David Bohm

Interview with F. David Peat and John Briggs

In 1950 David Bohm wrote what many physicists consider to be a model textbook on quantum mechanics. Ironically, he has never accepted that theory of physics. In the history of science he is a maverick, a member of that small group of physicists-including Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner, Erwin Schrˆdinger, Alfred Lande, Paul Dirac, and John Wheeler–who have expressed grave doubts that a theory founded on indeterminism and chance could give us a true view of the universe around us.

Today’s generation of physicists, impressed by the stunning successes of quantum physics–from nuclear weapons to lasers-are of a different mind. They are busy applying quantum mechanics to areas its original creators never imagined. Stephen Hawking, for example, used it to describe the creation of elementary particles from black holes and to argue that the universe exploded into being in a quantum-mechanical event.

Bucking this tide of modern physics for more than 30 years, Bohm has been more than a gadfly. His objections to the foundations of quantum mechanics have gradually coalesced into an extension of the theory so sweeping that it amounts to a new view of reality. Believing that the nature of things is not reducible to fragments or particles, he argues for a holistic view of the universe. He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the implicate order.

Most other physicists discard Bohm’s logic without bothering to scrutinize it. Part of the difficulty is that his implicate order is rife with paradox. Another problem is the sheer range of his ideas, which encompass such hitherto nonphysical subjects as consciousness, society, truth, language, and the process of scientific theory making itself.

The son of a furniture dealer, Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1917. He studied physics at the University of California with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Unwilling to testify against his former teacher and other friends during the McCarthy hearings, Bohm left the United States and took a post at the University of S„o Paulo, Brazil. From there he moved to Israel, then England, where he eventually became professor of physics at Birkbeck College in London.

Bohm is perhaps best known for his early work on the interactions of electrons in metals. He showed that their individual, haphazard movement concealed a highly organized and cooperative behavior called plasma oscillation. This intimation of an order underlying apparent chaos was pivotal in Bohm’s development.

In 1959 Bohm, working with Yakir Ahronov, showed that a magnetic field might alter the behavior of electrons without touching them: If two electron beams were passed on either side of a space containing a magnetic field, the field would retard the waves of one beam even though it did not penetrate the space and actually touch the electrons. This ‘AB effect” was verified a year later.

During the Fifties and Sixties Bohm expanded his belief in the existence of hidden variables that control seemingly random quantum events, and from that point on, his ideas diverged more and more from the mainstream of modern physics. His books Causality and Chance in Modern Physics and Wholeness and the Implicate Order, published in 1957 and 1980, respectively, spell out his new theory in considerable detail. In the Sixties Bohm met the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, and their continuing dialogues, published as a book, The Ending of Time, helped the physicist clarify his ideas about wholeness and order.

Recently retired from Birkbeck College, Bohm is now trying to develop a mathematical version of his implicate-order hypothesis-the kind of precise, testable theory that other physicists will take seriously. It is not an easy task, for Bohm’s universe is a strange, mystical place in which past, present, and future coexist. The objects in his universe, even the subatomic particles, are secondary; it is a process of movement, continuous unfolding and enfolding from a seamless whole that is fundamental. To test the theory of general relativity, Einstein forecast that the sun’s gravity would bend light waves from distant stars; he was correct. So far Bohm has been unable to find an experimental aspect that could support his ideas in the same way.

Although recently recovered from serious heart surgery, Bohm continues to make frequent trips throughout Europe and to the United States, where he lectures, talks to colleagues, and encourages students. His ideas have been enthusiastically received by philosophers, neuroscientists, theologians, poets, and artists.

Bohm was interviewed by John Briggs and F. David Peat, authors of Looking Glass Universe, over a two-day period near Amherst College in Massachusetts, where Bohm was involved in a series of meetings with the Dalai Lama. Additional comments are taken from a previous interview in England by writer Llee Heflin.

Omni: Can you recall when you first experienced the sense of the wholeness that you now express as the implicate order? Bohm: When I was a boy a certain prayer we said every day in Hebrew contained the words to love God with all your heart all your soul, and all your mind. My understanding of these words, that is, this notion of wholeness–not necessarily directed toward God but as a way of living–had a tremendous impact on me. I also felt a sense of nature being whole very early. I felt internally related to trees, mountains, and stars in a way I wasn’t to all the chaos of the cities.

When I first studied quantum mechanics I felt again that sense of internal relationship–that it was describing something that I was experiencing directly rather than just thinking about.

The notion of spin particularly fascinated me: the idea that when something is spinning in a certain direction, it could also spin in the other direction but that somehow the two directions together would be a spin in a third direction. I felt that somehow that described experience with the processes of the mind. In thinking about spin I felt I was in a direct relationship to nature. In quantum mechanics I came closer to my intuitive sense of nature.

Omni: Yet you’ve said that quantum mechanics doesn’t provide a clear picture of nature. What do you mean?

Bohm: The main problem is that quantum mechanics gives only the probability of an experimental result. Neither the decay of an atomic nucleus nor the fact that it decays at one moment and not another can be properly pictured within the theory. It can only enable you to predict statistically the results of various experiments.

