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Pattern!by Chris Marsh, 1992-4 [A while ago I found this stuff amongst some old writing on a few just-about-still-readable disks, and put it on this web site, which was becoming a kind of alter ego. It’s an unfinished ‘book’ dating from a time when I was exploring the ‘spirituality thing’ with the Quaker Universalists, hence the terms in which it is expressed. Shortly afterwards I left the Quakers to work on practical aspects of world change. It needs a good edit really, and may be worth completing, but not a top priority...] There are eight sections: pattern1 (this one), pattern2, pattern3, pattern4, pattern5, pattern6, pattern7 and pattern8. Introduction One of the major preoccupations of human life is trying to make sense of it all. It is a mystery how or why we came to be experiencing life, what the universe is, and our place in it. Many people who believe they have found some satisfactory answers want to share them with others, partly to recieve confirmation, partly in case they may help other people in their exploration.
In this book I am offering to others a way of understanding the world, and our experience of it, which I have thought out after many years of pondering. I usually refer to the end result as a theory, which seems appropriate for what has been largely a product of the intellect. However, once completed it seemed so right and perfect that it has become my belief, and something that I know, with that inner certainty which people call ‘spiritual’. It is my truth.
Many writers, particularly those who are respected authorities in a particular field of study, avoid the first person and give the impression that their words describe some external, objective truth that they have discovered. I shall often use the first person because I have no authority to call on apart from fifty years of varied but unexceptional life, and the haphazard learning and broad wisdom of an independent and sceptical mind.
It is a central tenet of my belief that there is no such thing as absolute, objective truth or reality. Hence I am obliged to acknowledge that the package I am offering you, who reads this, is just a model, a mental construction, one of many such which are on offer today. Nevertheless, I commend it, particularly to those who have been seeking a spiritual or philosophical home for most of their lives, and have never settled for long in any religious denomination or faith, but have felt the need for ‘something’ beyond the daily round and life journey. I also commend the theory to ‘universalists’: those who are happy with the religion or philosophy they have adopted, but who honour the different beliefs of others and are seeking a framework in which apparently conflicting beliefs can coexist harmoniously.
My theory supports all other belief systems becauses it takes up a position underlying them all: it is the ocean in which all else sails. This means that everything in life is an example and illustration of my theory, and so I have chosen to avoid the usual practice of serious writers of quoting a multiplicity of sources and references in support of their assertions.
There is another reason I want to avoid building my picture out of others writers’ words. For many years now I have been making the cynical observation that so much has been written during the course of human history that something can always be found to support any idea. Human literature, particularly religious scripture, serves people as a ‘mirror’, in which they see their own thoughts reflected, and filter out anything which might be disagreeable.
I hope that people who read this book will use their own ‘mirrors’ rather than any of mine, and make links with other writing which interests them in order to confirm or challenge the theory. Also I want my theory to appeal or not on its own merits, rather than according to whose authority I base it on.
Having said this, there is one writer whose influence I must honour: Rupert Sheldrake. I acknowledge with the deepest gratitude that his was the springboard from which my theory was launched. I also recognise that no one’s ideas are completely original. We all build on the work of others. Many writers have influenced me, including many with whom I have passionately disagreed. I also believe that I am resurrecting something very old, a knowledge from before human history and civilisation, which some, but not all of us have lost sight of, but will recognise as soon as it is pointed out. Many of those with whom I shared the theory while I was writing the book responded with, ‘Yes, of course it’s like that.’ I hope that this is your reaction too.
Understanding for a changing world
I feel that my theory has an important purpose in that it provides a framework of understanding appropriate for a world undergoing a process of profound change. The theory could be described as cosmological, since it is a model of the fundamental essence of the universe. It is also philosophical and ecological, since it applies to life as we experience it, and as we interact with the rest of the natural world.
The theory offers two benefits which are vital at this planet-time. The first is that it explains why it is so difficult for humanity to make the changes needed to steer our world away from its present destructive path. The second benefit of the theory is that it provides the basis for future harmonious coexistence between peoples of the world. It is tolerant and non-political, promoting understanding and cooperation rather than power and competition.
An important attribute of the theory is that it does not deny the truth or validity of any other theory, model or belief about the world that an individual or group of people may hold. The only belief that is disallows is the conviction that there exists a unique, all-encompassing, objective ‘Truth’ or ‘Reality’, whether scientific or religious, which has a monopoly over all other beliefs, and is capable of explaining them away. In effect, the theory provides a completely plastic universal medium which can be moulded into any number of theories or belief systems, without their interfering with each other.
The theory explains human behaviour by showing how our tendency to think and behave in habitual ways is a manifestation of how the entire universe is composed. We carry on living by ways which are not sustainable, and which bring about injustice and ecological damage, because our behaviour is a process of growth through time, and tends to continue the way it is going. Repetition of behaviour patterns is not brought about solely by active socialisation, but by a universal property whereby similar entities are aware of, and copy each other, without the need for any obvious physical contact.
Added to introduction - arising from D’s comments 6/1/92
Language
The habits which generally govern our experiences and behaviour are not isolated entities. Even small habits and mannerisms such as nail biting or eyebrow raising have origins and histories beyond the repeating loops involving the nervous system and muscles of particular individuals. By no means all the habits we acquire are bad. One of the biggest sets of useful and necessary habits shared by our species is language. It is the main means by which we communicate with each other and, as such, has attached to it all the frustrations, challenges and satisfactions of human interaction. By means of language we make ourselves understood and are constantly misunderstood, because all the words and phrases we use have strands and tangles of associations linked to them, most of which we do not consciously consider.
