bordi e pori meta-Tao

Artists Without Borders

La successiva metastruttura discussa da Tyler Volk e Jeff Bloom sono i bordi e i pori, strutture complementari che da un lato separano e dividono, dall'altro permettono il contatto e lo scambio; nell'insieme controllano e regolano l'interscambio di materiali, energia o informazione:

Immagine SEM colorata di uno stoma aperto su una foglia

Background

Borders involve the concepts of protection, separation of inside from outside, containment, and barrier or obstacle. With pores, borders regulate the flow and exchange of materials, energy, or information. Small pores heighten regulation and reduce flow, while larger pores decrease regulation and increase flow. Borders can be visible entities, fuzzy, or invisible. Physical borders tend to be built of sheets of repeating parts (clonons).

Examples

• In science: cell membranes and osmosis, skin and pores, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, stomata, the Earth’s crust and volcanoes, clouds with fuzzy borders, atmosphere, ecotones, edge of a pond, etc.
• In architecture and design: walls with doors and windows, roof and skylight, etc.
• In art: depicted forms, frame with canvas as opening pore to another world, pottery bowl or vase with circular pore, etc.
• In social sciences: personal space, psychological and social obstacles, problem as border with paths to solutions as pores, physical space divisions and openings, social barriers, borders between social strata, racism and other biases as barriers, propaganda as a barrier to truth, borders between countries with border crossings and immigration pores, etc.
• In other senses: borders and openings in feng shui, borders between properties, airline security, etc.

Forte rosso, Agra

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

il Tao della programmazione: Libro 6 - Management

Geoffrey James, 1987

Libro 6 - Management

Così parlò il maestro programmatore:

"Che i programmatori siano molti e i manager pochi - allora tutto sarà produttivo."

6.1

Quando i manager tengono riunioni infinite, i programmatori scrivono giochi. Quando i contabili parlano di profitti trimestrali, il budget dello sviluppo sta per essere tagliato. Quando gli scienziati più vecchi parlano del cielo azzurro, stanno per arrivare le nuvole.

Davvero, questo non è il Tao della Programmazione.

Quando i manager prendono impegni, i giochi vengono ignorati. Quando i contabili fanno progetti a lunga scadenza, stanno per tornare l'armonia e l'ordine. Quando gli scienziati più vecchi prendono in mano i problemi, i problemi stanno per essere risolti.

Davvero, questo è il Tao della Programmazione.

6.2

Perchè i programmatori non sono produttivi?

Perchè il loro tempo è sprecato in riunioni.

Perchè i programmatori si ribellano? Perchè il management interferisce troppo.

Perchè i programmatori si dimettono uno per uno? Perchè sono esausti.

Lavorando per un management scadente, non danno più valore al loro lavoro.

6.3

Un manager stava per essere licenziato, ma un programmatore che lavorava per lui inventò un nuovo programma che divenne popolare e vendette bene. Come risultato, il manager mantenne il suo posto.

Il manager cercò di dare un compenso extra al programmatore, ma il programmatore lo rifiutò, dicendo, "Ho scritto il programma perchè pensavo che fosse un concetto interessante, quindi non mi aspetto alcun premio."

Il manager, sentendo questo, pensò: "Questo programmatore, anche se ha una posizione di basso pregio, capisce bene il dovere proprio di un impiegato. Promuoviamolo alla posizione esaltata di consulente del management!"

Ma quando gli venne detto, il programmatore rifiutò nuovamente, dicendo, "Io esisto per poter programmare. Se venissi promosso, non farei altro che sprecare il tempo di tutti. Posso andare ora? Ho un programma a cui sto lavorando."

6.4

Un manager andò dai suoi programmatori e disse loro: "Riguardo alle vostre ore di lavoro: dovete essere entrati alle nove del mattino e uscire alle cinque del pomeriggio." Sentendo questo, tutti si arrabbiarono e alcuni si dimisero immediatamente.

Allora il manager disse: "Va bene, in questo caso potete gestire da voi l'orario di lavoro, a patto che finiate in tempo i vostri progetti." I programmatori, ora soddisfatti, iniziarono a entrare in ufficio a mezzogiorno e lavorare fino a tarda notte.

