Systemethics, an introduction : Our world is an interpretation of our mind’s projection.

Systemethics, an introduction : Our world is an interpretation of our mind’s projection.

When we read a newspaper, watch the six o clock news or observe our common world, we cannot help but notice that everything seems separated from everything else. We look at a white man as a white man and at a black woman as a black woman or we see the car we are driving in or the bus we are riding on as machines that have nothing to do with each other. The bus, the car and those people are separate entities, things perhaps or machines that have only in common that they are means of transport and these people are being transported. We may conclude that transport is the only connecting variable, nothing else.

But if that is true, are the bus, the car and two people of a different skin colour truly separated? This essay says no. They are very much related and connected. We can’t see it with our own eyes, but we do know that from within. The word transport connects the people with means of movement. When you start analysing the intrinsic connection between what we observe and what we internally know from being conscious, a form of interdependence emerges. This is a simple example, but imagine if you are able to connect your own personal history with that of the world. Are you a part of this global history? Of course you are. Without you the history of the world would have been different. You are valuable to this world for two reasons: firstly you belong to this world and secondly, you are this world because you are observing it constantly. Without you observing it, that world would not exist. It is a picture in your mind and everything else is too. We are creating our world through our personal observation. If you can understand this or are able to imagine this within yourself, you already know that without you, there is no world, no black woman, no bus, no car and no white man. They are projections of your mind. This mind is therefore a necessary part of reality as it is shaping it constantly. This so-called interconnectedness will give us, as the observer having to deal with the observed or perhaps a better word would be ‘interpreted’, an enormous responsibility as we are having to make choices based on our created reality. The risk would be as we believe that we keep seeing ‘separate’ things, we would react fragmentally, rather than basing our reactions on understanding the ‘whole’.  And that is basically what this essay is about. Our fragmentation, or inclination to separate things of life. We bomb Syria because we want to eradicate ISIS, but fail to accept that ISIS has a cause to exist. They exist in our minds as an evil, but we do not choose or refuse to see that this evil was caused by another evil; ours. When we would accept that everything is related, or interconnected, we can also acknowledge a total interdependence linking us all with what is observed. The evil that ISIS is doing, is dependent and interdependent on our own actions and choices which thrive in segregation. Climate change, the fact that hundreds of islands are slowly being swallowed by our oceans has a cause. Ignoring the cause, or not accepting the correlation through our fragmented observation and scientific conclusions, usually ulteriorly motivated, only postpones potential solutions. We do not realise that our world is an interpretation of our mind’s projection.

2. End of Fragmentation: We do not longer belong to the planet, but the planet now belongs to us.

When all is interrelated, reality is the sum of everything. It cannot be explained simpler. When we learn to understand this, we can commence by accepting this truth and gradually list everything we interpret in fragments in order to reunite them into this sum of it all. Physics talk about the ‘unified’ field, religions talk about God who created it ‘all’ and philosophers confirm that our world is a unity, an unification of mind and matter. Astronomers show us that mathematically we would not have existed as a human species if our planet would not be in that exact position in the universe where it is now, hanging in seemingly empty space which if fact is far from empty.

The challenge is to describe the interconnectedness and the interdependence of us and universal conditions for life in an understandable manner in order to overcome the gap between scientific mumbo jumbo and the way common folk using common sense interpret their observations. The famous physicist Fritjof Capra wrote his book ‘The Turning Point’ in 1984. Today, we live in the year  of our Lord 2015. Between the release of this important book and today 31 years passed. The question that this essay tries to answer is: did we read, understand and interpret his valuable insight and use it to unify all? Consult your observation of today’s reality and will agree that the answer is:  ‘no, we did not.’ Perhaps you read it and nodded ‘yes’ during your reading , but reality as we observe it today, certainly appears worse than in 1984. We do not see what he tried to show us. We did not read that fragmentation is the very cause of a reality that does not stroke with our innermost feelings or wants. Our innate survival mechanisms are constantly tested causing anxiety and direct related diseases. Fear, flight or fight has become a constant state of mind, shortening in fact our lifespans. The basic reason for this is that not only did Capra remind us of how reality could and should be interpreted and used, but every religious teacher, every scholar, every philosopher that lived on this planet confirms this since the day that humans became thinkers. What we have done lately is in Ayn Rand’s words: destroyed our minds. Cause: because we want to earn the unearned and deserve the undeserved which depends on one basic human flaw; denial of reality. Now, imagine you have to live in an imaginary world where the one condition to keep earning what you believe is yours, is deliberately ignoring your observation of reality by creating a suitable interpretation of it as your reality. This is the status of our leadership. A surreal preference is created but this cannot exist in a social vacuum. Someone stranded on an island in the South Pacific will not survive if this ‘surreality’ persists in his observation. He or she has to, in order to survive, accept reality as it is presented. Accepting such ‘surreality’ can only be sustained by the acceptance, the acquiescence or the abuse of others. Therefore it needs other people and /or the environment to be harmed. Believing therefore that someone can get away with such behaviour is a fallacy, as immediately one will understand that dependence on others causes vulnerability by others and are the needed conditions to maintain it. In other words; it will cost one’s freedom to act this way. This phenomenon is also known as politics. Presidents, Prime Ministers, Politicians and even those who work for Non-Governmental Organizations are required to choose in fragmentation, because they depend on the system they serve. Independence of a system is very difficult in our world because it is the intention and motivation of our leaders to create a sense of dependence being it financial or economic. If we were not dependent, we would not be needing any leaders. Laws prevent common folks to create their own currency or for example live on barter. They are not allowed to hunt or scavenge the lands or forests because these belong to someone else. The world has become fragmented because someone own the land, the waters, the fields, whilst a natural tendency would be that we all share what our planet is providing us with. Instead we believe in competition, ownership, rights, laws to protect such rights and therefore this cannot but lead towards separation. Ergo, our observational interpretation is faulty. We do not longer naturally belong to the planet, but we assume the planet now belongs to us.