In most post-modern business, economic and social circles ‘growth’ is a holy cow.
However consider what environmentalist Edward Abbey once said “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”.
Could it be that an unconsidered chase after growth has been the cause of dysfunctionality in many of our social, economic and business systems and organizations? Technology has enabled accelerated growth in almost all fields of human endeavor but has this growth been all in the right direction? Take the growing ability to cover long distances with the minimal of physical effort. The direction this growth has taken has produced among other things a sharp spike in lifestyle diseases, road rage, pollution and the corrosive and distorting politics of oil.
Let’s go a tad deeper into the realm of personal growth. Can the chase after more power, more fame, more money to the detriment of all other dimensions of growth could be viewed as a cancerous affliction of the human spirit?
What we perhaps need to revisit is the calculus of growth. Our growth paradigm today is differentiation. The rate of change towards a mad hurtle towards the ‘more’. Shift to integration in the calculus of change and we get back to the gestalt: the complete view. And then we perceive that there is constant beyond change that sums up to health and happiness.
Easier said than done. Nevertheless, good to remember and revisit, now and then. Like we revisit the child who once were.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Road to Reality
Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.
His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.
His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.
There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.
Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.
The concept is that mathematical existence is different not only from physical existence but also from an existence that is assigned by our mental perceptions.
And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.
Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.
The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.
Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.
The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).
Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.
If you don’t hate thinking, take the time to think about it. It could be worth your while.
That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.
His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.
His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.
There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.
Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.
And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.
Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.
The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.
Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.
The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).
Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.
If you don’t hate thinking, take the time to think about it. It could be worth your while.
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