In carrying out the task in hand I am aware of a special problem with the language available to me. I am trying to put forward an alternative way of thinking which contradicts some of the dominant conceptions of the Western European culture we are part of, and with which our language has developed. On the other hand, waves of change are overtaking human understanding and words are acquiring alternative meanings which resonate better with what I am trying to say. But I feel that this makes it even more necessary to be as precise as I can in the way I write, and try to avoid linguistic shorthand which may draw in associations which are not part of my meaning.
One of the problems with our language which many writers have encountered is that it is object orientated: with an emphasis on things rather than on processes. I have heard it said that the Hopi Indian language, and other native languages, are more process oriented, but I have to make do with the language I have. This is often maddeningly difficult: like trying to make a fairy dress out of sackcloth. The alternative tactics are to use the language as it is, the result being somewhat crude and awkward, or to tease out the course threads to discover their finer underlying structure, the result being attenuated and needing a lot of words to express a simple idea.
Objectifying is characteristic of how people in our culture view the world - separating it into distict entities, rather than as changing patterns in the flowing processes of the universe. This may have evolved as part of a human survival strategy - an idea I shall explore in a later chapter. Much of the time I shall have to accept the object orientated world view, and write in terms of distict entities, while I am offering an alternative world view from which all boundaries are somewhat arbitrary and indistinct.
Some people will be fairly comfortable with the world view I am offering. They will ‘get it’, to use that delightful 60s phrase which means receiving and understanding at a deep level, a kind of verbal embrace. Many others will not like it at first, because it is not how people in our society generally think. I shall be describing the theory in many different ways, and in several different contexts, trying it this way and that, from various angles and views. I hope that, once someone has understood the concept, they will also gain from seeing how deep an understanding of our world is made possible through applying the theory. It is nothing until it is applied. This book is only a conceptual framework for others to dress up with their own experience and beliefs. But the framework does, I believe, help everything else to make sense.
There is a second language difficulty besides objectification which I need to mention at this stage as a forewarning of confusion to come. There are many words in common use which are associated with different aspects of how we experience the world. Examples are: belief, truth, reality, the way things are, the obvious, observations, experience, knowledge, common sense. These are associated with what we think of as different realms of understanding, in particular: what we observe with our senses, what we have been told by respected (secular) authority, and what we accept on the basis of faith or spiritual experience. I need to remove or de-emphasise these distinctions, and treat them all as ‘what we believe in’. By my theory, there is no essential difference between what we believe from the evidence of our senses and what we believe to be behind or above our everyday experiences and observations. It will often be convenient to use the word ‘belief’ to cover any and all kinds of assumptions we may have adopted as mental models of the world ‘out there’ and our sense of ourselves ‘in here’.
In case you who is reading this is impatient for me to ‘get on with it’, I am including in this introduction a short and concentrated account of the theory, as a preliminary to describing it more slowly and fully in later sections. This structure is similar to the business report which ‘tells them what it is going to tell them, tells them, and then tells them what it has told them’. As I mentioned before, not everyone will like these ideas at the first mouthful, but I trust most people will get a taste for them as I dish them up in various concoctions. Here, then, is the theory .....
‘Pattern!’
I call the theory ‘pattern!’. (The exclamation mark serves to distinguish the concept from the general use of the word.) Put most simply, the theory states that the universe consists of patterns of awareness (‘patterns!’) which form, change and decay in habitual ways. We generally regard the universe as ‘material’ (though it is not clear what we mean by that), rather than as thought-based, so it is easiest to envisage the pattern! universe as consisting of a single, property-less substance, in which different minds perceive different patterns of reality.
To avoid the anthropic bias which has caused so much damage in the world, particularly over the past 500 years, pattern! includes an essential principle whereby we must assume that the entities which we perceive are also capable of awareness. Hence perception is always an interaction between minds, rather than conscious subject regarding possibly insensible object. So, by the theory, all entities which we perceive directly by means of our senses, unassisted by experimental apparatus: in particular, plants, animals, rivers and mountains, are aware and capable of perceiving us. Moreover, if we postulate the existence of entities such as particles, waves and forces, which we need experimental apparatus to observe, by the theory of pattern!, these entities too are aware and capable of perceiving us, just as we are aware and perceive them. Hence the theory is ecocentric and organic rather than anthropocentric and mechanistic.
Where pattern! really challenges us is that we have to accept the validity of other people’s beliefs and theories, even when we are inclined to dismiss them as nonsense, myths, stories or superstition. An area I have had to wrestle with personally is the various beliefs in God, heaven and the immortal soul, held by followers of the established religions. I have most difficulty with Christian beliefs, because they have been associated with the spread of the European Empire, which has resulted in so much destruction of natural ecosystems and other human cultures. But the fascinating thing about pattern! is that there can be no doubt that, since people do believe in him, God must exist. This is because it is thought which creates reality, so those who believe in God create him: not as a figment of their imagination, but in as real a form as any other entity which awareness sees and interacts with. However, it is also true that, for some people, God does not exist: he is not part of their reality.
