Allan Ralph Andrews, born September 13

But, release into the infinite game and the Heaven Trigram, the genius (see Carse) that we call Youngest Son Yang, triumphs and a new cycle of detachment and mindfulness meditation begins, with the triumph of the executive functions of the frontal lobes. Here the Infinite flux of the Heaven Trigram stimulates the Karma of the Flame Trigram and the Mind of the Mountain Trigram to focus on the Wind Trigram Ideal, the pure emptiness and integrative completeness of all things in the Wind and Heaven Trigram paradise of integrative contemplation of love, and joy, and peace, and faith in the harmony and win win release from the finite game into the endless play of the One that is Gone Gone Gone utterly beyond. This is symbolized in Hinduism by the play of Krishna, as a symbol of the creative genius of the detached mind, in Brindaban.

Allan Ralph Andrews, April 2^nd 2015

Harari is not beyond using the fallacy of special pleading, the appeal to the authority of science, the appeal to numbers in the notion that ten thousand scientific historians cannot be wrong, and the appeal to emotion. He rejects the old divine command ethics and makes fun of the old virtue ethic, the individualistic and utilitarian ethics, the hedonistic ethics of the finite game market, that Carse likes to ridicule also. But he turns around and uses an ethic that is just as irrational, just as much an appeal to emotion, and that is the human concern ethic which is popular among some of the women’s rights groups. Animals and humans have suffered terribly and therefore anything associated with their suffering is wrong. Now I maintain that all ethical systems are “is” systems at heart, they are set point based feedback systems that work around the set points of language communities, or segments of language communities, special language communities. This aspect of morality is discussed by Julius Kovesi in his book Moral Notions, a work I have discussed elsewhere. I believe that the various ethical systems are valid within their own area of operation. In Dilemmas, Gilbert Ryle, shows how different specialized language systems do different things.

Judges use duty ethics and politicians use utilitarian ethics, metaphysics often tends to virtue ethics and religious speculation to inspirational ethics, art to existential ethics, equity based accounting systems to ethical individualism and market based systems to hedonism, religious dogmatism to divine command ethics and liberal reactions against traditional religious dogma to human concern ethics, the system that Harari is using here in his criticism of traditional notions.

For scientific investigations, investigations of the tangible world, I prefer a virtue ethics with a focus on truth and fact and reason. Thus, I find Harari useful in setting a case up, but I do not feel obligated to buy into his system. Here is my argument. I have just done my family tree and it takes 83,000 people to get a DNA match that describes my ancestry. Change one tiny event and I and my relatives would not be here. I find that mothers tend to value their grandchildren more that their children. I believe that if Saint Margaret of Scotland, a distant grandmother of mine, were brought back from the dead, she would be just as glad to be my grandmother, even though the many time removal may mean I do not inherit a single gene from her, as she would be with her immediate children, regardless of the fact that they are more closely related to her. I would not exist without her. All that she suffered made me and my relatives possible. She and others like her, if brought back from the dead, would not want to change the events that caused them to suffer if it caused their offspring not to exist. Before, anything else it is natural for a living thing to wish to reproduce. We, their descendents are the fulfillment of what they were and it makes no sense to pass moral judgment on that dead history in the name of their suffering.

Therefore, I tend to use C. D. Darlington’s The Evolution of Man and Society, a detailed work published in 1969. I find it a more acceptable and less biased and emotional explanation of events. Darlington explains history in relationship to geographical influences and genetic systems. Also important are the many works of these subjects by the Columbia University anthropologist, Marvin Harris. Both these works tend to leave justice out of the picture because it was never the real concern of the authorities at the time, regardless of their noble claims. That these claims ring hollow in our new world should be no shock, but that tells us far more about ourselves than it tells us about them.

They did what they had to do to survive the problems of the day just as we do and were we back in those times we might quickly change our song to theirs. Not that it makes what they did right by all available ethical systems, but it does not make what we are doing right either, as both Carse and Harari are quick to pontificate about. Talk is cheap.

