Re: Free-will/the Internet

["James N Rose" <***>]

Hi Judith,

What a great analogy, Hercules' cleansing of the Aegean Stables.

The internet -is- helping ... -enormously-.

It was sad to read about your father's limitations and
plight his last years, but otherwise encouraging to
read about your closeness and love with him.  He was
lucky in that, and all you've done since.

I don't know whether its because I've eaten a lot of lox
over the years, but I've always felt a commonality with
salmon in regard to the struggle to share an 'alternative'
idea.  In some situations the world is ripe and ready to
accept something new/different.  Sometimes it takes the
passing of the inplace generation(s).  But when a world
view has worked satisfactorily for so long, it takes more
than one voice to nudge it's momentum to a new path. What
I've encountered along the way also was the tenacity of
people to protect their perception base, even if they
finally realize they are wrong.  One person fought me in
debates and in professional circles because he realized
if my propositions were accepted it would invalidate his
entire academic career's work and efforts.

So there can local resistences, not just mainstream 'concept'
inertia, to contend with.

When I made my first formal foray back into
academia after decades away, by presenting at
"Towards a Science of Consciousness II" in 1996
as a poster presenter, some college fellows came
by, read the stuff and said "put this on the
internet, that's your best shot for reaching people.
you're going to have a lot of trouble going through
the system formally."  It took me several months to
do it, learn basic page building and making something
presentable, but within a week I got a call from
Heiner Benking in Germany, and through him, made my
way to ISSS the General Systems Theory organization
your father had been President of.

The power of this internet is absolutely transformative,
you are so right, Judith.

Jamie









> Judith Rosen wrote:
>
> Hi James;
>
> I was struck by the similarity in the frustration you express regarding the
> inability or the unwillingness of mainstream science to look at the material
> world differently than the Cartesian or Newtonian paradigm has taught-- My
> father was swimming against that current his entire life. The thing that has
> made the biggest difference in the number of people who are "making the switch"
> is information sharing. Books were the first mode, but the internet is having a
> massive impact now. I have been watching the rise of the internet with great
> curiosity and no small amazement because of the effect it is having on
> humanity-- and almost always positive effects. I remember the dire warnings at
> the beginning, when psychologists said the internet would "dehumanize" society
> and make us all into vegetative bodies sitting hypnotized in front of computer
> screens, interacting only with our thoughts. I laughed at them at the time and I
> think my intuition is proving right.
>
> In this instance, the internet is allowing information sharing at an
> unprecidented rate in human history. That fact is having several noticeable
> impacts: 1. People who have some disquiet over the Cartesian mode of approach
> now have access to a vast research tool that gives them access to all sorts of
> other ideas, (like Rosennean Complexity). 2. People who have already made the
> switch in perspective are no longer "outnumbered" and drowned out by established
> or mainstream science. The internet has afforded people the opportunity to
> network and create "support systems" or groups of like minds that can allow a
> new perspective a place to flourish before it has to face the intellectual
> firing squad of academia or commercial publication. 3. Similarly, support can
> come in other ways, such that new modes of publication or of arranging symposia,
> etc, can be generated and "hard copy" information sharing can be caused.
>
> There are infinite possibilities being generated by the internet, in my view. My
> father would have been fascinated. Unfortunately, he was not able to really
> appreciate the internet as it was in the late 1990's because his diabetic
> neuropathy had progressed too far for him to type anymore and the voice
> recognition software was frustratingly primitive. But he and I had many
> discussions about what it could become over time. I find these kinds of
> developments fascinating and the unprecedented nature of it makes
> it particularly exciting to watch, for me.
>
> Ultimately, I predict that the "accepted" paradigms will lose their stranglehold
> on mainstream science, because there will be no mainstream anymore. The internet
> is like the river running through the Aegean Stables. The information flow will
> be irrefutable and there will be no "defense" against changing perspectives
> because the truth will be coming at the old paradigms from all directions.
>
> Judith
>
> > Our era is hungry to see that awareness raised to a
> > living panglobal pancultural thoughtway that is resident
> > in and part of the way all people think everywhere.
> >
> > It is that real, that true, that important.