NEW THINKING

NEW THINKING
“We have to learn to think in a new way.” If we take this call radically seriously, we have to take new or unaccustomed paths of learning. From this new viewpoint, the world – the Wirklichkeit – no longer appears as a theoretically closed system. This leads to an inherent indeterminism that results from the fundamental indivisibility and that is expressed in an inherent limitation of the “knowable”. Strictly speaking, we are thus forced to speak about the Wirklichkeit only in parables and analogies. There are in principle no longer answers to all the questions that, from a human standpoint, we believe we can pose, because the answers go nowhere.”

….

“We humans and human communities, with our cultural worlds of ideas, our mental processes, and our moving exchange, represent a special, deeply connected sphere of the living world. Pre-livingness is a characteristic of everything, including the world of things, which is usually regarded as “dead”. We need to reach a fundamentally new way of thinking and a more comprehensive understanding of our Wirklichkeit, in which we, too, see ourselves as a thread in the fabric of life, without sacrificing anything of our special human qualities. This makes it possible to recognize humanity in fundamental commonality with the rest of nature, without thereby falling into a conventional naturalism or simply invoking cosmologies that may have corresponded with the worldviews and ways of life of cultures that remain close to nature.” ***

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Manifesto

http://www.vdw-ev.de/index.php/en/?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=9&lang=en

Hans-Peter Dürr

is SOMEONE who for sure knows all what he is talking about – From deep down “Physics” at -the micro and quantum dimension- up to the schools of philosophy and social sciences … It is an entertainment for the intellect to take the time to listen to him attentively:-

Hans-Peter Dürr – Ganzheitliche Physik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvCo1yL3zVk

—-

***

AND …You can throw a glance at the fundamentals of “The Harmony Model” (1 to see the common grounds of the latter and the deliberations of the “Postdamer-Manefesto” !

“Animate nature draws its ability for continued, creative differentiate and cooperative integration from its “pre-living” (microphysically recognizable) primordial ground, whose “information”, through instabilities, rises enhanced into the meso-sphere, where it unfolds in more intense and richer form. The “pre-living” realm thus organizes itself in the complex variety of our “higher” bio-ecological vibrancy, as we encounter it in everyday life. Cultural-ecological variety and its developmental forms, i.e., its processes of transformation and balance, ultimately also results from this context.”(Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)”

Postdamer-denkschrift_English

Postdamer-manifesto_English

————————

1) Side-The-source-part-V

The foundation of our universe—and life !?

ON INFORMATION: AN EDGE CONVERSATION 
Svante Pääbo, Anton Zeilinger, John Brockman
Information is the foundation of our universe—and life itself. Cultural impresario John Brockman hosts a Third Culture conversation, spanning science and the humanities.

http://www.edge.org/

SVANTE PÄÄBO the founder of the field of ancient DNA, is Director, Department of Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. Among his achievements are the first demonstration of DNA survival in an ancient Egyptian mummy, the first amplification of ancient DNA, the first study of the DNA from the Iceman found in the Alps, and the first retrieval of DNA from a Neanderthal in 1997. Four years ago, he initiated and organized an effort to sequence the entire Neanderthal genome. The first scientific overview of the genome was published in 2009 and was front page news word-wide. He is the author of Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes. Svante Pääbo’s Edge Bio Page

ANTON ZEILINGER, a physicist, is Professor of Physics at the Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics, Quantum Information Institute of University of Vienna. He is President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the author of Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation. Zeilinger is a pioneer in the field of quantum information and of the foundations of quantum mechanics. He realized many important quantum information protocols for the first time, including quantum teleportation of an independent qubit, entanglement swapping (i.e. the teleportation of an entangled state), hyper-dense coding (which was the first entanglement-based protocol ever realized in experiment), entanglement-based quantum cryptography, one-way quantum computation and blind quantum computation. His further contributions to the experimental and conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics include multi-particle entanglement and matter wave interference all the way from neutrons via atoms to macromolecules such as fullerenes. Anton Zeilinger’s Edge Bio Page

 

A Brain’s View of Economics

From:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/

CAMBRIDGE – In his pathbreaking 2005 book On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins proposed an alternative paradigm of how the human brain works. In his view, the brain is not a Turing machine that manipulates symbols according to a table of rules, which is the model on which computers and artificial intelligence have been based. Instead, the brain is a giant hierarchical memory that is constantly recording what it perceives and predicting what will come next.

The brain makes predictions by finding similarities between patterns in recent sensory inputs and previous experiences stored in its vast memory. It matches current fragmentary sounds in a sea of noise with a known song, or the face of a person in disguise with that of your child. The idea is similar to the auto-complete function in, say, the Google search box – constantly guessing what you will enter next based on what you have already typed in.

The brain makes predictions by finding similarities between patterns in recent sensory inputs and previous experiences stored in its vast memory. It matches current fragmentary sounds in a sea of noise with a known song, or the face of a person in disguise with that of your child. The idea is similar to the auto-complete function in, say, the Google search box – constantly guessing what you will enter next based on what you have already typed in.

…..

…..

In a recent paper, my colleagues and I showed that such an approach to economic development actually works. In a particular city or country, you can predict, even a decade in advance, which industries will appear or disappear or grow or wane just by knowing the history of what has been there and everywhere else.

Countries tend to move into industries that are related to the ones they already have or that are present in locations that are similar to them. We have made the approach user-friendly for countries in our recent Atlas of Economic Complexity.

The idea of looking at previous experiences to inform future action is as old as civilization. Following this intuition, Justin Yifu Lin, the former chief economist of the World Bank, has suggested that when countries choose what to do next, they should look at a successful country that was similar to them two decades ago.

…

Read more at

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ricardo-hausmann-proposes-an-alternative-approach-to-economic-development-based-on-how-the-human-brain-functions#DlUt0sBG6tQzLcOe.99

Books including PDF Versions for DOWNLOAD:-

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/book/

Ricardo Hausmann on Economic Complexity and Productive Knowledge (INET 2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JC24CBVsdo&feature=youtu.be

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CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCAMBRIDGE – In his pathbreaking 2005 book On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins proposed an alternative paradigm of how the human brain works. In his view, the brain is not a Turing machine that manipulates symbols according to a table of rules, which is the model on which computers and artificial intelligence have been based. Instead, the brain is a giant hierarchical memory that is constantly recording what it perceives and predicting what will come next.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe brain makes predictions by finding similarities between patterns in recent sensory inputs and previous experiences stored in its vast memory. It matches current fragmentary sounds in a sea of noise with a known song, or the face of a person in disguise with that of your child. The idea is similar to the auto-complete function in, say, the Google search box – constantly guessing what you will enter next based on what you have already typed in.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphTo see the hierarchy in this mechanism, consider that by perceiving just a few letters, you can predict the word; by looking at a few words, you can predict what the sentence means, or even the paragraph. In fact, right now you must be guessing where it is that I am going with this entire commentary. The hierarchy allows you to understand meaning, whether the input got to your brain by reading or listening. The brain is thus an inductive machine that predicts the future based on finding similarities, at many different levels, between the present and the past.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphHawkins’ alternative model of how the brain works has important implications for many fields, including the one that I spend most of my time thinking about: economic-development strategy.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphBy definition, development is not just more of the same, just as an adult is not just a big baby. The process involves adding and combining new and existing capabilities to support more diverse and complex activities.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphBut finding new things that can be done successfully is tricky, because it requires knowing what you will need and whether you will be able to procure it. This is why Jeffrey Sachs’s Millennium Villages project has faltered, as the journalist Nina Munk’s recent book shows. In trying to move farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture, Munk argues, there are just too many missing pieces.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphTraditional thinking in economic development has followed a Turing-like approach, trying to specify a general model of the world – based on first principles – and then use that model to think about a country’s predicament or a policy’s potential impact. But the world is often too complex and nuanced for such an approach.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWould it not be a great improvement if, when looking at a particular place, we could have in mind all of the world’s previous experiences and automatically identify the most relevant ones, in order to infer what to do next? Would it not be useful to see the development possibilities just as our brain, according to Hawkins, sees the world?

