Auto-SummaryThe post discusses three models of the universe: Mechanical, Organic, and Dramatic. The Mechanical model, prevalent in the West, views the universe as a complex arrangement of parts, similar to billiard balls, with a deterministic outcome. The Organic model, more common in Eastern philosophies, sees the universe as a living, growing entity, emphasizing interconnectedness and organic processes. The Dramatic model, prevalent in Eastern religions, posits that reality is poetic, with a single self (Brahman) playing all parts. These models, while distinct, are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, each offering a unique perspective on the nature of existence.
I am paraphrasing Alan Watts' lecture The Nature of Consciousness
I see another way of modeling the world views. three models of the universe in use. These models touch our emotional chords. They are the Mechanical model, the Organic model, and the Dramatic model.
The Mechanic model is the most prevalent in the west, and is actually common sense for most people living in the west. I believe it derives from the Bible and Aristotle. There are two variations of this model; The Ceramic model, and the Fully-Automatic Model.
"The ceramic model of the universe is based on the book of Genesis, from which Judaism, Islam, and Christianity derive their basic picture of the world. And the image of the world in the book of Genesis is that the world is an artifact. It is made, as a potter takes clay and forms pots out of it, or as a carpenter takes wood and makes tables and chairs out of it. So the image of God and of the world is based on the idea of God as a technician, potter, carpenter, architect, who has in mind a plan, and who fashions the universe in accordance with that plan.
So basic to this image of the world is the notion, you see, that the world consists of stuff, basically. Primoridial matter, substance, stuff. As parts are made of clay. Now clay by itself has no intelligence. Clay does not of itself become a pot, although a good potter may think otherwise. Because if you were a really good potter, you don't impose your will on the clay, you ask any given lump of clay what it wants to become, and you help it to do that. And then you become a genious. But the ordinary idea I'm talking about is that simply clay is unintelligent; it's just stuff, and the potter imposes his will on it, and makes it become whatever he wants. "
The Ceramic model is the where the materialist fully-automatic view evolved out of. Many Transcendalist view the universe with the Ceramic model. Themselves as just objects in the objectionable objective universe.
"And this image, this ceramic model of the universe, originated in cultures where the form of government was monarchial, and where, therefore, the maker of the universe was conceived also at the same time in the image of the king of the universe. 'King of kings, lords of lords, the only ruler of princes, who thus from thy throne behold all dwellers upon Earth.' I'm quoting the Book of Common Prayer. And so, all those people who are oriented to the universe in that way feel related to basic reality as a subject to a king. And so they are on very, very humble terms in relation to whatever it is that works all this thing."
Then people started feeling kind of weird with this God person breathing down their neck all the time so they killed him. But kept the Ceramic model. Only without Potter. So now we have evolved the Fully-Automatic model. And we still go on about the laws of reality, with no lawmaker.
"Newton's whole image of the world is based on billiards. The atoms are billiard balls, and they bang each other around. And so your behavior, every individual around, is defined as a very, very complex arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else. And so behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality itself is, to use the favorite term of 19th century scientists, blind energy....And likewise and parallel to this, in the philosophy of Freud, the basic psychological energy is libido, which is blind lust. And it is only a fluke, it is only as a result of pure chances that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people. With values, with reason, with languages, with cultures, and with love. Just a fluke. Like, you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica. And of course the moment they stop typing the Encyclopedia Britannica, they will relapse into nonsense. "
"And so in order that that shall not happen, for you and I are flukes in this cosmos, and we like our way of life--we like being human--if we want to keep it, say these people, we've got to fight nature, because it will turn us back into nonsense the moment we let it. So we've got to impose our will upon this world as if we were something completely alien to it. From outside. "
"And so in this way, we inherit a conception of ourselves as being artifacts, as being made,[being constructions of parts just moving mechanically]." and it is perfectly natural in our culture for a child to ask its mother 'How was I made?' or 'Who made me?' " (Materialist How, and Transcendalist Who).
But this would not be natural for a Chinese child to ask. A Chinese child might ask How was I grown? Which is a world of difference.
"You see, when you make something, you put it together, you arrange parts, or you work from the outside in, as a sculpture works on stone, or as a potter works on clay. But when you watch something growing, it works in exactly the opposite direction. It works from the inside to the outside. It expands. It burgeons. It blossoms. And it happens all of itself at once. In other words, the original simple form, say of a living cell in the womb, progressively complicates itself, and that's the growing process, and it's quite different from the making process....Because after all, you ARE a symptom of nature. You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way an apple grows off an apple tree."
This idea is cyclical, and has a far different emotional context then simply being an artifact that will fall apart in the end. So this is the Organic view. And it is a way many of the Eastern Transcendelists and much of the Magicicians subsbribe to.
The other idea is the Hindu Dramatic view of the Universe. where there is one self Brahman playing all of the parts of the Universe. In the Dramatic view Reality is poetry.
And which view is the right view. These 3 views do not necessarily deny eachother. If anything they fit together perfectly. Materialist seem to want to suck the poetry out of breathing. But it is unnecassary. Poetic expression of life is a way of expressing the wonder of being. The OM is the pulse of Life.
They are like the different maps of the world. The Phyiscal map, with all of the wiggly lines. The Politcal Map with the sectioning off of the Earth. Population density maps.... etc. Even maps with vastly different shapes. But trying to measure meters with an inch stick is hard if you haven't been taught measurement conversion.
Life is purposeless. And in the Purposeless of life lies the joy of freedom. You can feel how ever you want about life. Is Consciousness just a complicated mineral, or is a mineral just a primitive consciousness. It can work both ways. This emotional imperialism is weird.
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. And actually most theories I come up with match this paradigm. I actually had forgotten im not really made for the Trancedental view (in my case buddistic) of life, which I have been interested in for quite some time.
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