Quote: "Everything is connected" says Chani the Fremen woman to her lover, the Mua’dib. She draws a circle in the sand with snake symbols in it representing Shai-hulud the great sandworm, considered by most Fremen to be the god of Dune. "The living and the dead, inanimate and animate, all parts functioning to serve the whole." (Dune - the movie, part II, from the science fiction series by Frank Herbert.)
It seems so "natural" to accept this explanation of life as if it explained all of life. It's so easy to just nod and agree. We observe this phenomenon of "connectedness" and we accept it as normal and necessary. And we go to sleep knowing we are “connected” and dream our petty dreams waiting for the day when we too will be a complete part of "all that is" and "all my struggles, Lord, will be over..."
We have this observation, and the zillions of teachings to back it up. Does that really make it true? Is everything truly connected to everything else as a natural process, or is it just one gigantic artificial machine put together with parts that continually pull apart, away from each other?
How would our perception of who we are change if we turned it around? If we said, "Everything is individual. Every bit exists for itself alone. Every unit that joins with another to create something "else" does so for a limited time only, knowing that it must return to being an individual "self" among all the other "selves".
If we were truly observant, we would see that there are more manifestations of individualism than collectivism. That collectives essentially coerce individuals to serve them and that individuals push away from the collective all the time, the greatest push being when they "die."
Our problem here is one of skewed observation. Bad teaching, bad religion, bad science. Wishful thinking passing itself off as law. A universe is a collective. It is made up of "things" that serve it. Do these "things" need the universe more than the universe needs the things? Our bodies are made up of individual particles. Do the particles need the body to survive, or does the body need the particles to exist? Is it truly a mutual need? When the organic system we call a body dies, what becomes of the particles who had joined to maintain the body?
OK, here's another one: what is death? When the body dies, what actually dies? What remains? What can once more move freely and decide to join itself to another body... or not? Seems to me that only two aspects of the "body" remain after death: the mind and the particles. These no longer need each other, so go their separate ways. And what of the body, that over which so much was made "in real life"? Dust to dust, ashes to ashes...
Observation (from memory and awareness):
When particles and mind join into body, a change happens. Both lose their individuality and become more body. Their awareness shrinks. All that they are is taken (usurped?) by the body to serve its desires. Individual awareness of self becomes a huge gob of incredible selfishness. From this arises fear. Fear because the body, an artificial construct, a collective, knows that it must control its "event horizon" to survive. It believes against all observation, that it can somehow survive, that it must survive. And it seeks ways to enhance itself. To protect itself and to please itself. Willy-nilly, mind and particles are sucked into this process, converting natural energy to feed the monster they inhabit and creating man's ubiquitous problems of growing energy shortages, pollution and over population.
The amount of energy required to feed the monster is always more than the individual parts can supply, hence the body (as the planet) goes ever into energy debt (entropy in a closed system) and eventually dies. One after another, particles flee the monster. For a time, others are attracted to it and take their place, but eventually the movement is more "out" than "in". Sometimes, the clouded mind too begins to question her role in all of this and with tremendous effort, reaches out and looks around. Sometimes she actually decides that "enough is enough" and she plans her escape. She knows she must leave or she will be trapped in the throes of the monster's ultimate death.
Yes, it's comforting to believe. There are many belief systems. Being systems, they will go along with the truism that all parts function to serve the whole. The Fremen are very superstitious people. And the harsh conditions of life in the deep desert of Arrakis makes it imperative that they work cooperatively. But to take necessary cooperation and translate that into a "whole" is taking too much of a giant step: it is to do the splits.
Why is Earth in such a shambles today? Because individuals have been buying into the collective mindset for thousands of years and seldom questioned it. Individuals have not moved to that magic place of personal awareness and true independence. They continue to serve their collectives because they believe that they, themselves, as bodies, are collectives. And those collectives, led as a rule by sociopaths, can only take: they are incapable of producing anything on their own.
Serving "the whole" requires the conversion of incredible amounts of energy. The whole would exist just as well, and would not require feeding if it was totally ignored, was not served, by individuals. There would be a whole, observable through natural interaction and cooperation. But to serve and to feed the whole, you need laws, coercive, heavy, destructive. You need control. That's what a "served" whole does: it makes laws to control energy so it can feed itself. It has no natural life. Only individuals have natural life.
In a nutshell then: The whole does not exist as such. However, where individualism freely expresses, a "background" is formed. Call it history or memory, the past, whatever. That is not "you" but a record of your passage "there/then". As long as background remains as background, all is well. But when the background, when the record, moves to the front and obliterates the individuals that make it, then you have oppression and eventually mass death -either by war, genocide, disease, famine or suicide.
Earth has become a "whole" and is at an interesting point. Individual humans can no longer support their collectives as these have grown too fat and too demanding. Energy-wise they can no longer make ends meet. People are dying at a terrifying rate and their death creates an energetic wave of suffering and fear that poisons the minds of those remaining alive and those being born. Depression, paranoia, anger and hate, along with horrible addictions are endemic. And the old guard which calls itself the New World Order has no way of preventing this from escalating into chaos. So it will attempt to fight fire with fire by initiating "limited and controllable" chaos: a state of permanent war, fought, not with weapons of mass destruction, but with subterfuge and psychology so the fear, the anger and the hate, the undergirding of every institution, will be manageable and controllable. (A good example of this in the movie world is "V for Vendetta")
Every Earthian who puts the collective, "the whole" ahead of her or his individuality and personal common sense will struggle fruitlessly and die needlessly to support a chimera. Carnage will be the result, as universal carnage was the result of the Fremen taking their collective power and unleashing their Jihad, their "holy war", upon the entire universe in the name of their new god, Mua'dib.
The individual mind set free is more powerful than the whole. This I have demonstrated to myself and for myself.
Observation: cooperation out of felt need or fear leads to institutionalization and the empowering of the whole - best exemplified by fascism.
Cooperation out of compassion, out of individual choice, leads to a soft and gentle interplay of energies, not demonstratable except by individual to individual.
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