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAn alternative, Hawkins-like approach to economic development would take massive amounts of data about the world and ask what is likely to succeed next in a country or a city at a given point in time, given what is already present and in light of the experience there and everywhere else. It would be like Amazon’s recommendation system, proposing books you may like based on your and everybody else’s experience.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ricardo-hausmann-proposes-an-alternative-approach-to-economic-development-based-on-how-the-human-brain-functions#DlUt0sBG6tQzLcOe.99

A Brain’s View of Economics

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• Share25
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CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCAMBRIDGE – In his pathbreaking 2005 book On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins proposed an alternative paradigm of how the human brain works. In his view, the brain is not a Turing machine that manipulates symbols according to a table of rules, which is the model on which computers and artificial intelligence have been based. Instead, the brain is a giant hierarchical memory that is constantly recording what it perceives and predicting what will come next.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe brain makes predictions by finding similarities between patterns in recent sensory inputs and previous experiences stored in its vast memory. It matches current fragmentary sounds in a sea of noise with a known song, or the face of a person in disguise with that of your child. The idea is similar to the auto-complete function in, say, the Google search box – constantly guessing what you will enter next based on what you have already typed in.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphTo see the hierarchy in this mechanism, consider that by perceiving just a few letters, you can predict the word; by looking at a few words, you can predict what the sentence means, or even the paragraph. In fact, right now you must be guessing where it is that I am going with this entire commentary. The hierarchy allows you to understand meaning, whether the input got to your brain by reading or listening. The brain is thus an inductive machine that predicts the future based on finding similarities, at many different levels, between the present and the past.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphHawkins’ alternative model of how the brain works has important implications for many fields, including the one that I spend most of my time thinking about: economic-development strategy.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphBy definition, development is not just more of the same, just as an adult is not just a big baby. The process involves adding and combining new and existing capabilities to support more diverse and complex activities.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphBut finding new things that can be done successfully is tricky, because it requires knowing what you will need and whether you will be able to procure it. This is why Jeffrey Sachs’s Millennium Villages project has faltered, as the journalist Nina Munk’s recent book shows. In trying to move farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture, Munk argues, there are just too many missing pieces.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphTraditional thinking in economic development has followed a Turing-like approach, trying to specify a general model of the world – based on first principles – and then use that model to think about a country’s predicament or a policy’s potential impact. But the world is often too complex and nuanced for such an approach.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWould it not be a great improvement if, when looking at a particular place, we could have in mind all of the world’s previous experiences and automatically identify the most relevant ones, in order to infer what to do next? Would it not be useful to see the development possibilities just as our brain, according to Hawkins, sees the world?

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAn alternative, Hawkins-like approach to economic development would take massive amounts of data about the world and ask what is likely to succeed next in a country or a city at a given point in time, given what is already present and in light of the experience there and everywhere else. It would be like Amazon’s recommendation system, proposing books you may like based on your and everybody else’s experience.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ricardo-hausmann-proposes-an-alternative-approach-to-economic-development-based-on-how-the-human-brain-functions#DlUt0sBG6tQzLcOe.99

Biology-of-Consciousness

Tremendous Development in Neuroscience during the last decades:

Prominent positions are held by

Neural-Darwinism  (1 & 
Global Workspace theory

in understanding the substance behind Consciousness.

————

Front. Psychol., 25 January 2011 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004

Biology of consciousness

Gerald M. Edelman*, Joseph A. Gally and Bernard J. Baars

• The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, CA, USA

“Advances in neuroscience have now made it possible to study the biological basis of consciousness. Indeed, in recent years an increasing amount of attention has been directed to this subject (Crick and Koch, 2003; Edelman, 2003; Velmans and Schneider, 2007; Zelazo et al., 2007). Our own efforts to account for key aspects of consciousness at a biological level have taken two forms. The first involved the proposal of a neuroscientifically based global brain theory commonly referred to as Neural Darwinism (Edelman, 1978, 1987; Edelman and Tononi, 2000). This theory proposes the functioning of a Dynamic Core generated by a neural process, reentry, to link dispersed cortical and thalamic areas and account for the relation between perception and conscious memory. The second theory (Baars, 1988) was propounded mainly from a cognitive psychological point of view. This Global Workspace theory hypothesizes that a number of brain components constitute an integrative workspace that serves to reconcile the narrow momentary capacity of conscious contents with a widespread recruitment of unconscious brain functions, including long-term memory.” (http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004/abstract)

READ MORE:

Biology-of-Consciousness

————–

1)

Neural Darwinism

Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection, also known as Neural Darwinism, has three basic tenets—Developmental Selection, Experiential Selection and Reentry.

• Developmental selection — the formation of the gross anatomy of the brain is controlled by genetic factors, but in any individual the connectivity between neurons at the synaptic level and their organisation into functional neuronal groups is determined by somatic selection during growth and development. This process generates tremendous variability in the neural circuitry—like the fingerprint or the iris, no two people will have precisely the same synaptic structures in any comparable area of brain tissue. Their high degree of functional plasticity and the extraordinary density of their interconnections enables neuronal groups to self-organise into many complex and adaptable “modules.” These are made up of many different types of neurons which are typically more closely and densely connected to each other than they are to neurons in other groups.
• Experiential selection — Overlapping the initial growth and development of the brain, and extending throughout an individual’s life, a continuous process of synaptic selection occurs within the diverse repertoires of neuronal groups. This process may strengthen or weaken the connections between groups of neurons and it is constrained by value signals that arise from the activity of the ascending systems of the brain, which are continually modified by successful output. Experiential selection generates dynamic systems that can ‘map’ complex spatio-temporal events from the sensory organs, body systems and other neuronal groups in the brain onto other selected neuronal groups. Edelman argues that this dynamic selective process is directly analogous to the processes of selection that act on populations of individuals in species, and he also points out that this functional plasticity is imperative, since not even the vast coding capability of entire human genome is sufficient to explicitly specify the astronomically complex synaptic structures of the developing brain.^[17]
• Reentry
  Main article: Reentry (neural circuitry)

  — the third tenet of Edelman’s thesis is the concept of reentrant signalling between neuronal groups. He defines reentry as the ongoing recursive dynamic interchange of signals that occurs in parallel between brain maps, and which continuously interrelates these maps to each other in time and space (film clip: Edelman demonstrates spontaneous group formation among neurons with re-entrant connections^[18]). Reentry depends for its operations on the intricate networks of massively parallel reciprocal connections within and between neuronal groups, which arise through the processes of developmental and experiential selection outlined above. Edelman describes reentry as “a form of ongoing higher-order selection … that appears to be unique to animal brains” and that “there is no other object in the known universe so completely distinguished by reentrant circuitry as the human brain.”

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Edelman

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/12/scienceandnature.highereducation/Wider than The Sky

http://www.amazon.de/Bright-Air-Brilliant-Fire-Matter/dp/0465052452/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1220525581&sr=8-2

http://www.tokresource.org/

http://www.homodiscens.com/home/ways/agnoscens/neural_darwinism/index.htm

http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/home.html

Art and or vs Science – video

A Beautiful Conversation

……

Ian McEwan on the relationship between art and science – video

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http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/nov/12/ian-mcewan-art-meets-science-video

See too:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/nov/12/stephen-hawking-large-hadron-collider-live-stream-video

DO THE TWO CULTURES STILL EXIST?

