On Blogging or the Virtual Nutshell

It’s been a long time since I started wondering about blogging; why it has taken the virtual world by storm and its effect on our self; what kind of communication it has brought about and its effect on the spread and exchange of ideas. This might have been the reason why I stopped writing on my blog. I felt the need to reflect on the nature of blogging.

Well, firstly, it goes without saying the blogging filled a communication gap. We found ourselves presented with the opportunity to extend our minds to a virtual world and exchange ideas with like-minded people –at least this applies to the majority of us. Something that started to bother me was that rather than communication it was self-gratification we were after. I have experienced this first-hand when I made comments –some well-intentioned ones I think, which could give food for thought- which were misunderstood, condescended upon or were met with complete unwillingness to delve deeper into what I was trying to articulate. Well, it never fails to amaze me that people forget that the construction of identity comes from our relations with the Other and the way we relate –especially with the ones we disagree with- affects our identity.

It seems to me that we have started to live in the maze of the Internet, each of us stuck in front of their terminal trying to desperately to fill the communication gap that exists in our lives. Someone might say that it is communication nonetheless, but, besides the above-mentioned doubts- to what extent does it compensate for communication in the flesh? What do we lose when the others become personas on a computer screen? It is certainly more convenient to address an avatar than dealing with the complications of an interaction in the real world. But could this not have a negative impact on our relationships with the people around us especially when for many blogging has become an addiction that takes up a significant part of their timetable on a daily basis and it bears all the characteristics of an obsession?

In short, don’t we become curled up in a virtual nutshell so that we become kings of our own infinite space?

Interrelatedness

An anthropocentric view of the world, abetted by the dominant position of the human species, tends to ignore or rather forget that life has sprang from the womb of the earth. The main consequence of this common beginning is that life on earth has common ancestry.
Concerning the human species, according to Guy Murchie in The Seven Mysteries of Life, the most distant relation you can have with any human being, regardless of race, is approximately that of the 50th cousin (if someone finds this hard to believe, it is mathematically proven). This means that all our family trees merge into one genetic tree which covers the whole humanity when we reach back fifty generations.
One of the implications of the above is that what diverse spiritual teachings have been claiming about the brotherhood of man is true but if we want to be more accurate we should be talking about the cousinhood of man. The interesting point for me here is that we could reach such 'spiritual' insights through scientific observations.
The second effect is that there is no such thing as purity of race since all our ancestors have intermixed. Now, when we take into account the whole of life, this interrelatedness pervades everything. For example, can you specify the boundary between you and the outside world? Firstly, you are made of some common elements found on earth. You breathe the world, you eat the world and you develop your consciousness through your interaction with the world.
Life would be meaningless without this interrelatedness, which makes it all the more imperative for humanity to find new ways of perceiving reality. These new ways should enable us to stop fragmenting reality and consequently ourselves because we have tended to focus on the foreground of competition and disregard the background of cooperation which is the prerequisite for sustaining life.

The Abstract quality of life

Taking my cue from the previous posting where the implicate order is seen as the basis of life one feels that this basis has an abstract quality. The pervading materiality of contemporary life, nevertheless, has obscured this and most would smirk at the notion of abstraction since everything seems so concrete around them. But what do we mean exactly by the abstraction of life?
Firstly, if one considers quarks, electrons, atoms, cells which are in a constant process of replacement - according to Bohm continuously unfolding into the explicate order and enfolding back to the implicate order - one realises that our bodies are waves of energy and energy is, of course, abstract. Furthermore, the DNA, the basis of organic life, is also part of this process since the essence of it is not found in the visible reality of the known elements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and the few others which constitute the bricks of life. This essence is enfolded in the coded pattern of the above elements which carries the message of life. This pattern has a parallel in music where the notes themselves are meaningless if they are not composed into coherent melodies. In the same way the DNA is the music score which creates the melodies of life.
An overall effect of the above could be that the essence of life is elusive since everything evolves in the spiral process of the holomovement. That is why there can never be an ultimate theory which explains everything. Can there ever be the ultimate poem which makes all the others redundant?

The hologram and the holomovement

Not many people could ever think that the hologram could provide an alternative theoretical insight into life but scientists such as the late David Bohm have been working on this idea and believe that it offers a comprehensive view of life. Of course, 'ultimate' theories claiming comprehensiveness can be treated with skepticism since quite often, if not always, lead to totalitarian attitudes. However, the underlining notion behind Bohm's theory is that the pursuit of the ultimate truth is futile since it is found in what he calls the 'implicate order', which is the basis of life, but not accessible to consciousness. What consciousness can do is to try and approach this hidden order through the use of analogies and such an analogy can be found in the hologram.
For those not familiar with the hologram, this is a 'special' photographic image of an object using laser technology. The amazing thing is that when you look at the holographic film what is visible is an 'interference pattern' similar to what happens when you throw a stone in calm water. However, when a laser beam falls on the film it produces a 3-D image of the photographed object which floats in space! Even more amazingly if you cut the film in half you will get not a split image as you would normally expect but two smaller reproductions of the original one. Incredible as it may sound, the same applies even with smaller pieces because every area of the film contains in encoded form the entire image! Of course it should be noted that the image on the film is just the codified representation of the invisible order of the electromagnetic film.
Using this analogy Bohm suggests that what we perceive is the 3-D representation of a higher reality, which he calls the implicate order. What happens is that senses and consciousness - like the laser beam - fall onto the implicate order, similar to the holographic film, and produce a specific 3-D model of perceived reality in the explicate order of ordinary experience. This model of course is conditioned by the limited spectrum of our senses and intelligence.
The implicate order, like the interference pattern in the photographic film, is ultimately incomprehensible and it should be seen as a kind of a sea of energy from which everything in the visible universe unfolds and enfolds in a continual process. Bohm calls this process the holomovement, which he sees as the basic process of life.
Versions of this process exist around us:

• When you watch TV, for example, the unfolded images on the screen are carried in the enfolded form of electromagnetic waves.
• Your brain enfolds information - in a fashion similar to that of the holographic film - which unfolds while expressing yourself.
• An unread book enfolds the consciousness of the writer which unfolds into the consciousness of the reader by being enfolded in her/his brain.
• Life and death could be seen in this light. If life unfolds from the energy of the implicate order it means that it ultimately enfolds back to it.

Finishing, it could be said that this notion of holomovent has applications in every sphere of life.