Muted Snake—early Spring (VI.2.2008) . . . Northeast Oregon / Idaho
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Muted Snake—early Spring (VI.2.2008) . . . Northeast Oregon / Idaho
[click photo for next . . . ]
With very complex issues, I think that
clarity and simplicity are of the essence.
Questions of the environment I see as essentially questions
of questions of relationship.
[see my essay, THE TRIANGLE OF RELATIONSHIP]
My point of departure in all relationship
is a kind of uncompromising non-violence.
This I sometimes call the Earthrise Path.
It is way of the TAO; the watercourse way.
[see TRINITY / EARTHRISE PATHS]
Non-violence is serious business. It is hard to see
seeing itself. It is hard to see our motivations. It
is hard to see our collusion with one another in order
to sustain the unsustainable.
I ride up to the place where the above MUTED SNAKE photo was
made a lot. To see what's out and flowering. To ponder these
things. Big problems seem to require big spaces. Below is a
little meditation that I jotted down there Thursday; it's
about the inner logical contradictions in all use of force,
contradictions which, given enough time, always and necessarily
come to the surface. My main assumption—for me it is a fact—is
that:
Nature abhors nothing more than contradiction (or conflict).
This is because contradiction is never sustainable
and necessarily wastes Nature's most precious resource:—
the energy of life itself. That is why it non-sustainable.
Follow @cliffcregoKNOTS IN THE FLOW OF LIFE—the false way
of force, power, control
Force fades, because it eventually breaks
what it is trying to force;
Power fades, because it comes to depend on
energy from without, and thereby becomes empty
from within;
Control fades, because it eventually wrecks
what it tries to control.
So the circle of contradiction comes round
necessarily in collapse. Dams, blocks, knots in the flow
of life. We either of our own volition remove the dams, or
the intelligence of Nature herself will remove them
for us.
On the road in the Northwest of America.
ON HOLOGARCHY—the order of the whole
Hologarchy is the mutual co-generation of part and whole. With
hologarchy, both whole and parts share in a kind of co-relative equal
importance in the distribution of generative intelligence.
This is, of course, in marked contrast to the idea of hierarchy, or how
we normally conceive of organizational structure as an ascending
ladder of importance or rank. Higher is more; lower is less. Higher or
lower of x, of whatever—power, control, information, money, or all
of these.
Hierarchy we see as a kind of directional flow of order and importance
from the top to the bottom, as in classic military or corporate structure.
Or as a somewhat weaker and less common alternative, there is also
the more “grass roots” interpretation of the flow of order in hierarchy,
from the bottom up.
In contrast, what is unique about what I’m calling hologarchy is the
generative flow of order both from the bottom up, and the top down, at
the same time. The model or paradigm I always like to keep in mind—
that is, actually hear—is that of acoustic harmonic sound. Briefly, with
a harmonic series, the ground tone or fundamental generates the higher
harmonics or overtones, while at the same time these harmonics or
overtones come round by means of difference tones to re-enforce, or,
when the fundamental is for example for whatever reason absent,
re-generate a new ground tone. Within the classical music tradition, this
re-generation principle was used in the Baroque era, especially in the
Italy of Stradavari and Vivaldi, to great effect. And then nearly two cen-
turies later once again by the French-American composer Edgar Varèse,
but now to create totally unique, vibrantly alive, sound complexes.
My conjecture, again here very briefly, is that this hologarchic principle
of mutual co-generation of part and whole, may be very much more
common in the natural world than we at present realize.
THE LITTLE CLAVIER please preview 150 of 631 pages
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Each miniature is a kind of meditation on one idea & one image;
Each lasts 30 seconds; They play in random order;
The music is my BOREA Mix,
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All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1998-2026 picture-poems.com
(created: VI.1.2008)