All religions include some conception of immortality, or life after death. Indeed, some cynics see the main function of religion as providing an escape from the fear of death and oblivion. One important attribute of pattern! is that it guarantees immortality to every entity which comes into being. This is because pattern! includes a conception of time whereby the past accumulates in a process of growth, rather than passing away. All of the past is present in the present, and continues to be influential by constituting the habits which guide the movement and change of the universe. Thus memory and awareness are the same. What has been conscious in the past must continue to be conscious in every present moment. Nothing is left behind, forgotten.
Although immortality is inherent in the pattern! universe in the way I have described, those who believe in particular forms of immortality do not have to be content with that. The theory of pattern! means that, for those who believe in a heaven, where there are choirs of angels and where they are reunited with people who were dear to them in earthly life, that heaven does exist, and they will go there when they die. (Of course, those who profess to believing in heaven, but have secret doubts, will not create that experience for themselves.) Similarly, people who believe in reincarnation will be reborn, and experience further lives, according to the rules of the belief system they have adopted.
The only belief about immortality that pattern! has difficulty accommodating is the belief that there is no such thing: the conviction that our destiny is oblivion. It must be nonsensical to say that belief in nothing can create nothingness. Those who look to death as a release from pain or guilt will find themselves when they die in possession of a life lived, but not resolved. Those who dread oblivion will get a delightful surprise. Perhaps those who are so sure of oblivion would do well to decide what they would want to do next, just in case they are wrong.
By the theory of pattern!, time can be seen as progressing in an onward direction, or as occurring in cycles, or as some combination of the two: in spirals, perhaps. This is because the habitual nature of the universe produces repetition of past patterns in the form of cycles within cycles, but not in an inevitable, deterministic way. One oak leaf may seem very like another; oak leaves grow according to the habit of past oak leaves; there is evolution and change; but whether a new pattern is original, or the repetition of some wider cycle, is a matter of how one chooses to perceive it, rather than of how and what it ‘actually’ is, in some objective sense.
The pattern! universe consists of entities which have form and behaviour which are created by thought, indeed which are thought. A pattern! is thought and form and behaviour. Every pattern! is a part of many wholes and a whole of many parts. A pattern! exists in time as well as in space. Behaviour is pattern! in time.
The two aspects of pattern!: awareness creating reality and habit perpetuating past patterns!, create an interesting dynamic. Although each entity creates its own reality, all entities are interconnected in that they are influenced, and influence each other, according to the degree to which they resemble each other. So, to take the important example of human experience, we create our own reality, but we do so strongly influenced by ourselves in the past, and by others who resemble us most closely, who may share our lifetime and space, but who may have lived long ago or be far away. Once we become fully aware of the influences upon us, we can choose whether to continue to follow them or to find some other way. We are held firmly to our habitual path, but we are also free to leave it. Those who realise this can change the world.
Although I have introduced pattern! as a theory that I have originated, I feel that I may be just reminding people of something very basic that they all know already. Readers familiar with the work of Rupert Sheldrake will see the resemblance between pattern! and his theory of ‘morphic resonance’ and the role of habit in nature. But I have replaced Sheldrake’s scientific idea of ‘morphic fields’ shaping development with the more organic idea of the past forming the present through a process of growth. Like Sheldrake’s theory, pattern! does not replace other models, but underlies them at the deepest level.
What I propose to do in this book is to take various subject areas, and show how they can be seen in terms of pattern!. I shall then go on to show how adopting a pattern! way of thinking would be helpful in bringing about a period of regeneration in the world. It will help us to learn to work with nature, and with each other, to heal the wounds left by the devastating period of the European civilisation.
But first I need to describe pattern! more precisely. The description will be scientific in style. This means that I shall state the theory as a model with the simplest possible components, and I will show how the model is capable of providing a consistent and complete explanation for all observable phenomena in the field of interest. Since this is a cosmological model, the field of interest is the universe at a fundamental level, i.e. as it applies to ‘particles and stars’, rather than as we experience it in everyday life. In order to be able to concentrate on the theory itself, I need to take the reader’s interest in science for granted, so I am using the device of writing the essay in the form of a letter addressed to a professor of physics. I am not trying to pretend that this is a communication between peers: clearly I do not know as much as the professor does about physics, but I think I can assume that he knows as much as I do.
1. Definition of the concept of pattern!
Letter to Professor Chris Clarke
Dear Chris Clarke,
Last May you were kind enough to write to me with comments on an essay I had written called ‘Cultivating Confusion’. We met when I was a student on Rupert Sheldrake’s course at SchumacherCollege and you came as a guest speaker.
When you spoke to us during the course, I was very impressed by the almost humble way you seem to regard the science of theoretical physics. At one point you said that you did not believe that physics explains very much about the world, if anything at all. Curiously, you also said that you did not see a niche for Rupert’s ideas, in that you see no ‘gap’ needing to be filled in the spectrum of scientific explanations, and particularly not in your own field. It may be true that there is no gap, as such, however, I believe that there is a need for something like Rupert’s ideas actually to replace existing theory to the extent that they are seen as explanations or underlying reality, rather than as just providing useful models.
Although I am not an academic or a practising scientist, I feel that the theory I have put together about the nature of the universe is so simple, all-embracing and consistent with common sense, that it deserves consideration by serious scientists, as well as by the current generation of ‘alternative’ thinkers, to whom it is more likely to appeal. My theory was built upon Rupert’s hypothesis of ‘morphic resonance’ and the concept of habit in nature, but I feel I have taken his ideas a considerable distance further, to form a new theory which I can call my own. I call this theory ‘pattern!’. (The exclamation mark serves to distinguish the concept from the general use of the word. I also use the term ‘patterns!’ to refer to the ‘stuff’ of the universe postulated by this theory.)