Il Tao della Programmazione: Libro 5

il Libro Tao: dentro l'informazione - I

PREFACE

THIS BOOK explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.

We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe. For this purpose I have drawn on the insights of Vedanta, stating them, however, in a completely modern and Western style—so that this volume makes no attempt to be a textbook on or introduction to Vedanta in the ordinary sense. It is rather a cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition.

Sausalito, California                                                                                                  ALAN WATTS

January, 1966

INSIDE INFORMATION

JUST WHAT should a young man or woman know in order to be "in the know"? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?

In Japan it was once customary to give young people about to be married a "pillow book." This was a small volume of wood-block prints, often colored, showing all the details of sexual intercourse. It wasn't just that, as the Chinese say, "one picture is worth ten thousand words." It was also that it spared parents the embarrassment of explaining these intimate matters face-to-face. But today in the West you can get such information at any newsstand. Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.

But if sex is no longer the big taboo, what is? For there is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skins of an onion. What, then, would be The Book which fathers might slip to their sons and mothers to their daughters, without ever admitting it openly?

In some circles there is a strong taboo on religion, even in circles where people go to church or read the Bible. Here, religion is one's own private business. It is bad form or uncool to talk or argue about it, and very bad indeed to make a big show of piety. Yet when you get in on the inside of almost any standard-brand religion, you wonder what on earth the hush was about. Surely The Book I have in mind wouldn't be the Bible, "the Good Book"—that fascinating anthology of ancient wisdom, history, and fable which has for so long been treated as a Sacred Cow that it might well be locked up for a century or two so that men could hear it again with clean ears. There are indeed secrets in the Bible, and some very subversive ones, but they are all so muffled up in complications, in archaic symbols and ways of thinking, that Christianity has become incredibly difficult to explain to a modern person. That is, unless you are content to water it down to being good and trying to imitate Jesus, but no one ever explains just how to do that. To do it you must have a particular power from God known as "grace," but all that we really know about grace is that some get it, and some don't.

The standard-brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist, are—as now practiced—like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don't seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day.

The Book I am thinking about would not be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned—the universe and man's place in it, the mysterious center of experience which we call "I myself," the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word. For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odd—uncanny and highly improbable. G. K. Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at a gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things. Why, of all possible worlds, this colossal and apparently unnecessary multitude of galaxies in a mysteriously curved space-time continuum, these myriads of differing tube-species playing frantic games of one-upmanship, these numberless ways of "doing it" from the elegant architecture of the snow crystal or the diatom to the startling magnificence of the lyrebird or the peacock?

Ludwig Wittgenstein and other modern "logical" philosophers have tried to suppress this question by saying that it has no meaning and ought not to be asked. Most philosophical problems are to be solved by getting rid of them, by coming to the point where you see that such questions as "Why this universe?" are a kind of intellectual neurosis, a misuse of words in that the question sounds sensible but is actually as meaningless as asking "Where is this universe?" when the only things that are anywhere must be somewhere inside the universe. The task of philosophy is to cure people of such nonsense. Wittgenstein, as we shall see, had a point there. Nevertheless, wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.

Is there, then, some kind of a lowdown on this astounding scheme of things, something that never really gets out through the usual channels for the Answer—the historic religions and philosophies? There is. It has been said again and again, but in such a fashion that we, today, in this particular civilization do not hear it. We do not realize that it is utterly subversive, not so much in the political and moral sense, as in that it turns our ordinary view of things, our common sense, inside out and upside down. It may of course have political and moral consequences, but as yet we have no clear idea of what they may be. Hitherto this inner revolution of the mind has been confined to rather isolated individuals; it has never, to my knowledge, been widely characteristic of communities or societies. It has often been thought too dangerous for that. Hence the taboo.

