John Woods response re: choice being an illusion prompts some additional
comments.
John said,
"OK, I'm going to get controversial with regard to the idea of choice as
discussed by Willard just below, with special emphasis on why, given my
assertions, the systems view is so important.
I believe that the idea of choice is an illusion. It suggests that we
somehow can decide to do this or do that with some sense of freedom."
John goes on to describe what I would say is that "we are prisoners of our
paradigms." To me this means our paradigms completely determine the
actions we choose and the order in which we choose them. If we make a
leap into chaos theory and complexity, we could say that their is a
strange attractor connected to our paradigms. We can access various
points within the phase space defined by that stange attractor but we
cannot access other points without changing our paradigms and the
associated phase space.
John says,
"Thus we do not really choose what we'll do, we just act in accordance
with our understanding. Being aware that we're doing this does not give
us some sort of omnipotent control over the process."
Which on its surface might be interpreted to mean that our actions are all
predetermined and we play out some preordained life dance. This
prescription is not an attractive alternative to people like myself who
like to believe that we have some affect on the results that we get in our
lives.
Fortunately, John gives us a way out of this quandary. He says,
"If our understanding changes, you can be sure we'll do something else
that is consistent with that new understanding. That's how things work.
Our gift is being able to know that."
That is in fact the gift; the gift of choice. As soon as I become aware
that I am a prisoner of my paradigms and that to get different results I
will have to have differnet paradigms, I can make a conscious choice.
That choice is to understand (or not) what paradigm would I have to have
in order to get the results I want. I then have a choice (maybe not) to
do (or not to do) what I have to do to create that paradigm in myself.
Back to the concept of strange attractors and accessible phase space. If
you have a victim's paradigm, you will not be able to access points in the
sapce that a person can access who has a creators paradigm. The only way
you can access that space is to shift your paradigm to that of a creator.
Once you have made that shift, a whole new set of options are open to you
and you can start to move through that new space.
I find that this new creators' space is a rich universe to explore.
Because in this space, you would continually explore to discover what
paradigm you would have to have in order to get the results you want, and
then you would do what you have to do to create that paradigm in yourself.
For you fractalites, do you get the idea that this is a pattern
(continually explore to discover what paradigm you would have to have in
order to get the results you want) and a rule of connectivity (then you
would do what you have to do to create that paradigm in yourself)? Do you
also see that iterating this pattern would continually lead you to new
points in the phase space but never back to the same point because as soon
as you have a shifted paradigm you can't go back. So exploring the phase
space of paradigms provides us richness in our lives.
Now I see that their must be some connection between the victim's phase
space and the creator's phase space. Otherwise the victim could never get
to the creator's pahse space. Aha! As the victim interacts with the
environment (people and things), a phase shifter (paradigm shifter) is at
work. When the student is ready a teacher will appear.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I'm not quite sure what phase space I'm in right now, but
it sure is fun (Bernie and Tobin please take note).
Later.
Willard Jule
-- Willard Jule <75272.3452@compuserve.com>