Physics has changed from its earlier form, when it tried to explain things and give some physical picture. Now the essence is regarded as mathematical. It’s felt the truth is in the formulas. Now they may find an algorithm by which they hope to explain a wider range of experimental results, but it will still have inconsistencies. They hope that they can eventually explain all the results that could be gotten, but that is only a hope.

Omni: How did the founders of quantum mechanics initially receive your book Quantum Theory?

Bohm: In the Fifties, when I sent it around to various physicists-including [Niels] Bohr, Einstein, and [Wolfgangl Pauli--Bohr didn't answer, but Pauli liked it. Einstein sent me a message that he'd like to talk with me. When we met he said the book had done about as well as you could do with quantum mechanics. But he was still not convinced it was a satisfactory theory.

His objection was not merely that it was statistical. He felt it was a kind of abstraction; quantum mechanics got correct results but left out much that would have made it intelligible. I came up with the causal interpretation [that the electron is a particle, but it also has a field around it. The particle is never separated from that field, and the field affects the movement of the particle in certain ways]. Einstein didn’t like it, though, because the interpretation had this notion of action at a distance: Things that are far away from each other profoundly affect each other. He believed only in local action.

I didn’t come back to this implicate order until the Sixties, when I got interested in notions of order. I realized then the problem is that coordinates are still the basic order in physics, whereas everything else has changed.

Omni: Your key concept is something you call enfoldment. Could you explain it?

Bohm: Everybody has seen an image of enfoldment: You fold up a sheet of paper, turn it into a small packet, make cuts in it, and then unfold it into a pattern. The parts that were close in the cuts unfold to be far away. This is like what happens in a hologram. Enfoldment is really very common in our experience. All the light in this room comes in so that the entire room is in effect folded into each part. If your eye looks, the light will be then unfolded by your eye and brain. As you look through a telescope or a camera, the whole universe of space and time is enfolded into each part, and that is unfolded to the eye. With an old-fashioned television set that’s not adjusted properly, the image enfolds into the screen and then can be unfolded by adjustment.

Omni: You spoke of coordinates and order a moment ago. How do they tie in with enfoldment? Do you mean coordinates like those on a grid?

Bohm: Yes, but not necessarily straight lines. They are a way of mapping space and time. Since space-time may be curved, the lines may be curved as well. It became clear that each general notion of the world contains within it a specific idea of order. The ancient Greeks had the idea of an increasing perfection from the earth to the heavens. Modern physics contains the idea of successive positions of bodies of matter and the constraints of forces that act on these bodies. The order of perfection investigated by the ancient Greeks is now considered irrelevant.

The most radical change in the notion of order since Isaac Newton came with quantum mechanics. The quantum-mechanical idea of order contradicts coordinate order because Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle made a detailed ordering of space and time impossible. When you apply quantum theory to general relativity, at very short distances like ten to the minus thirty-three centimeters, the notion of the order of space and time breaks down.

Omni: Can you replace that with some other sense of order?

Bohm: First you have to ask what we mean by order. Everybody has some tacit notion of it, but order itself is impossible to define. Yet it can be illustrated. In a photograph any part of an object is imaged into a point. This point-to-point correspondence emphasizes the notion of point as fundamental in sense of order. Cameras now photograph things too big or too small, too fast or too slow to be seen by the naked eye. This has reinforced our belief that everything can ultimately be seen that way.

Omni: Aren’t the contradictions you have been talking about embedded in the very name quantum mechanics?

Bohm: Yes. Physics is more like quantum organism than quantum mechanics. I think physicists have a tremendous reluctance to admit this. There is a long history of belief in quantum mechanics, and people have faith in it. And they don’t like having this faith challenged.

Omni: So our image is the lens, the apparatus suggesting the point. The point in turn suggests electrons and particles.

Bohm: And the track of particles on the photograph. Now what instrument would illustrate wholeness? Perhaps the holograph. Waves from the whole object come into each part of the hologram. This makes the hologram a kind of knowledge of the whole object. If you examine it with a very narrow beam of laser light, it’s as if you were looking through a window the size of that laser beam. If you expand the beam, it’s as though you are looking through a broader window that sees the object more precisely and from more angles. But you are always getting information about the whole object, no matter how much or little of it you take.

But let’s put aside the hologram because that’s only a static record. Returning to the actual situation, we have a constant dynamic pattern of waves coming off an object and interfering with the original wave. Within that pattern of movement, many objects are enfolded in each region of space and time.

Classical physics says that reality is actually little particles that separate the world into its independent elements. Now I’m proposing the reverse, that the fundamental reality is the enfoldment and unfoldment, and these particles are abstractions from that. We could picture the electron not as a particle that exists continuously but as something coming in and going out and then coming in again. If these various condensations are close together, they approximate a track. The electron itself can never be separated from the whole of space, which is its ground.

About the time I was looking into these questions, a BBC science program showed a device that illustrates these things very well. It consists of two concentric glass cylinders. Between them is a viscous fluid, such as glycerin. If a drop of insoluble ink is placed in the glycerin and the outer cylinder is turned slowly, the drop of dye will be drawn out into a thread. Eventually the thread gets so diffused it cannot be seen. At that moment there seems to be no order present at all. Yet if you slowly turn the cylinder backward, the glycerin draws back into its original form, and suddenly the ink drop is visible again. The ink had been enfolded into the glycerin, and it was unfolded again by the reverse turning.