I feel that you are a very good ‘sounding board’ for my theory because of the seniority of theoretical physics amongst the sciences, and your standing in that field, your open-mindedness, and your interest in Rupert’s ideas and in the role of consciousness in the fundamental nature of the universe.
The nature of theory
I am sure you will agree, in principle, that any theory or explanation is a mental construction rather than a discovery of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ in an objective sense. A mental model has validity if it proves useful in the sense of representing a collection of observations, and making predictions which can be tested empirically. If the model is then used technologically to make some set of new artifacts, its validity becomes undeniable. If we are clear about the distinction between objective truth, which may be unknowable, and validity or usefulness, much agonising over scientific theory can be avoided. For example, there is no need to resolve apparently contradictory models such as ‘particle/wave duality’, or the once-and-for-all ‘Big Bang’ versus oscillating universes.
One can extend the idea of ‘valid even if contradictory’ mental models beyond science into the areas of philosophy and theology. We can say that a model is valid, and so ‘true’, not just if it has some practical application, but simply because it is believed. In other words, we can say that thought creates truth. Different thoughts can create different truths. That idea can be translated into a theory of the fundamental nature of the universe: the result is the theory I call ‘pattern!’. Its usefulness as a model lies in the fact that it allows us to feel relaxed about contradictions, because they are only what the theory would predict. This is particularly appropriate at the present stage of human history when mutual understanding and tolerance are so essential if we hope to have a future worth living on this conflict-ridden planet.
Any serious scientist, while he may recognise that his theory is a mental model, and his experiments simply test its consistency with observations, usually thinks of his model as being objectively real. His particles, waves, quarks, superstrings etc., and the forces influencing them, may only be notional entities, but he thinks of them as having their own existence and as the agents which bring his experimental results into being. In the same way, I regard my patterns! as real, rather than as notions, or ways of envisaging a world which ‘actually’ consists of something else.
I have introduced the theory in terms of belief, thought or consciousness creating truth or reality. However, it is important to make clear from the start that I am not implying that the human mind alone creates the universe. To suggest that the world as we experience it came into being when the first Homo sapiens individual left the womb of her hominid mother is altogether too anthropic for my preferred way of thinking. I could object to such an interpretation because it is like a creation myth which begs the question of where the creator came from (in this case the hominid mother, in other myths some notion of God). But my objection really arises because I have become accustomed to the model of creation adopted by Western science, with the Big Bang, formation of matter, stars, galaxies, solar system, our earth, and the evolution of life. So I think of my concept of pattern! underlying all that, but also encompassing all other models of creation which various groups of people have adopted, whether as myth and legend, or as serious rivals to the Western model.
If we concentrate on the conventional Western model, the creative agent is what I am calling ‘pattern!’, which includes what we experience as belief, thought and truth, but which is extended to include all regularity and repetition, in a similar sense to Rupert Sheldrake’s use of the general idea of ‘habit’.
What the pattern! universe is made of
The question of ‘what matter is’ has kept philosophers and scientists wrestling for centuries, with no real hope of a final answer. Similarly, the idea of empty, featureless vacuum or ether in which the material and forces of the universe interplay begs questions about the nature of the vacuum itself. It is a problem for the human mind to envisage the ‘tabula rasa’ on which the universe in time and space is written. It is just as difficult to accept that there is no such thing. The question ‘What was there before the Big Bang?’ may be answered, ‘God’ or ‘Nothing’ or ‘The question is meaningless’ etc., according to various personal beliefs or metaphysical preferences. The questioner can accept the faith or authority behind one or other answer, but not one of them is obviously true or provable. To question deeply is to court disappointment.
However, the problem is avoided if, just at this point in particular, we remind ourselves that all anyone can do is dream up a model, we cannot know in any absolute sense. To qualify as scientific, a theory should be based on the smallest and simplest assumptions taken on trust, and allow the rest to be built, using consistency with observations and experience as a test of every additional part of the structure. My own model has the advantage of needing, at most, one single ‘substance’ to be assumed, and one which does not need to be distinguished from some other, ‘empty’ state in which it resides.
The forms that this one substance takes can be thought of as local bunching or thickening, which endures for a while, and so extends in time as well as in space; resulting in the phenomena which I call ‘patterns!’. The patterns! are, in effect, the form and behaviour or habit of the substance. Only the patterns! are interesting; the substance has no properties at all without them. In fact, one can invoke the principle of ‘nothing buttery’, and state that only the patterns! exist.
Since the patterns! are similar in nature to thought or awareness (subjectively conscious or not), this is the same as saying that the universe consists of awareness alone. So, by the theory of pattern!, one can envisage a single, propertyless, substance, which awareness draws up into patterns!, or one can envisage a universe consisting of patterns! of awareness existing by themselves, in no medium at all. The choice is only over which idea one feels comfortable with; the body of the theory can rest on either foundation. (I used to think of the medium as chaos, patternlessness. But that has the disadvantage of suggesting that patterns! must have some geometrical regularity to be different from the chaos, which is unnecessarily restrictive.)
Awareness without mind?