But the world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure—like the Pasteur serum for rabies. It is not that we may simply blow up the planet with nuclear bombs, strangle ourselves with overpopulation, destroy our natural resources through poor conservation, or ruin the soil and its products with improperly understood chemicals and pesticides. Beyond all these is the possibility that civilization may be a huge technological success, but through methods that most people will find baffling, frightening, and disorienting—because, for one reason alone, the methods will keep changing. It may be like playing a game in which the rules are constantly changed without ever being made clear—a game from which one cannot withdraw without suicide, and in which one can never return to an older form of the game.

But the problem of man and technics is almost always stated in the wrong way. It is said that humanity has evolved one-sidedly, growing in technical power without any comparable growth in moral integrity, or, as some would prefer to say, without comparable progress in education and rational thinking. Yet the problem is more basic. The root of the matter is the way in which we feel and conceive ourselves as human beings, our sensation of being alive, of individual existence and identity. We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature."

Tao in zattera

Jean-Louis Théodore Géricault, Le Radeau de la Méduse, 1818-19, musée du Louvre

Goscinny-Uderzo, Asterix

Sergio Michilini, La zattera della medusa italiana, 1981

Ju Duoqi, The Vegetable Museum - The Raft of the Lotus Roots, 2008

Joel Peter Witkin, The raft of George W. Bush, 2006

sottosistemi del Tao - IV

Dopo l'estero-interocezione, il processamento degli input e la memoria Charles T. Tart introduce il quarto sottosistema del sistema della coscienza, il subconscio:

Subsystems

Subconscious

The Subconscious is usually defined as representing mental processes or phenomena that occur outside conscious awareness and that ordinarily cannot become conscious. They are part of the mind, but not conscious. How do we know they exist if we cannot be consciously aware of them? We infer their existence we observe certain aspects of our own and others' functioning that cannot be adequately explained on the basis of our or their immediately available conscious experiences, and we infer that forces or phenomena outside consciousness are affecting it—from behind the scenes, as it were. Thus, from the viewpoint of our ordinary d-SoC, the Subconscious subsystem is a hypothesis, an inferential construct needed to explain conscious behavior. A psychoanalyst, for example, observes that a patient becomes pale and trembles every time he speaks of his brother, yet when questioned about him says they have a good relationship. The psychoanalyst hypothesizes that in the patient's Subconscious there is a good deal of unresolved anxiety and anger toward the brother.

The emphasis here is that subconscious processes occur outside awareness from the viewpoint of the ordinary d-SoC. What is subconscious from the reference point of the ordinary d-SoC may become conscious in d-ASCs.

I deliberately use the term subconscious rather than the more commonly employed unconscious to avoid the strictly psychoanalytic connotations of unconscious mind. The classical, Freudian unconscious (the sexual and aggressive instincts and their sublimations and repressions) is included in the Subconscious subsystem described here. The Subconscious also include creative processes, the kinds of things we vaguely call intuition and hunches, tender and loving feelings that may be just as inhibited in their expression as sexual and aggressive ones, and other factors influencing conscious behavior. All these things are mysterious and poorly understood by our conscious minds.

Also included as subconscious processes for many of us are the kinds of thinking that are now called right hemisphere modalities of thinking. The type of thinking associated with the right hemisphere seems holistic rather than analytic, atemporal rather than sequential in time, more concerned with patterns than with details. But for many of us in whom intellectual, sequential, rational development has been overstressed and this other mode inhibited or ignored, this right hemisphere thinking is largely subconscious.

D-ASCs may alter the relationship between what is conscious and what is subconscious.

Figure 8-2 expresses this idea. In the ordinary d-SoC, it is convenient to think of the conscious part of the mind as the part that is in the full focus of consciousness or is readily available to such consciousness, to think of a preconscious part that is ordinarily not in the full focus of consciousness but can be made so with little effort, and a Subconscious subsystem that is ordinarily completely cut off from conscious awareness even though special techniques, such as psychoanalytic ones, give inferential information about it. I have followed the general psychoanalytic conventions (1) of showing the Subconscious as the largest part of the mind, to indicate that the largest portion of experience and behavior is probably governed by subconscious forces we are not aware of, and (2) of showing the conscious and preconscious parts of the mind as about equal in size. The barrier between conscious and preconscious has many "holes" in it while the Subconscious is relatively inaccessible. For example, if you dislike someone and I ask you to think about why you dislike him, a little thought may show that the reasons behind your immediate dislike result from a synthesis of the person's appearance and some unpleasant experiences you previously have had with people of that appearance. These reasons might actually be based on deeply buried subconscious feelings that all people of the same sex are rivals for mother's affection, things you ordinarily cannot become aware of without special therapeutic techniques.