Omni: Suppose you put a drop of dye in the cylinder and turn it a few times, then put another drop in the same place and turn it. When you turn the cylinder back, wouldn’t you get a kind of oscillation?

Bohm: Yes, you would get a movement in and out. We could put in one drop of dye and turn it and then put in another drop of dye at a slightly different place, and so on. The first and second droplets are folded a different number of times. If we keep this up and then turn the cylinder backward, the drops continually appear and disappear. So it would look as if a particle were crossing the space, but in fact it’s always the whole system that’s involved.

We can discuss the movement of all matter in terms of this folding and unfolding, which I call the holomovement.

Omni: What do you think is the order of the holomovement?

Bohm: It may lie outside of time as we ordinarily know it. If the universe began with the Big Bang and there are black holes, then we must eventually reach places where the notion of time and space breaks down. Anything could happen. As various cosmologists have put it, if a black hole came out with a sign flashing COCA COLA, it shouldn’t be surprising. Within the singularity none of the laws as we know them apply. There are no particles; they are all disintegrated. There is no space and no time. Whatever is, is beyond any concept we have at present. The present physics implies that the total conceptual basis of physics must be regarded as completely inadequate. The grand unification [of the four forces of the universe] could be nothing but an abstraction in the face of some further unknown.

I propose something like this: Imagine an infinite sea of energy filling empty space, with waves moving around in there, occasionally coming together and producing an intense pulse. Let’s say one particular pulse comes together and expands, creating our universe of space-time and matter. But there could well be other such pulses. To us, that pulse looks like a big bang; In a greater context, it’s a little ripple. Everything emerges by unfoldment from the holomovement, then enfolds back into the implicate order. I call the enfolding process “implicating,” and the unfolding “explicating.” The implicate and explicate together are a flowing, undivided wholeness. Every part of the universe is related to every other part but in different degrees.

There are two experiences: One is movement in relation to other things; the other is the sense of flow The movement of meaning is the sense of flow. But even in moving through space, there is a movement of meaning. In a moving picture, with twenty-four frames per second, one frame follows another, moving from the eye through the optic nerve, into the brain. The experience of several frames together gives you the sense of flow. This is a direct experience of the implicate order.

In classical mechanics, movement or velocity is defined as the relation between the position now and the position a short time ago. What was a short time ago is gone, so you relate what is to what is not. This isn’t a logical concept. In the implicate order you are relating different frames that are copresent in consciousness. You’re relating what is to what is. A moment contains flow or movement. The moment may be long or short, as measured in time. In consciousness a moment is around a tenth of a second. Electronic moments are much shorter, but a moment of history might be a century.

Omni: So a moment enfolds all the past?

Bohm: Yes, but the recent past is enfolded more strongly. At any given moment we feel the presence of all the past and also the anticipated future. It’s all present and active. I could use the example of the cylinder again. Let’s say we enfold one droplet h times. Then we put another droplet in and enfold it N times. The relationship between the droplets remains the same no matter how thoroughly they are enfolded. So as you unfold, you will get back the original relationship. Imagine if we take four or five droplets–all highly enfolded–the relationship between them is still there in a very subtle way, even though it is not in space and not in time. But, of course, it can be transformed into space and time by turning the cylinder. The best metaphor might involve memory. We remember a great many events, which are all present together. Their succession is in that momentary memory: We don’t have to run through them all to reproduce that time succession. We already have the succession.

Omni: And a sense of movement–so you have replaced time with movement?

Bohm: Yes, in the sense of movement of the symphony, rather than the movement of the orchestra on a bus, say, through physical space.

Omni: What do you think that says about consciousness?

Bohm: Much of our experience suggests that the implicate order is natural for understanding consciousness: When you are talking to somebody, your whole intention to speak enfolds a large number of words. You don’t choose them one by one. There are any number of examples of the implicate order in our experience of consciousness. Any one word has behind it a whole range of meaning enfolded in thought.

Consciousness is unfolded in each individual. Clearly, it’s shared between people as they look at one object and verify that it’s the same. So any high level of consciousness is a social process. There may be some level of sensorimotor perception that is purely individual, but any abstract level depends on language, which is social. The word, which is outside, evokes the meaning, which is inside each person.

Meaning is the bridge between consciousness and matter. Any given array of matter has for any particular mind a significance. The other side of this is the relationship in which meaning is immediately effective in matter. Suppose you see a shadow on a dark night. If it means “assailant,” your adrenaline flows, your heart beats faster, blood pressure rises, and muscles tense. The body and all your thoughts are affected; everything about you has changed. If you see that it’s only a shadow, there’s an abrupt change again.

That is an example of the implicate order: Meaning enfolds the whole world into me, and vice versa-that enfolded meaning is unfolded as action, through my body and then through the world. The word hormone means “messenger,” that is, a substance carrying some meaning. Neurotransmitters carry meaning, and that meaning profoundly affects the immune system. This understanding could be the beginning of a different attitude to mind-and to life.

Omni: Descartes held mind and external reality together with God. You’re holding the two with meaning.