IAN McEWAN: That old, two-culture matter is still with us, ever since [CP] Snow promulgated it back in the 50s. It still is possible to be a flourishing, public intellectual with absolutely no reference to science but it’s happening less and less. And I think it’s less a change of any decision in the culture at large, just a social reality pressing in on us. And it’s true that climate change forces us to at least get a smattering of some idea of what it is to predict systems that have more than two or three variables and whether this is even possible. The internet has created sites like John Brockman’s wonderful edge.org, where it’s possible for laymen to sit in on conversations between scientists. And when scientists have to address each other out of their specialisms they have to speak plain English, they have to abandon their jargons, and we’re the beneficiaries of that.

NIMA ARKANI-HAMED: It’s an asymmetry that doesn’t really need to exist. Certainly many scientists are very appreciative of the arts. The essential gulf is one of language and especially in theoretical physics, the basic difficulty is that most people don’t understand our language of mathematics which we use to describe everything we know about the universe. And so while I’m capable of listening to and intensely enjoying a Beethoven sonata or an Ian McEwan novel it can be more difficult for people in the arts to have some appreciation for what we do. But at a deeper level there’s a commonality between certain parts of the arts and certain parts of the sciences.

…………..

A-H: We often talk of the idea of beauty in theories. And I think if this is interpreted loosely you won’t get really a sense of what we mean. We have to be a little more specific. Ideas that we find beautiful are not a capricious aesthetic judgment. It’s not fashion, it’s not sociology. It’s not something that you might find beautiful today but won’t find beautiful 10 years from now. The things that we find beautiful today we suspect would be beautiful for all eternity. And the reason is, what we mean by beauty is really a shorthand for something else. The laws that we find describe nature somehow have a sense of inevitability about them. There are very few principles and there’s no possible other way they could work once you understand them deeply enough. So that’s what we mean when we say ideas are beautiful. A year ago I ran into this great lecture on YouTube by Leonard Bernstein about the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. And Bernstein used precisely this language – not approximately this language – exactly this language of inevitability, perfect accordance to its internal logical structure and how difficult and tortuous it was for Beethoven to figure out. He used precisely the same language we use in mathematics and theoretical physics to describe our sense of aesthetics and beauty. ( cf. Conversation; my italics & bold)

Read or Listen More:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/17/art-science-ian-mcewan-nima-arkani-hamed

…..

You may smile or sneer… but that is among others why I am convinced of “The Harmony Model/SIDE” !!!

http://berhane-hilina.blogspot.de/2007/11/purpose-of-l-i-f-e-quintessence-purpose.html

…..

PS.

In this context –

José Ortega y Gasset

mentioned above must be highly interesting to know!

Philosophy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ortega_y_Gasset

“For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. In order to accomplish such tasks the philosopher must, as Husserl proposed, leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism (in which reality is centered around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism (in which reality is located outside the subject) in order to focus on the only truthful reality (i.e., “my life” — the life of each individual). He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me: “I” (human being) can not be detached from “my circumstance” (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” (“I am I and my circumstance”) (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914)^[6] which he always situated at the core of his philosophy.

For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian ‘cogito ergo sum‘ is insufficient to explain reality. Therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system wherein the basic or “radical” reality is “my life” (the first yo) which consists of “I” (the second yo) and “my circumstance” (mi circunstancia). This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom.

In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom “is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny.” In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a “project of life” — thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.”

HARMONY of LIFE

HARMONY of LIFE-in-the Palm

The IDEA (see more)

HARMONY of LIFE-interpreted

Some Preliminary Notes on the Four Planes of the Harmony of Life:

Some Preliminary Notes on the Four Planes of Life

(download)

1. The Social Plane

2. The Cultural Plane

3. The Material Plane

&

4. The Spiritual Plane of the Harmony model.

The following is republished without change from the original, as published in December 2006. The Harmony Model has been elaborated and somehow more enlightened since its initial conception, but this short explanation does not need any change for it stands by its own right, with all the authenticity it reflects. One would perhaps only suggest to look more into the details of the model below, with all the possible TRIANGLES of relations to discern all varieties of combinational moments signifying different but related entities of the Harmony on discussion!

– The Harmony of LIFE –

Here are some examples for illustration;

Top – Down:-

source -universe- state;

source -mankind- family;

source -faith- love

etc.

Down – Top:-

destiny -faith- love;

destiny -conscience- laws;

destiny -universe- state

etc.

 

***

1. The social plane

The social plane and the cultural plane make up what I called the “human hemisphere” in the harmony model. The social plane consists of the following sections:

1. The state

2. The community and

3. The family

These are sociological and economic categories, which need no detail elaboration in the context of the harmony model but are subjects of their corresponding branches of sciences.

Fields of sciences, which are at the service of this plane, are:

Sociology, economics and all fields of engineering;

Political science as a derivative of other fields or similar areas of study covering other fields, which are common to other planes of life can serve this plane too.

1.1 The State and the social plane

The state is the section of the social plane whose purpose of existence can only be humanity. The state makes sense and deserves the right of existence at all, as far as it serves humanity, with which it can be qualitatively measured. Out of this inherent nature, which the state should assume, humanity is thus considered as the axis of the dimension of the state and its laws.

The State, the modern state, which history has brought about today, as the only form which can work in the sense of the high objectives of mankind, is I think the democratic state alone. The rest, which have come to the surface and tried to make it through life didn’t leave any positive experience. Most of them have brought mankind to the brink of collapse, with all sorts of social conflicts and – or a low level of intellectuality. In the aftermath, above all, the wars and revolutions which followed at the high cost of human life and material destruction are beyond a healthy human imagination.

Going to details on the State is a case for the sciences mentioned above. For the purpose of understanding the harmony model, it suffices here to mention the components of the modern democratic state, which as a whole takes its legitimacy from the people through its appropriate institutions and regulations. These are the well known three sources of state power:

1. The legislative

2. The executive and

3. The Judiciary.

Maintaining their functional autonomy, these are the sectors of the section, and must be in a harmonious relationship with each other, so that the state may function for the wellbeing of its members.

The section of laws on which basis the state functions belongs to the cultural plane and is necessarily in a horizontal harmonious relationship, like all the sections of the social plane with their corresponding components in the cultural plane are. The State and laws in the classification of the dimensions of the harmony model, make one of the eight dimensions of life. It is clear that, the State with its laws is not an end by itself and the purpose lies in serving mankind. The State and laws with mankind as one of the sections of the material plane, make a harmonious whole, with all their micro and macro interactions and interrelations.

1.2. The Community and the social plane:

The community is the section of the social plane, which is full of life and activity, without which the social plane as a whole would lose its existence. The very existence of the social plane depends on the harmonious functioning of the sectors of the community. This can only take place as far as the factor intelligence, which plays a central role in the dimension of the community and ethics, is sufficiently available. Intelligence is thus the qualitative scale of this section, which can as such be measured in its relation to the factors of humanity and the cultural development of the community in question. It is in this sense, be it individual or the sum total of the members, that intelligence or consciousness is the ultimate purpose of the community. Therefore intelligence is considered as the axis of the community and its ethics, whose nature of existence and wellbeing can be evaluated in how much and in which quality the social intelligence is attained – Social intelligence, which is essentially similar to the quintessence of the sum total of the intellectual level of the society, thereby elevating the role of education in the community.