Preconscious and subconscious contents may be more or less readily available in a d-ASC, depending on the d-ASC. In d-ASC 1 in Figure 8-2, more other mind and preconscious material are directly in consciousness and less are in the Subconscious subsystem. This, incidentally, is one of the danger of experiencing a d-ASC: a person may be overwhelmed by emotionally charged material, normally subconscious, that he is not ready to handle. This can happen with marijuana intoxication or other psychedelic-drug-induced states, as well as with meditative states or hypnosis. In all these states things that are ordinarily preconscious or subconscious may become conscious.

D-ASC 2 illustrates the kind of state in which things that are ordinarily conscious may become preconscious or subconscious. Certain drug-induced states or other d-ASCs that tend toward stupor might fit in this category, where consciousness feels quite restricted and dull, even though the subject's behavior suggests that previously conscious material is still affecting him. The alcoholic blackout state is interesting in this context, for the person seems to behave "normally" in many ways, indicating that much ordinarily conscious knowledge is still present, even though this is a blackout in terms of later recall.

D-ASC 3 represents various d-ASCs in which much subconscious material might become preconscious: it will not necessarily well up by itself, but it is much more readily available than ordinarily. Thus the potential for exploring the mind is greater, but effort must still be exerted. Marijuana intoxication can do this.

In terms of overall system functioning, I have shown a direct information flow arrow from Input-Processing to the Subconscious, and a feedback control arrow from the Subconscious to Input-Processing. Processed input information may reach the Subconscious and have effects even when it does not reach awareness. To use again the example of scanning the crowd, even though you are consciously looking for your friend's face, the impact of another face may trigger subconscious processes because of resemblance to someone emotionally meaningful to you, and may produce later effects on you even though you were not consciously aware of seeing that particular person.

The feedback control arrow from Subconscious to Input-Processing indicates that the Subconscious subsystem may have a major control over perception. Our likes and dislikes, needs and fears, can affect what we see. This kind of selectivity in perception is discussed in relation to the Input-Processing subsystem. I bring it up here to indicate a distinction between relatively permanent, learned selectivities of perception that are inherent in Input-Processing itself, such as ability to recognize words, and selectivities that are more dependent on the current emotional state of the Subconscious subsystem, and so may show more variation from time to time. For example, we have many permanent learnings that are part of Input-Processing and that enable us to distinguish men from women at a glance. But we have sexual needs that peak from time to time, and these may be partially or wholly in the Subconscious subsystem because of cultural repressive pressures. As these repressed needs vary, they affect Input-Processing and change our current perceptions of people of the opposite sex: they can become much more attractive when we are aroused. We should also briefly note the possibility of the activation of archetypes from the Collective Unconscious during d-ASCs. The terms archetypes and Collective Unconscious are used in Carl Jung's sense. The Collective Unconscious refers to a large body of biologically inherited psychological structures,, most of which remains latent human potentials. Particular structures are archetypes, innate patterns that can emerge and dominate consciousness because of the high psychic energy residing in them if the right stimuli for activation occur. Myths of heroic quests, demons, gods, energies, God, Christ, are held by Jung to be particular archetypes from the Collective Unconscious, which express themselves at various times in human history. It would take far too much space here to give them adequate consideration; the interested reader should refer to the collected works of Carl Jung. It should be noted, however, that some d-ASCs frequently facilitate the emergence of archetypes.

sottosistemi del Tao - III

un giorno per il Tao

From poisoning and injuring marine life to disrupting human hormones, from littering our beaches and landscapes to clogging our waste streams and landfills, the exponential growth of plastics is now threatening the survival of our planet.