Bohm: I say meaning is being! So any transformation of society must result in a profound change of meaning. Any change of meaning for the individual would change the whole because all individuals are so similar that it can be communicated.

Omni: What do you think might convince the next generation of physicists, who seem very skeptical, that the implicate order is worth investigating?

Bohm: The most convincing thing would be to develop the theory mathematically and make some predictions. A few years ago The New York Times noted that some physicists were critical of grand unification theory, saying that not much had been achieved. Defenders of grand unification theories said it would take about twenty years to see results.

It seems that people are ready to wait twenty years for results if you’ve got formulas. If there are no formulas, they don’t want to consider it. Formulas are means of talking utter nonsense until you understand what they mean. Every page of formulas usually contains six or seven arbitrary assumptions that take weeks of hard study to penetrate.

Younger physicists usually appreciate the implicate order because it makes quantum mechanics easier to grasp. By the time they’re through graduate school, they’ve become dubious about it because they’ve heard that hidden variables are of no use because they’ve been refuted. Of course, nobody has really refuted them.

At this point, I think that the major issue is mathematics. In supersymmetry theory an interesting piece of mathematics will attract attention, even without any experimental confirmation.

Omni: If scientists could accept your theory, would it change the meaning of nature for them? Would it change the meaning of science in general?

Bohm: We have become a scientific society. This society has produced all sorts of discoveries and technology, but if it leads to destruction, either through war or through devastation of natural resources, then it will have been the least successful society that ever existed. We are now in danger of that.

Where we are going depends on the programs of four thousand five hundred million people, all somewhat different, most of them opposed to one another. Every moment these programs are changing in detail. Who can say where they are going to lead us? All we can do is start a movement among those few people who are interested in changing the meaning.

Omni: You’ve suggested that it may be possible to develop “group minds.” Could they serve as a potential avenue for this change of meaning?

Bohm: They could: If we don’t establish these absolute boundaries between minds, then I think it’s possible they could in some way unite as one mind. If there were a genuine understanding of and feeling for wholeness in this group mind, it might be enough to change things–though as the external circumstances gain momentum it becomes harder. This is important, especially if there is a catastrophe, so that the notion of group minds might remain in the consciousness of survivors.

Omni: All that seems to imply a radical change in the concept of being human.

Bohm: Yes. The notion of permanent identity would go by the wayside. This would be terrifying at first. The present mind, identified as it is with the personality, would react to protect the sense of personal “self” against that terror.

Omni: That seems to fit in well with your thoughts about death.

Bohm: Death must be connected with questions of time and identity. When you die, everything on which your identity depends is going. All things in your memory will go. Your whole definition of what you are will go. The whole sense of being separate from anything will go because that’s part of your identity. Your whole sense of time must go. Is there anything that will exist beyond death? That is the question everybody has always asked. It doesn’t make sense to say something goes on in time. Rather I would say everything sinks into the implicate order, where there is no time. But suppose we say that right now, when I’m alive, the same thing is happening. The implicate order is unfolding to be me again and again each moment. And the past me is gone.

Omni: The past you, then, has been snatched back into the implicate order.

Bohm: That’s right. Anything I know about “me” is in the past. The present “me” is the unknown. We say there is only one implicate order, only one present. But it projects itself as a whole series of moments. Ultimately, all moments are really one. Therefore now is eternity.

In one sense, everything, including me, is dying every moment into eternity and being born again, so all that will happen at death is that from a certain moment certain features will not be born again. But our whole thought process causes us to confront this with great fear in an attempt to preserve identity. One of my interests at this stage of life is looking at that fear.

What is Wealth?

Timothy Wilken, MD

The collective term we humans use to describe what we value is “wealth”.

The human species emerged in the world of space-binding. Here the rule of survival was fight or flight. The values in this world were adversarial. Adversary relationship originates on earth in the animal world. Earth supplies limited space for the animals. Space is finite. Good space is even more finite. This means it is very limited. There is only so much good water, so much good grazing land, so much good shelter, and so much good food. There is not enough to go around. The space-binders must compete for this limited amount of good space. They compete adversarialy. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing other space-binders. Humans living as space-binders follow the adversarial rule. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing their enemies. In this world survival depends on securing good space and avoiding bad space. Bad space is where the predators live – bad space is where you lose – bad space is where you die. Bad space has threatened humans for a very long time as Jared Diamond1998 explains:

“For most of the time since the ancestors of modern humans diverged from the ancestors of the living great apes, around 7 million years ago, all humans on Earth fed themselves exclusively by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants, as the Blackfeet still did in the 19th century. It was only within the last 11,000 years that some peoples turned to what is termed food production: that is, domesticating wild animals and plants and eating the resulting livestock and crops.” ⁽¹⁾ 

Jared Diamond makes the point, that for 99.9% of the seven-million-years that our species has existed, we have been hunter-gatherers. And, for that same period, our species has been dominated by the adversary way, and all human values have been adversarial values.

Adversarial wealth – physical force

Physical force is what adversarial humans value most. The force to physically control other humans. Adversarial wealth is weapons, fighting men, horses, fortresses, that which gives me the adversarial advantage.