The state cannot exist and doesn’t have any ground without the community, which it serves. Whatever the form of the state, the community is actually the main pillar of a society. Mankind has experienced a lot of models, which tried to show, how this plane would function at best. This plane is in history the most controversial part of life. This is because it is directly related to the peaceful and prosperous existence of mankind itself. This plane has been the battlefield of diverse ideas, where in times of history, reason didn’t prevail and these ideas have transformed themselves into violence, with the consequence of wars and revolutions. In this century, the fascist and nationalist states before World War II or after are instances of intellectual abyss. The recent socialist-communist experiment, which has degraded man to an instrument of social manipulation and has degenerated itself to the autocracy of a few individuals under a dogmatic ideology with all its variations, is still alive in the minds of a substantial section of mankind. It is even still a legacy in the active politics of several parts of the present world, either in a direct reference to the ideology in the form it has presented itself in history or de facto in the promotion of the ideas and the form of governance, camouflaged and packed for a political market which it could manoeuvre. The Ethiopian political scenery is also not free from this legacy, which makes the peaceful resolution of our political situation difficult. In the Ethiopian reality, this is true not only for those in state power but also for the opposition.

The sectors, which serve as components of the harmony of life in the interplay of community with the functions of the state, can be generalised in the following areas of human activity:

1. Education/ profession -in its high relevance to social intelligence, the central factor of the social plane as a whole.

2. Production /business -the practice of the available intelligence in the community to guarantee the well-being of the social being.

3. Distribution/market-in the attainment of social justice on the one side, which is highly significant for maintaining the high objective – peace- of the social structure, and on the other in making sure that all the necessities of each and every individual is guaranteed on the ground of full individual freedom and liberty.

These sectors make a harmonious section. Every sector is autonomous in its function and all the sectors are related to each other.

For the purpose of showing the necessity of harmony in life, the details at this point of generalisation are irrelevant. However, it is of paramount importance, to mention the key role distribution plays for the peaceful existence of different social groups and classes in the community. This is a highly important factor for the objective of a high level harmony. For harmony at a higher level, distribution of wealth only through the mechanisms of the market is still highly controversial but at this level of social reality, there is no other alternative. Market forces are nevertheless not magical forces and they are especially not appropriate to solve social problems. One should not therefore make a fetish out them. The legitimate controversy on the market is due to the missing underlying sense of justice, given the difference in opportunities, which nature or society renders to the members of life today. Many philosophical and economical approaches for solving this dilemma have come and gone and can at any time again revive, as long as there is inequality – Human and natural inequality, disturbs the intellectual mind and threatens the peace of mankind, if it runs contrary to the harmony of life, whose prerequisite is also social justice among others. The intellectual mind should always try to bring the best possible justice one can attain at a given time, space and human substance. The solution can always be, only an approach to the best condition. And this can be best achieved when the intellectual level of mankind arrives at the conception of humanity and wisdom, with which the human mind may grasp the truth about true good life. In my truth, as long as the most basic cultural and existential necessities are fulfilled, the real pleasure of life does not depend on the accumulation of wealth. It is at least a good beginning if the mind internally feels the insignificant role accumulation of wealth plays for real pleasure. Real pleasure is an abstract substance incorporating love, solidarity, a sense of justice and above all the knowledge about the delighting truth of eternity with mankind and the enlightened individual as a subject in the harmony of life.

Community is related to Ethics from the cultural plane and to nature from the material plane to make a harmonious whole. The relations, interactions and the reciprocal inspiring effects between these sections is a case for investigation, which I don’t intend to deal with here.

1.3. The Family and the social plane

Family and love is the dimension of life, through which the real source of pleasure could have been sensed, if only True Love, as high as it is, the spirit of family’s existence, were abundant. This is unfortunately not always the case. “If music be the food of love give me excess of it” is the sound of Shakespeare. It is this music which is the ultimate purpose and essence of the family. In this sense music or culture at large is the factor which would qualify the family in the social plane. It is the essential and fundamental substance of the social plane in the sense that it is the source of all spiritual and material activities, whose purpose of life is pleasure. Music is thus the axis of the dimension of family and love in the harmony of life.

The family as the lower organ of community is the collective where the genuine feelings of the society will be expressed and the social reality makes its abstract nature concrete. The passion in the family is more or less the genuine spiritual expression of the social reality.

The family which is based on love and harmony is mostly successful in life. This is not only because of the good opportunity and the influential position it may have in society but mainly due to the fact that the factors of intelligence from the individual members of the family are accordingly cultivated from childhood to maturity.

The family can be classified into the following three sectors of socially relevant categories:

1. Intelligence – the Individual

2. Social activity/ Labour

3. Necessity – Income

These sectors make up the harmonious section. These are economic categories which are subjects of the relevant sciences.

In their relevance to harmony, it is worth noting that,

The family is the source of intelligence;

Labour/social activity and necessity are instances through which the interaction with the community takes place;

Labour and intelligence flow into the sectors of production and education in the community; and

The sector of necessity will be covered by means of distribution through the income achieved by the activity of labour and intelligence.

The family is related to love from the cultural plane and to the universe from the material plane to make a harmonious whole. The relation with the universe is due to the spiritual nature of love in its true form, reaching out for the universal substance, which true love and solidarity may consist of; godly virtue.

The sections of the social plane get their essential contents and their guiding spirits in the sections of the cultural plane.

 

2. The cultural plane

The cultural plane consists of the following sections:

1. The Laws and constitution of the state

2. Ethics in relation to the community

3. Love and solidarity in relation to the family as the lower organ of the social reality.

Fields of sciences, which are at the service of this plane are:

Laws, History, philology, literature and arts; pedagogy, music and related fields with relations to one or more of these fields of science

2.1. Laws and the cultural plane

The State lives with its laws; the community with its ethics; the family with its love and solidarity. In the cultural plane the effects and the validity of the laws reach down to the section of love and solidarity and there is also a reciprocal dynamic interaction between all the sections from top to down and vice versa, which can easily and practically be witnessed by everyone in life. The horizontal, vertical and diagonal interactions of all these sections and their sectors with each other fill the corresponding sections with real life. The point is, in the final analysis, to find out and make a harmonious whole out of these sections and a harmonious sphere consisting of the social and cultural planes.

The best form of state, which mankind has so far attained is Democracy. This form of state lives and manifests its high spirits, when it is filled up with the democratic and basic human rights and laws it deserves. The details are for the jurist. To imagine the necessity of the harmony of the cultural plane, within its own sections and with the social plane, it suffices to mention the three general sectors of laws:

1. Basic human rights, including the right of work and basic necessities

2. Civil and all forms of democratic rights without any limitations; in the sense of liberating man from all sorts of human and natural constraints

3. Penal laws, the practice of care taking and responsibility in all spheres of life.

The State and laws in the classification of the dimensions of the harmony model, make the first of the eight dimensions of life as presented in the graphic model. The Axis of this dimension is humanity with history as its scale and its high objective as the maximum possible peace in life. History is a witness that humanity, even in its lowest form of manifestation i.e. in the respect of basic human rights is not universal; and the high objective peace is still a farfetched dream. Mankind is still full of violent conflicts like a thousand years back, with the only difference that the means of violence are now, supported by scientific progress, much more sophisticated than the old arrows and bows of Robin Hood.