Speaking of talk, if you recall my model of the I Ching Brain, Heaven Trigram is romantic temper and inspirational ethic, Wind Trigram is Classical temper and virtue ethic, Water Well is Baroque and duty ethic, Lake Trigram is Post Impressionist Dialectical Ideology Symbolist Sentiment and is Divine Command and Human Concern Ethic, Flame Trigram is Cubist, Experimental, existential ethic, Thunder is expressionist and hedonistic ethic, Earth Trigram is realistic and utilitarian ethic, Mountain Trigram is impressionist, empirical and is ethical individualism.

All of this have various biological equivalents, for example let as create a food chain I Ching with Heaven as Producer Organisms, Wind as Herbivores, Mountain as Carnivores, Flame as Decomposers, Earth as Final Consumers, Water Well as Fungi, Lake as Symbionts, and Thunder as Pathogens. Heaven into Lake would be Lichens, and Lake into Water Well would be mold, and Lake into Thunder would be yeast and Thunder into Earth would be things like malaria and Thunder into Flame would be entities like measles viruses, Flame into Mountain would be things like a Mantis, Mountain into Earth would be things like a Lion, and Mountain into Wind a butterfly, and Wind into Heaven a redwood and Heaven into Flame, a chemosynthetic bacterium, Water Well into Earth, a rust fungus, Water Well into Wind, a mushroom. In this system Eldest Son would be the primitive and Eldest Daughter would be the advanced. Eldest Son Yang could be protozoa and Eldest Daughter Yin a hive of bees. Middle Son Yang would be integration, as in a coral reef and Middle Daughter Yin would be disintegration as in the dung gathered by a dung beetle. Youngest Son Yang would involve autonomy and dissociation as in a Venus Fly Trap and Youngest Daughter Yin, the opposite, as in a Slime Mold.

Thus, left brain focused facts are the dung of the symbol system processing brain and its dreamtime infinite game play is the coral reef opposite. Both are needed, but both are not equally beautiful.

So is the purpose of the meditating frontal executive areas of the I Ching Brain, to be a Venus Fly Trap that catches the Youngest Son Yang jiva Buddha monad pneuma psyche Creative Spirit Genius Soul Anima Atman and absorb it into the pleasure and addictive Kama desire system of the pleasure centered brain? Our does it pull an Avatar, an incarnation of Visnu, of Brahman out of the integration of all things in the infinitesimal infinite refinement of all possibility? Is the Brain System an integrated Bee Hive that feeds on the pollen of the flowers generated by the central nervous system and the slime mold of energy and impulse that is the sensory net established by the combined sensory receptors that feed the brain’s association areas out of the protozoan complexity of organic activity in the lower physiological autonomic realm?

Shall we apply the principles of evolution to the I Ching brain, the Heaven Trigram of mutation generates creativity for the Middle Son Yang right hemisphere out of the deep cycles of sleep and dreams and wakefulness in the brain stem, the Dreamtime roots of the higher mindfulness, and the Lake Trigram of limbic lobe connections provides emotions from lower brain connections to hypothalamus and autonomic nervous system components, this is the recombination, the sexual reproduction, the population genetics of attachment complexity for the deep brain, the root of the collective unconscious. So also the natural selection of emergent sensory impulses moves upward toward the association areas of the brain through the thalamus and potential actions move downward through the cerebellum and basal ganglia, this natural selection of sensation and action is connected to the competitive exclusion of potential actions in the Flame Trigram roots of the motor cortex of the frontal lobes.

But, the upper brain, the bee hive that buzzes out of the hippocampus and Eldest Daughter Yin sequence tracking mindfulness, generates the emerging phenotype of these selected entities in the association areas of the left hemisphere of the cerebrum where they emerge as the shadow objects of associated sensory facts in the Earth Trigram of the I Ching Brain. From here they pass to Broca’s Area and the Frontal Lobes of Mountain Trigram where they undergo analysis and speciation and connect with emerging plans and values and set points in the adaptive peak of genotypic thought in the executive areas of left and right frontal lobes and the Wind Trigram of the right frontal area that connects thought and feeling and creative images in the dreamtime symbolism of the infinite game. The right hemisphere connects these associations with the basic integrative ordering of sensations in the Water Well aspect of the right association areas, the homeostatic feed back loops of the brains systems of time and space location and orientation.

