcalled, in the 1920s, Cartesian bifurcation.
Cartesian ‘bifurcation’ [...] constitutes a dichotomy which divides the world into two substances, namely Thought (res cogitans)and Extension (res extensa). This gives rise to the
belief that the ‘objective’ world can be wholly described in quantitative terms. In light of [Wolfgang] Smith’s ontological distinction, this is tantamount to the reduction of the
corporeal to the physical. Therefore, qualitativeattributes—such as colour, sound, or taste—are taken, in the Cartesian paradigm, to be mental or subjective. On the other hand,
the quantitative attributes—the ‘extended’ (i.e., measurable) aspects—of the world are taken to be the ‘really real’. Quantities are thought to have ontological priority over
qualities, insofar as the latter are merely ‘in our heads’ (res cogitantes).What is left in the external world, then, are objects which can be accounted for, without residue, in
mathematical terms(res extensae) Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation » Surveying the Integral Cosmos | Philos-Sophia Initiative [the original texthas been adjusted] .
Now, when we investigate modernconceptsof mental health and climate change, we find that, for many people, each concept continuesto be philosophicallya Cartesianconcept.
Hence, modern understandings of mental health and climate change depend on the primacy of res extensae (quantities-measurements-data)over res cogitantes (qualities). Thus,
modern accounts of mental healthdepend on sciences of measurement, primarily on selected psychometrics(see e.g., Building systemic resilience, productivity and well-being: a
Mental Wealth perspective), and secondarily on selected case studies. Mental health, in these measurement-based understandings, does not involve participation in “I-I”
Enlightenment (the journey from one’s immature self into Oneness with Nature and Humanity in compassion and wisdom), nor involve participation in various “I-We-Thou”
Relations, in which the Divine in one person dignifies the Divine in another person (NAMASTE), nor involve participation in wisdom schools with attention on various Divine
Qualities, like Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and Love (Agape-Eros-Agency-Philia), in Nature, Arts, Morals, and Sciences. Likewise, modern accounts of climate change depend on
sciences of measurements, not on wisdom schools with attention on “I-I” Enlightenment, “I-We-Thou” Relations, and Divine Qualities in Nature, Arts, Morals, and Sciences.
I'm sorry if what I am raising here with you is not familiar knowledge, nor yet easy to understand. Perhapsthis will help. Have you seen the image of three modern frogs in water in
a saucepan, whichis slowly being heated (see p. 17)? One frog says, concerned, my calculationsshow somethingis wrong here. Another frog says, withoutany concern, everything
is good here. And a third frog, annoyed, abruptly dismisses any concerns with contempt, "alarmist!" Let us ask here: Which frog is being physically healthy? mentally healthy?
spiritually healthy? Any one of them? In modern ways? In non-modern ways? I hope you can now see that I am trying to engage with some crucial issues here. Will you join us in
participating more fully in Whole-HeartedNature and Humanity? Thank you for your time and attention, Be Well, Gerard Bruitzman, GerardBruitzman – Academia.edu.
2.
3. W.E.I.R.D. Is Now Normal
Apostolic Exhortation LaudateDeum of the Holy Father Francis
to all people of good will on the climate crisis (vatican.va)
COVID-19: A NEW DISEASE PARADIGM - John Snow Project
Dr Andrew Forrest at Boao Forum for Asia Perth 2023 |
Fortescue
"Business will kill your children:"Was Andrew Forrest's climate
speech really that "loopy"? | RenewEconomy
Increasing Heat with Intensifying Lethal Humidity
Will Kill Millions in Forthcoming Years-Decades!!!
Post Doom
Global Warming is Accelerating. Why? Will We Fly Blind?
September2023was around1.75ºC above the preindustrial average!!!
All planetary boundaries mapped out for the first time, six of
nine crossed - Stockholm Resilience Centre
Earth ‘well outside safeoperating space for humanity’,
scientists find | Climate crisis | The Guardian
ArcticNews: Methane eruptions threaten (arctic-
news.blogspot.com)
The Great Simplification | Film on Energy, Environment, and
Our Future | FULL MOVIE - YouTube
Wilful ignorance drives civilisation collapse - Pearls and
Irritations(johnmenadue.com)
Jem Bendell – essays on collapse risk, readiness & response
Technical dialogue of the first global stocktake. Synthesis
report by the co-facilitators of the technical dialogue
Chasm between climate action and scientific reality laid bare
in UN stocktake | Climate crisis | The Guardian
Climate change underminesnearly all sustainable
development goals | World Meteorological Organization
United In Science 2023 (wmo.int)
Beyond-growth-dialogue-with-the-european-commission
(eeb.org)
13. Surveying the Integral Cosmos: A Review of ‘Physics &
Vertical Causation’
29 August 2023 Book Review, Philosophy of Physics, Wolfgang Smith
John Trevor Berger
Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation » Surveying the Integral Cosmos |
Philos-Sophia Initiative
According to the experts of standard cosmology, we live in a universe
which is uniformly egalitarian, a homogeneous mass of subatomic
particles. And this purported ‘cosmological principle’, we are told, holds
from the furthest observable (and unobservable) reaches of the
universe, to the ordinary moment of lived experience. The problem is
that this world-picture completely contradicts what seems to be
manifest to us, self-evidently, by our five senses as well as our shared,
‘common’ sense of things. If what the experts are telling us is true, then
we really are living in an illusion—and many of them have no qualms
about telling us just that.