If I wanted to ensure acceptability for my theory amongst a substantial group of people, I could choose to describe the awareness of which I am postulating the universe is made as ‘thoughts in the mind of God’. I have no objection to the theory being thought of in those terms and, indeed, I would encourage those who follow a religious belief in God, or are comfortable with the idea of God, to envisage their own version of the theory with God included. But I hope I may be excused from adopting that version myself, because I do not find it helpful personally, and it adds another entity, a complication, which is not logically necessary, and has a lot of potentially confusing associations in people’s minds.
The conventional Western cosmological model seeks to explain phenomena in terms of matter and forces, and the laws governing their behaviour. It is a model resembling a combination of machine and repressive city state. Rupert Sheldrake has described in his book ‘The Rebirth of Nature’ how this model originated and developed. He shows that the history of science derived from the human desire to master nature and the Protestant drive to destroy paganism and nature worship. So the development of science has been more a product of politics than a process of discovery by independent minds. The mechanistic model served to support the notion of the superiority of mankind, and his right to exploit natural resources.
The desire to repress and control wilderness, replacing it with orderly fields and structures, is reflected in science’s objective of simplification, hence its search for the smallest set of fundamental particles and the ‘single unified force’. No human being has experienced and known one of these entities directly, they are not apparent and obvious. So I believe that there is no reason to choose such things as the ‘really and truly’ building blocks of the universe.
As one of the founders of modern science, René Descartes, has famously observed, the one thing we do know and experience directly is that we think. So surely it makes good sense to explain the universe in terms of thought; but not just human thought. With all the evidence that human dominance has been dreadfully destructive, we must avoid anthropocentrism in any new cosmology. We know that thought exists, and that is in the end all that we can know, so let us try out the idea that thought is universal, that all beings and entities are capable of thought and, in fact, that nothing else exists or has meaning.
Science has, of course, operated the other way, and tried to explain thought in terms of its preferred model, reducing thought to electrical processes in the brain. But there are many human experiences which cannot be explained in this way, such as telepathy, out-of-the-body and near-death experiences, and memories of past lives. The small intellectual step of questioning the necessity of a connection between thought and brain function opens up a liberating new dimension of understanding.
A pattern! domain
There is a problem with describing my theory in that it is so flexible and all-embracing that it can be difficult to pin it down. If, by the theory, thought creates reality, different thoughts creating different realities which may contradict each other but still be true, how can I identify anything which is universally valid, and so characteristic of the model? But this is a problem with almost any theory. For example, relativistic quantum mechanics may be thought of as applicable to any chemical substance, but it becomes impossibly complicated with large atoms or molecules, so its proponents started with a simple chemical, hydrogen, and hoped to progress from there. I shall do something similar.
The best way to understand the characteristics of pattern! is to show how it applies to a sample set of thinking; to some accepted and popular field of interest and study. The pattern! model is inherently simple, so I need not resort to anything as restricted as a hydrogen molecule. That is only necessary with the theories of conventional science, because they are so complicated through having to be contorted into the straight jacket of mathematics. Examples of the sort of ‘chunk’ of thought I would take are: the conventional model of the physical universe, life, human social behaviour, religion and philosophy etc. Each of these I will call ‘a domain’. In this introduction (still addressed to Chris Clarke), I will concentrate on the example of the physical universe.
The conventional model of the physical universe
It is widely accepted by human thinkers and so, by my theory, it is true (but not the only truth), that the universe exists in three-dimensional space and changes through time. Within the universe are matter and energy, various forces influencing them, and a background medium of vacuum. Disregarding for now the incessant wrestling by physicists over the most fundamental particles and forces, and the origin of it all, how would pattern! account for a universe with those characteristics? I will begin by considering a single particle: a proton, say.
Let us assume for now that a particle can occur spontaneously, in the way we experience a thought occurring. We can envisage it as a local pattern!, a thickening in the single substance of the universe. It is aware of itself, and it is aware of all other particles in the universe. It recognises other particles as resembling itself to a greater or lesser degree. It behaves towards other particles according to their usual practice. The more often that behaviour is repeated, the more ingrained it becomes. The particles and their behaviour towards each other constitute a further pattern!, which is also aware of itself, recognising others resembling itself to various degrees, and behaving towards each other is the ways they usually do. And so on.
By the conventional model, the ‘behaviour’ of patterns! would be thought of as movements taking place over time. By the theory of pattern!, behaviour is persistence of patterns! through time, rather than movement. Furthermore, pattern! postulates a conception of time by which past states do not disappear, but build up in a process of growth. So a particle does not shift its position over time, but grows in a particular direction as it persists over time. So its memory or habit is present to it, and part of its being and awareness.
A new pattern! emerges from nothing in a similar way to our experience of being conceived and born from a state of non-existence. Thereafter, the pattern! cannot cease to be, but is perpetually present and influential in the universe, even if its growth is interrupted. When a pattern! emerges, its behaviour tends to follow the other patterns! which it most closely resembles.
After its initial emergence, it will generally be the case that what any pattern! most closely resembles is the immediate past state of itself that it has grown from. So continuation of virtually exact similarity is the norm. However, a past pattern! of eventual decay will also tend to be repeated by a newer pattern! resembling it. We observe that there appears to be a general pattern! or ‘rule’ whereby large and complex patterns!, such as organisms and stars, are more likely to undergo stages of marked change and eventual break up than are simple patterns!, such as chemical elements. So although simple patterns! combine into progressively more complex patterns in the direction of growth which time is, so do the more complex patterns! tend to break up at the end of a period of growth. These are the opposing tendencies we call ‘evolution’ and the ‘Second Law of Thermodynamics’ (which, by this theory, is not an absolute ‘law’, but a pattern!).
