timespace coordinates: 2010’s United States, Germany, India
Origin is a 2023 American biographical drama film written and directed by Ava DuVernay. It is based on the life of Isabel Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as she writes the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Over the course of the film, Wilkerson travels throughout Germany, India, and the United States to research the caste systems in each country’s history. (wiki)
“Scientific and technological advances have enabled us to zoom into the biological world. We can get down to the biomolecular scale, a domain where quantum phenomena can take place and therefore cannot be neglected.”
I think that whoever said photosynthesis is all known, been there done that, does not have a clue about how recent our understanding of such an important biological process has gained from zooming in and peering into happenings at smaller and smaller (picosecond, femtosecond) intervals. Suffice it to say that processes happening on this scale have to be scaled up or slowed down in order for us to even be able to acknowledge they exist since they completely overstep our own sensation of a specious present. It is highly ironic that some of the most efficient and most ancient energy uses happen on levels that are just now being explored or approached. It is this clean energy and high efficiency that escapes us and we are very far from trying to mimic it in a lab environment. Harnessing each moment the energy from our nearest star is much more complicated than we think even if it appears all-natural, all happening at once and without much thought. This molecular (and quantum) complexity is mind-boggling and also merits the effort of listening attentively because it comes from somebody trying hard to take us on a trip riding on a photon.
In order to get over the biographical and personal – I must confess that having Erik Davis as an untiring and generous guide through High Weirdness, esoterica, (techno)occulture, psychedelia, Californian counterculture, Cyberdellia, the 1970s – has helped me get around my late 80s Golden Bough or the 1990s brush with Noua Acropola (Theosophy), Mircea Eliade’s books on shamanism, or his Treaty on the History of Religions and Gilbert Durand’s Les Structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire, both published by Humanitas. I was never sure if I would ever be interested in that influx of paranormal and esoterica or how to qualify it. Interestingly on the continuum of the physical-mental pole (as Whitehead would say) – there was rationalism, Darwinism, and atheism through the thinking of Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins (yes!), Edward O. Wilson, Jared Diamond (more lastingly than the others) – Stephen Jay Gould. It has not been a tug of war, or a contest although ultimately the political stakes have been more important – the way conspirituality and post-truth has taken over and divided societies or the way the New Atheists have been somehow preparing the MRM or alt-right is part of this history. Rationality and anti-rationality have been always contested grounds – and recent text by John Bellamy Foster: the New Irrationalism IHMHO I can agree with in general, but at the same time cannot get over the feeling that it builds the same strawmen arguments as those hurled at so-called “cultural marxism” by the right-wingers. Another argument I have with John Bellamy Foster’s recent text is my doubt that pessimism and existential nihilism could be a catchall for what ails the current moment – while we could very well admit that untrammeled irrational (US-birthed) “positive thinking” made our situation direr than ever.
Never thought these two tendencies relevant, trying to see how they square off. How the unreason of witch-hunting atheism might end up locked in battle with some kind of spiritualist nativist revival, while it might have more in common with transphobic cishet religiosity. On my side it would be foolish to deny the importance of this background radiation (and I have at least been acknowledging this during a beer rant with a good friend in Timisoara). At the same time, I wish Erik Davis would have been there too. Even if I don’t find his interest in life after death, techno gnosticism, spiritualism, or astrology – as exciting as he does, I still think it important to keep track of conspiracies, dualism, of discarded beliefs at a time of scientific triumphalism, or revisit our metaphysical presuppositions, keep learning from the “sociology of science” when one discusses the most recent Silicon Valley fads (simulation theory) or crypto NFT based longevity seeking tech. I also appreciate his critical sensibility – the way he’s decrying the ideological fervor of Wikipedia editors, while at the same time recognizing how religious traditionalistic values are becoming untied from organized religion to weaponize the new right consensus that is quite irreligious. I also think he is bringing a more culturally aware understanding and historicity to a generally ahistorical scientific culture, finding plurality at paradigmatic turning points (such as Kepler’s indulgence with Plantonic forms) or recognition for the role fringe culture played as visionary avant-garde popularizing goofy, previously minoritarian views or mad ideas, that in the meantime have become quite accepted, bland and easily embraced by the ‘normies’.
It is really telling indeed that Bell’s Theorem (the three experimental tests of Bell’s inequalities) – and indeed how quantum entanglement and quantum information theory ceased to be SF. FTL has been abandoned, no magical spooky action at a distance – but strong correlations have has domesticated entanglement, making it less spectacular (that is the role of science!) and has been applied in cryptography and communication – areas where non-locality helped out. What Davis make clear that would have sounded like heresy or lacking any respectability 20 or 30 years ago (say panpsychism )- has garnered the right of being debatable and even scientifically probable, radiating in as many flavors and combinations. The same has happened with the spillover from the SF nerd/geek ghetto into the larger oceans of mass culture making some fairly undigestible and outlandish ideas gain traction, just because big-screen SF popularized them, got them across under the pen of atheist authors (and VC funding!), making them palatable to a less and less religious world.
With this philosophical and even newly earned scientific respectability, there comes a time to recognize the way (Erik D is good at this!) Consciousness Culture has been doing much of the groundwork for this slow acceptance of the neurodivergent and non-human minds. Ultimately I like Davis’s attraction for “naturalism” in all matters. For me any type of naturalism (or multinaturalism) is quite healthy and goes a long way, from (even non-Western) pre-scientific thinking, including forgotten philosophical inquiries by the German idealists and the experimentalism of Naturphilosophy (Schelling, Hegel, Fichte etc) to today’s speculative realists. I also appreciate all these discussion that circumvent the usual post-digital or cyber studies pitfalls or full automation fears about robotics and focus instead on how robotic one is AFTER mindful de-programming, or how mechanistic and bureaucratic some of the gaming experiences truly are as one keeps playing, or how even after awakening (or joining a cult!) one starts acting ever more routinized, almost like a remote “observer” exhibiting a more robotic self than ever before. In one word – highly recommended for a weekend hearing!
A remarkable trip to the universe of what was to become the Royal Society. A few cursory notes -are how diverse the preoccupations at the time were, and how studying Saturn went very well with studying or perfecting ways to better draw and analyze fleas and flies. The microcosms were in many ways much closer and more accessible than the macrocosmos – and at the time all optics and telescopes were so poor as to make optical aberrations, errors, and mistakes unavoidable. The universe itself was quite small, and distances were not properly understood, still C. Wren had tremendous fun trying to figure out the surface of the moon and make a model of it. Another example was the temper and gracious nature of Wren – who compared with many other researchers, then and now, was very uninterested in tying his name to a discovery or really an influencer that did not strive to be an influencer.
A very good introduction to the history of astronomy, ethics in science, and the pleasure of discovery, even when one does not have the proper tools or the best of conditions.
TimeSpace Warps 