John Dunn

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'Violating 0', '1=0', 'New life v 0' and 'Violation comes first'

Saturday, 18 Feb 2023

'Violating 0' Vernadsky's noosphere remained within the closed system of evolution (Pictured: Vernadsky in 1889) My belief is that life has always something to do with breaking out of closed systems. The very act of birth is the physical act of breaking free - but life is more than this. A closed system is an equilibrium of one sort or another that remains unviolated; this is just as true at a cosmic as well as an individual level. For life to break free the cosmos had to be violated, just as an individual must be violated to attain life. I am equating life here to consciousness and mind. Breaking out of a closed system is a coming to consciousness. It is the emergence of mind.I am equating life therefore to something that is uniquely human; to humanness. The emergence of life as consciousness and mind has been argued for before on an evolutionary basis. For example, Rudolf Steiner argued that only the mind of man can continue and complete the evolutionary purposes of God. There was also Vladimir Vernadsky’s concept of the noosphere, in which the sphere of nous, i.e. of mind, is an evolutionary stage higher than the biosphere, i.e. the world of minerals, plants and animals; but yet again, Vernadsky placed the emergence of consciousness and mind within a structured evolutionary process. Both Steiner and Vernadsky had consciousness and mind within processes of evolution and therefore remaining in closed systems. This leaves me wondering about closed systems and how truly to burst out of them; how to violate the equilibrium in order that there might be life, or that life might be. For to break free is a coming to being, with the implication that not to break free is to exist in a state of non-being, or locked in the closed circle of 0. © John Dunn. 1=0 Imagine a world without man. What do you see? Much as we see today perhaps, but without human life? You are probably imagining a return to nature, a planet in which the evidence of man’s history recedes into the background as the plants and trees of the jungle overwhelm his works and biodiversity increases, something like that. I put it to you that whatever you imagine will not be the case, because whatever you imagine will not ‘be’ without the mind of man. Let me elaborate. Biodiversity, for example, only exists because of man. Without man’s powers of distinction, i.e. the ability to distinguish one thing from another, there would be the polar-opposite of biodiversity, or any diversity for that matter; there would be a return to amorphous oneness;nature would be one viscous soup. The world we as humans see is very specifically our own. Only we stand apart to observe. Minerals, plants and animals do not observe, they are in nature and of it. They are in and of the one entity, not apart from it. Without man, the one entity would persist infinitely as the Cosmos, as an equilibrium, with its own self regulating mechanisms, its own necessities. Our world and others will be swallowed up in the formations and destructions of inter-Galactic events over aeons of time, but the Cosmos will continue, infinitely, as an equilibrium, as one entity. Without man, however, there will be no observer to confirm upon this one entity the status of being. For what is it to be? ‘To be’ is to be distinguished as one thing from another. To be is the ‘that is’ of the observer's mind. In an infinite Cosmos without man, there would be no ‘that is’, there would be no ‘be’ing. Where there is no being, there is void, no-thing; there is 0. Without man, 1=0. © John Dunn. New life v 0 Saint George and the Dragon, Tintorreto c. 1555. Tintorretto’s remarkable combination of the Resurrection and St George symbolism. St George slays the dragon, the symbol of evil and the crucifiers of God on Earth who lays crucified, whilst the Virgin is freed. St George receives the blessing of God in Heaven. 1=0 (see blog) at the cosmic level applies also at an individual and cultural level. The general applies to the particular. There are individuals who never emerge from the amorphous oneness of nature; the same can apply to whole races. In such cases individuals do not observe, they are in nature and of it. They are in and of the one entity, not apart from it. This was the state in which Dante found himself, ‘lost in a dark wood’, before the great journey of emergence that he undertook, making the Divine Comedy the cultural treasure that it is. Not to be distinguished, i.e. apart from the ‘dark wood’ of nature, not to emerge as separate as one from the others, is to have no be-ing, to be as an animal, bestial, void, to be nothing, 0. A race stands culturally distinct, or it is nothing. An individual emerges as a self or does not rise above the animals. Such emergence has been metaphorised into the new life mythologies of: Horus or the Ptolemaic Harpocrates Spring with its symbology of the Easter Egg The Orphic egg and Eros The Creation, Fall and Resurrection. The new life myths of emergence stand against the counter-myths of return and subsumption such as: Kaballah and freemasonry Spinozism Marxism Derridean deconstruction. Being variants of globalist necessitarian oneness effectively renders the latter group as the mythologies of death and 0. © John Dunn. Violation comes first “In an infinite Cosmos without man, there would be no ‘that is’, there would be no ‘be’ing.” (1=0 See Blog) “Where there is no being, there is void, no-thing; there is 0. Without man, 1=0.” (1=0 See Blog) Nietzsche and Heidegger grappled with the issues, but remained necessitarians. They advocated an independent and freely chosen life, an amalgam of the aesthetic, frivolous, improvised and authentic, but failed to recognise that the forest had to be cleared first. Violation comes first; the wilderness must be beaten back and equilibria overturned. For what is life? It is violation at all levels, from the human individual to the cosmic. Life must be actively chosen over 0. The wilderness is never conquered. Admittedly Heidegger was wise to this. There is a natural and eternal tendency to return and ouroboros is the symbol. This return is the passive fatalism of a sub-humanity that obeys the tendency in its various iterations: Spinozism, Marxism, Kabbalah, the mind lost in the Heart of Darkness. There can only be struggle against the wilderness, constant violation, if there is to be life. Struggle is life. The global pandemic has taught us that nature is the enemy. There is no working with nature, man must work against it. Man must violate nature. Fire and metaphors hold back entropy; the forest has to be burnt back. This applies hierarchically at a number of levels. First must come the awakening violation of the self through encounter and love. Man enters the still darkness of the cave to paint on the walls and art is born - metaphor for the violation of the equilibrium of womanhood. The Earth is violated for the stored fruits that it holds. Beyond Earth there must ultimately be a reaching out into space. What will be the measure of success? For the individual it will be by how much he is distinguished from the herd. For mankind as a whole it will be by how much we are distinguished from nature through art, architecture, feats of engineering and the active control and management of the Earth. The ultimate measure will be the density of the population made possible by man’s marshalling of the Earth’s resources to his own health and benefit. Beyond that it will be by how far into space the mind of man has penetrated. What of the Orphic egg metaphor? It has its chicken and egg limitations. Yes Eros broke free; but only after an egg itself was penetrated and fertilised. A 1=0 equilibrium has to be violated from outside; there has to be an outsider. In the Creation, the equilibrium of 0 was violated by God. The equilibrium of the Garden was violated by the Devil. The equilibrium of Adam was violated by Eve. The equilibrium of fallen man was violated by the Incarnation. Man, in the image of the first Violator, is the proof of God. © John Dunn.