il Te del Tao: LIII - TRARRE PROFITTO DALLE PROVE

LIII - TRARRE PROFITTO DALLE PROVE

Se avessimo grande sapienza
cammineremmo nella gran Via
e solo di agire temeremmo.
La gran Via è assai piana,
ma la gente preferisce i sentieri.
Quando il palazzo reale è troppo ben tenuto
i campi son del tutto incolti
e i granai son del tutto vuoti.
Indossar vesti eleganti e ricamate,
portare alla cintura spade acuminate,
rimpinzarsi di vivande e di bevande
e ricchezze e beni aver d'avanzo,
è sfarzo da ladrone.
È contrario al Tao, ahimé!

sinergetica del Tao

Circa nello stesso periodo degli anni 70 in cui Hermann Haken introdusse il termine Sinergetica per i sistemi aperti lontani dall'equilibrio termodinamico nell'ambito della teoria dei laser - in particolare per spiegarne la coerenza ottica - Richard Buckminster Fuller, persona dai molteplici interessi, utilizzò lo stesso termine per una vasta serie di considerazioni su quella da lui definita "la geometria del pensiero".

100.00 SYNERGY

100.01 Introduction: Scenario of the Child 

100.010 Awareness of the Child:

The simplest descriptions are those expressed by only one word. The one word alone that describes the experience "life" is "awareness." Awareness requires an otherness of which the observer can be aware. The communication of awareness is both subjective and objective, from passive to active, from otherness to self, from self to otherness.

Awareness = self + otherness

Awareness = observer + observed

100.011 Awareness is the otherness saying to the observer, "See Me."

Awareness is the observer saying to self, "I see the otherness." Otherness induces

awareness of self. Awareness is always otherness inductive. The total complex of

otherness is the environment.

100.012 Universe to each must be

All that is, including me.

Environment in turn must be

All that is, excepting me.

Fig. 321.01 Universe as "A Minimum of Two Pictures": Evolution as a transformation of nonsimultaneous events: the behavior of "Universe" can only be shown with a minimum of two pictures. Unity is plural and at minimum two.
(Drawings courtesy Mallory Pearce)
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Fig. 505.41 Involution and Evolution.
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Fig. 509.01 A, B, C. Patterns of Thought.
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Fig. 970.20 Basic Vector Equilibrium Concentric Shell Structure: The legend at the bottom illustrates the interstitial between-sphere spaces.
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Fig. 995.31A Reverse Peaks in Descending Isotope Curve: Magic Numbers
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Fig. 1074.13 Nuclear Structural Systems: Nuclear structural systems consist entirely of tetrahedra having a common interior vertex. They may be interiorly truncated by introducing special case frequency. which provides chordal as well as radial modular subdivisioning of the isotropic-vector-matrix intertriangulation. while sustaining the structural rigidity of the system.
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Fig. 1220.16.
Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

SYNERGETICS
Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

Tao complesso livello 0: Tao Sinergico

Isolamento (3 di Spade)

Nella nostra società, in particolare agli uomini viene insegnato a non piangere, ad assumere un aspetto coraggioso quando qualcosa li ferisce, e a non mostrare la loro sofferenza. Ma anche le donne possono cadere in questa trappola, e noi tutti, una volta o l'altra, possiamo aver sentito che il solo modo per sopravvivere era quello di bloccare le nostre sensazioni e le nostre emozioni, in modo da non essere più feriti. Se la nostra sofferenza è particolarmente profonda, possiamo perfino cercare di nasconderla a noi stessi. Ciò ci può raggelare, irrigidire, poiché in cuor nostro sappiamo che una lieve scalfittura nel ghiaccio libererà la ferita, ed essa tornerà a farsi sentire. Le lacrime a tinta arcobaleno che scorrono sul volto della figura, nascondono la chiave per spezzare questo isolamento gelido. Le lacrime, e solo le lacrime, hanno il potere di fondere il ghiaccio. Piangere va benissimo; non c'è ragione di vergognarsi delle proprie lacrime. Piangere ci aiuta a lasciar andare il dolore, ci permette di essere gentili con noi stessi, e alla fine ci aiuta a guarire.