2.2. Ethics and the cultural plane

Every community in every society has its traditions, history and culture. Every section of mankind has certainly developed until today its own code of ethics and moral mutual understanding, which has either made its way up to the sector of the laws of the state or in effect is accepted in the community without explicit critic and serves as the underlying moral and ethical norms or codes of the community. These Norms and codes independent of their access to the laws of the state are always in harmony with the prevailing universal laws of the society, without which the community will be in contradiction to the laws. Otherwise the peaceful existence of the society is not guaranteed and the consent of the community for the functioning of the state cannot be taken for granted. Without going to the details of Ethics and community, which is a case for the sociologist and similar expert on the micro-level, it suffices to mention the three sectors relevant to the harmony of the social plane:

1. Historically conditioned Ethics

2. Culturally developed Ethics

3. Traditionally accepted Ethics

Community and ethics make the 2nd dimension of life in the Harmony model. Intelligence or social consciousness is the Axis of this dimension and Intelligence as the sum total development of culture and the intellectual capacity of the community, is the scale with which the nature of the community and its ethics can be determined.

2.3. Love and the cultural plane

The culture of love in the family is perhaps as old as mankind itself and in whatever form practiced, it is the first cultural formation of a human collective. Love as a cultural component of life essentially manifested and carried by the family is a crucial factor of the harmony. Any society and human social instance whose basis is deficient with love is tantamount for conflict. Harmony and peaceful culture cannot be realised.

Be it in a family or other social group, love is a human attribute, which can only be experienced in a human social environment, without which any society can never be free of conflict. The experience and reality of love in the family can manifest itself in society as human solidarity. Love in the family and human solidarity or any social relation can be the fundament of a welfare society, which incorporates harmonious human individuals free of any constraints and full of freedom.

Love can be conceived through three different aspects:

1. Spiritually initiated and motivated love resulting in an extraordinary sense of feeling

2. Love with a cultural touch bringing about a strong cultural attachment

3. Love biologically motivated and resulting in reproduction

Family and love make up the 3rd dimension of the harmony of life. The axis of this dimension is music, the quality of sound, conceived and scaled as the development of culture in a reciprocal relation to the development of production which, if contrary to a high human cultural progress, has a negative impact on the quality of culture.

–        The Human plane

The 4th dimension of the harmony, the Human being and his spiritual Hope belongs to the transcendental plane. It consists of the sovereign and fully autonomous individual with limitless freedom and the human virtues becoming congruent to that of the godly nature, when the individual attains harmony in life. This is an area, which is not a point of elaboration here. It is mentioned just to indicate its appropriate position in the harmony model. It is a point of spiritual investigation, left for the peaceful, cultured and scientifically inclined individual personality. The ultimate purpose of life is that the whole mankind attains such sublimity. Can you imagine the protagonists of the so-called “Terror and anti-terror” on one boat abandoning all their wealth in favour of the destitute children of Africa, Asia or Latin America. May be when they come out of Age and are confronted with the ultimate question of existence just before their last sigh on their death thrones.

3. The material plane:

In the Hemisphere which I called Godly, we, as humans don’t have much influence except investigation and scientific enquiry to find out the governing laws and their constants, which were at work before mankind has stepped into nature. This is divided according to my model of harmony into the material and the spiritual planes. The material plane can be classified into the following sections:

1. Mankind,

2. Nature and

3. The universe.

Fields of sciences, which are at the service of this plane, are:

– Physics, Biology, Chemistry, mathematics, medicine and fields constituting more of these or other fields from other planes.

3.1. Mankind and the material plane

Mankind is distinct from the rest of nature through the fact that it has learnt to make a conscious use of mass for the purpose of its wellbeing and further existence – thereby unequivocally making sure its high participation in determining its own destiny; in the best case in accordance with the harmony of nature. Mass is at the service of mankind as far as it is activated consciously and intelligently to be the source of energy, which is the vital substance of mankind’s further existence. Energy can either be destructive or constructive depending on, how qualitative the conscious and intelligent substance, ultimately how human the conscience applied to it is. The purpose of the development of production and scientific progress should be seen in this light -i.e. in its promotion of human existence as a whole. Mass, as the significant factor of Energy, which is the central and vital substance of the existence of mankind is seen in this sense as a qualifying axis of the dimension of mankind and conscience. The development of mankind and its conscience is therefore qualified in how consciously and reasonably mass, as abstract as it may be, is applied to attain Energy for the purpose of the wellbeing of the human and nature at large.

The study of mankind can be divided in :

1. Ontology as the study of being /not being and the philosophical inquiry of Existence at large; the question of harmony in nature.

2. Anthropology as the study of the development of mankind alongside nature and its social and cultural interaction with the latter – Including the role of evolution and the relation of the human species to other species; the question of harmony in relation to the rest of nature.

3. Genealogy – enlightening the meaning of genetic and ethnical relation in the formation of the human intelligence factor – consciousness; the role of genealogy in social relations and a historical analysis with its relevance to cultural development and civilization or barbarism and social decadence.

How is the propensity of people for hierarchy, even in cultured areas, to be explained?

The whole part of this section can more or less be considered as the study of all living things with emphasis on Mankind as an essential component of harmony.

3.2. Nature and the material plane

Nature is the source of Energy. The abstraction of Energy as the central axis of nature, as expressed by the statement of relativity in relation to mass and light is not difficult to imagine. Nature, in light of the existence of mankind or the purpose of life in general can thus be qualified in as much as nature is the source of energy. Energy, as the central significant component of harmony, is thus posited as the axis of the dimension of nature and religion (by the way the fact that religion is a source of energy too, spiritual though, cannot be simply dismissed).

Nature in its abstract and concrete meaning as an object of knowledge interfacing mankind as its subject is the second section of the material plane. Nature as an object of knowledge is in particular relevant to the harmony model in order to understand the role and the relation of energy to mass and light as expressed in the Einstein’s theory of relativity. Here, the fields of science, biology, chemistry and in particular physics in all its variations from mechanical physics to astro- and quantum physics are highly relevant.

Though not in direct relevance to the theory, the general sectors which could be mentioned in the study of nature here are:

1. Geology: – as the study of Earth, in the sense of thoroughly understanding its history, actual substance and its development in its influence on the achievement of harmony in life.

2. Geography – is meant here as the study of the world in all forms of its existence at the surface, including the actuality, development and change of climate (meteorology)and its role as a determinant factor in the movement of mankind on Earth.

3. Archaeology as the study of the relics of civilisation and its role in the development of the intellectual capacity of mankind; Enlightening periods of mankind and their archaeological remains. The civilization and wisdom of the Antic – the Greek… The Roman….The Ethiopian… (This is I think not exaggerated!) And that before…Egypt – China – India …Inca …

This section is the study of all parts of nature and its derivatives as differed from mankind and the anthropological sector.

3.3. The Universe and the material plane

Can we imagine the purpose of the existence of the universe without light? Light is as such the significant substance of the universe or it is even the whole essence of existence. It is beyond human dimension to imagine life without light. Without being a physics student, the legitimacy of the postulation of light, in the form of the speed of light, as the most significant factor of energy can easily be conceived in this way too. With this understanding and insight one can abstract light – the speed of light- to be the axis of the universe as the component of the harmony model. At the speed of light mass can be transformed into energy. I would try to imagine an intelligent instance at the speed of light, whose form of existence is Energy (out of the theory of relativity), which would inquire, discover and acquire the universe. What could this instance be? This is light as the axis of the dimension of the universe and faith in the harmony model.

The universe as the sum total of all celestial bodies beyond nature is an epistemological issue, which has to be discovered in order to understand its governing rule behind. This is significant in the validity of the theory of relativity.

The trouble of elaborating this theory belongs to the scientist in the field of physics. For me this is relevant as far as the factors of Energy are concerned in their relations to the harmony hypothesis I posit. It is important to the extent of putting these elements in their appropriate relations. Without the study of these sectors it is of course impossible to understand the theory.

