Infinite Mind - A Biosphere Project Blog
“The total number of minds in the universe is one”
-Erwin Schrödinger, one of the ‘fathers’ of quantum physics
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force...
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind.
This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”
-Max Planck, one of the ‘fathers’ of quantum physics
Dear friends,
Those of you who have followed my blog and project from the beginning have probably noticed the shift that has taken place over the months and years.
Gradually, my focus has shifted more and more from the more common ecological themes to topics related to our worldview and metaphysics.
I’ve also confirmed this recently in a number of blog posts and Walkie-Talkies.
Over the past six months, I’ve therefore seriously considered coming up with a new name for my project and creating an entirely new website. This would reflect my changed focus and better capture the new direction: a deeply personal investigation into how our worldview is the direct cause of the ecological catastrophes we are currently experiencing, as well as the many social crises that make our times seem so chaotic, violent, and crazy.
The new name for my venture was to be “INFINITE MIND.” A reference to “scientific idealism,” which forms part of potential new worldviews emerging in cutting-edge science (see, among other sources, the interview with Frederico Faggin).
But after much deliberation, I decided against this in the end, and instead chose to integrate that new title into the existing website. I do not want to neglect the topics related to the biophysical aspects of the planetary crisis in order to focus solely on metaphysics and worldview. I also want to continue researching the causes and broader context of the biosphere crisis.
I realized that I actually want to link these two paths even more clearly, because that connection is not yet clear to many people.
Many people long for clear—and preferably quick—“solutions” to the many ecological crises we face, which pose an existential threat to the survival of our industrial society and possibly even to our species (and to the majority of other life forms on this planet).
But if I’ve learned anything during my years of research on this topic, it’s that not a single “solution” currently being cited in the public debate is going to change our situation one iota. And that’s because most “solutions” are conceived from the very same worldview that got us into this situation in the first place. And without a change in worldview, we simply won’t make it through this transition unscathed.
Gradually, I’d like to weave more and more threads between these two approaches, arriving at a tapestry that can clarify how and why the way we view the world and ourselves is so essential to the way we relate to the world.
The name “Infinite Mind” now appears on the website and on the updated logo alongside that of A Biosphere Project, making it a dual project:
A BIOSPHERE PROJECT/ INFINITE MIND.
As I state on the updated homepage:
“A Biosphere Project and Infinite Mind form a dual project.
Two perspectives on the ecological crises we are currently facing. One starting from the story 'on the ground': the crisis in our biosphere. The other starting from the stories we created about ourselves.
But both perspectives are moving toward each other and lead to a new way of looking at ourselves and the world—and realizing that the separation between the two is an illusion.”
A special book has been lying on a table in our living room for over a year:
“Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism” by Julian Watson.
It is a beautifully designed and illustrated account of the ways in which countless indigenous cultures, throughout the centuries and across the globe, have developed fantastically ingenious ways of living and working in harmony and synergy with nature, rather than attempting to subjugate it out of a delusion of dominance and supposed technological omnipotence.
These “low-tech” systems and practices—related to housing, agriculture, irrigation, land and water management, and more—have often proven their efficiency for thousands of years, and have for just as long enabled these groups and societies to live in a way that does not disrupt the ecological balance of their habitats.
But what also strikes me every time I look through and read this book is the fact that literally all societies and technologies described here are embedded in—and have been and continue to be shaped by—a cosmology, a worldview, a mythos about what the world is, what the universe is, and what it means to be human. And a story about why there is something rather than nothing. Why we—human beings—are here.
And all those cosmologies, all those worldviews, were and are based on the belief that everything is animated and sacred — all living and non-living things.
That fundamental aspect of all those indigenous worldviews—which, taken as a whole, could be called animism—permeated all those societies and all those ways of living together with nature, rather than against it.
Today, we like to think that those indigenous cultures and societies were and are primitive, and could not have known any better, and that science has confirmed once and for all that the universe is merely a mindless mechanism, existing purely by chance (and so do we).
But science has not stood still, and by now, little remains of the mechanistic worldview. Especially since the development of quantum physics, the universe has proven to be “stranger than we can imagine,” as Werner Heisenberg put it. And since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been increasing indications that all those indigenous cultures may well have come much closer to the truth than we are currently willing to acknowledge.
And that is exactly what I want to continue reporting on in the new section of the blog, which will be called “Infinite Mind”: a fascinating exploration of all those perspectives emerging in various branches of science, and the increasingly clear parallels with the world’s oldest wisdom traditions.
This was already happening in the latest episodes of the “Musings,” but that wasn’t actually the intention behind that series of posts. And so now this reaffirmed aspect of my work is getting its own name and its own section on the blog, which you’ll receive in your inbox under that name: “Infinite Mind.”
I’ve already moved those latest installments of the “Musings”—including the ones featuring Frederico Faggin and Alex Gomez-Marin—into that new blog section, which has its own page on the website.
You might want to take a look at the updated homepage, because it has become a sort of new mission statement, now that the original travel project has transformed into a journey into consciousness and worldview.
And from now on you’ll find new blog posts on the themes of metaphysics and worldview (and their connection to the crisis in our biosphere) in your inbox under the title Infinite Mind Blog.
First up, you can soon expect two interviews with Marjorie Woollacott, a leading neuroscientist who, after a remarkable experience (similar to Frederico Faggin), thoroughly revised her ideas about consciousness and materialism.
Thanks for reading, and until the next installment,
All the best tot you,
Filip