In our modern world, adversarial wealth is B2 bombers, F15 fighter aircraft, aircraft carriers, tanks, military satellites, explosives of all types from hand grenades to nuclear weapons, trained soldiers and last but not least guns.

The adversary world is a game of with losers and winners. This is a world of fighting and flighting – of pain and dying. Survival depends on securing good space and avoiding bad space. To win in this game someone must lose. Winning is always at the cost of another. All humans living in the adversarial world are struggling to avoid losing – struggling to avoid being hurt. Recall our definition:

CONFLICT –def–> The struggle to avoid loss – the struggle to avoid being hurt.

Here humans must fight and flee to stay alive, and they do. Always ready at a moments notice to go tooth and nail to avoid losing – to avoid death. Losers/winners is the harshest of games. Winning is always at the cost of another’s life. The loser tends to resist with all of his might occasionally prevailing by killing or wounding his attacker. So both parties can lose, turning the game – losers/winners into losers/losers.

If we analyze adversary relationships, we discover that individuals are less after the relationship. (1+1) < 2.

In the adversarial world where the loser forfeits his life. (1+1) = 1. Or, in the end game of losers/losers, both adversaries may die in battle. (1+1) = 0.

The adversarial value system is much intact in our present world. Much of today’s wealth is weapons. Nearly all of today’s nations maintain large armies, navies, and airforces. They also maintain equally large national, state, and local police forces. The number of weapons in private hands is equally enormous – over 200,000,000 just within the United States1999. Adversary wealth is physical force – adversary wealth is firepower.

Adversarial humanity uses force to seize their wants and needs. By coercing the actions of others with force or threat of force, they seek to protect their own lives and well being. They seek to optimize their individual survival and to make their individual lives meaningful by hurting others.

Adversary humanity sees self and other as separate – as different – as distinctly apart. Things are black or white – good or bad. You are either for me or against me. You are either my ally or my enemy.

However, in 1776, a new option for humanity emerged with the institutionalization of Neutrality. And with this new option came a new set of values – neutral values.

Neutral wealth – money

Neutral relationships originated in the plant world.

Sunlight provides unlimited energy for the plants. Each individual plant needs only the sun, and adequate water and minerals to survive. Plant survival does not require any relationship with other. This fact makes plants the independent class of life – independent of other.

Humans living in the world of institutional Neutrality view themselves as independent of others. While they should not deliberately hurt other humans, they are not required to help them.

Their success or failure depends solely on their own efforts and talents. Individuals have no relationship with each other. Individuals have no awareness of each other, they ignore each other. To survive in the neutral world, you must be self-sufficient. If we analyze neutral relationships, we discover that individuals are unchanged by their relationship. They are neither less nor more after the relationship. They are the same. (1+1) = 2.

Choices which do not hurt or help are neutral choices. Actions which do not hurt or help are neutral actions. Relationships which do not hurt or help are neutral relationships. The mechanism of relationship is conducted through a free and fair market with the honest exchange of merchandise of good value at a fair price. Recall our definition:

FAIR TRADE –def–> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair – to insure that the price is not too high or too low – to insure that neither party loses.

Institutional Neutrality is about fairness. The market place is a fair and safe place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold at a fair price. All citizens are guaranteed freedom from loss.

The medium of exchange in the neutral world is money. Money is used as symbolic representation of all real wealth. For all intensive purposes in the Neutral world money and real wealth are the same. Money is what neutral humans most value. The money to purchase help. Neutral wealth is any negotiable security – cash, stocks, bonds, certificates of deposit, that which can be exchanged in the fair market.

Neutral humanity uses money to purchase their wants and needs. By purchasing the actions of others with money, they seek to protect their own lives and well being. They seek to insure their individual survival and make their individual lives meaningful by ignoring others.

Neutral humanity sees self and other as independent – as separate – as different – as distinctly apart – as buyers and sellers in the great market.

And, if other is not independent, if other does not have the price of admission to participate in the great market, then neutral humanity cannot see other at all.

In 1999, humanity has the option for synergic relationship. If we choose Synergy we will adopt a new set of values – synergic values.

Synergic wealth – mutual life support

In a synergic culture wealth is defined very differently. Synergic wealth is that which supports life for both self and other. It is mutual life support. Synergic wealth by definition excludes adversary wealth – physical force that hurts other human beings, and neutral wealth – money that ignores other human beings.

Synergic humans recognize that interdependence is the human condition. They recognize that all humans need help unless they wish to live at the level of animal subsistence. They choose to help others and trust that others will choose to help them.

They know that adversarial humans use coercion to force others help them. They know that help obtained with force or fraud is the lowest quality help because the helper is hurt.

They know that neutral humans use money to buy help from others in the fair market. They know that help purchased in the market place is of average quality because the helper is ignored.

  They understand that synergic humans use co-Operation to attract help from others. They help others and trust others to help them. They know that help attracted by helping others is of highest quality because the helper is helped.

Recall that when others understand that by helping you, they will also be helped, they will automatically help you. That when others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your every success. Recall our definition:

Co-OPERATION –def–> Operating together to insure that both parties win, and that neither party loses. The negotiation to insure that both parties are helped, and that neither party is hurt.

