PHYSICAL FRAMES OF REFERENCE AND METAPHYSICAL WORLD VIEWS
Since the emergence of Relativity Theory it is now clear that there are no absolute frames of reference. Yet people constantly pretend that their own subjective frame of reference is somehow fixed, and absolute. The challenge is to learn flexibility in our choice of referential structures.
HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER
Scientific research is now held captive by the military-industrial complex, which dictates its own frames of reference to meet its corporate objectives. Those who would eschew technocracy must devise new referential frameworks to fit differing conceptual idea.
A SOUL DESTROYING WORLD VIEW
Work, warfare and international trade do not constitute a sufficient lifestyle package to sustain our species for much longer. Even if the biosphere survives the relentless assault of unfettered economic growth, this degrading obsession with mechanistic values leads to spiritual emptiness, economic servitude and government by organized crime.
BREAKING THE SPELL OF MATTER
The Geoperipheral Universe has much to offer in breaking the spell of matter since it treats the arrangement of matter in the macrocosm as subject to human design, within limits. This shocking claim does not seem so outrageous if human beings and their symbolising activities are regarded as an intrinsic part of the universe, in fact the most complex phenomena in the known universe.
The major benefits of deliberately and purposefully inverting the model of the Earth we choose to live in, from a ball in space into a hole in matter, are as follows:
1) Human beings regain the belief that they are part of the known universe as an ecosystem, the governor itself in fact) and not terrified impotent voyeurs having no power to interact with the cosmos.
2 ) The Earth’s surface is the single most important part of the Cosmos to us Earthlings. Our new frame of reference should recognise this. NASA, space-ship pilots and rocketry-obsessed engineers should stick with Newton.
3) If there is Anybody Else Out There, they themselves can perform the same conformal inversion in their cosmological world-view. While their planetary surface features would be different from ours, it is interesting to note that the centre of their cosmos will be similar to ours (the macro-world into which the Universe’s matter is mostly receding), and the central point (heaven) will be identical for all possible planetary-peripheral frames of reference.
4) Religious cosmologies were rejected by materialists because they depended on accepting the existence of a central place above them and of a qualitatively different level of reality, known as heaven, paradise, the happy hunting ground etc. There was no possible location for such places if the Earth was portrayed as a sphere in infinite space. In the inside-out universe model the singularity at the centre once again focuses human attention on a transcendent and mysterious place.
5) Purpose is relative and subjective. It is something that human beings create, it is not something we have “revealed” to us or “discover”. Most secular humanists have such negative feelings about religion that they have an irrational fear and hatred of teleological reasoning. However it takes a great deal of self deception to even imagine a cosmos without purpose, let alone live in one. And in a relativistic universe we should feel free to choose a frame of reference which will suit our spiritual needs.
6) The dramatic impact that would follow the widely publicised realisation that human beings can, by an act of collective will, turn their universe inside-out, would be so great that many other ideas that depend on relativistic thinking which have for almost a hundred years been restricted to discussion by cloistered intellectuals, could be accepted for discussion and adoption by the general public.
Dysfunctional and absolutist ideas and moral attitudes that have been drilled into school children for almost two hundred years could then be properly and publicly exposed. I refer to the various blood-thirsty versions of the resentment-based belief in equality and levelling in general, which leads to mindless hatred of all hierarchical organisation; the stressful primacy of the recently invented individual with a mind of his or her own; socialist and capitalist beliefs about the absolute importance of work, money, and physical health and low priority of play, status and mental peace; the absolute value of political independence and nationalism regardless of good or bad government; and the overemphasis on passive feeling and sensation at the expensive of active reason and imagination.
7)The freedom to shift frames of reference by freeing oneself both from the absolute frame of an authoritarian deity and the absolute frame of an objective universe is essentially a magical view of the inter-relationships between the self or ego and the other or alter.
The Post-modern Cosmology represents a paradigm shift in perception from scientific “objectivity”, which is no longer a tenable position, towards a more interactive and participatory relationship between ego and alter without flipping back to the previous religious “revelatory” position. In the former the alter is distorted and separated from human control through reductionism and the unacknowledged and unconscious selection of frames of reference to suit the needs of industrial civilisation, and the ego is distorted through claims of objectivity whilst being biased by unconscious belief in materialism and economic determinism. There is no inter-action between ego and alter. The ego is bribed by fame and fortune and the alter is exploited for economic gain. Feedback is entirely economic and the preservation of both the social and cultural infrastructure and fragile biological ecosystems is subsidiary.