For the better part of four decades, Wolfgang Smith has been gradually
chipping away at this impasse, and his project breaks new ground in
Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality .
First published by Angelico Press in 2019—and now available exclusively
from the Philos-Sophia Initiative—the book is an indispensable
companion to the Initiative’s feature documentary on the life and work
The End of Quantum Reality
of Prof. Smith, released in 2020, . It is also
the true sequel to his paradigm-shifting 1995 monograph, The Quantum
Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key—now also available from the Philos-
Sophia Initiative.
Physics and Vertical Causation (PVC) picks up just where The Quantum
Enigma (TQE) left off: namely, the discovery of ‘vertical causality’ (VC).
Yet while TQE was primarily restricted to VC’s relevance to the resolution
of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, PVC probes widely
and deeply into the presence of VC throughout the cosmos en masse—
not to mention the ‘microcosm’, man himself. Indeed, while it may not
be readily apparent by the book’s title, the work is, fundamentally, a
study in cosmology; the title simply indicates whence cosmology must,
in our time, take its point of departure. For if, as Smith maintains, physics
is the foundational science—and quantum mechanics “physics come into
its own”—then our entire view of the cosmos is necessarily affected by
how we interpret quantum theory.
One should take special note, incidentally, that the author’s decades-
long project reaches its summit in his last work, Physics: A Science in
Quest of an Ontology (soon to be re-released in a second, Revised and
Expanded edition). And these three books—The Quantum Enigma,
Physics and Vertical Causation, and Physics: A Science in Quest of an
Ontology, in this order—form a kind of ‘trilogy’, each one building upon
the breakthroughs of the previous: a journey from the bare bones of
quantum physics to a full-fledged renascence of Neoplatonist
cosmology, wherein one finally sees how physics generally, and quantum
mechanics specifically, fits into an ordered cosmological hierarchy.1
* * *
Devoted readers of Wolfgang Smith know only too well the great care he
takes—in the formulation of his position on a given issue—to articulate
his ontological distinction between the ‘physical’ and the ‘corporeal’:
to the world “as conceived by the physicist,” versus the world as
originarily manifest to sensory perception. In PVC, he takes a great stride
forward by the introduction of his etiological distinction between
‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ causation. But since the etiological distinction
hinges upon the ontological, let’s first take a look at the latter.
Owing in large part to his tremendous philosophical prowess—a rarity
among contemporary scientists—when first confronted with the
quantum reality problem, Smith saw something to which other
theoretical physicists seem to be completely myopic: the conundrums
and ‘paradoxes’ of quantum theory never stemmed from the side of
physics in the first place. Rather, the origin lay in a deeply sedimented
philosophical presupposition—one postulated by the likes of Galileo
Galilei and John Locke, but most closely associated with René Descartes.
Cartesian ‘bifurcation’—a term coined by Alfred North Whitehead,
which Wolfgang Smith has put to good use throughout his authorial
career—constitutes a dichotomy which divides the world into two
substances, namely Thought (res cogitans) and Extension (res extensa).
This gives rise to the belief that the ‘objective’ world can be wholly
described in quantitative terms. In light of Smith’s ontological
distinction, this is tantamount to the reduction of the corporeal to the
physical. Therefore, qualitative attributes—such as colour, sound, or
taste—are taken, in the Cartesian paradigm, to be mental or subjective.
On the other hand, the quantitative attributes—the ‘extended’ (i.e.,
measurable) aspects—of the world are taken to be the ‘really real’.
Quantities are thought to have ontological priority over qualities,
insofar as the latter are merely ‘in our heads’ (res cogitantes). What is
left in the external world, then, are objects which can be accounted for,
without residue, in mathematical terms (res extensae).
Smith’s philosophy of physics rests squarely upon the rejection of
bifurcation, and indeed he has demonstrated that quantum paradox is
itself a byproduct of the Cartesian partition. It is this unexamined
assumption which underlies and, in a way, defines what is commonly
reckoned as the ‘scientific outlook’, and it is precisely this—not, that is
to say, some remaining ‘incompleteness’ in quantum mechanics—that
renders the quandaries of quantum theory insoluble from a technical
standpoint. Remove this epistemological fallacy, however, and
foundational physics starts to make sense. Nor is anything scientific
sacrificed in so doing: what is rejected, rather, is a false philosophical
dichotomy. The physicist, then, is not, in the strict sense, dealing with
the corporeal world—that world in which we find ourselves via cognitive
sense perception—but with a subcorporeal domain: one which has been
discovered, and to a certain degree ‘constructed’, by the interventions
of the physical scientist. And these procedures are what brings into the
sphere of observation what the author identifies as the physical
universe—the world, once again, “as conceived by the physicist.”
Now the ontological distinction, as mentioned above, necessarily
entails a complementary etiological distinction. For if there are these
‘strata’ in the order of being—these two different ‘worlds’ so to speak,
the corporeal and the physical—then there must be some mode of
causation which is capable of traversing between the two, on pain of
not being able to conduct the business of physics to begin with. And
this defines a causality which is unknown to modern physics: a causal
mode that is not field-based, but acts instantaneously—‘above time’
as it were. Hence we have a distinction between horizontal and vertical
causation. Horizontal causation may be generally thought of as
‘physical’—the well known relation of ‘cause-&-effect’ operating in
space and time—whereas vertical causation is supra-spatiotemporal.