The universe as the study of all celestial bodies as far as the human can stretch its experimental and logical arms, is divided into:-

1. Cosmology – the study of its origin in relation with the abstract inquiry of being and not being and its epistemological approach. Including the study of all the newly discovered micro-particles in the field of quantum physics; the so-called wimps, machos, axion and so on;

2. Astronomy – the study of all celestial bodies in the universe and their governing laws and the substances they are composed of, along the relation of space and time to the bodies in question. Including the study of the newly discovered or postulated immeasurable anti-material content of the universe; machos, neutrinos, photino-photon, axion and so on;

3. Astrology – the critical study of human fate in relation to celestial bodies and its relevance to the laws of harmony:

The scientific investigation of the role of astrology along the determinist philosophical and conceptual understanding of life: – And the investigation of its interface to astronomy, which was fluid and has only changed in due course of the recent scientific progress. The relation of the truth to mythology has to be soberly and objectively analysed, especially with its relevance to the harmony of life.

4. The spiritual plane –

This plane is in effect the soul of the material plane. The material plane gets its inspiration from the spiritual plane.

The spiritual plane with its sections of

1. Conscience

2. Religion and

3. Faith, is strictly speaking, actually an area of concern for the sovereign individual, if the pre-requisite of the scientific approach, cultural maturity and peaceful social environment were available. However, since the human development of mankind is not historically that far to presuppose these attributes of perfection, high culture and peaceful existence, these sections are still socially relevant factors.

Fields of sciences, which are at the service of this plane, are:

Philosophy, theology, psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, medicine and fields related to more than one of these fields and beyond this plane; like mathematics & physics.

4.1. Conscience and the spiritual plane

If they are grasped in their spiritual depth and meaning, the relations of the universe with faith, nature with religion, mankind with conscience are such that one is the inspiration of the other.

In the promotion of humanity to attain harmony in life, mankind and its conscience can be inquired through the following light;

1. Human conscience and consciousness, as a responsible citizen in the sense of the wellbeing of the society at large.

2. Social conscience and moral awareness in the sense of solidarity with once neighbour in the human family at large.

3. Individual conscience and integrity in the sense of responsibility for the family and the community to which one belongs.

Mankind and Conscience make the 5th dimension of the Harmony. Mass is the Axis and Science the scale of the dimension, by which the development of mankind in his scientific perfection would be evaluated. Mass as the factor of Energy which is the significant component of the Godly Hemisphere in the harmony of Life expressed by the theory of relativity, is difficult to interpret. Mass and Energy in their relations and constant attributes are crucial for the existence of mankind and its scientific progress. The factor Energy has for example a qualitatively different form of being after the discovery of the theory of relativity in contrast to that before. This discovery like much of the scientific progress and discoveries in the last two centuries has changed the perspective of mankind, nature and the question of existence; e.g. Atomic Energy and its consequences.

4.2. Religion and the spiritual plane

History has shown that religion and nature are interrelated. Religion is influenced by nature as far as humanity has developed in understanding nature.. According to the development of understanding nature and human culture, religion has taken its abstraction to a higher level.. The religion of the primitive man is clearly attached to nature and its surroundings. The religion of the modern man is on the other hand accordingly modelled to the reality of his day-to-day life. The religious ritual it may celebrate is mostly intended to give its religion a legitimate ground for the social role it plays in society rather than the actual purpose of religion itself. No wonder for instance that the celebration of religious holidays in a developing nation is more intensive and time-consuming than that of the same practices in a developed country, which is sometimes even limited to exchanging presents and not more.

Religion can be conceptually divided into the following sectors, with the diverse understanding of their meanings and strict roles they may play in a society:

1. Philosophical conception and understanding of religion as a philosophical foundation for one`s own life. E.g. the modern man of art or the leader of a developed nation without any religious affiliation or even the Atheist;

2. Theological conception as understood by the actual relevant religions in their corresponding institutions and its followers. E.g. the Catholic Church or Islam …

3. Cultural based religion and derived conception without any relevant limits and understood simply as a favoured way of life art; e.g. Christianity in the west as conceived by the average man or all sorts of esoteric tendencies and sects.

Nature and Religion in their intrinsic relations and in the conception of their development make the 6th dimension of the harmony model. Energy is the axis and the scale of the dimension as well. Energy as the most significant component of the whole godly hemisphere in the harmony model has steadily changed mankind and nature. Nature has changed as manifested by the content of life; and mankind as well, in the maturity and development of its intellect as a whole; though it is accompanied with substantial periods of disharmony, with all its hard consequences.

4.3. Faith and the spiritual plane

My conception of faith, the universe and that beyond is as vast as one can imagine these substances and as abstract as the intellect can allow grasping. Therefore while I limit the inspiration of religion to nature to make my distinction clear, I posit Faith in relation to the universe. Therefore irrespective of the fact how tolerant a particular religion may seem, it is always exclusive and limited, in the worst case dogmatic. Faith on the contrary is an open philosophy, with all the tolerance the intellectual mind can imagine and manage.

Faith is essentially intellectual and the system of belief which would result out of it is never in contradiction to reason and logic. There is no faith devoid of Reason and logic. And there is no genuine Reason and logic devoid of Faith. When reason can’t do further, faith will take over the command of life and the mind will experience miracles, wondering on itself for what potential it is made of ;the heart will be engulfed with love and passion for nature composed of all its elements to discover that the source of the pleasure lies in the moment of conceiving the unity of the mind, body and soul, which expresses itself with the experience of the universal and the particular pleasure at a timeless time, to give the person involved the sense of pleasure in the sense of eternity and infinity; and in their coincidence. One would ask at such moments: Oh Wealth – the source of pleasure – the source of all human conflicts! Where is your faceless mask in the presence of this moment?

Faith in this sense can be classified in the following sectors:

1. Spiritually inspired and based on a spiritual experience, logically and intellectually accommodated with a possible touch of a certain religion.

2. Intellectually conceived, after the necessary philosophical inquiry with the possible abstraction is made.

3. Historically determined and conditioned under the philosophy of enlightenment and any high concept of philosophy which promotes a highly human cultural development, depending on the intellectual capacity of the relevant subject.

Faith and the universe make the 7th dimension of the harmony of life. The Axis of this sublime dimension is light, -the speed of light and the scale is the space stretching its wings up to and across the non-space, which is beyond human dimension, where all dimensions lose their dimensions and meanings as far as we humans are concerned. The non-dimension, what today modern physics scientists’ à la Hawkings would call the state of singularity!

–        The Absolute plane

The Absolute plane – God and Deliverance make the 8th dimension of the harmony. This is like the Human plane an area of the transcendental sphere relevant for the sovereign individual and therefore not a point of discussion in this contribution. But to complete the harmony model, this is mentioned just for interpretation in its relations to the factors involved. The Absolute plane and God are the counter instances of the human plane and the Individual free of all constraints and whose purpose of existence is the voluntary work for the higher objectives of Life; peace, culture, perfection and faith as discussed below. When the human humbles his strength with Hope, the absolute would reach out the arms of deliverance, to complete the art of harmony in life. This art of harmony can be graphically visualized in the way I have attempted. What are the concrete higher objectives of the four planes of Life, whose total ultimate purpose is harmony at large – a property of the absolute?