Synergic relationships are mutually helpful. Both parties in the relationship experience a gain. In Synergic relationships, one individual plus another individual is more after their relationship than before. (1+1) >> 2. Synergic relationships are marked by low conflict, high effectiveness and enormous productivity.

Synergic humanity uses co-Operation to attract their wants and needs. By attracting the actions of others with co-Operation, they are able to protect their lives and well being. They seek to insure their individual survival and make their individual lives meaningful by helping others.

Synergic humanity sees self and other as components of the same whole – as aspects of the same unity – as existing together – as a co-Operative alliance.

Co-Operation is mutually life affirming. Both self and other join in an alliance to seek mutual survival and mutual meaning.

They seek to be more together than they can be apart.

Life force

Life is the basis for all synergic values. All forms of life are animated by the life force. The life force is not well understood, but it seeks to survive and to extend itself into universe. The life force on planet earth is known to be three and one half billion years old.

It is like a special flame, sort of a living fire, we pass it to our children in the act of procreation. But, we do not know how to rekindle the flame should it go out. The life force itself is the very basis of living action.

(Life Force) x (Time) = Living Action

No life force. No living action. Therefore, the sanctity of life itself must be the highest synergic value. Therefore, synergic wealth is defined as life itself – life of both self and other – and that which promotes mutual well being. That which satisfies the wants and needs of both self and other. That which promotes mutual survival and makes life mutually meaningful for both self and other. We can now further define our synergic value system.

IMPORTANCE –def–> The amount of wealth effected by an event compared to the total amount of wealth.

WEALTH (effected)
WEALTH (total)

RISK –def–> What is the amount wealth that could be lost during an event – action, reaction & resultant.

OPPORTUNITY –def–> What is the amount of wealth that could be gained during an event – action, reaction & resultant.

ALLOWED ACTION –def–> Any action is allowed which does not injure or hurt.

SYNERGIC ACTION –def–> Any allowed action which helps.

DYMAXION ACTION –def–> The least synergic action that triggers an event that produces the greatest gain in wealth.

If we are to move beyond adversity and conflict — if we are to move beyond neutrality and anonymity, then we must get to know each other. The secret of creating synergic relationship is WE-ness. Synergic relationship is close and personal. It requires trust, caring and committment. It requires honesty and openness.

Trust is not a new word for humanity. It was coined long ago when the world was dominated by the adversary way. Trust meant that I could rely on you not to hurt me. In a world of black and white – good or bad – friend or foe – trust meant that I was safe to assume that you are not my enemy. Trust meant the ability to rely on the absence of a negative.

Synergic trust is much more than simply the ability to rely on the absence of a negative. It is that plus the ability to rely on the presence of a positive. Synergic trust means that I can rely on other not only to not hurt me, but also to help me.

In the future, we humans can use co-Operation to attract help from others by insuring that those who help us are also helped.

When we co-Operate, others will seek to invest their action with ours for a share of the cooperators’ surplus. They will understand that when we win, they will win, and they will support and celebrate our every success.

If we humans choose a synergic future, we will trust each other. We will care about each other. We will help each other. Our relationships will be loving positive experiences. We will all win. We will be more together than we can ever be apart.

We humans can create a future based on synergic trust. We can build it by working together. We can heal ourselves and our world by co-Operating. The choice is ours.

1—Life
2—Three Ways
3—The Relationship Continuum
4—Three Classes of Life
5—Human Neutrality
6—Interdependence
7—Wealth

The Science — UnCommon Science – (PDF)

Intro—Science 2001
1—Knowing 2001
2—A Limit to Knowing
3—Scientific Mistakes
4—What Do We Know

5—Order (PDF)-New

The Present — Crisis: Danger & Opportunity

The Future – A Synergic Future

Human Neutrality

Timothy Wilken, MD

Today human life is not synergic. Most of humanity are ignorant of the natural law of Synergy. Most humans ignore or hurt each other. Most humans ignore or hurt the environment. This is the source of nearly all our current problems.

In the free world, we have created a system of human Neutrality as a mechanism to avoid the loss of Adversity. This is the system that brought us capitalism and the great market.

Remember that the neutral relationship originates in the plant world. Sunlight provides unlimited energy for the plants. And so each individual plant needs only the sun, and adequate water and minerals to survive. Plants are solar energy collectors. They use the sun’s radiant energy in photosynthesis to manufacture glucose, carbohydrates and other plant cells. Individual plants do not relate to each other. They relate only to the earth and the sun.

No plant will deliberately hurt another plant, its success or failure depends solely on its own efforts. Individual plants have no relationship with each other. Plants have no awareness of each other, they ignore each other. To survive as a plant, you must be self-sufficient. Plants are the truly independent. They need no other life form to survive. Each plant lives or dies on its own. If it sits luckily in the Sun with an abundance of solar energy, it does not assist its brother in the shade. The motto of plants could be to live and let live.

The values of human Neutrality parallel the laws of plant neutrality. Free and independent citizens relate to each other as equals. They are prohibited from hurting another free and independent citizen, but that are not required to help another citizen.

The mechanism of relationship is conducted through a free and fair market with the honest exchange of merchandise of good value at a fair price.

FAIR TRADE –def–> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair – to insure that the price is not too high or too low – to insure that neither party loses.