In “revelatory” cosmology the ego is completely suppressed and the alter becomes divine and absolute like a strict parent or dictator. Again there is no real interaction between ego and alter. The ego becomes deformed and irresponsible and even malevolent, and the alter, rigid and remote. There is no accurate feedback just censorship and sacrificial appeasement.
Buddhism and Taoism represent exceptions to this view and are closer to the magical view, especially the latter. The magical view of overall inter-connectedness and the interaction of ego and alter at the highest level emphasises the importance of symbols. This leads to the realisation that words and numbers form “spells” or subjective reality systems which we can conjure up and use to communicate with, and in which we live.
The magician’s role in society as performer gratifies his or her ego so there is less likelihood of them making security and control of materials their main aim in life. This is much more likely to happen
to priests and scientists.
Another advantage of the magical view of the cosmos is the tradition of the alchemical quest to realise the androgyne, or perfect male/female sexual-intellectual union. Both priests and scientists are drawn to their intellectual cosmologies as an escape from the female principle which both terrifies them and is idolised by them. The female is seen by them only as a feared mother figure or desired sexual object.
8) In my attempt to create a proper post-modern cosmology, frames of reference were consciously chosen for each level in the cosmology so that the phenomena at that level of complexity can be understood and acted towards with purpose and with concern for the levels above and below.
The geoperipheral universe is the physical base or “ground” for a cosmology which is my attempt at a synthesis of current human knowledge based on emerging and converging “spheres” which, through positive and negative feedback, act as “figure and ground” to the spheres below and above them in terms of complexity.
Thus the sub-material world of particles etc is the ground for the physical world. This is in turn the ground for the biosphere which is the ground for the organic behavioural ecosystem which is the ground of the complex roles in the interlocking vertebrate social systems which provide the ground for the overall human symbolic communication system or “nousphere”.
What is this latter the ground for? In order to avoid trapping myself in a “closed system” I allow for some sort of metaphysical transcendence, perhaps some form of dematerialisation and ascension into the central singularity or heaven. This appears from my reading of anthropology and history to have been an almost universal human aspiration until modern times.
This has the advantage of combining both Eastern religions (which emphasize levitation) and Western religions (which emphasize ascension) for the means of combined physical and metaphysical transcendence. For materialists physical transcendence is displaced into an obsessional desire for conquest and expansionism implemented through sending space ships to colonise the universe.
Note. My use of the concept of “figure and ground” owes a great deal to Marshall McCluhan’s historical analysis of the development of the peculiar idea of figures without ground in Western Civilization. See pages 1-128 in Laws of Media: The New Science, by M and E McLuhan (1988).
9) My cosmology is thoroughly post modern in that I have never claimed that it is an objective assemblage of phenomena and their various dynamics which have been “discovered” by observation. Moreover it is most unlikely to be adopted for its “usefulness” to the thoroughly modern military-industrial complex. It is a synthetic symbolic creation and is therefore a cultural phenomenon itself, located in history and limited by the extent of my own awareness of the relevant human knowledge at this present time and in this present place. Like all human creations it is ultimately subjective, being both anthropocentric and ethnocentric and bearing the marks of the personality of its creator. Claims of freedom from such biases are only made for divine creations and “objective” scientific theories.
The modern scientific world view is little more than mechanistic physics together with a chaotic, unconnected collection of specialist knowledge only linked together through their utilitarian
connections to the funding organisations. There is in fact no modern cosmology, only astrophysics.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION
AND THE WEB IS THE PLACE FOR IT!
WHAT SHALL WE DO TO BE SAVED?
Once the geoperipheral model of the physical universe is recognised as a perfectly valid model within the constraints of the known laws of physics, then its “usefulness” for providing the ground or base for a truly new post modern cosmology, which includes biological, behavioural, social and cultural phenomena, can be discussed.
This web-site can provide the opportunity for such an exciting discussion which is unlikely to take place in either a state-funded academic institution, or a god-centred ecclesiastical environment.