Generally, the voice of the emerging Mountain Trigram is the adult voice, the ego of Freud, and the Wind Trigram is the parental voice, the superego, the Earth Trigram is the child voice, the emerging id, the deep id is voiceless in what I call the Water Well “egg,” the unconscious ground of consciousness and meaning. It is this deep order that hypnosis attempts to speak to rather that the adult voice which is the normal window to communication with the mind of the I Ching brain.

It is the parental patterns and the creative mutation of dreamtime thought that have become habitual, that have moved from infinite mind play toward finite mind seriousness that Hararia is complaining about when he speaks of the justice that is no justice, for at this deep root the primitive band, the clan, the local gang is favored over all other possibilities and it is the attachment of this gang, this primitive order to the symbols of a universal state or a universal church that gives these myths the destructive power that Arnold Toynbee discusses at such length in his Study of History. Here at this egg level lies the hypnotic trance imposed by the parental voice on the emerging child that allows his mindless servitude to the absolute rule of corporation, church, caste, and state. This is why in Chinese mythology, the Water Well Trigram is associated with uncontrolled danger, the river in flood.

In Astrological symbolism, this is the irrational Moon and its tidal power, as opposed to the light giving Sun in Flame Trigram. In a similar fashion, Jupiter is the symbol of the expanding source that is Heaven Trigram, while Saturn is its dark limits beyond which gravity pulls all things back toward Earth Trigram. The symmetry of the orbit of Venus makes it the symbol of the perfect ideal in Wind Trigram and the asymmetry of the orbit of Mars makes it the symbol of evolution as entropy in Thunder Trigram. The remaining planets fill out the vertices and sides of this cube octahedron of eight trigrams. Odd ball Uranus stands in for Youngest Son Yang, further out Neptune stands in for Dreamtime Middle Son Yang, and furthest out Pluto stands in for Eldest Son Yang and the infinite flux that is the source of all things in the black holes that lie beyond. Mercury is the symbol for Middle Daughter Yin, while the Earth is the zero point that is Eldest Daughter Yin, finally the Moon’s Nodes and the Asteroid belt, including Ceres, Juno, Pallas, and Vesta, along with the ascendant and the houses that surrounded the Earth provide that inner planetary space that is the space time relativity astrological world of Youngest Daughter Yin associations. It has no real focal point because it is the principle of association rather than dissociation, of distribution rather than concentration.

This astrological pattern is the heavenly symbol of the I Ching brain, arranged in ancient China as a pattern of circles, with the eight trigrams arranged in various patterns, symbolizing the movement of seasonal forces across the Chinese sky. It begins in one dimension with the opposition of Eldest Son Yang to Eldest Daughter Yin. Middle Son and Middle Daughter draws the one dimension into a two dimensional plane, often symbolized by Heaven opposed to Earth and the Flame Trigram of the Sun opposed to the Water Well trigram of the Moon. With the addition of a new dimension opposing Youngest Son Yang to Youngest Daughter Yin, this system becomes more complicated. This complication is often symbolized by two opposing circular I Ching Trigram planes, we prefer however to proceed to a more compact three dimensional arrangement instead. As the various trigrams associate with each other, the 64 hexagrams emerge, often shown in a great circle, but again we prefer a three dimensional system instead, because the next step, the further division of the system by the five substances, fire, wood, water, metal, and earth, will spin the system into a five cell and generate a fourth dimensional space time relativity which cannot be easily displayed in a simple two dimensional arrangement.

We prefer an interpretation in which fire stands for the big bang, earth for the emergence of quantum mechanics, and metal stands for the generation of the higher elements in the furnace of super nova, water stands for the emergence of the protoplasmic soup, and wood stands for the emergence of life at the level of the cellular organism and all the complexity associated with it. Which will eventually be consumed by the very thermodynamic flux from which it came.

Allan Ralph Andrews, April 2^nd 2015, Bakersfield, CA, Oildale, 93308.

