Maybe we can´t ever know an “ultimate” truth. Why should evolution have bestowed any capacity beyond survival needs? So maybe, too, we cannot know for sure what the climate will be in future. And yet, predicting what may happen is what knowledge is all about - at least, from the evolutionary viewpoint. We are graduates of millions of years of evolutionary education - the school of hard knocks, if ever there was one - and have, more than any other species on this planet at least, developed an ability to discern likelihoods and plan for their consequences. So despite being (in the view of many holding views one and three at least) responsible for making something of a serious mess of this planet, we are the ones best able to save it. What changes are required if that is to happen?

To determine our response to these views, I contend that we have to be able to qualitatively discern between them. And to make that qualitative distinction, we can use the development paradigms used by Kohlberg et al above. So for this, let´s return briefly to the parable at the beginning of chapter two.

Different stages in the development of understanding, as articulated by the philosopher Gebser, were represented by different figures in that story.

“Gebser´s first structure, the Archaic, which he also designates as the zero dimension stage because it is antecedent to any process of differentiation and integration, smacks of a focus in the reptilian brain. The second, the Magical, which he designates as the one dimension stage, allows a rudimentary self-sense and a crude degree of differentiation, which would still permit, for example, that the harming of an image would harm the object of the image. This can be seen as focussing around the reptilian and lower mammalian brains. The third, the Mythical, two-dimensional understanding of the world, clearly defines self vs other, us vs them as in tribes and football teams - “everybody [has] to think the same thing, share the same symbols, and have the same father-god-king in common” (Werner, 1957, as quoted in Wilber, 1984, p. 78) - the mammalian belongingness needs. The fourth, the Mental, three-dimensional understanding of the world, completes man´s differentiation from nature, discovers the mindscape and uses it to master his or her world - the focus shifts to the neocortex. The fifth, the Integral, four-dimensional stage, integrates the previous stages and the three brains´ activities, and similarly integrates experiences in terms of both their spans and depths. . . It´s like a using a spectrometer or those computer-generated 3-D images to suddenly see pictures in three dimensions rather than two. It enfolds qualitative as well as quantitative understanding.”

(Mc Dermott, 1998: for more on Gebser, see http://www.gaiamind.com/Gebser.html)

So we can begin to sort out which of the viewpoints we should give the most credibility to by applying those levels in Gebser and my parable to them. Mental level views should be given more credibility than Mythical; Mythical than Magical; and Magical than Archaic. I should give more credibility to Einstein´s explanation of relativity theory than to a three year-old´s. Yet this is considered to be so politically incorrect as to be untenable by many at the mythic-membership level! Too bad.

But Gebser mentioned a higher level - Integral - which instead of being merely linear, as prevails at the Mental level, can take a more multi-dimensional, multiperspectival approach to arrive at a level of understanding more reflecting the level of complexity of the phenomenon being examined. As Einstein said, in disposing of the first-approximation, Medieval expediency of Occam´s Razor “Everything should be made simple, but not simpler than it is” (Occam was a Franciscan logician, born in 1288, who said “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily” - that is, “the simplest explanation is the best”, which is fine for a first approximation, but not for closing the lid on a subject).

Meteorologists use computer modelling to assist in gaining that Integral perspective, and constantly adjust their models to fit information received. Some view twos said “don´t call it science”. OK, we won´t, I don´t care; but it is then, using this qualitative approach, discernible as something better than science so defined. Computer modelling cannot possibly ever be entirely accurate, but it should be able to develop a more “differentiated, articulated and hierarchically integrated” view, and I contend that closer approximations to reality are qualitatively more persuasive. How much of the views held by individuals are based upon undeveloped ‘gut reactions?´ Should such a mythical level reaction be given equal credibility with a mental level one? There is nothing wrong with adopting worldviews based on temperament more than mutually reinforcing observations from mindscape (a la Plato) and fact-space. There is everything wrong, however, in thinking that the world must adapt to your views, or that your views dictate the way the world is. They dictate your view of the world, not the world.

So views that are resolved upon what one wants to believe are wrong in the sense of “immature.” Not wrong for a toddler, who needs such views to grow; but wrong in the sense of mature decision-making. Should scoffing at something carry more weight than mindscape/fact-space correlation? To a toddler, scoffing will. To a mature adult, it won´t. The incredible is not necessarily untrue for being incredible.