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More on the conception of the HARMONY MODEL see:-

THE QUINTESSENCE

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Higher Objectives – Extended Notes

I. Peace for the social plane

The concrete purpose of any state form (e.g. Democracy), the community and the family can be nothing less than peace. If we want to save ourselves from further calamities, wars, and all sorts of inhuman social conflicts, as witnessed in our recent history (WWII etc.), this higher objective can only be attained through an appropriate social justice and welfare. Otherwise, we are driving towards what a wise Ethiopian may call “Eyaweku Aleku” (“a conscious self-destruction”) – another form of destruction. Irrespective of the insanity of the actors, in the name of “enduring freedom” or the promise of the “heaven beyond”, the “cultural conflict”, which is hovering today over the world around the question of “Atomic Energy and the dream or the nightmare of a religious National superiority” is not accidental and has its social ground and may be the forerunner of the next round of human destruction, if the human species fail to work for peace, social justice and welfare. There is no way that this round of destruction could be less inhuman than the recent past, which was more or less ideologically conditioned. How would it be like with an additional religious dimension?

II. Culture/ High culture for the cultural plane

Culture – High culture means human culture based on the high level of scientific progress with the respect of all human cultural background as diversified as it is today, historically handed over to the modern human from every section of the human species. Imagine a virtuoso classical music, which would caress all your senses***, which would move your loving heart, which will enhance the silence of your mind, which will inspire you with a transcendental vision, thereby elevating your passion and respect for life and the human. This can only be achieved by the genius, who is in a position to combine all variations of notes by means of a high musical intellect one can imagine of. Or imagine a nice field and steppes of flowers made up of only tulips in one geometrical form or the other, in comparison to that of a big garden with different forms of planes full of all the varieties of flowers existing today in nature – from the well-known beautiful black red rose to a cactus flower etc. It does not require a special intellect to tell which would be appealing and delighting to the healthy mind, be it the artist or the layman. The same is true with Culture and High Culture, which can be a panorama of all cultures from all shades and corners of the human species at a definite time, without the slightest propensity of exclusiveness. Not exclusive but always working on the elevation of the human intellect towards the essential substance of the human mind – reason and logic, supported by some form of faith; Faith which as discussed below, is itself one of the higher objective of life too.

III. Perfection for the material plane

Mankind as a species, not only represented by its highest intellects, but also even by that of the common intellect, has the affinity for perfection and it lies in the nature of the human to be curious and always in the search for a higher knowledge. This may be, as protagonists of evolution may presume, due to the higher instincts of survival in the “highly aggressive state of nature”. Survival of the fittest for the human however, can be more easily realised through a higher intellect than through a tougher tentacle – the muscles. This is true, though history is also full of other facts on events which are contrary to reason and logic. In spite of all odds, this did not however prevent the human species to progress towards perfection. Every period of life has produced its jewels of humans, who have the courage and the intellect to develop science as far as their ages could manage, so that we would enjoy its fruits. Enjoy and develop all spheres of science, always critically appraised to go further towards perfection initiating a new scope. Science is always an open phenomena and remains so, as long as the human being manages to maintain its existence, and life; Life with a Purpose. In other words the higher objective of the material plane is perfection with the strong support of science; Science for the promotion of peace and human culture.

IV. Faith for the spiritual plane

Faith is strictly speaking a domain of the sovereign individual; the individual free of any constraints. It is not with a longing for the past or out of nostalgic sentiments, if it is suggested here to change the well-known aphorism of the last Emperor; “Haymanot yegil new “ to “Imnet Yegil new”. “ Faith (not religion) belongs to the sphere of the individual”. This is true, if all the prerequisites of a high human culture with the necessary welfare and peace on the basis of reason and logic were available. But this is not the reality, though, given the scientific progress of today, combined with the available spiritual prerequisite, the abundant wealth could have been sufficient enough to entertain such a culture.. The higher insight hadn’t unfortunately made its way through the mind of every individual, that the source of pleasure does not lie in the accumulation of wealth but somewhere in the mind of the self for the bliss of knowledge (cf. Aristotle) or somewhere between heaven and earth or like Kafka would simply say over the surface and under the feet. But unfortunately we are still staggering on an earth – otherwise the beautiful earth – where one feels to be happy touching the barren sand of the moon and on the other side, a child on this same earth dies out of destitution by every tick of the minute; and the former could sleep at night silently, without being nagged by the slightest bit of conscience whatsoever. Because of all such hard facts, the necessity of the state for the social reality of today is apparent, be it for the administration of social and civil justice, and be it for the administration and distribution of wealth or controlling and monitoring of the latter with the help of the “magical market forces”. Likewise mankind is today full of all sorts of faiths and all kinds of religions. Whether or not with a highly genuine spiritual purpose or as a style of life, these spiritual instances attract and absorb the individuals or groups of mankind, since it lies in the nature of the human to be spiritually affiliated to this or that sect. As long as they are not instances of human manipulations, as unfortunately they indeed mostly are, these religions or faiths constituted in all forms of institutions could play a healthy social role. They can fulfil their social purposes in helping to elevate mankind, if not in the possible spiritual humbleness, at least, in the sense of human ethics and in its moral awareness. If we are lucky and the intellectual level of the society allows, this objective can more or less be fulfilled by the religions available today. And thanks god, ample humanist intellectuals have pleaded for religion not to meddle in the secular section of life. At least in the regions where enlightenment has succeeded, it is established, that the civil state should be free of any religious affiliation or attachment, which is the most optimal way of looking at it. The Faith posited here, as the high objective of the harmony of life, is but of a higher abstraction. This is, on the one hand the sum total of the philosophy of enlightenment and the belief that the human mind would be at its summit of intellectual abstraction capacity and would touch all godly virtues, when it is free of any institutions, dogmas and religions in their traditional interpretation of disciplining the life of the human. Without the inherent insight emanating from oneself, liberation of the self would not be materialized. This way of attitude can be manifested in all forms of intellectual devotion or system of belief, be it philosophy or religion. On the other side, there is the quintessence of the sum total of all institutionalised manifestations of religions, which could serve as instances of ethics and moral awareness, which are of spiritual nature but also secular enough to be in favour of life and in an indirect service of the state where they exist. Whether, those from the traditional religion politically liberated intellectuals like it or not, the form of faith whose moments stretch in the two directions mentioned is amply present in the social reality of today. And it is the quintessence of all these aspects of faith, which I concretely posit as a higher objective for the spiritual plane at large. This culminates ultimately in the Faith for life with the purpose of realising the other high objectives of mankind. Peace, perfection and culture, which in turn will lead us to the longed harmony in society and the intellectual individual mind at its highest level of intelligence based on reason and logic, which is again itself not devoid of faith for a still higher purpose; a higher purpose beyond human dimension, with which only the mind can and may prepare itself – if not endowed by nature and historical process in its substance, as some may be – a ready mind at least in the will,

The will for a healthy human conscience to live with once neighbour;

The will for a state of peaceful existence;

The will to learn and progress towards perfection;

The will to appreciate the development of human culture in its diversity and complexity;

And never the arrogance of superiority in an inhuman uniformity, negating the very nature of life or pseudo equality in a uniformity of life, for the purpose of manipulating man. Can you make out of a cactus tree a eucalyptus, or is it better and wiser to make their common soil fertile? The faith in Harmony is not a belief in uniformity like religions of this or that colour may propagate. On the contrary, it is a state of existence with diversity and complexity as its prerequisites. It is with this conception that Faith is presented as one of the four high objectives of life in harmony. Faith as the crème de la crème emanating out of the healthy human conscience, the non-dogmatic section of religion and the philosophical faith-based on the intellect.

 

Google as God? …

“You’re already a walking sensor platform… You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should… Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever… It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information.”
Ira “Gus” Hunt, CIA Chief Technology Officer [1]

Google as God? Opportunities and Risks of the Information Age

….

“Innovation requires the protection of minorities and new ideas. It is an engine of the economy. Social diversity also promotes happiness, social well-being, and the ability of our society to recover from shocks (the “resilience”).