The author has thus identified a causal mode whose field of action
vastly exceeds that of physical causation. And the central objective of
PVC is to bring out the immense scientific, cosmological, and
philosophical implications of this discovery.
* * *
Although first recognized within the context of resolving the quantum
measurement problem, Smith found that VC is ubiquitous; its effects
come into view on all sides, even from the strictly operational
viewpoint of the physicist. It makes sense of the fact, for instance, that
corporeal objects do not ‘multilocate’; or that cats cannot be, at once,
dead and alive. The intelligibility and stability of form that we find in
the corporeal world owes precisely to VC. Smith also shows how VC
demystifies J. S. Bell’s celebrated interconnectedness theorem: the
phenomena of ‘nonlocal’ interactions become perfectly intelligible
once we see that there can in fact be cause-to-effect relations which
do not involve a transfer of energy through space. It is worth pointing
out, in this connection, that the ‘instantaneity’ of VC is truly
atemporal—not just ‘super-fast’.
PVC argues as well for the crucial role that VC plays in biology, which
for nearly two centuries has been basically reduced to physics, for no
better reason than that the Cartesian axiom necessitates such a
reduction; res extensae are, after all, governed by horizontal causation
alone. Smith demonstrates the invalidity of said reduction, specifically,
in arguing that a physicalist biology—by virtue of its inability to
recognize vertical effects—is, in principle, incapable of comprehending
the physiology of a living organism. In other words, a physiology based
upon the contemporary paradigm is able to comprehend an organism
only to the extent that it is inorganic!
Finally, as he ascends to the anthropic level, the author explains how
VC accounts for man’s ability to produce ‘complex specified
information’ (CSI). Indeed, it follows upon the strength of William
Dembski’s 1998 theorem that CSI cannot be produced by means of
horizontal causality: our very ability to generate CSI—or, if you prefer,
intelligible forms—necessitates the existence of VC.
* * *
What is perhaps the most astonishing about PVC—especially to those
unfamiliar with premodern thought—is Wolfgang Smith’s analysis and
appropriation of what he terms the ‘tripartite cosmos’, manifested, in
14.
15. its respective ways, in both the macrocosm (the world) and the
microcosm (the human person). His analysis of the ‘cosmic icon’
2 gives us a concise symbolic
depiction which effectively encapsulates the cosmic tripartition. The
book’s magisterial final chapter, “Pondering the Cosmic Icon,” brings into
full view this fecund symbol—to which the author has referred in
previous works as a kind of primordial archetype whose presence
reverberates throughout traditional cultures—and we find in following
Smith’s decoding of the icon the rediscovery of an integral cosmos.
But the author really breathes new life into the cosmic icon, and what it
depicts, insofar as his reflections on the import of modern physics play
an important role in his definitions. First basing himself upon traditional
sources, Smith posits that the cosmos consists of three tiers or domains:
the corporeal, the intermediary, and the spiritual.3 What makes Smith’s
account of the cosmic tripartition unique is that he differentiates these
three domains vis-à-vis their spatio-temporal ‘bounds’. That is to say,
whereas the corporeal world is bound by the conditions of space and
time, the intermediary is bound by time alone, while the spiritual is
bound by neither space nor time. One should note well here that the
corporeal domain—the sensorily perceived world in its entirety—is
actually the lowest stratum of the cosmic hierarchy. From the latter it
follows that the physical, or ‘subcorporeal’, is technically ‘below the
bottom’ of cosmic reality; hence the author’s characterization of physical
objects as ‘sub-existential’. The architecture of this trichotomy, then, is
accompanied by the realization that our vaunted differential equations
simply do not apply above the corporeal plane, for the simple reason that
said equations presuppose the bounds of space and time. Whereas VC
acts from the highest reaches of the ontological hierarchy, physics—by
virtue of its modus operandi—is restricted, once again, to the ‘lower
third’ of the tripartite cosmos.
As for man himself: the microcosm is constituted by the tripartition of
body (corpus or soma), soul (anima or psyche), and spirit (spiritus or
pneuma). Inasmuch as the human person is a true ‘cosmos in miniature’,
whatever can be said of the macrocosm is echoed in the microcosm. For
instance, while the body is bound by space and time, the soul is bound
by time alone, and the spirit by neither space nor time. But it’s crucial to
remember that, just as the macrocosm is one, integral being—whose
tiers are distinguishable, but not separated,by particularbounds—so
the human person is one, integral being. Neither macrocosm nor
microcosm is ‘three beings’, but rather one being with three ‘levels’.
The cosmic icon, in any case, depicts human nature as well as the cosmos
at large.
* * *
What is also new in PVC—and which will no doubt come to the surprise
(and consternation) of many—is Prof. Smith’s final and decisive break
with the physics of Albert Einstein.4 While in previous decades Smith
suggested that while the theory of relativity may well pertain to the
physical universe, it does not, strictly speaking, pertain to the corporeal
world. PVC, however, tells a new tale. Smith now lays it down
categorically that, even on purely physical grounds, Einsteinian relativity
is a no-go. And it turns out that relativity falls on shockingly simple
theoretical grounds. The author also provides a brief exposé on several
little-publicized falsifications of relativity on empirical grounds.
Upon analysis of the basic premises of Einstein’s original 1905 paper on
special relativity, Smith finds that Einstein’s Principle of Relativity is
based upon little more than the fact that it offers a reason why the
Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 failed to detect any orbital
velocity of Earth. That the principle of relativity preserves the Copernican
cosmological principle may explain why—even in spite of adverse
empirical findings from Einstein’s time to the present day—the theory
remains sacrosanct by the physics establishment. Intriguingly, we also
learn that the renowned formula E = mc²—perhaps the most celebrated
‘proof’ of Einstein’s theory—is derivable from classical electrodynamics.