Human Neutrality is about fairness. The market place is a fair and safe place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold at a fair price. All citizens are guaranteed freedom from loss.

In the free market of Neutrality, our identities and personal relationships are unimportant. We purchase products anonymously, usually without knowing the seller’s name, or he ours. When I enter McDonalds to purchase my lunch, I see only the product, the hamburger stacked in the warmer. I ignore the clerk. I don’t know her name or her story. I see the hamburger, that’s what I want. The clerk behind the counter ignores me. She doesn’t know my name or my story. She sees my five dollars, that’s what she wants.

The store is clean and I feel safe. I expect the kitchen is clean and I will get a good product for a fair price. We will trade. We will speak the neutral words of the trading ritual. I never knowing her name, she never knowing mine. “May I help you?” “Thank you and have a nice day.” We trade.

Fair Trade

Now our trade is fair. By definition, the lunch McDonalds is selling has a fair market value of $5.00. My five dollars has a fair market value of $5.00. We trade fairly. Economically nothing much has changed for me. I had five dollars in cash when I entered McDonalds, and I left with five dollars worth of lunch. My net worth is the same.

While I obviously got some utility from the exchange, I preferred the lunch to my cash. In a strict economic sense, I am little changed by this exchange. In fair exchanges, $5.00 in cash equals $5.00 in food. In fact, McDonalds created the lunch for less than $5.00, the fair market price contains some profit for the seller. But, when I earned my $5.00, I did it by I selling some product or service that cost me a little less. I’m entitled to a profit when I sell products or services. That’s the neutral way.

If we analyze neutral relationships, we discover that in a neutral exchange (1+1) = 2. Humans institute Neutrality to escape Adversity – to protect themselves from loss.

The first principle of human Neutrality is to AVOID LOSS.

In the language of games, where you can win, lose, or draw, we are obtaining a draw. We, like the plants, will be ignored by the experience. We will be the same after the experience as before. The advantage of changing from Adversity to Neutrality is not that we will win, but rather that we will avoid losing.

Neutrality offers a safe haven for humans. With Neutrality it is possible for us humans to avoid playing the adversary game. We are free to work without fear that others will hurt us. We are free and independent citizens. We are free to create products or provide services and sell those in the great market for a fair price.

The capitalistic economics of Neutrality produces a major advance over the economics of Adversity. Humans using neutral organization are much more successful than those using adversarial organization. Because human needs and wants are many and complex and there is no way any individual can meet these needs, we have evolved the great market. We operate as independent producers and consumers. Each neutral citizen is responsible for purchasing their own needs and wants.

Neutral government is committed to fairness for all its citizens.

The government’s only legitimate purpose is to insure economic independence and protect individual freedom. To insure a safe and stable environment that allows the free market to work best.

Today’s free world is dominated by Neutrality in the form of neutral government, neutral nations, neutral organizations, and neutral value systems.

The unchallenged success of human Neutrality in the United States and within the rest of the Free World has established that most modern values and beliefs are neutral ones. Modern humans are strongly convinced that they are self sufficient and independent, or at least that they should be self sufficient and independent. They believe in their right to own property and to freely and independently control their property. These beliefs are so strong in our present culture, that it is almost impossible to imagine things any other way.

Trouble in paradise

But, is neutrality really the best way for humanity?

With careful analysis of the neutral relationship, we discover that the best one can get is only equal value. The best result of a neutral relationship is a draw. We are ignored by the experience. We are the same after the experience as before. At worst, the price is less than fair, we get cheated. We lose. Or the product is not good, we get ripped off. We are less after the experience than before. At best within a neutral exchange (1+1 )= 2, at worst (1+1) < 2.

And while today’s beliefs in freedom and independence may be our most highly prized values, many of our neutral values are not very humanitarian.

While hurting others is highly discouraged, helping others is rarely encouraged. We are focused on products, and help is just another product. Generally, we ignore each other. The free market is a neutral, anonymous and completely impersonal place.

You don’t know the person serving you at McDonalds. You don’t know their name and they don’t know yours. There is nothing special about the relationship. You may eat your lunch there every day for a year, but go in once without your wallet, and you won’t eat. They will ignore you. If you don’t have the admission price. You don’t get in. In a world where the highest value is independence, why should I help anyone. Everyone should be independent and not require any help. In the world of human Neutrality only products and their fair prices really matter. If you can’t pay your way you don’t exist.

Despite all our pride in being free and independent, we humans are blind to the true nature of our neutral relationships. Being truly independent means you are alone. You are all by yourself. There is no one to help you if you get in trouble. The casualties of human Neutrality are numerous. Because we are independent, because we are self sufficient, we are encouraged to ignore the problems and difficulties of others.

It’s always someone else’s job to help others not ours. If my coworker gets fired it’s not my problem. If there are hungry children in my community, it’s not my problem. Neutral humans are indifferent. Neutral humans ignore.

Today we have enormous and evergrowing levels of human poverty and suffering and starvation effecting hundreds of millions of humans worldwide. Millions of children die needlessly every year.

Today, homelessness is an institution found in every city and town in America. Large numbers of humans live out their short lives completely ignored. Hundreds of children disappear every day from the streets of our cities and towns – many without notice. Neutral governments are indifferent. Neutral governments ignore.