To illustrate, let´s go back briefly to chapter one. String theory has been scoffed at as never being capable of empirical verification, and therefore ‘unscientific´. The same criticism applies to the standard model, with never-to-be-visible (?) fermions at the most fundamental level. The same criticism also applied to atoms, unseen and at the second-most fundamental level before the atomic bomb. If an atomic bomb isn´t loud enough to wake one up, what is? Certain equations have physical correlates. Continuation of a mindscape process beyond the capacity for fact-space verification is a necessary process of the growth of knowledge. Just as Dawkins pointed out that detecting a blurred view of a predator had survival value over no view at all, so fuzzy views have survival value over no views at all. Note that “fuzzy logic” refers to the process of sharpening focus on an existing situation - as progressively happened in Dawkins account of the evolution of the eye. “Probability” refers to estimating the likelihood of a future event occurring (I mention this because there appears some confusion of the terms in references to them). But just as with vision being less fuzzy progressively improved one´s survival prospects, probabilistic predictive ability was also a major evolutionary benefit. Not because you learnt as such, as much as that learning led to preventative, precautionary action (“Whoa, I´ve never seen that sneaking critter before, but it looks a bit like the one that ate my aunt. I´d better get outta here”). Unlike the eye, however, the brain has enfolded its earlier forms “like a city built across the ages” (Combs, title to chapter three):

The reptilian brain, with its “dominant role in genetically programmed activities such as defending territory, hunting, mating, and forming social pecking orders”, and its “stubbornness and extreme inability to learn anything new”

The paleomammalian brain, the reptilians brains “ emotional thinking cap”, liberating the creature from stereotypical behaviours, thereby increasing its adaptability, and allowing social bonding to take place

The neomammalian brain, with its capacity for language and other intellectual skills.

(Combs, pp 41-42, quoting MacLean)

If views one or three are correct, then acting upon view two - that is, letting our reptilian brains prevail over our neomammalian ones by not taking any preventative, precautionary action - could even be a matter of extinction. As the saying goes - “Death is Mother Nature´s way of telling you to slow down.” So let´s get back to computer modelling as a tool for more integrated understanding (albeit focussing on only one quadrant, and thus not truly integrated in Wilber's sense of the word).

One of the institutes producing computer models is NASA´s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. In its article “Forcings and Chaos in Global Climate Change” (NASA Goddard), it begins by confirming that “there is no way to predict the timing and location of (climate changes) far ahead of time”. But it can produce computer models based on chaos theory, compare them with observed phenomena from the past and present. Then, if the correlation is good, there´s an equivalent probability that they may be reliable for the future. They posted two such models, at:

Which models show correlations to reality of 92 percent with the atmospheric chaos model, and 68 percent for the Atmosphere and Ocean Chaos. The reason given for the comparatively lower correlation when the ocean´s are included is that the “simple” model used was unable to accommodate the observed El Nino warming in 1983 or the La Nina cooling in 1989. Still, 68% isn´t too bad. But look where the projections are heading - almost straight up!

The study´s conclusions:

1. that observed climate change in the past two decades contains unambiguous signatures of both natural and anthropogenic climate forcings.

2. that year-to-year climate change at middle latitudes. . . are primarily chaotic fluctuations. Forcings such as greenhouse gases, on the average, alter temperature over two decades by only a few tenths of a degree, while chaotic fluctuations are several times larger. Thus the forcings, even from a strong El Nino, can modify the probability of unusual temperature or precipitation by a modest amount, but they do not allow for a reliable definitive forecast of seasonal climate. Therefore any claims that El Nino will do this or that to next winter's climate at middle or high latitudes should be taken with a large grain of salt.

3. that Earth is not in radiative balance with space. Specifically, the observed temperature changes imply that Earth is absorbing about 0.5 Watt per square meter of sunlight more than it is emitting back to space. This imbalance is presumably due to greenhouse gases added to Earth's atmosphere over the past century, to which climate has only partially responded because of the large thermal inertia of the ocean. One inference of this inferred radiative imbalance of Earth is that the ocean is presently accumulating heat, at a rate which should be measurable over several years. Another inference is that. . . new record global temperatures are likely to occur during the next few years.