Again, it does not matter which metaphysical system you choose to use. There is no final title in the infinite game. The game of winners and loss, the game of final truth and final falsehood is a finite game. You can play the ethics game of inspirational ethics, of utilitarian ethics, of duty ethics, you can play a metaphysics biased toward virtue, toward circular reasoning, toward fallacies of appeal to emotion, of special pleading, there is no final perfect argument in the infinite game, no final proof for any one version of the play, no final perfect way of believing or not believing. You can play with astrology as a skeptic or as a believer, the only rule is that you cannot stop another player from playing his own way, because in the infinite game all things are open and there is no final title, no final end, no perfect conclusion, for mortality in the sense of finality exists only in the finite game, in the infinite game your energy dies to be reborn as something new, your passion ends to give itself to new passions, eternal life in the infinite game is quite a different thing that the frozen mummy immortality of finite game championships. In the infinite game, the earth centered astrology of Babylon is reborn as the universe centered astronomy of a space probe. There are no rules limiting the infinite play of your belief and disbelief, your attachment and detachment.

Allan Ralph Andrews, April 2^nd 2015

At the beginning, the global aspect of the I Ching brain was rooted more in the global mythology discussed in respect to the emergence of the cognitive revolution and its effects on the development of agriculture and empires using agriculture and written scripts as discussed in Harari’s work Sapiens, referred to above. We have described elsewhere the work done by Arnold Toynbee in his Study of History relative to this phase, the Heaven Trigram of the global brain was explored extensively by African religion and philosophy, as described by John S. Mbiti in his work African Religions and Philosophy, referred to above. The Heaven Trigram brain was the realm of the Zamani, the Dreamtime, and the Earth Trigram brain belonged to the here and now fact, it was the Sasa, words derived from Swahili, used by Mbiti in the work referred to above.

Toynbee describes how civilization emerges from the challenge and response of early effort to generate a human relationship with the environment, the symbol forming work of the Cro-Magnon, discussed above is an example. At some point, organized chiefdoms begin to appear and conflict and war emerge. This process is developed by Marvin Harris and Jared Diamond in their works. But, a time of raiding tribes appears and is recorded in epic poetry like the works in Greek attributed to Homer.

The Greeks emerge from obscurity as an Indo-European language speaking people with some aboriginal Heaven Trigram beginning somewhere in Central Asia, and they appear as an external proletariat to the existing system, bringing competition and martial anger in the Flame Trigram of our global I Ching brain. As these tribes settle down in city states, there is a passage from aboriginal pride in Heaven Trigram challenge and response to martial anger in a Flame Trigram external proletarian raid, to partisan jealousy in the rival debates of various political factions in some Greek city state republic belonging to the philosophical and logical Mountain Trigram of the global I Ching Brain. This is the ego phase of the global brain, where the individual gains a voice and debates with Socrates and Plato.

However, creative minorities gradually become dominant elites, and aristocracy and monarchy begin to encourage aristocratic greed in the Classical phase that is Wind Trigram, Alexander the Great has conquered the known world and the wealth begins to flow back to the Greek speaking upper classes. Eventually, the dominant elites mange to develop internal proletariats that can control a universal state and we see the global I Ching brain move into a Water Well Trigram phase.

When this phase begins to fail, internal and external proletariats associated with the failing universal state will develop universal churches, the Latin speaking Roman Catholic Church of the West will emerge from the decline of empire in the West. Eventually, an Byzantine Empire will be associated with the Greek Orthodox Church, and an Arabic speaking universal state will emerge with the rise of Islam, out of an external proletariat based religious system. Similar forces with generate Hindu and Buddhist and Taoist religious systems in the East out of the decline of Empire in South and East Asia, this phase is the Lake Trigram aspect of the global I Ching Brain.

New sciences and technologies will put the focus on the fact centered left hemisphere of the global brain. Empiricism and Impressionism will emerge in the Mountain Trigram, Existentialism in the Flame Trigram, science and Realism in the Earth Trigram, Pragmatism and Expressionism in the Thunder Trigram. The emerging industrial state will emphasize utilitarian products and democracy in Earth Trigram and international trade and market capitalism will come to dominate in Thunder Trigram as the world brain emerges from the absolutism and slavery that is the Water Well Trigram order and the dogmatic sloth that is Lake Trigram into an new world of industrial gluttony and alcohol, drug, and sugar addictions in Earth Trigram and the vulgar lust of the market and consumer society that is Thunder Trigram.

