Biosphere should more properly be called psychoshpere now

Re: Derrida, Death and Forgiveness by Andrew J. McKenna
by Debashish on Sun 12 Nov 2006 01:51 PM PST Profile Permanent Link

This is my response to Rich, but I would like to preface it with a few words on the frame of the discussion re. freedom in the context of 'system' relative to Rakesh's comment also. The discussion at this point is about the cosmos as an autopoeitic system with the individual will as a constituent of it which can nevertheless identify intuitively with its integrality and its will to manifest intergality. In this context, freedom is only relative if the integrality of the 'system' is left compromized in the realization of the individual will. The question of freedom can be approached differently depending on one's frame and ultimately (in terms of yoga/praxis) one's central aspiration.

Thus, Sri Aurobindo, who had the nirvanic realization without seeking it, could say afterwards that he was not seeking for nirvana or moksha but for power (initially to liberate the nation and later to liberate the cosmic condition of Ignorance). In his wrods, "a liberation which left the world as it is, was felt by me to be almost distasteful." Thus, from this frame, such a "freedom" is a compromized and relative freedom. not an absolute one. Also philosophically speaking, if he is positing a degree of freedom greater than this (freedom to accept cosmic bondage and transform it) then the lesser freedom cannot any more be called "true freedom."

This said, thanks, Rich for your introductory post on auropoeisis which serves to illuminate the present discussion and steer it towards greater clarity. The difficulties (and maybe inapprorpiateness or at least 'impurity') of looking at cosmos as an autopoeitic system with the individual will as a constituent is brought out there and by you in your comment. The principal difficulties, imo, seem to be the fundamental requirements for the properties of closure and self-stabilization. These are properties of "living machines" because such 'systems' are marked by the will to retain identity and survive. That they can be self-modifying through environmental pressure again has difficulties in application to cosmos, because cosmos contains all environments, no environment is external to it.

The difficulty to closure comes due to the presence of individual freedom at its center. If individual will (as psychic being) can surpass the cosmic being (the universal intelligence and power of this intelligence to maintain itself) - this is where Sri Aurobindo tells us that the individual is greater than the cosmos because he can surpass it and transform it through powers not manifest in it - then the cosmic system cannot be seen as "closed." In terms of self-stabilizing, at the cosmic level, this can resonate with the earlier idea of ecosystem or biosphere and the more recent paradigm of Gaia, on which thanks also for your posting. Ecosystems (as subset of cosmos) may be seen as "living machines" in the autopoeitic sense, since constructive, preservative and destructive processes are ongoing there and all serve as parts of a self-conserving process.

But we know how human will has ruptured all that. Biosphere should more properly be called psychoshpere now. So too the posting on Gaia mentioned above goes to show how close we are to the breakdown of earth as a "living machine" due to the disbalances introduced by human beings (embodying, I may say, the Asuric will of cosmos). Hindu mythos places a self-stabilizing 'system' at its center in the form of the Trimurti (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) but Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that these are properly supramental deities not cosmic ones (cosmos as bounded by Avidya with the Overmind as its peak). The cosmos is constantly in threat of Asuric takeover and it requires supramental intervention in the form of avatars of Vishnu or of transcendental acts of power by Shiva or Devi to stabilize it from beyond its boundaries (so long as the human will has not reached the proper stage in evolution to transcend and transform cosmos).

Of course, all "living machines" that we know of are ultimately subject to dissolution - i.e. notwithstanding their self-stabilizing properties, what wins out at the end of the day is cascading instability and "death." In this sense, of course, cosmos, even if we atribute to it autopoeitic property can also be seen as compromized and individual will within it, so long as it is bound by it as a constituent at best identified with its "central intelligence" is similarly compromized (Deva pitted against Asura). It is only if we see the cosmos as a system with absolute freedom at its center in the form of one of its constituents being able to transcend its limitations, can it be not only autopoeitic in the limited sense of any "living machine" but truly effective in self-manifesting its integrality. But such a conception of 'system' leads beyond cosmos into gnosis. DB