---

Siamo infelici perché siamo troppo nel sé. Cosa significa? E cosa accade con precisione, quando siamo troppo nel sé? Puoi essere nell'esistenza, oppure puoi essere nel sé - le due cose insieme non sono possibili. Essere nel sé significa essere isolati, separati. Essere nel sé significa diventare un'isola. Essere nel sé significa aver tracciato tutt'intorno una linea di confine ben precisa; significa aver fatto una distinzione tra "questo sono io" e "questo non sono io". La definizione, il confine tra "io" e "non io" è il sé - il sé isolato. La conseguenza è che ne vieni raggelato - non fluisci più. Se fluisci, il sé non può esistere. Ecco perché le persone sono praticamente diventate pezzi di ghiaccio; non hanno né calore né amore - l'amore è calore e loro hanno paura di amare. Se fossero raggiunti dal calore, inizierebbero a sciogliersi e i confini scomparirebbero. In amore i confini scompaiono e così pure nella gioia, perché la gioia non è fredda.

economia del Tao

Serge Latouche, teorico della decrescita (downgrade controllato di sistema), pone delle questioni radicali su una delle «invenzioni» cruciali della modernità: come si è formato il nostro «immaginario economico», la nostra visione economica del mondo? Perché oggi vediamo il mondo attraverso i prismi dell’utilità, del lavoro, della concorrenza, della crescita illimitata? Che cosa ha portato l’Occidente a inventare il valore produttività, il valore denaro, il valore competizione, e a costruire un mondo in cui nulla ha più valore, e tutto ha un prezzo?
Si ritorna qui alle origini di questa economia, che i primi economisti definivano la “scienza sinistra”, e articolando la sua argomentazione in una prospettiva storico-filosofica, mostra come si è plasmata la nostra ossessione utilitarista e quantitativa.

- Anche un bambino di cinque anni può capire facilmente che una crescita infinita è incompatibile con un pianeta finito. Soltanto una fede tenace e irrazionale nel progresso può spiegare il fatto che gli economisti e i loro adepti continuino a non capirlo.

- Noi rifutiamo l'idea di una essenza o di una sostanza, in altre parole di un universale "economia". L'economia è, in quanto tale, una costruzione culturale e storica.

- L'economista inventa l'economia allo stesso modo che l'economia inventa l'economista.

- L'unico senso è fare sempre più denaro, o fare denaro col denaro, senza limiti. E' quello che viene proposto a tutti e che pochi possono realizzare, senza comunque che venga colmata l'anima né dei pochi né dei molti. Forse la cosa aiuta i vincenti a dimenticare la morte, anche se la morte di milioni di perdenti sta lì a ricordare a ogni momento la vanità dell'operazione.