Various imperial languages will dominate the hexagrams at the edges of these emerging trigrams, narcissistic English generating a hexagram combining Mountain with Earth and dependent Russian combining Earth with Water Well, compulsive Persian and Hebrew combing Water Well with Wind Trigram, masochistic Arabic and the combination of Water Well and Lake, avoidant Chinese and the combination of Lake and Heaven Trigram, schizoid Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu, at the edge of Heaven into Wind, schizotypal Javanese, Indonesian, Malay, and Bengali making hexagrams combining the global brain Heaven Trigram with Flame Trigram.

Mountain Trigram nationalism ruled by JUG, Japan, United States and Germany, supporting a hexagram of sadistic negativisum in the Japanese hexagram combining Mountain Trigram with Flame and paranoid German combining Wind and Mountain. Out of the Latin area, histrionic French and Italian combine Earth with Thunder in a histrionic set, and antisocial Spanish combining Flame and Thunder and Brazilian at the borderline edge of Lake and Thunder.

The Persian Empire and ancient Persian language appear to lie at a deep center of Wind Trigram and Sanskrit and Bali into this Heaven Trigram of ancient imperial artifacts. Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic, and later Turkish rule Water Well, Greek in Earth Trigram, Latin in Thunder Trigram, Mandarin in Lake Trigram, Germanic languages in Mountain and Japanese and Malaysian languages in Flame, the sector of the global brain ruled by the Pacific Rim of fire. Persian rises to the adaptive peaks of Wind while Russian, Turkish, Arabic conquer the river valleys beyond the high peaks, Mandarin continues to dominate the rice growing marshes of the Far East in Lake Trigram.

German languages conquer the Swiss Alps and the mountains of Scandinavia, in the Mountain Trigram of the West. Greek colonies spread along the feet of the Mountains in the Mediterranean Sea and Renaissance Culture carries the ancient Greek aristocratic values across the face of Europe where is sows the seeds of a new science based Earth Trigram that is spread across the world by Latin language speaking ships from Portugal, Spain, France, and later Latin and Greek culture influenced Dutch and English adventurers. This creating the new Thunder Trigram of expressionism, hedonism, and market centered trade that makes the entire world a seaport, an airport, a space port for the new adventures in consumer based vulgar lust.

In the meantime, South Asian languages and culture are moving into what remains of the Heaven Trigram in South and South East Asia. An exotic Buddhism and Hinduism move into Cambodia and Bali leaving such wonders behind as Angkor Wat. A venture of civilization into the Dreamtime fantasy of the infinite game and the Coral Reef complexity of the Middle Son Yang attempt to generate a harmony that includes all things. A very different impulse that the dung collecting fact finding of the left hemisphere oriented Middle Daughter Yin that currently dominates the Sasa, the here and now fact approach of our modern orientation, it is the difference between a Gothic Cathedral and a piece of Deconstruction inspired art.

Allan Ralph Andrews, April 3^rd 2015.

True Philosophy, as opposed to ideology and dogma, is love of wisdom and plays the infinite rather than the finite game. Socrates was a philosopher and took poison hemlock rather than a public prize. We do not know for sure what Socrates believed, because, as Gilbert Ryle of Oxford put it, he “always came out a different door than he went in.”

True philosophy is not limited to any one temper, to anyone metaphysics, to any one ethical system, to any one trigram or hexagram of the I Ching Brain. So to play philosophy, to pick up the ethical system used by Harari in his book Sapiens, we can see how the dominance of the narcissistic childish Lion voice that English claims, as lord of the capitalistic, utilitarian, scientific, industrial, individualist ethics, marketing world forces other cultures and language systems into subordinate roles. Mandarin Chinese does not play avoidant role out of choice, it was forced into this position by the dominance of English, so also with the paranoid role of German, the negativistic role of Japanese, the Schizoid role of Hindi, the dependent role of Russian, the masochism of Arabic, the antisocial position of much of the colonial Spanish speaking world, under the control of a drug distributing mafia. These imperial language systems and cultural systems were force into these subordinate games by the dominance of the English speaking consumer and entertainment media empire. There is no justice here, only subordination and slavery in a new form, consumer slavery in which Pavlov based conditioning is used to train the consumer to conform to cue, as a saliva producing dog conforms to the cue of a bell when conditioned to do so. The subordinate imperial language systems need the goods and supplies and weapons distributed by the English language narcissistic lions of commerce, they are conditioned to respond to monetary cues and dance to the bells of Wall Street.