Smith contends that, in the final count, Einsteinian relativity is founded
on ideological grounds, not empirical ones.
Of the many areas of inquiry wherein ideological scientism has instigated
what the author characterizes as a “war on design,” two in particular
stand out: (1) Darwinism, which denies design in the origin of biological
species; and (2) relativistic physics, which negates design on a cosmic
scale. Apropos the latter, Smith’s argument is that the equations of
classical physics, in conjunction with Mach’s principle, actually imply a
geocentric cosmos —and this is surely the epitome of design ‘on acosmic
scale’.
The possibility of Einsteinian space-time is, furthermore, ruled out on
rigorous metaphysical grounds, in light of the author’s reflections on the
tripartition of the integral cosmos. For if the bounds of space and time
are ontologically incommensurable, there simply cannot be—as a matter
of principle—any such intelligibly combined phenomenon of ‘space-
time’. Moreover, Smith demonstrates that an ‘absolute simultaneity’, a
universal Now—categorically absent from the notion of Einsteinian
space-time—is globally defined throughout the corporealcosmos.
* * *
A final note: The epithet “the end of quantum reality”—the subtitle of
the book and title of the documentary film—has been met with some
unwarranted prima facie skepticism. Is Wolfgang Smith suggesting we
abandon quantum physics, after all the technological wonders it has
wrought for instance? Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact,
Prof. Smith is among quantum mechanics’ strongest defenders.
What, then, does this ‘end’ refer to? It refers to the end of a spurious
cosmography which would reduce the corporeal world to the physical
universe: the popular notion that all those corporeal entities with
which we are in continuous contact are no more than ‘aggregates of
subatomic particles’—to wit, the idea that reality is fundamentally a
quantum reality. But quantum physics is one thing, while ‘quantum
reality’ is something else entirely. There is thus no ‘pseudoscientific
obscurantism’ here. Quite to the contrary: we are here presented a
cosmological vision which renders pseudoscientific—or at any rate
untenable—the pop-cosmology peddled for decades by the likes of
Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, et al. It is this
false picture which comes to an ‘end’. After absorbing Smith’s insights
one realizes just to what extent authentic science has been
contaminated by fallacious philosophical presuppositions which have
no place in scientific inquiry. By drawing a clear distinction between
physics and philosophy, the author brings the true nature of physics
into optimal clarity. On seeing this, we find that the genuine,
‘operational’ findings of quantum physics fit like a glove into the
ontological hierarchy and the perennial wisdom of mankind.
What emerges from the considerations of Physics and Vertical
Causation is an incomparably enlarged worldview: a cosmos vast
enough to encompass all of modern science—from the distant stars to
subatomic particles—as well as the quintessential patrimony of
antiquity. The discovery of vertical causality has reopened the door to
truths higher than those discoverable by empiriological means.
Wolfgang Smith has shown that a radical expansion of our worldview
is both scientifically admissible and absolutely necessary for a proper
understanding of physics, not to mention our own human nature.
References:
1. Recall that, in the original Greek, the word for cosmos is the
antithesis of chaos. If the universe really were just a
homogenous amalgam of ‘quantum stuff’, no model of it could
meaningfully lay claim to being a bona fide ‘cosmology’.
2. Impressively featured in The End of Quantum Reality—but not
fully explained! Again, the book and the film are complementary.
3. Readers familiar with his more recent work will note that the
‘spiritual’ (or ‘celestial’) is now customarily designated by the
term ‘aeviternal’. For all intents and purposes one may take
‘spiritual’, ‘celestial’, and ‘aeviternal’ as interchangeable.
4. More accurately: with how Einstein is conceived in the popular
imagination, viz. in association with his theory of relativity.
Einstein in fact made two major discoveries having nothing to do
with relativity, one on the photoelectric effect (for which he duly
received the Nobel), the other on Brownian motion. That these
are bona fide contributions to the field is beyond dispute.
John Trevor Berger is Editor of PSI Publishing. A writer and musician
from Atlanta, he is a graduate of Georgia State University, where he
studied Philosophy, English Literature, and Art History.
19. Secretary-General's opening remarks at pressconferenceon
climate | United Nations Secretary-General , 27 July 2023.
A very good morning.
Humanity is in the hotseat.
Today, the World Meteorological Organization and the
European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service are
releasing official data that confirms that July 2023 is set to be
the hottest month ever recorded in human history.
We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this.
Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter
records across the board.
According to the data released today, July has already seen the
hottest three-week period ever recorded; the three hottest
days on record;and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for
this time of year.
The consequences are clear and they are tragic: children swept
away by monsoon rains; families running from the flames;
workers collapsing in scorching heat.
For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe – it is a
cruel summer.
For the entire planet, it is a disaster.
And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame.
All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated
warnings.
The only surprise is the speed of the change.
Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the
beginning.
The era of global warming has ended; the eraof global boiling
has arrived.
The air is unbreathable. The heat is unbearable. And the level
of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable.
Leaders must lead.
No more hesitancy. No more excuses. No more waiting for
others to move first.
There is simply no more time for that.
It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees
Celsius and avoid the very worst of climate change.
But only with dramatic, immediate climate action.