Patterns! which are simple, and have long established habits such that their behaviour is very predictable, may seem to behave according to absolute laws. Those ‘laws’ can be expressed in mathematical language and, to the extent that they are consistent with the behaviour of the patterns! they represent: particles, waves, forces etc., the laws are potentially useful, and so are valid. So pattern! does not invalidate or deny the laws of physics. However, the theory of pattern! does say that it is the habits of the simple patterns! in question, not the laws of physics, which govern their behaviour. The laws exist in the minds of scientists, and in their books and papers, they do not reside with the patterns! whose behaviour they model, or in some transcendent realm which overarches the universe.
Significantly, it has not been possible for scientists to devise absolute laws, or combinations of absolute laws, which provide satisfactory models of complex patterns! such as organisms, ecosystems or weather systems. The belief that anything can be explained by reducing it to its smallest component parts has been thoroughly discredited in recent years. It is now recognised that an entity which is composed of many parts often has emergent properties over and above the sum of the properties of all the parts. This is clearly what would be expected with the pattern! model. Complex patterns! would have habits which tend to follow their own past behaviour and the behaviour of complex patterns! similar to them, in addition to being influenced by the habits of the simpler patterns! which have combined to constitute the complex patterns!. The build up of habits would not have to work in a hierarchical way. The habits of the complex patterns! would be likely to have some reciprocal influence on their component patterns!.
I will now return to the simple patterns! which we know as nuclear particles in order to consider the subject of creation.
Creation
So far I have talked of particles (or simple thoughts) ‘occurring’ or ‘emerging’ spontaneously. It is also possible to envisage that their emergence is encouraged by the presence of already existing particles, just as their subsequent behaviour is influenced by particles they recognise. Thus there may be a process of on-going creation of even the simplest patterns!, in addition to the processes of evolution and decay. But I realise that I must say something about how the ‘very first’ pattern!, or collection of patterns!, came about. This is not because I am myself very interested in the emergence of the first tiny pimple or rash in the hitherto empty and unaware substance of the universe. It is because people generally seem very interested in the very beginnings of things.
Popular interest in the origin of the universe and ‘Creation’, with a capital ‘C’, is obviously linked with religion and mythology. Western religions based on the Bible have inherited a myth of a ‘once and for all’ Creation though the agency of one God. I have already mentioned that I find this story unsatisfactory because it begs the question of how the God came into being. (This is largely because of my own upbringing and does not in any way invalidate the biblical model of creation.)
Interestingly, although our culture has been dominated by the Christian religion and its creation story, this has not prevented Western science exploring its own version of the origins of the universe. And I understand that there are physicists specialising in this area who simultaneously believe that God was the creative agent. By the theory of pattern!, there is no problem or inconsistency here. Like everything else, a creation story is a pattern! of thought, and is true if someone holds it. It is an important principle of the theory that it allows and expects contradictory patterns!, and there is no reason to make the domain of one person’s thinking an exception to this principle.
I intend to explore the domain of religion is a later discussion because it is an important part of our culture. But I shall concentrate for now on pattern! versions of creation which might fit the domain of the conventional model of the physical universe.
To the extent that the ‘Big Bang’ hypothesis is believed and accepted, by the theory of pattern! it is true. However, other possibilities may be more appealing to the scientific mind which is rigorous in seeking after simplicity. I have mentioned the idea of the first pimple or rash emerging, in the quietest of murmurs, rather than though an explosive event. As to why that first little nudge of thought should have occurred, I am inclined to say, ‘Why not?’ or, with quantum theory in mind, ‘By chance.’ By the ‘multiple universe’ theory, in which all possibilities are manifested in some universe, of which the one we experience at this moment in time is just one, there would be a universe where it didn’t happen, a universe which did not wake up.
I find the examination of continuation and development much more fascinating than speculation about initial creation. I intend to explore a number of interesting pattern! domains, and to explore further the domain of science! In order to do that, I need to describe with some care the concept of ‘explanation’ as it relates to pattern! So at this stage I am concluding this ‘letter to Professor Chris Clarke’, and extending my thanks to him for providing a receptive, though critical, audience for my initial attempts to recount my theory.
(Fit in somewhere: Just as it allows and includes every system of belief, the theory of pattern! does not invalidate the study or application of any existing scientific discipline. Since the scientific community probably considers that all fields of study are adequately covered already, it might well assert that pattern! is superfluous. So it is important to explain why I consider that the theory of pattern! is vitally necessary. I have already mentioned the important general benefit of pattern!: that it removes many causes of argument and controversy which lead to oppression and conflict. In the scientific arena, oppression is manifested in ‘the peer review’ and the difficulty of getting any radically new theory published and recognised. But a more important reason for the theory to be applied to science is that it removes the excuse for regarding science as value free and independent: the assumption that science is concerned with the pursuit of truth and so should not be hindered. Pattern! says that science does not discover truth, but creates new patterns! whose validity is, to some extent, dependent on their usefulness. Hence the best course is to restrict further study and application of science to areas of real benefit to the whole of society and to the urgent mission of assisting in the regeneration of healthy planetary ecosystems. Such a conclusion could lead to a sweeping embargo on research, and to much existing technology being dismantled or allowed to fall into disuse, which is an outcome that many concerned people today, including many scientists, would welcome.)