Social diversity must be protected just as much as biodiversity. Today, however, the Internet recommends us opinions, books, music and movies. This, however, undermines the principle of the “wisdom of crowds” and collective intelligence. Why should a company decide what is good for us? Why can we not choose the recommendation algorithms ourselves? Why do we not get access to the data?

Yes, I also recognize that our world is becoming more unstable – particularly because of its increasing interconnectivity and interdependence, which can lead to cascading effects, and hence to extreme events. But surveillance, combined with the suppression of people or undesired behaviors, is not a sustainable solution.

An Alternative Vision of the Information Age

But what then? Is there an alternative to the omniscient almighty state that matches our ethical values? An alternative that can create cultural and economic prosperity? Absolutely! Our society and economy are currently undergoing a fundamental transformation. Global networking creates increasing complexity and instability. But strongly variable, highly complex systems cannot be properly managed by planning, optimization and top-down control. This calls for a fundamental paradigm shift.”

….

http://www.futurict.eu/news/google-god-opportunities-and-risks-information-age-dirk-helbing

by Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich)

Homo economicus vs Homo-socialis

This is NOT an Outcome of Ideology

Evolution of “friendliness”

…..

“For most parameter combinations, the model predicts the evolution of a payoff-maximizing “homo economicus” with selfish preferences, as assumed by a great share of the economic literature. Very surprisingly, however, biological selection may create a “homo socialis” with other-regarding preferences, namely if offsprings tend to stay close to their parents. In such a case, clusters of friendly people, who are “conditionally cooperative”, may evolve over time. That is, they prefer to be cooperative, but they do not cooperate, as long as the interaction partners in the neighborhood are non-cooperative. In this way, they can protect themselves from being exploited. “But if by chance an unconditionally cooperative individual is born in the neighborhood one day, someone like ‘Mother Theresa’, the conditional cooperators may turn to cooperative behavior”, explains Christian Waloszek, one of the coauthors of this study. As a consequence, cooperation may spread in a cascade-like way and earn higher paysoffs, such that many friendly offspring are born. The “homo socialis” is established and begins to outnumber the selfishly optimizing “homo economicus”(my italics & bold).

Trespassing the “valley of tears”

“But it does not always go so well,” Christian Waloszek continues. “A superfriendly, unconditionally cooperative individual may be exploited by everyone, consequently getting a miserable payoff and no offspring. Hence, such people might die without an impact on the world.” That means, the evolution from the “homo economicus” to the “homo socialis” may go through a valley of tears. “Without random mutations it would never happen,” adds Helbing. However, if enough conditionally cooperative individuals are already around, the “homo socialis” spreads.

“This has fundamental implications for the way, economic theories should look like,” underlines Professor Helbing. Most of today’s economic knowledge is for the “homo economicus”, but people wonder whether that theory really applies. A comparable body of work for the “homo socialis” still needs to be written. Our economic thinking may have been totally misled. It may apply to the “untamed selfish beast” that characterized Thomas Hobbes picture of humans, when he called for the ordering hand of a state in his book “Leviathan” back in 1651. But since then, much has changed.”

More:

Nature Scientific Report: Evolution of “Networked Minds” –

Scientists show that a Fundamentally New Kind of Economics is Needed

http://www.futurict.eu/news/nature-scientific-report-evolution-networked-minds-scientists-show-fundamentally-new-kind

“In contrast, when agents reproduce locally, other-regarding preferences suddenly emerge after some time (see Fig. 1A). How does this surprising, sudden transition from the ‘homo economicus’ to the ‘homo socialis’ take place? In principle, mutations could create a random co-location of mutation-borne ‘idealists’ by coincidence after a long time²⁸. This would lead to the formation of a cluster of cooperators of ‘supercritical’ size. Such clustering would dramatically increase the relative fitness of other-regarding agents in the cluster and create sufficiently high reproduction rates to spread friendliness.

Figure 1: A random spatial coincidence of friendly agents can lead to the sudden spreading of other-regarding preferences and a transition from a ‘homo economics’ to a ‘homo socialis’.

The graphs show representative simulation runs on a 30 × 30 spatial grid with periodic boundary conditions. 60% of all sites are occupied with agents who can either cooperate or defect. The payoff of interacting agents is determined as sum of payoffs from prisoner dilemma games with all Moore neighbours. The payoff parameters are: ‘Temptation’ T = 1.1, ‘Reward’ R = 1, ‘Punishment’ P = 0, and ‘Sucker’s Payoff’ S = −1. The strategies (cooperation or defection) are updated simultaneously for all agents, applying the myopic best response rule to the utility function of each agent. It weights the payoffs of neighbours with the friendliness ρ_i and the own payoff with (1 − ρ_i). Agents die at random with probability β = 0.05. To keep population size constant, surviving agents produce offsprings proportionally to their payoff in the previous round. Offspring move to the closest empty site (ν = 1) and inherit attributes from the parent, here: the friendliness ρ_i. However, with probability μ = 0.05, the friendliness of offsprings mutates. With probability 0.8 it is ‘reset’ to a uniformly distributed random value between 0 and the friendliness ρ_i of the parent, and with probability 0.2 it takes on a uniformly distributed value between ρ_i and 1. (A) Average of friendliness and share of cooperating agents as a function of time (one generation is 1/β periods). (B) Average payoffs of cooperators and defectors as a function of time. Initially, defectors are more successful than cooperators. However, when the sudden transition from a ‘homo economics’ to a ‘homo socialis’ occurs, the payoffs for defectors increases, but the payoffs for cooperators increases even more, which implies higher production rates of agents with other-regarding preferences.”

See More & Details

http://www.futurict.eu/news/nature-scientific-report-evolution-networked-minds-scientists-show-fundamentally-new-kind

…….

A participatory kind of economy

How will this change our economy? Today, many customers doubt that they get the best service by people who are driven by their own profits and bonuses. “Our theory predicts that the level of other-regarding preferences is distributed broadly, from selfish to altruistic. Academic education in economics has largely promoted the selfish type. Perhaps, our economic thinking needs to fundamentally change, and our economy should be run by different kinds of people,” suggests Grund. “The true capitalist has other-regarding preferences,” adds Helbing, “as the “homo socialis” earns much more payoff.” This is, because the “homo socialis” manages to overcome the downwards spiral that tends to drive the “homo economicus” towards tragedies of the commons. The breakdown of trust and cooperation in the financial markets back in 2008 might be seen as good example.

“Social media will promote a new kind of participatory economy, in which competition goes hand in hand with cooperation,” believes Helbing. Indeed, the digital economy’s paradigm of the “prosumer” states that the Internet, social platforms, 3D printers and other developments will enable the co-producing consumer. “It will be hard to tell who is consumer and who is producer”, says Christian Waloszek. “You might be both at the same time, and this creates a much more cooperative perspective.”

Further information follow the link below:

Thomas Grund, Christian Waloszek, and Dirk Helbing (2013) How natural selection can create both, self- and other-regarding preferences, and networked minds. Scientific Reports 3, 1480.

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JUST FOR THE RECORD;

Quintessence of LIFE according to THE HARMONY MODEL :

The Purpose of Life (Quintessence)

LIFE is a manifold complex process of nature evoking the godly nature of All Being – creativity, to revitalize the Human, Universal and Mankind’s Aesthetic Nature (H U MA N), with the ultimate purpose of creating the Harmonious Human Being through generations /1).

 

Wheel88

Wheel of Life & Knowledge (WoL&K) – indicates new ideas & insights; reports and documents new scientific discoveries, break-through innovations & highly significant social & technological projects …for the development of human consciousness