Mid April 2018, I wrote my blog Know thyself a.k.a. Who am I? Its first paragraph wonders how 37.2 trillion cells can view themselves as “one”. A recent Aeon article – You are a network – sheds some light on this discrepancy and on my implicit question. The article’s subtitle reads as follows: “You cannot be reduced to a body, a mind or a particular social role. An emerging theory of selfhood gets this complexity”.
Last Monday, my girlfriend and I talked about this subject. During that conversation, I asserted that all networks are conscious. Actually, my observation made me wonder about its reciprocal: consciousness itself is a network. To a large extent, my second assertion is known as panpsychism, ” one of the oldest philosophical theories”. Moreover, a network does not need to be “alive” to perform its job.
Networks are all about cooperation rather than competition (my blogs). Networks have built-in redundancy (my blogs) in order to mitigate risks (my blogs). Networks have meaning and/or purpose (my blogs). Networks can take the shape of a powerful alliance, either for attack, defence or deterrence. Hence, networks are supporting Knowledge and Power but how about Love ?
While I was just looking at my blog labels / tags for further consideration, I noticed my tag Advantage. A network is supportive and thus – by definition – not selfless. This should explain why I cannot find any reason why Love would be part of any network. Moreover, the six ancient Greek words for Love are all dualistic (a.k.a. 1-on-1) in nature: agapē, éros, philautia, philia, storgē, and xenia.
In the view of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Love connects Knowledge and Power (eg, Brain Pickings). His views resulted in mine on trialism (my blogs) and Love, Knowledge & Power (my blogs).
Today, I’ve added a new blog label / tag, being Networks. I had never realized its importance despite using its term before and on several occasions (eg, 2015, 2016, 2020). Networks might be the oldest structures in life, nature and the Universe. However, they are invisible to our senses. Only our minds can decipher networks.
Networks are our mental visualization that everything is connected, ie. interconnectedness (my blogs).
“Whenever we look at life, we look at networks.” A quote from The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision by Fritjof Capra (b. 1939), “an Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist“.
The Network (2011) by Bob Sinclar
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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