2. Explanation
I am going to use the concept of pattern! to ‘explain’ a number of important areas of human experience. By using the word ‘explain’ I am implying that I shall argue that pattern! underlies our experience at a fundamental level; that the world as we know it is built from, or grows out of, pattern!. That is, indeed, what I hope to do, and what I believe. But even if I succeed in making my arguments and descriptions really clear and plausible, many people would dismiss them from serious consideration because I am not a recognised ‘authority’ in any of the areas I will be covering.
But the choice of whether or not to be receptive to another’s ideas, itself derives from a pattern!: the pattern! which includes a set of unconscious associations with the word ‘explain’. Reflected in ‘explanation’, and the associated concept of ‘understanding’, are certain of the power relationships which mould human personality and social behaviour. An important benefit that I see in the pattern! way of thinking is that it helps to disarm those power relationships, so I want to dissociate myself from playing the conventional power ‘games’ before I get down to my kind of ‘explanation’. One way of doing that is to try to bring into the open some of the hidden associations that the term ‘explanation’ invokes, by musing on the subject of what ‘explanation’ is, and why people seek explanations for things. My intention here is not to tell how it is, but to stimulate curiousity and questioning.
We tend to assume that the need for explanations and understanding is unique to the human species, being a manifestation of our superior intelligence. However, some other animal species exhibit behaviour which resembles curiousity and experimentation, suggesting that they build up a mental map of how the world is, which can be likened to our experience of understanding. And animals which care for their young must pass on some of their understanding through the generations, which is a form of explanation. But what does seem to distinguish our species from others is that when human parents pass on knowledge to their young, they do so in a particular way, a way which introduces into that relationship the notion of authority and the exercise of power. When the curious and insistent ‘Why?’ of the young child is put down by the authoritative response of the knowledgable parent, he is taught to ‘understand’ by adopting an attitude of acceptance towards the ‘explanation’ imposed by the parent. By such means are our young socialised into the power relationships of human society.
Parental authority is the first power relationship we experience in life: the power of our mother, who has superior strength and can threaten to withdraw food, nurturance and approval; and the authority of superior knowledge, which may involve both parents. But there is a second dominant power relation in human life which is also part of the picture.
Most of recorded human history has been dominated by the power relation of male over female, and there is a sense in which ‘explaining’ is a masculine role, whereas ‘understanding’ is a female one. This is echoed in the power relation of man (sic) and his science being able to explain ‘mother’ nature, which may itself be connected with the resistance of the (male) child to the authority of his mother. There is even a suggestion of the ‘Oedipus complex’ here, in the way ‘explanation’ seeks to penetrate, and introduce itself into, passive and receptive ‘understanding’.
So the human drive to explain and understand may be not be so much the product of superior human intelligence as the outcome of family and gender relations. There is no mystery about why our species should have developed family social relations, after all, many animals care for their young for a protracted period, and pass on the necessary habits of behaviour through the generations. What is perhaps more puzzling is why human family roles and relationships are partially hidden in the unconscious, and give rise to frustation and conflict.
The Homo sapiens individual, on his own, is a pretty weak and puny individual. Our evolutionary strength, which enabled us to survive amongst other, physically superior, animals and would-be predators, was our strategy of group cooperation extending beyond the period of child rearing, and perhaps arising by that period being extended into adulthood. Perhaps, then, the family relationships underlying the adult group relationships are so deep and old that they have become buried in unconscious habit, overlayed by habits of more recent development.
Many human characteristics we take pride in, in particular self-reflective consciousness and language, can be seen as useful tools for implementing a strategy of adult group cooperation. Being able to distinguish oneself from others and to communicate with them make for flexible responses to situations requiring cooperation, particularly for hunting. Understanding and explanation are also part of the process of distinguishing particular phenomena in the environment, and choosing the appropriate response in the interests of furthering human needs and activities.
The need for rapid response to the phenomena encountered in the hunting situation may have given rise to the more active thought process of ‘explanation’: ‘this is happening because ..., so I need to respond by ..., or tell someone else to ...’. Since nursing young children made women less available for hunting excursions, we can see how individuation and linguistic communication may have been less necessary to them than to the males. Females may have remained more connected with the others of their kind, and with nature, because of the need for maternal bonding, and their availability for the work of plant food gathering. The patterns in nature that women needed to recognise were less mobile than the hunters’ prey, perhaps giving rise to the more passive thought process of ‘understanding’.
The subject of human social relationships is one of the pattern! domains I shall be exploring more fully in a later section. I am particularly interested in how man’s domination of nature, and his separation from nature in the psychological step of individuation, is reflected in the relatively modern phenomenon we call ‘civilisation’. At this stage, I will simply state that I see a link between man’s (sic) alienation and dominance of nature and his claims to having the authority to explain how the world works. Assuming that there is such a link, I will move on to describing how ‘explanation’ is carried out in the modern world, highlighting the aspects of explanation I want to avoid in the explanations I shall be putting forward in the following sections.
Explanation and authority
People today do very little in the way of finding out for themselves. Generally, they are instructed by those in authority, who may be parents, teachers, superiors in their places of work, or ‘experts’ whose influence is more remote. An interesting exception has been that, in recent years, there has been a generation of school teachers who have recognised that children naturally learn by exploring, and have developed ways of encouraging and working with children’s curiousity and play. But such moves are a threat to the deeply rooted power relations of society whose origins I have just been exploring. Significantly, it is the government authorities, rather than the educationalists, who are insisting on a return to disciplined learning imposed by teachers onto pupils.
