Unity and Diversity - Quareness Series (20th "Lecture").
When I penned "The Dance" (see https://focalireland.tripod.com/poems) i was not at the time consciously aware of how deeply rooted were the sentiments expressed. I was still sorta slumbering in the Light. In hindsight I'm inclined to see the experience as a kind of "below the radar" dynamic unfolding of a widening understanding on my part "with implicate underlying reality revealing itself to me at random".
Quantum physics suggests an underlying background to reality - a sort of vacuum or void (like for the atom) - which cannot be perceived or measured by us directly. We can see particles and we can see waves but we cannot see both at the same time. And within this inaccessible wave-particle dualism the waves and particles themselves can be transmuted one into the other or indeed into a different wave or particle. At the level of percieved existence, everything has a kind of impermanence. It's important, however, to grasp that for science (as we know it Jim) these manifest waves and particles though impermanent are not illusions - in quantum physics the emphasis is on a temporary and shifting reality rather than on unreality ("the cosmic dance of temporary realities").
To get a handle on how this "background" vacuum or void "works" we need to refer to what's known in physics as the Quantum Field Theory whereby everything that can ex-ist (= Greek for "stand out from") is grounded in an underlying sea of potential - somewhat like the waves undulating on the ocean. In this understanding the universe is not filled with the vacuum but rather it's written on or emerges out of the vacuum. A somewhat surprising aspect of this scenario is the similiarity of this (not at all empty but replete with all potentiality) vacuum to the Buddhist concept of Sunyata/Void. Maybe our unfolding understandings of both science and religion are beginning to converge?
In the language of physics the vacuum is the "empty space ground state" or minimum energy state of all that is in the universe. And we are excited states of the vacuum - each one of us is an individual excitation, an individual being on the sea of being. Maybe we also mirror/resemble the vacuum through neural sensory excitations of the brain giving rise to thought, the content of the mind, the mind's information? We may indeed be active agents of creation. In religious terms all things emanating from the vacuum could be regarded as expressions of God's being, all "filled with the spark of the divine" like as "thoughts in the mind of God". We can be seen as among the instruments of His own unfolding potential. In a physical sense humanity may actually be at the vanguard of evolution given that we may be possessed of the most complex version of this physics i.e. our form of knowing and capacity for self-reflection. Again this might be the true significance of our "being created in God's image", or as so memorably phrased by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (an Anglo Irish poet of the latter half of the 1800s)....
We are the music makers
We are the dreamers of dreams
We are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever it seems.
In whatever terms we put it, as existing entities we most probably comprise expressions of the vacuum's potential. Whatever we think or feel or do is likely an expression of that potential and has the effect of exciting the vacuum i.e. of influencing the ground state of existence itself. And this could be why "there are no messiahs" or there's nobody here to act for us or to save us and why each one of us as individuals are most probably active agents of creation, of a literally physical dialogue with the vacuum that affects both ourselves and everything else. In this way we may come to realise "we are the Second Coming". The job of transforming ourselves and saving the world is "all down to us".
Thus we can gain insight into how science now might give us the vision to see the responsibilty we shoulder. In the quantum world view we are fully part of creation and its processes, we derive our being and our efficacy from those processes and we are truly effective in the long run only in so far as we remain in dialogue with them. We are not the end for which all else was created but "the small servants of a much larger drama that needs us to unfold". We are being called upon to enter a more mature stage.
In our increasingly pluralistic societies any form of meaningful consensus is not easy. There can seem to be ever more things about which we must agree to disagree in order to have any real chance of getting along. Without enforcing massive conformity, assimilation, population movements or apartheid, it seems our post modern "democratic" world will not ever again provide the kind of homogenous societies that were once the norm. Within the old Hobbesian mechanistic way of thinking where individuals or groups are so many atoms bouncing around and colliding in some featureless social space, democratic freedom appears to breed the source of its own fragmentation and to have to surrender its quest for the sort of consensus that gives shared life any true meaning - pluralism made possible by democracy is at the same time fated to undermine its best fruits - the best we can hope for from this is an array of loose compromises and a great deal of tolerance.
However, we could look at pluralism and difference and the search for consensus in quite a different way, through exploring the question of how we might both celebrate our diversity and at the same time find some creative unity in our differences. Quantum physics shows us that any fundamental sharp distinction between one self/thing and another is false. Indeed difference and diversity turns out to be the very stuff upon which deeper and more meaningful consensus can be built. It's the stuff out of which all personal, social, physical and biological evolution proceeds.
It is said that the one absolute certainty in life is change. For the purpose of our subject here we can say that any one vision or paradigm is finite, a bucket can hold only some of the inexhaustible well of truth. New questions always present themselves that are insoluble in the old terms and oftentimes cannot even be formulated in the old terms. Once the images and analogies on which we have based our theories are called into question, it becomes kinda impossible to think along the old lines, and that's when the impetus arises for a new coherent and wide-ranging vision with meaningful and resonant images. And at this point in our evolutionary march the images derived from quantum physics are perhaps the most potent and articulated.
Quantum reality has the potential to be both particle-like and wave-like. Particles are individualistic, located and measurable in space and time - they are here or there. now or then. Waves are non-local and spread out across all of space and time and their instantaneous effects are everywhere - they extend themselves in every direction at once, overlapping and combining with other waves to form new emergent realities/wholes. This wave-particle dualism is a powerful model for seeing ourselves as both individuals, distinct and effective in our own right, and at the same time as members of wider groups through which we acquire further identity and a wider capacity for creative relationship. Through our particle or personal aspect we cultivate what is unique about ourselves and our talents, exercising freedom and responsibility. Through our wave or impersonal aspect we overlap with others and find new parts of ourselves through our relationships with them. We literally grow or construct ourselves through our relationships - "I am my brother I am who am". It's similar for groups - not just my group and your group but for emergent society, with "this dance where each and all discover and explore and create as we share our public space", drawing from "the source of our consensus".