L'intuizione dei limiti fisici della crescita economica risale in parte già a Thomas Maithus (1766-1834), ma trova il suo fondamento scientifico soltanto con Sadi Carnot e la sua seconda legge della termodinamica (1824). In effetti, il fatto che le trasformazioni dell'energia nelle sue diverse forme (calore, movimento ecc.) non siano totalmente reversibili - e che dunque si produca il fenomeno dell'entropia - ha necessariamente delle conseguenze su un'economia fondata su quelle trasformazioni. Tra i pionieri dell'applicazione delle leggi della termodinamica all'economia bisogna segnalare in particolare Sergej Podolinsky, teorico di un'economia basata sull'energia, che tentò di conciliare il socialismo e l'ecologia. Tuttavia, èsoltanto a partire dagli anni settanta che la questione dell'ecologia all'interno dell'economia comincia a essere esaminata a fondo, grazie soprattutto al lavoro del grande studioso ed economista rumeno Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a cui va il merito di aver individuato le implicazioni bioeconomiche della legge dell'entropia, già intuite negli anni quaranta e cinquanta da Alfred Lotka, Erwin Schrodinger, Norbert Wiener e Léon Brillouin. Adottando il modello della meccanica classica newtoniana, osserva Georgescu-Roegen, l'economia esclude l'irreversibilità del tempo. In questo modo ignora l'entropia, ovvero l'irreversibilità delle trasformazioni dell'energia e della materia. Viene oscurato per esempio il fatto che i rifiuti e l'inquinamento, pur essendo prodotti dall'attività economica, non rientrano nel processo di produzione così come si è andato determinando. Una volta eliminata la terra da questo processo di produzione, ciò che si è verificato intorno al 1880, si è rotto l'ultimo legame con la natura. Sparito dunque ogni riferimento a un qualsiasi substrato biofisico, la produzione economica, così come è concepita dalla maggioranza dei teorici neoclassici, non appare soggetta ad alcun limite ecologico. Conseguenza: lo spreco irresponsabile delle risorse rare disponibili e la sottoutilizzazione del flusso abbondante di energia solare. Come sostiene Yves Cochet, "la teoria economica neoclassica contemporanea maschera dietro un'eleganza matematica la sua indifferenza alle leggi fondamentali della biologia, della chimica e della fisica, in particolare quelle della termodinamica". Si tratta dunque di un nonsenso ecologico. In sostanza, il processo economico reale, a differenza del modello teorico, non è un processo puramente meccanico e reversibile; essendo di natura entropica, si svolge in una biosfera che funziona all'interno di un tempo unidirezionale.

© Li Wei

il Tao di Mirdad

Pubblicato per la prima volta in Libano nel 1948 – prima in inglese e poi tradotto in arabo – da Mikhail Naimy (Mikha'il Nu'ayma - Mīkhāʾīl Nuʿayma), amico e accolito di Kahlil Gibran, Il Libro di Mirdad è scritto in gran parte sotto forma di dialogo. Narra la storia di un misterioso straniero, Mirdad, che va in visita al remoto monastero della montagna dell'Arca e lì si assume il ruolo di insegnante e di guida spirituale per i nove allievi che si è scelto.

“Mirdad ha designato proprio questo momento per rivelarsi, sì da poter insegnare a voi e al mondo come dissuggellare le vostre labbra e come scoprire i vostri occhi, e quindi, come rivelare voi stessi a voi stessi nella pienezza della gloria che vi appartiene”.

“Al mondo ci sono migliaia di libri, ma il Libro di Mirdad è superiore a qualunque altro libro esistente. È un peccato che pochi lo conoscano, per il semplice motivo che non è un testo sacro. È una parabola, un racconto immaginario, ma contiene una verità oceanica. È un libro da leggere col cuore, non con la mente”

There are millions of books in the world, but The Book of Mirdad stands out far above any other book in existence.

It is unfortunate that very few people are acquainted with The Book of Mirdad for the simple reason that it is not a religious scripture. It is a parable, a fiction, but containing oceanic truth.

It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book... and mind my words, I am not saying "the man who wrote this book." Nobody wrote this book. I am saying the man who gave birth to this book - he was an unknown, a nobody. And because he was not a novelist, he never wrote again; just that single book contains his whole experience.

The name of the man was Mikhail Naimy.

It is an extraordinary book in the sense that you can read it and miss it completely, because the meaning of the book is not in the words of the book. The meaning of the book is running side by side in silence between the words, between the lines, in the gaps.

If you are in a state of meditativeness - if you are not only reading a fiction but you are encountering the whole religious experience of a great human being, absorbing it; not intellectually understanding but existentially drinking it - the words are there but they become secondary. Something else becomes primary: the silence that those words create, the music that those words create. The words affect your mind, and the music goes directly to your heart.

And it is a book to be read by the heart, not by the mind. It is a book not to be understood, but experienced. It is something phenomenal.

Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have utterly failed. I know only one book, The Book of Mirdad, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.

He has created a perfect device of words, parables, situations. If you allow it, the book becomes alive and something starts happening to your being. And naturally, because you have never come to such a state, you are puzzled about what it is - sadness? blissfulness? There are tears, but those tears can be either of sadness or they can be of immense joy.