It is also significant that the amount of knowledge and skills passed on within families is now negligible. Life skills, even at the instinctual level of basic child care, come from the explanations given by books and experts. Only a generation or two ago, the skills and knowledge needed for gardening, cooking, and household making and mending were taught at home. Now each person is taught, through the education system, a single set of skills and knowledge, which becomes his job, career and, indeed, his identity. He then sells his labour and abilities to others for the money to buy the various things they too have individually made or can do. Until recently, identification with one’s job was a male phenomenon. Women continued to acquire a variety of vital home based skills, passed on from mothers to daughters. Some parts of the women’s movement has, I think regrettably, encouraged women to participate in the de-skilling process, which has made everyone dependent to an absurd extent on the fragile balancing act of exchanging everything in life via ‘the market’.
So in our day to day lives we specialise in the providing end of human activity, whilst obviously having to continue to be generalists in what we consume. Each specialist practitioner receives training and instruction from specialist teachers. Each person’s knowledge and understanding is limited because everything in life has to be explained to each of us by experts. Each expert becomes a powerful authority is some tiny aspect of life. Only experts have the authority to explain how things work and how to do things. Explaining is dominant, understanding is passive.
There is another kind of ‘explanation’ which is usually considered to be distinct from the everyday ‘how to do it’ variety. The other kind covers explanations to do with meaning and purpose: answers to the ‘what?’, ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ questions we ask about life and the universe. It also includes morality and judgement: right and wrong; good and bad.
My feeling is that the separation of these two areas is the result of the fragmentation of our society. In a more integrated human community, the ‘cosmic’ explanations would form a layer of understanding which would include and hold together the everyday explanations. Myths about spirits and ancestors would help to sustain practices and group customs which had been found to serve the community well.
Where the two kinds of explanation do come together in our society is the way they are imparted to others.
Explanation is carried out by recognised authorities, who may be teachers or academics, or may have built up a reputation through their paid employment or other respected experience. In general there is an inverse correlation between breadth of knowledge and authority, such that the narrower the expertise the more respect it commands and vice versa.
Explanations tend to be presented in a categorical way, as if they are unarguably correct, and part of objective truth. Authors of textbooks, manuals, histories, and works of philosophy, religion and science write in the third person, rather than in the first person, which would make it more obviously the authors’ experience, advice, opinion or interpretation. In an effort to shore up this assumed objectivity, and to give an impression of constructing sound edifices of knowledge, authors include abundant quotations and references to each others’ works. And there is so much material in the library of human literature that confirmation can be found for any idea or conclusion that any of these experts may have. Contradictions between works do not matter because readers have learned to take in reflections of their own views and filter out the rest: a phenomenon I call ‘the mirror effect’.
Pattern! explaining
Having explored some of the associations and attitudes which come with our use of the notion of explaining, I now want to make clear what my intention is when I set out explanations using the theory of pattern!.
My explaining is intended to be as assertive as that of any authoritative person’s. The word ‘explain’ comes from the Latin word ‘explanare’ which means ‘to flatten’. I do intend to flatten, demolish and disarm the power relationships inherent in the explaining which most authorities do: not in order to claim explanatory power for myself and my own theory, but in order to give it back to common sense and natural understanding, which is what pattern! theory really amounts to.
In my ‘letter to Chris Clarke’, I used pattern! to explain the physical universe in terms of ordinary experiences all of us have, such as thoughts and habits. I did not deny the validity of the theories of physics, but took away their explanatory power, leaving them with whatever usefulness they may have. As a result, common sense is also given back the power of deciding whether the models of physics, and their technological possibilities, are allowed to be included in our culture.
I have a similar intention in putting forward pattern! explantions in the areas of interest covered in the following sections. Each of the areas constitutes a pattern! ‘domain’, with a somewhat arbitrary boundary drawn around each in order to focus attention on the patterns! which apply within that area, and avoid those which are universal or interconnecting. In each area, I hope to show that anything which has been put forward as truth or reality is really a pattern! of human thought or behaviour, and is influential but not absolute and inevitable.
I referred above to the objective of giving power back to ‘common sense and natural understanding’. But it is not as obvious as it ought to be what that is. There is much that people generally take for granted in the world today that is quite absurd, and contrary to common sense. And we can see the absurdity if we are able to detach ourselves from our own involvement, and judge it in terms of whether it is a sensible way of going about things.
I have found that children often have the degree of detachment needed to judge by common sense. To them it is absurd (to take a rather too obvious but convenient example) that the destruction of tropical forests continues when it is well known how vital they are. Adults may see the absurdity too, but their common sense judgement often gets swamped by feelings of anger and blame, and their own opinions about what should be done about it: debt relief, sustainable exploitation, absolute preservation etc. I am not saying that such reactions and opinions are wrong. But I want to distinguish between detached common sense judgement and the thoughts and actions which are part of the way we live and the associations and influences we are subject to.
I hope to shed light on the curious phenomenon whereby many people, some of whom are very influential, have for many years been seeing quite clearly many of the problems of the world today, and also know of sound and practical ways these problems can be addressed, but there is no net improvement. We are overwhelmed with good ideas and good intentions but we are stuck. But stuckness is the usual result of habit, which is characteristic of patterns! So I am going to take as my first pattern! domain, human experience and behaviour.
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