We have seen some progress. A robust rollout of renewables.
Some positive steps from sectors such as shipping.
But none of this is going far enough or fast enough.
Accelerating temperatures demand accelerated action.
We have several critical opportunities ahead.
The Africa Climate Summit. The G20 Summit. The UN Climate
Ambition Summit. COP28.
But leaders – and particularly G20 countries responsible for
80% of global emissions – must step up for climate action and
climate justice.
What does that mean in practice?
First, emissions.
We need ambitious new national emissions reduction targets
from G20 members.
And we need all countries to take action in line with my Climate
Solidarity Pact and Acceleration Agenda:
Hitting fast forward so that developed countries commit to
reach net zero emissions as close as possible to 2040, and
emerging economies as close as possible to 2050, with support
from developed countries to do so.
And all actors must come together to accelerate a just and
equitable transition from fossil fuels to renewables -- as we stop
oil and gas expansion, and funding and licensing for new coal, oil
and gas.
Credible plansmust also be presented to exit coal by 2030 for
OECD countries and 2040 for the rest of the world.
Ambitious renewable energy goals must be in line with the 1.5
degree limit.
And we must reach net zero electricity by 2035 in developed
countries and 2040 elsewhere, as we work to bring affordable
electricity to everyone on earth.
We also need action from leaders beyond governments.
I urge companies as well as cities, regions, and financial
institutions to come to the Climate Ambition Summit with
credible transition plans that are fully aligned with the United
Nations’ net zero standard, presented by our High-Level Expert
Group.
Financial institutions must end their fossil fuel lending,
underwriting and investments and shift to renewables instead.
And fossil fuel companies must chart their move towards clean
energy, with detailed transition plansacross the entire value
chain:
No more greenwashing. No more deception. And no more
abusive distortion of anti-trust laws to sabotage net zero
alliances.
Second, adaptation.
Extreme weather is becoming the new normal.
All countries must respond and protect their people from the
searing heat, fatal floods, storms, droughts, and raging fires that
result.
Those countries on the frontlines -- who have done the least to
cause the crisis and have the least resources to deal with it --
must have the support they need to do so.
It is time for a global surge in adaptation investment to save
millions of lives from climate [carnage.]
That requires unprecedented coordination around the priorities
and plans of vulnerable developing countries.
Developed countries must present a clear and credible roadmap
to double adaptation finance by 2025 as a first step towards
devoting at least half of all climate finance to adaptation.
Every person on earth must be covered by an early warning
system by 2027 – by implementing the Action Plan we launched
last year.
And countries should consider a set of global goals to mobilize
international action andsupport on adaptation.
That leads to the third area for accelerated action – finance.
Promises made on international climate finance must be promises
kept.
Developed countries must honour their commitments to provide
$100 billion a year to developing countries for climate support
and fullyreplenish the Green Climate Fund.
I am concerned that only two G7 countries – Canada and Germany
– have made until now replenishment pledges.
Countries must also operationalize the loss and damage fund at
COP28 this year. No more delays; no more excuses.
More broadly, many banks, investors and other financial actors
continue to reward polluters and incentivize wrecking the planet.
We need a course correction in the global financial system so that
it supports accelerated climate action.
That includes putting a price on carbon and pushing the
multilateral development banks to overhaul their business models
and approaches to risk.
We need the multilateral development banks leveraging their
funds to mobilize much more private finance at reasonable cost to
developing countries -- and scaling up their funding to
renewables, adaptationand loss and damage.
In all these areas, we need governments, civil society, business
and others working in partnership to deliver.
I look forward to welcoming first-movers and doers on the
Acceleration Agenda to New York for the Climate Ambition
Summit in September.
And to hearing how leaders will respond to the facts before us.
This is the price of entry.
The evidence is everywhere: humanity has unleashed
destruction.
This must not inspire despair, but
action.
We can still stop the worst.
But to do so we must turn a year of
burning heat into a year of burning
ambition.
And accelerate climate action –
now.
27. Looking into the Philosophical Roots of Current Obsessions with Limitless Economic Growth on Our Limited Planet
On Cartesian Bifurcation in the 1920s Excerpt from Alfred North Whitehead (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Whitehead spoke of the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality” (1920
[1986: 30]) to denote the strategy—originating with Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and
Locke—of bifurcating nature into the essential reality of primary qualities and the
non-essential reality of “psychic additions” or secondary qualities, ultimately to be
explained away in terms of primary qualities. Whitehead sided with Berkeley in
arguing that the primary/secondary distinction is not tenable (1920 [1986: 43–44]), that
all qualities are “in the same boat, to sink or swim together” (1920 [1986: 148]), and that,
for example,
the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and
electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. (1920 [1986:
29])
Whitehead described the philosophical outcome of the bifurcation of nature as follows:
The primary qualities are the essential qualities of substances whose spatio-
temporal relationships constitute nature. … The occurrences of nature are in some
way apprehended by minds … But the mind in apprehending also experiences
sensations which, properly speaking, are qualities of the mind alone. These sensations
are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature. Thus the
bodies are perceived as with qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities
which in fact are purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should
in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and
the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics
to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency
of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colorless; merely the
hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly . (1925 [1967: 54])
“The enormous success of the scientific abstractions”, Whitehead wrote, “has foisted
onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact”
and, he added:
modern philosophy has been ruined
Thereby, . It has oscillated in a complex manner
between three extremes. There are the dualists, who accept matter and mind as on
an equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind inside matter,
and those who put matter inside mind . But this juggling with abstractions can never
overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced
concreteness to the scientific scheme. (1925 [1967: 55])
Vedic Tradition
“The safest general
characterization of the
European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of
a series of footnotes to
Plato.”