You have come to a point where you have never been before, so naturally you cannot categorize it. You cannot put a label on it according to your old experiences. But the name does not mean anything. What matters is that you have taken a step beyond yourself. You have never been in this space; you have entered into the unknown, and it is so unknown that you don't have the vocabulary even to give it a name.

Just see the point: It may look like sadness... because for the first time in your life you will become aware that up to now you have not been alive. Life has happened today.

And it brings a great sadness... you were alive - but knowing this new experience, your whole life becomes so mundane, so meaningless, that it is better to say that it was more death than life. And a sadness arises that, "Why could I not reach this space before?" It is so close - just a step beyond the boundaries of your old mind and the whole sky with all its stars becomes available. You were confined in such a small prison - and nobody was imprisoning you. You were the prisoner and you were the imprisoned. You were the jailer and you were the jailed. Naturally... a sadness, looking to the past.

But looking to the present... a great blissfulness, a peace that passeth understanding, a silence that is not just the opposite of sound... a silence which is absence of sound, not the opposite of sound. A music without any instruments, a song without any words....

For the first time you start feeling that, "Up to now I have been living in the head; and only this moment the doors of my heart are open."

There is an old Chinese story. Because of the story a proverb has come into existence - that when the musician becomes perfect, he burns his instruments; they become not only useless, they become a nuisance because they only create noise. Only between the noise are there a few moments of music - why not have it all?

And when the archer becomes a perfect master, he drops his bow and his arrows and forgets all about it. A strange proverb - because ordinarily we think that when we become perfect our instruments will also attain a perfection with us; their working will also become perfect.

Tao atomico sospeso

Suspended space: Salvador Dalí, Leda Atomica, (1949)
Dalí Theatre and Museum, Figueres

Dali himself described “Leda Atomica” as a picture created “in accordance with the modern ‘nothing touches’ theory of intra – atomic Physics”. “Leda does not touch the swan; Leda does not touch the pedestal; the pedestal does not touch the base; the base does not touch the sea; the sea does not touch the shore . . .” he explains, presenting a suspended world similar to the one of the atomic scale. The design of the composition is purely mathematical and carefully prepared as is revealed in a 1947 study of the artist. Leda (portrayed as his wife Gala) and the swan are inscribed in a regular pentagon, closely connected to the golden ratio. Dali conceived the design influenced by the Romanian polymath Prince Matila Costiesco Ghyka. The mathematical formula for the length of the pentagon’s side appears in the lower right side of the study.

The peacock's tail

Essays on Mathematics and Culture

il lascito del Tao - V

Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

The Intelligent Design Debate

We are still troubled by the invocation of deity to explain living systems. Most natural scientists devoutly try to avoid teleological language to this day. In the United States, however, we are seeing another of the waves of religious revival that have occurred in American history, which is shaping American policy in disturbing ways. Much of it looks absurd from Europe: absurd that the Americans were preoccupied with the sex life of a president and even more absurd that we are now debating yet again whether evolution should be taught in schools, or if mentioned whether it should be treated as scientific knowledge – that is to say, what metamessage children should be given about the nature of what they are being taught, including whether it should be presented as one of several alternatives.

President Bush, earlier this summer, said in a press conference that he believes Intelligent Design should be taught in all schools. I.D. is not quite Creationism, but is very similar, because of the suggestion that the complexity and apparent purposefulness of organs such as the eye can only be explained by postulating a designer shaping his creations toward particular ends.

Intelligent Design, of course, takes off from William Paley (1794), whom Darwin and, two generations later, Gregory read at Cambridge. Paley argued that just as, when you look at a watch, you can recognize that it is designed and made by someone for a purpose, so too you can look at the natural world and infer the existence of a creator. The advocates of Intelligent Design do not insist that it all happened in seven days and they don’t insist that species don’t change over time and so on, but still they see a need for an outside intelligence. They make an effort to present their ideas with the style and format we associate with science, thereby mislabeling their message, and at the same time try to label the accumulated evidence for evolution as speculative.

il lascito del Tao - IV