In quantum reality things are determinate and their qualities are pinned down/fixed in a given state when measured. They no longer have an internal "freedom to become" and are in fact actualities rather than potentialities i.e. either/or. Before they are measured, however, many properties/qualities of a "quantum" thing are indeterminate. They're in every state at once, comprised of spread-out possibilities with an internal freedom to become fixed in any one of them i.e. in a state of both/and. At the quantum level measured or determinate qualities relate externally but don't get into emergent correlations. Their internal properties do not change with the relationship. In the unmeasured or indeterminate state the internal characteristics do get into "sync". They become defined in terms of their relationship which in turn gives rise to new realities. When we harbour fixed attitudes, allow ourselves to be cast or to cast others in rigid roles or stereotypes, have fixed expectations, live our lives as a set of well-worn habits, follow routines or adhere to rigid bureaucratic rules, we are living out of our determinacy. We restrict ourselves to the level of here and now and actuality. Although sometimes necessary and even desirable, this is not creative. It fixes us and our relationships in place. It exposes us to the risk of becoming stale or bored and it denies us the opportunity to explore ourselves as creative members of an emergent group. By contrast when we live at the edge between order and chaos, when we accept the risk of our freedom and allow ourselves to be open to new experience, open in our attitudes, open to the many possibilities within ourselves and others, ready to reinvent ourselves and our relationships, we live out of our indeterminacy. In other words we live at the level of our potentiality and remain fresh like children - "opening myself to the new I live on the edge multi layered and suggestive and with friendly ambiguity at the level of poetry".
Ambiguity and ambiguous muti-faceted, multi-layered and suggestive communication are our friends, not our enemies, when we stand poised towards true community and an emerging consensus.
Each quantum thing has the potential to go this way and that, to be here and there, now and then. Until it is measured it lives out all these possibilities simultaneously. Although each may contradict all of the others, they are all necessary for a full description of what and how a quantum thing is. Like as with Schrodinger's famous cat, he is alive and he is dead (before observation) and both descriptions are necessary to tell us about him - and because the experiment/equation is a description of just one underlying thing, it ultimately celebrates a unity in the diversity. There is always more to truth than can ever be expressed in any one statement or system of belief. As the Tao te Ching states "the way that can be expressed in words is not the eternal way" or to put it in "plainer" language - there is not one way but many ways, and all are necessary to describe the way.
The larger and richer the range of diversity, the greater the opportunity for a society to express its own underlying potential. The greater and richer the range of my experience, the closer I am to realising my inexpressible true self. Inside each of us there's an infinite range of potential selves waiting to be evoked through relationship to others (the truth of this becomes apparent as serendipity increasingly enters your life experience when you're "on the right path"). The "other" is my opportunity, my necessity for growth. His or her difference is a possibility sleeping within myself. I need you to be you (to hold your values) and I need me to be me to do likewise. In quantum terms our agreeing to disagree is in fact agreement on something very fundamental upon which we can build our pluralistic consensus.
At the level of quantum reality, differences that are in a determinate particle-like fixed state relate only externally and have the potential to clash. When differences that are in an indeterminate wave-like state meet, their wave fronts overlap and combine and the potentialities carried by each wave give rise to a new reality that is greater than the sum of its parts. An apt metaphor here is that of "The Dance" with its own characteristics and also a moving but co-ordinated grace that no one dancer has on his or her own - their relationship evokes the reality.
Deconstruction in the brain (letting go of old concepts and categories and deciding to look at data afresh) is much like getting oneself into an indeterminate state. During the process of resynthesis, new concepts and new categories are evolved that can integrate the diversity with which the brain has been challenged. New neural pathways are laid down and new perceptual skills evolve. For this to happen we must come to dialogue with an attitude or belief or plan which we are willing to put "on hold", in effect letting go of our familiar concepts and categories i.e. where we are willing to put ourselves in an indeterminate state - to be open, to listen creatively and to look afresh at the issues concerned. This is how a resynthesis occurs through the process of dialogue, with each of us learning and arriving at a newer understanding than either could have achieved on their own. The willingness to engage in such and the resultant meeting of our differences is our common ground and consensus.
To summarise - physics can now describe an underlying common reality which forms the ground or lowest energy state of all that is in the universe. This quantum vacuum is replete with all potentiality and everything that exists ("stands out" as an actuality) does so as an excitation of the vacuum.... "like ripples on a pond". We too cannot be other than excitations of this vacuum (perhaps the God within?). All "ripples on a pond" could then be viewed as "thoughts in the mind of God". All of us are of the same source, stuff of the same substance, and our differences are the expressed potentialities of that common source - its unfolding reality. The vacuum is the ultimate reality underlying all differences, the ultimate source of their meaning, and if we become aware of this and commit ourselves to the task of reality creation as agents of the vacuum's (or God's) unfolding, we necessarily commit ourselves also to the value and meaning of the "other" and of diversity.
Evolution is the physical process through which all that is in the physical and natural worlds unfolds. And all evolution proceeds through a process of using variation leading to selection and in turn leading to further variation. In the circumstances it's likely too that the quantum dynamics on which consciousness itself may rest are built into the unfolding process of evolution at whatever level. Indeed there may be one universal principle of evolution at work at every level of reality - physical, biological and social. The evolutionary process is how we get to our future and commitment to this means committing to the value of diversity. Evolution needs and feeds on diversity and that universal need is why we need the "other" and his or her "otherness". The consensus we need is one in which many are heard and yet remain "distinct voices in the same choir". Evolution needs many dancers but all are dancers in the same dance.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
July 2012.