Alfred North Whitehead
Process and Reality pt. 2, ch. 1 (1929)
Modern West
28.
29. On Cartesian Bifurcation in 2023: An Excerpt from Wolfgang Smith’s Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology
To the extent that modern physics possesses an ontology
at all, it has tended to be the Cartesian doctrine of
"bifurcation." Not only, however, does this thesis prove to
be untenable, but since the advent of quantum theory it has
rendered physics de facto incomprehensible. This book
introduces an astoundingly uncomplicated and inherently
Platonist ontology in which the quantum theoretic stratum
assumes its rightful place within the hierarchy of being.
An ontological distinction is thus to be made between the spatio-temporal world
as perceptible, and that world as conceived by the physicist: the two are by no
means the same. No wonder that—from the physicist’s point of view—the
measurement problem could not be solved: what else can you expect, given that the act
of measurement—inasmuch as the result must be perceptible—transcends “the world
of physics” categorically! What strikes me as perhaps the most amazing fact concerning
the quantum measurement quandary is that it has apparently failed to rouse the physics
community at large from their “Cartesian slumber.”
What is called for is an ontological distinction between the spatio-temporal world
as perceptible and the world as conceived by the physicist: the corporeal and the
physical, we shall say. It appears that Eddington was right: there are in truth “two
tables.” There is namely the one I can see and touch, and the one made of “atoms and
the void” which I cannot.
What renders a corporeal entity thus irreducible is the ontological fact that, in its
essence, it is not subject to the bounds of space and time. And this notion of irreducible
wholeness leads quite naturally to the Platonist ontology represented by the tripartite
cosmos, as we have come to conceive of it. In this ontology the integral cosmos
divides hierarchically into three domains, ranging from the corporeal—subject to
the bounds of both space and time—to what may traditionally be termed the
aeviternal, which is subject to neither and must consequently be the ontological
stratum from which both VC and IW are ultimately derived. Dante refers to it poetically
as “the pivot around which the primordial wheel revolves,” a metaphor in which that
“primordial wheel” refers evidently to time, which proves in fact to be definitive of an
ontological stratum referred to traditionally as the intermediary domain, of which the
corporeal is the termination. The integral cosmos may therefore be represented in
iconographic mode as a circle in whichthe center represents the aeviternal realm,
the interior the intermediary, and the circumference the corporeal domain .
1 René Descartes (1596–1650) posited a division of reality into two substances: res cogitantes (things of
thought) and res extensae (things extended in space). A. N. Whitehead named this partition “bifurcation.”
The interest of modern physics is with res extensae, which are purely quantitative and conceived of as
wholly “objective”; res cogitantes are, in this paradigm, merely subjective constructs “in the mind” and
include qualitative attributes, such as color. —Ed.
2 Democritus of Abdera (5th century BC) declared: “According to vulgar belief, there is color, the sweet
and the bitter; but in reality, only atoms and the void.” Cf. Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker (Dublin: Weidmann, 1969), vol II, p. 168. —Ed.
Wolfgang Smith graduated from Cornell at age eighteen with majors in physics, mathematics, and
philosophy. He subsequently contributed a theoretical solution to the re-entry problem for space flight.
After taking his doctorate in mathematics at Columbia, he served for thirty years as professor of
mathematics at M.I.T., U.C.L.A., and Oregon State University. Smith then devoted himself to correcting
the fallacies of scientistic belief, focusing on foundational problems pertaining to quantum theory and
visual perception by way of the traditional tripartite cosmology. The Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation’s
documentary on his life and work, "The End of Quantum Reality", is now available on disc and digital
Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation »
platforms worldwide. Visit to go much deeper into the modern
philosophical roots of our current problems.
Here is An excerpt from 'Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology'
- SAND (scienceandnonduality.com)
The first step towards an ontological comprehension of physics
consists in the rediscovery of what we term the corporeal domain,
which is basically the perceptible, beginning with the visual. It is
neither necessary nor feasible—initially, at least—to speculate about the
other four senses, nor to worry about “border cases” and the like. To regain
a grasp of “the corporeal” it is needful to substantiate that the grass is
indeed “green”: and this should suffice to break the Cartesian [1] spell.
There is thus a categorical distinction to be made between the world as
conceived by the physicist—which we refer to as the physical—and the
perceptible world in which we “live and have our being,” which we
distinguish ontologically from the physical as the corporeal.
Having rejected Cartesian bifurcation, we reflect upon what this entails in
regard to the measurement problem of quantum theory. And the fact is
that, having restored ontological rectitude, the resolution of this conundrum
literally “stares us in the face”! This is what we wish now to explain.
In place of the Cartesian dichotomy of so-called res extensae versus res
cogitantes—which has proved to be spurious—another ontological
dichotomy has now taken its place: one needs namely to distinguish
ontologically between the entities of physics and the entities comprising
this ordinary perceptible world. What invalidates the Democritean [2]
premise is the fact that qualities—beginning, yes, with color—have once
again been recognized as bona fide components of the “external” world.
And this has drastic implications for physics, given that—by its very modus
operandi—it has no eye for qualities! A worldview based upon physics is
bound, therefore, to exclude the “qualitative dimension” of the cosmos—
not because it is not there—but because this science is categorically
incapable of grasping that dimension, that aspect of the world.
