H.I.V.E. 3.0- Some thoughts on the buzz about emergence

I was fascinated by a passage in Emotional Contagion, where Daniel Goleman shares an example taken from a crossfire between the Americans and the Vietcong during the Vietnam war.

A group of monks were traveling in the area, and they ventured through the crossfire. The atmosphere of serenity they brought with them was enough to stop the firing. Amazingly, the guns stayed silent long after the monks left the area.

There are some other not-so-pleasant instances of emotional contagion if you simply consider the orgy of anger and rage from your typical mob riot.

Despite a large body of data that seem to indicate some validity to claims of psi phenomenon (what Ken Wilber refers to as tele-prehension) many mainstream scientific materialists chuckle and scoff at the suggestion, ignoring empirical data gathered through the scientific method as being “pseudoscience.”

The mainstream scientific community does, however, seem to lend credence to the idea of mirror neurons. These are cells in the brain that are specialized to mutually resonate with the emotional sensations of others humans.

Transmission of non-dual awareness is commonly reported within various Eastern schools of meditation. Many people who knew and respected Ramana Maharshi claim to have reached previously unattained depths within their various spiritual practices by just being close to the remarkable sage.

From the “Zeitgeist Addendum,” to the Neo-Mayan Mythology ala “2012 the return of Quetzalcoatl” to the scientistic “the Singularity is Near” there seems to be a resounding buzz that we are standing at the doorway of a truly strange brave new world.

Many people have their strong ideas, but of course if we were able to guess it from the pieces of it that already exist here today, then it would be reducible to those pieces and therefore not a true emergence.

A Holon, a term coined by Arthur Koestler, is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. To avoid embarrassing myself and butchering the explanation, the following two paragraphs are taken directly from the Wikipedia article on holons

“A holon is a system (or phenomenon) that is a whole in itself as well as a part of a larger system. It can be conceived as systems nested within each other. Every system can be considered a holon, from a subatomic particle to the universe as a whole. On a non-physical level, words, ideas, sounds, emotions—everything that can be identified—is simultaneously part of something, and can be viewed as having parts of its own, similar to sign in regard of semiotics.

Since a holon is embedded in larger wholes, it is influenced by and influences these larger wholes. And since a holon also contains subsystems, or parts, it is similarly influenced by and influences these parts. Information flows bidirectionally between smaller and larger systems as well as rhizomatic contagion. When this bidirectionality of information flow and understanding of role is compromised, for whatever reason, the system begins to break down: wholes no longer recognize their dependence on their subsidiary parts, and parts no longer recognize the organizing authority of the wholes. Cancer may be understood as such a breakdown in the biological realm.”

So now I’m going to use an acronym to tie some things together into a bundle.

The H.I.V.E. is short for Holonic, Integral Vector of Emergence.

I use the term vector in an epidemiological sense. The idea is that since we are a part of a whole, we disseminate our states of experience, almost like a virus, throughout that whole.

The more we integrate different disciplines, facts, traditions, sentient beings into a universal dialectic, the more vibrancy and vitality we lend to this future that we are all working towards co-creating.

“So what do we do now?” you ask?

Well, even if you didn’t, I’ll tell you!

In the words of the poet Justin Blackburn, whatever you are meant to be doing, you were always doing it!

The only action that I am requesting of you is that you consider these ideas, and take just even a quick moment to see if anything looks different in your world when you put on the filter of H.I.V.E. style perceptual goggles.

Comments are encouraged.