Neutrality only works well when there are unlimited resources. Remember the plants have an unlimited supply of sunlight.

As solar collectors, they are the truly independent form of life. Their independence requires unlimited resources.

We humans share the animal body of the space-binder. And good space is limited. This is why Adversity dominated human life until the 17th century. As Hazel Henderson in conversation with Fritjof Capra explained in 1988:

“Until the sixteenth century the notion of purely economic phenomena, isolated from the fabric of life, did not exist. Nor was there a national system of markets. That, too, is a relatively recent phenomena which originated in seventeenth century England.

“Of course markets have existed since the Stone Age, but they were based on barter, not cash, and so they were bound to be local. The motive of individual gain from economic activities was generally absent. The very idea of profit, let alone interest, was either inconceivable or banned.” (1)

Human Neutrality emerged in the old world with the creation of national markets, but it was a partial Neutrality strongly dominated by the adversary systems still in place, and constrained by limited resources.

For Neutrality to work, there must be unlimited resources. A more complete and purer form of human Neutrality was institutionalized by the American Revolution that founded the United States of America. The early colonists were in the right place at the right time.

The right place was the empty continent of North America. Millions of acres of arable land and forests, filled with abundant water in millions of steams, rivers, and lakes and stocked with uncountable numbers of wildlife. This was further enriched with enormous reserves of iron, coal, copper, aluminum, zinc, lead, gold, silver, oil, and much more – all available for the taking.

The right time was 1776, by then the collective power of humanity’s time-binding had discovered, invented, and developed the tools and knowhow that created the mechanism of the Agricultural, Industrial, and Transportational Revolutions. The level of knowledge and technology available to the American colonists coupled with enormous North American reserves, provided them with cheap food, cheap power, and cheap transportation. Thus, conditions were perfect for the success of human Neutrality. America would have the equivalent of unlimited resources for the next 150 years.

The North American continent was nearly empty when human Neutrality began, today it is getting full. We no longer have a limitless abundance of natural resources available for the taking. Our world of plenty is being reduced to a world of scarcity.

In 1776, there were less than a billion humans on the planet, today we approach 6 billion.

As things start to get scarce, the humans lose their option for Neutrality. Soon they have to learn to do without. They go without owning their own homes. They go without higher education for their children. They go without free time for recreation as they are forced to get a second job. Or, they sidestep back into the adversary world – they steal, embezzle, or defraud.

Today, within the United States, the very center of human Neutrality, we see declining quality of life, declining compensation for all workers, deteriorating nuclear families, and declining numbers of humans able to own their own homes. We see increasing mental illness and child abuse; ever escalating health care costs, and more humans without access to medical care. Examining today’s youth, we see declining numbers of college graduates, mixed with increasing drug and alcohol use; increasing suicide; casual sexuality and unwanted pregnancy.

And there are even bigger problems facing Americans and the rest of humanity.

Acid rain, ozone depletion, water and air pollution, toxic buildup, strip mining, deforestation, erosion & topsoil depletion; greenhouse effect, ice age, nuclear winter, el nino, and even asteroids threatening the planet. These big problems are invisible to indifferent governments and ignoring citizens. Whose problems are these anyway? In Neutrality, they belong to no one. They are certainly not mine.

Human Independence is an Illusion

When we humans institutionalized Neutrality over two hundred years ago, it was a great advance over Adversity, it dramatically reduced the pain and suffering for humanity. In the 18th century, Neutrality was a major advance for humankind. The neutral system gave individuals opportunities for great economic success. The birth of capitalistic economics greatly enriched the human condition. Neutral organization was more powerful than adversary organization. Neutrality did work well in the free world for many humans who inhabited it two hundred years ago. This will all be explained in The Past section of this book.

Human independence is an illusion. We humans bought into this illusion in the ‘free’ world that was created in 1776, and many of us have lived by the rules of Neutrality ever since. But things have changed, today, Institutional Neutrality no longer works for humanity – not even for those ‘living’ in free world.

We humans are not independent, we are interdependent.

In summary then, Neutrality was instituted by humans to avoid the loss of Adversity. It is a mechanism most suited for independent organisms which humans are not. Its great benefit over adversity is as a mechanism to avoid loss. Neutrality is dominated by fair trade – the bartering to insure that the price is fair – that neither party loses in a fair exchange. The market is everything.

Neutrality avoids losing, but at best only gets you a draw.

You are ignored by the exchange. (X + Y) = 1. Neutrality only works when there are unlimited resources. The plants – a naturally independent form of life – have unlimited sunlight.

Earlier in our human history, we had relatively unlimited resources especially in the new world of America. Things have changed. Our human population has grown from less than one billion in 1776 to nearly six billion. Neutrality is no longer an option.

1—Life
2—Three Ways
3—The Relationship Continuum
4—Three Classes of Life
5—Human Neutrality
6—Interdependence
7—Wealth

The Science — UnCommon Science – (PDF)

Intro—Science 2001
1—Knowing 2001
2—A Limit to Knowing
3—Scientific Mistakes
4—What Do We Know

5—Order (PDF)-New

The Present — Crisis: Danger & Opportunity

The Future – A Synergic Future