Identification with a sustaining "heliocentric" locus?

Going Nowhere through Not-knowing Where to Go (Part #6)

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As argued above, identity is most readily associated with "geocentric" identity -- despite the confusion of incommensurable dynamics, suggestively mapped as cognitive epicycles. The curious challenge is the nature of the requisite detachment through which greater coherence emerges from a "heliocentric" perspective. From a "geocentric" perspective the importance of the "sun" is unquestionable in sustaining life. From a "heliocentric" perspective, it is the "sun" which enables and sustains the "geocentric" movements most commonly associated with life as it is known and experienced.

There is a curious difference between the two perspectives with respect to movement, progress and "going somewhere":

• the "geocentric" perspective is witness to repeated
  • progress through the seasons and their variability
  • daily movement of the "sun" with the passage of time especially marked by the contrast of night and day
• the "heliocentric" perspective is
  • witness to the circumnavigation by the geocentric perspective -- "going nowhere" repeatedly, through being locked into an orbit (offering an illusion of "going somewhere" from a "geocentric" perspective)
  • effectively unmoving -- "going nowhere" (although offering the illusion of "going somewhere" from a "geocentric" perspective)
• both perspectives are characterized by rotation on an axis (with the system as a whole in less evident movement with respect to a universal context)

Both "Sun" and "Earth" figure extensively in the insights offered by mythology -- and a sense of the possibility of identifying with them as patterning dynamics . Using these metaphors, the question is how meaningfully to embody the dynamics of the contrasting perspectives with respect to:

• going "somewhere" -- implying achievement through the sense of possibility in having somewhere to go (and the potential of sustainability there). This exemplifies the sense of both the "arrow of progress" and any quest for a metaphorical Holy Grail (In Quest of Sustainability as Holy Grail of Global Governance, 2011). This can be deprecated in the sense offered by the image of a dog chasing its own tail -- an image consistent with planetary motion, whether framed as heliocentric or in terms of epicycles.
• going "nowhere" -- with the challenge of how to elicit the emergence of potential and sustainability without endeavouring to move "anywhere", especially when there is a sense of there being "nowhere to go". Going "nowhere" is of course readily deprecated in the light of any conventional understanding of "progress".

The first offers an illusion of progress towards a condition of sustainability -- but without clarifying the dynamics of that condition when achieved. The illusion may be usefully associated with that of continuing "growth as sustainability". Sustainability may then be associated with "resilience", as the capacity to return to a desired condition despite disruption. This understanding is vigorously challenged by Taleb (Antifragility, 2012), suggesting that sustainability might be better understood as the transformative capacity in response to disruption and Black Swan surprises, namely an intangible learning capacity more consistent with the values implicit in "growth", but obscured by the conventional preoccupation with growth of the tangible.

The second is necessarily a paradoxical challenge to comprehension -- how to progress (and develop) whilst standing still. The articulation of such a self-sustaining dynamic can be explored in terms of the dynamics of a nuclear fusion reactor -- through which it is hoped to release the "power of the sun", as mentioned above and separately discussed (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006). Unfortunately, as critics have remarked, progress towards the goal of a sustainable fusion reaction, as currently conceived, has been "35 years away" for a number of decades.

The relevant "solar" or "heliocentric" insight required for such sustainability can be tentatively explored through understandings of an "indwelling" intelligence (Implication of Indwelling Intelligence in Global Confidence-building, 2012). Notably with respect to the arguments of Neil Shubin (The Universe Within: discovering the common history of rocks, planets, and people, 2013) There would seem to be the possibility of a tantalizing correspondence, equivalence or isomorphism -- whether in topological or experiential terms -- between comprehension of:

• universe, and its emergence from a mysterious "point identity"
• human conception, and the emergence of identity from a point (sperm/egg, invagination)
• "surprise", associated with such emergence,
• transformation from the structures/processes contributing to that emergence (notably in terms of the learnings associated with antifragility)
• insight into the cosmological pattern constituted by DNA, as extensively explored by anthropologist Jeremy Narby (The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of knowledge, 1999), as separately discussed (Myth and indigenous knowledge, 2006)

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