32. Have You Seen the Movie Don't Look Up? Changing Our Focus from Science to the Wholeness of Nature
I found the popular movie Don’t Look Up – a climate change allegory, featuring a comet crashing into earth – provocative, funny, upsetting, at times, but seriously inadequate.
A much deeper understanding of our intensifyingecological-climate metacrises, in my view, is available at Post-Doom.
Michael Dowd, in Sanity 101, introducesfive stages of awakening, using Paul Chefurka’s framework.
So, in your view, is our metacrises, no problem, just one problem, many problems, interconnecting many problems, or a
significant part of our whole predicament (Michael Dowd's Sanity 101: Living Fully in an Age of Decline (Basic Training))?
Now, I ask you to determine which mix of these stages of increasing awareness, from asleep to trying to see the whole
shebang,seem to be involved in informing your own understanding of our escalating ecological-climateemergencies.
For myself, I struggle to understand, even though I would like to inhabit, a more inclusive stage-5 awareness.
If you watch Michael Dowd's Sanity 101, you will see his superb review of a popular way W.E.I.R.D. people
tend to evade the full predicament of our escalating climate-ecological metacrises – techno-optimism.
To its credit, Don’t Look Up provides its own curious critique of techno-optimism, ending with (oh dear Meryl, what one
does for the sake of art!) the gory consumption of a naked dim-wittedAmerican president by a hungry dinosaur!
Now we must go beyond various techno-optimisms, championed by various techno-billionaires. According to Bill Baue,
a systems transformation catalyst at r3.0, there are other options:ESG (blah! blah! blah!) or Sustainability: You Choose.
Whoops! Sustainability – everybody living well within our local-global ecological matrices-thresholds, and with fair social
allocations of limited capacitiesand capabilitiesfor each body with everybody – is totally ignored in Don’tLook Up!
Instead, the movie offers a naïve stage for science, with no awareness of the various ways inquiry-minded sciences turn
into closed-mindedscientisms, which in stage-5 views is seen as another crucial problem in our shared metacrises.
Some philosophersof science, usuallyignoredby many, continueto warn us aboutthe outcomes of Cartesianbifurcation.
John Trevor Berger: Cartesian ‘bifurcation’—a term coined by Alfred North Whitehead, which Wolfgang Smith has put
to good use throughout his authorial career—constitutes a dichotomy which divides the world into two substances,
namely Thought (res cogitans)and Extension (res extensa). This gives rise to the belief that the ‘objective’ world can
be wholly described in quantitative terms. In light of Smith’s ontological distinction, this is tantamount to the
reduction of the corporeal to the physical. Therefore, qualitative attributes—such as colour, sound, or taste—are
taken, in the Cartesian paradigm, to be mental or subjective. On the other hand, the quantitative attributes—the
‘extended’ (i.e., measurable) aspects—of the world are taken to be the ‘really real’. Quantities are thought to have
ontological priority over qualities, insofar as the latter are merely ‘in our heads’ (res cogitantes). What is left in the
external world, then, are objects which can be accounted for, without residue, in mathematical terms (res extensae).
Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation » Surveying the Integral Cosmos | Philos-Sophia Initiative.
This drastic modern reduction of reality into abstract mathematical terms, engineered by our W.E.I.R.D. Cartesian
mindsets, also ignored in Don’t Look Up, ends with many of us waging our current all-consuming war on Nature.
Now let us ask here: what must we do to stop waging our stupid, currently escalating, degenerative war on Nature?
In other words, how do you and I become truly whole, and thus fully happy, in our lives – which involves each person
and each communityliving well with each other withinour local-globalecologicalmatrices-thresholds,and with fair social
allocations of limited capacities and limited capabilities for each person and each community – as we learn to secure the
preciouswellbeing of all forms of life within each generation and across all generations on our beautiful planet?
Gail Hochachka – Making meaning of climate change towards greater climate action. Gail Hochachka- The Psychology of Climate
Change: Understanding the Causes and Finding Solutions to the Great Challenge of Our Time - Deep Transformation Podcast .
W.E.I.R.D.– Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic
33. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, with ready access to the dedicated work of many UN agencies, understands better than many what is happening on our planet. He keeps on
saying, REPEATEDLY, again and again, “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal” (UNEP report, Making Peace With Nature ). With the release of IPCC
Sixth Assessment Report: WG1, he declared a Code Red for Humanity! At COP27 in Egypt, he said, “We are on a Highway to Climate Hell with our Foot on the Accelerator!”
So, here we are in CODE RED with an escalating climate crisis, with our current BAU trends already condemning ourselves to 1.5°C degrees of global heating within a few
years, and, given that for many of us changing ourselves is much too hard, re-signing ourselves to allowing around 3.0°C degrees of global heating within a generation or two!
Moreover, we are not yet ready to talk about abrupt runaway climate change, prompted by geophysical surprises yet to be considered or measured in IPCC reports, which would turn
BLAH!, Arctic News: Crossing 3C (arctic-news.blogspot.com)
our current, already very alarming, IPCC projections, in each of five authorised scenarios, into more blah! blah! .
Indeed, all of us are living in very challenging, unsettling times (Said E. Dawlabani, Paradise Lost | The Sequel – Kosmos Journal ; Jeremy Lent, Solving the Climate Crisis Requires the
End of Capitalism). In addition to deliberately choosing with BAU to dooming ourselves to inhabiting ever-increasing global heating in upcoming years-decades, we have
our ongoing challenges with COVID-19 with novel everchanging variants that are likely to continue to emerge to disrupt, upset, and terminate many lives into the foreseeable future.
according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s 2022 Living Planet Report, population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish declining by 69% on
average since 1970, and, with ongoing significant losses of habitat continuing to be orchestrated by BAU, population sizes are likely to decline into the foreseeable future.
Sir David Attenborough presenting, in Breaking Boundaries and A Life on Our Planet, his thoughtful accounts on the devastating environmental consequences of humanity’s
rapid economic and population growth in recent decades. He laments the tragic ongoing decline of biodiversity and life on Earth, saying emphatically, “Our planet is headed
for disaster. We need to learn how to work with nature; rather than against it.” (UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15), POST-2020 GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY FRAMEWORK).
limited supplies and declining resource quality of key resources, compounding within upcoming years-decades, according to Nate Hagens ( The Great Simplification ) and
r3.0 2020 Conference,
Harald Sverdrup et al. WORLD7, Global Integrated Assessment Model, that will be needed in any transformations into regenerative economies.
economic systems that deliberately, legally externalise from their accounts, unethically, unsustainably 1) fail to consider the necessity of living within our planet’s limited
ecological matrices-thresholds, and 2) fail to provide secure social foundations for everybody with everybody in genuine intragenerational-intergenerational justice.
political systems that 1) fail to go beyond divisive debates between various “us” versus “them” contenders, 2) fail to generate diversity informed “all of us,
interconnecting with each other” dialogues, and 3) fail to work to integrate what is true, good, and beautiful in the various contributions of various rightsholders.
Now, let us dive from what is happening on our observable measurable surfaces into our metaphysical depths. There is much more of crucial importance to be considered here:
in physics, as A.N. Whitehead, Nick Herbert, Wolfgang Smith, Sabine Hossenfelder, et al. have declared in various ways for decades, physicists have “lost their grip on reality”.
in philosophy, too few understand humanity’s metaphysics in Heart-soul-body which can be found within humanity’s diverse languages, from East to West, from South to North.
in religion, noetic-yogic practices of purification, illumination, and unification, in body, soul, and Heart, in individuals, communities, and kosmos, that generate METANOIA from
exclusive self-centredness and/or exclusive group-centredness into the Universal Heart of All Living Beings too often tend to be ignored in both theoria and praxes.
Now, with this barest outline of our global-national-local metacrises in place, let’s ask: what does authentic development and overall regenerative transformation truly mean?
in humanity’s wisdom traditions, development means noetic transformations from self-centredness and/or group-centredness into the Universal Heart of All Living Beings.
in metaphysics, development means awakening ever more inclusive modes of the seer (who is seeing in epistemic views in me-centred body, us-centred community, or heart-
centred, all of us, living beings, altogether?), seeing (how is seeing being done with our current methodologies?), and seen (what is being seen in various ontological domains, in
individuals, communities, and kosmos?) into ever more inclusive modes of wisdom and compassion in Heart-Centred Service of the Wellbeing of All Living Beings.
in modern science, development means, in ordinary, “instrumentalist”, “positivistic” terms, using limited “sciences of measurement”, advances in technological innovations.
in capacities management, development means putting into place the cyclical renewal of limited living capacities, not our current reckless taking, using, and wasting of resources.
in biodiversity management, development means re-wilding habitats and re-generating biodiversity, not continuing with polluting air, waters, and lands in business-as-usual.
in climate action, development means reducing, stopping, and drawdown-ing emissions of greenhouse gases as much as possible as quickly as possible within our current
decade, the 2020s, and working to repair, restore, and regenerate the natural balance of our planet that was present in the Holocene in which all forms of life tended to flourish.
in economics, development involves going beyond our current degenerative BAU exploitations, and various ESG LaLaLands, transforming key initiatives, like Ralph Thurm’s r3.0-
,
Performance Indicators (SDPIs) User Manual
Presentation-WEALL-NL-February-16-2023 (r3-0.org), r3-BioregionalDoughnuts-BioRegenSummit (r3-0.org), and UNRISD’s Sustainable Development
The Lighthouse Keeper
r3.0, Global Thresholds and Allocations, UNRISD SDPI, Earth4All, WEAll
, at pathfinding organisations, DEAL, , into a regenerative
economics, based on everybody living well with each other within our planet’s ecological matrices-thresholds and with fair social allocations for everybody.
in politics, development means local-national-global co-ordinations in robust, ethical, and Heartful Service of the Wellbeing of Life in All Beings on our Precious Planet.
Now, let all of us move out of our current forms of “deadly incrementalism” (BAU, CSR, ESG, UN SDGs et al.) into truly robust, multi-dimensional, regenerative transformations.
We repeat here that a tangible way forward must work to coordinate what is happening within who is seeing, and how is seeing being done with our methodologies, both of which are
resulting in what is being seen in our various Covid, biodiversity, ecological matrices-thresholds, climate, economic, and political crises, separately, interconnectedly, and altogether.
CODE RED
Time for each of us to respond with all of us to overcome our current degenerative ways of living, which have resulted in all of us living in our life-threatening world.
I wish you, everybody, well, in our challenging, unsettling, hopefully transformative times, in moving out of our heartless ways of living into Heartful Regenerations, Gerard Bruitzman.