NASA Goddard

Note that the hard data stopped in 1996 and 1997, so we can now partly test the models´ predictive value. “New record global temperatures are likely to occur during the next few years”; did they?

“Extraordinary heat waves, enormous drought-driven forest fires, raging storms, torrential downpours and massive floods -- A rising wave of extreme weather events is sweeping the planet. In the first 11 months of 1998, the world saw almost $90 billion in weather-related damage, half-again more than the previous record set just two years before and more economic damage in a single year than in all the years of the 1980s combined. The most destructive year in weather history was also the hottest since people began taking regular thermometer readings in 1860, and probably the hottest in 1,200 years”.

(Mazza & Roth [2])

Further - “the six warmest years of the global record have all occurred since 1990, and are, in descending order, 1998, 1997, 1995, 1990, 1991, and 1994” (Jones et al, 1999). Yet, contrary to the “grain of salt” recommended above, Roy Spencer, NASA´s Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at the Marshall Space Flight Centre, blames these temperatures on El Nino! (Spencer, 1998). Just as his satellites recording of a slight cooling has been called into question (and in any case, he claims the difference could only be a tenth of a degree Celsius per decade), he calls the reliability of information from surface thermometers etc into question! If NASA Goddard´s approach is truly an “Integrated” level one - not another smokescreen for a political agenda - it could be our most valuable evidence. On that assumption, it would undermine view two´s credibility, and again make us wonder as before if the timing of the prominence of view two and the Kyoto accord are connected (see p.17). If NASA Marshall´s approach is correct (as expressed by Spencer), then view two is correct.

But, if we drop view two for some reason, what NASA Goddard´s approach still doesn´t tell us is whether or not these projections will take us into a zone where a flip-flop is possible: does this globally funny weather mean that we are going through Prignone´s threshold dynamics instability? Therefore, they don´t help us to distinguish between views one and three. At the conclusion of his article, Spencer warns us that:

“Bias is widespread in the global warming debate. Scientists are human too, and have their own pet theories, political and world views, and heartfelt beliefs. . . Many scientists involved in the process feel that the official U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's firm predictions of substantial warming were guided more by policymakers and politicians than by scientists. To some extent, this can be excused since it is often difficult to pin a scientist down to a definite answer. . . The public's confusion is justified, since nearly the same level of confusion exists in the climate science community” (Spencer).

So, no-one knows what´s happening - and maybe no-one can. But on this developmental (qualitative) approach to knowledge, who would be the people best able to help with this crucial question?

Firstly, they would come from those with a considerable depth and span of knowledge in the relevant disciplines (which rules me out, for one).

Secondly, (and again noting that developmental lines are open-ended, including Torbert´s below) they should also be those with highly advanced development along the most relevant developmental lines. Of Wilber´s lines quoted above, I submit that the moral, visual-spatial thinking, logical-spatial thinking, linguistic narrative knowledge, cognitive, and worldviews lines are the most germane (‘moral´, to minimise the influence of any personal agendas in decision-making).

Thirdly, they should be brought together to deliberate by means evolved to best facilitate consensus at those developed levels. They would not necessarily be knowledgeable about such methods, but management disciplines may be able to help them decide their methodology.

Bill Torbert was mentioned at the conclusion of my previous monograph, and pops up again now because he has charted equivalencies between human development, social/scientific approaches, and the aim of the social/scientific paradigm, as follows:

Torbert describes his highest management approach, developmental action inquiry, as follows:

---

Developmental Action Inquiry emanates from a growing appreciation that different persons, organizations, and cultures are complex, chaotic interweavings of the six prior paradigms (Pondy & Mitroff, 1979). No one of these paradigms will win the paradigm-war once and for all; indeed, this very definition of the situation is illusory . . . An interweaving of first-, second-, and third-person research/practice makes such inter-paradigmatic conversation and work sustainable. From the integrative Developmental Action Inquiry perspective, each paradigmatic perspective is a positively powerful and beneficial analogue of the preeminent features of a situation at different moments and in recognized complementarity to the other approaches. By contrast, each paradigmatic perspective becomes demonic if it is asserted as the only legitimate kind of truth in all moments. “An active consciousness holds all ideas lightly” (Judi Marshall, Quality in Human Inquiry Conference, University of Bath, March, 1995). Whereas each of the prior paradigms tends to emphasize its revolutionary dissimilarity from the paradigms prior to it, Developmental Action Inquiry highlights the contrapuntal rhythms, interruptions, and interventions in developmental movement from one paradigm to another, whether in single conversations or in whole lives (Torbert, 1989). Fisher & Torbert (1995) provides an illustration of research in multiple modes, ranging from quantitative lab experiments using psychometric measures (Empirical Positivism), to multi-voiced, qualitative culture studies (Postmodern Interpretivism), to cases of 'observant participants' exercising real time first-, second-, and third-person research/practice in their work. All types of validity testing described in earlier paradigms are accepted as conditionally appropriate, depending upon the degree to which one's current aims correspond with the purpose of truth-seeking in that paradigm. Finally, however, in Developmental Action Inquiry, generalization is recognized as occurring one person at a time, and "slowly" within that person (i.e. over a lifetime), as she or he practices awareness-expanding action inquiry at more and more moments.

Torbert, 1995

---

As Chaitin´s theorem imputes (see above), the understanding of complexity is dependent upon the complexity of the available premises, and, further - a complex self can arrive at knowledge that a less complex self cannot. I have my own, underdeveloped, view of which of those views on climate change is the most likely. Look at the weighing I have given the three views in this paper; does that betray my bias? Or was that exclusively dependent upon the information available and weighted for the purposes of this paper? I´m not saying, but if a developmental action inquiry approach could be arranged with members of the calibre I described, unless I could find serious flaw with it I would go along with whatever they decided. Because, for me:

For each one of us, the past and the present have spheres of sharp focus; all the rest is fuzzy. The near future has spheres of near certainty; all the rest has degrees of probability, possibility, and near impossibility.

But wait! News just in! Perhaps ‘hard´ science can provide an answer, after all - or at least, considerably harden up the probabilities one way or another. One of the world´s most exciting explorations is currently going on at the coldest place on Earth - the Vostok research station, Antarctica. They are drilling down to a huge lake (as big as Lake Ontario) which has been isolated from the rest of the world for, perhaps, millions of years. There could still be life down there! They are going to use sterilised robot submarines to explore it. But in drilling through the ice (three kilometres so far, only 100 metres to go) they are able to go back in time to check the atmospheric conditions, trapped in the ice like an insect in amber.

The results so far? That current levels of greenhouse gases are higher than at any time in the last 420,000 years. Jonathon Overpeck, head of the paleoclimatology programme at the National Geophysical Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado, noted “This study is probably the most convincing evidence to date that humans are making some really large changes to Earth´s climate system. What this says is we´re going well beyond the bounds of natural variation” (The Star, 28.6.99, italics mine).

That´s pretty convincing evidence, in my view. But completely? No. Remember what Spencer said. And what about the evidence collated by the view twos? That doesn´t just disappear. What it does for me is re-weigh my probabilities; to me, view three is suddenly looking much more threatening. We need what I have recommended above - urgently. It may already be too late to do anything about it, given the inertia in the climate system, but it´s time to find out.

So, once again, we are back with Jesus, in front of Pilate, being asked that question - what is truth? The past and present are mostly fuzzy, the future has probabilities - which should, if we have adapted sufficiently through evolution, change our behaviour. How can we best decide what to do? Torbert´s approach is the most sophisticated one I´ve seen to tackle that question, but he has a stage (maybe stages?) beyond that, which would imply more developed approaches still to truth. What could they be?

As mentioned above, Gödel was a Platonist. In making his paradigm-shifting discoveries, he believed that “in addition to objects, there exists a world of concepts to which humans have access by intuition. Thus, for him a statement would have a definite “truth value” - be true or not - whether or not it had been proved or was amenable to being empirically confirmed or refuted. In his own view, that philosophy was an aid to his own remarkable mathematical insights” (Dawson, p. 76). Could that insight help?

Well, yes, providing that intuition had been developed along the relevant lines. But, as McClain points out, Plato himself was not ‘just´ a Platonist. McClain subtitled his book The Pythagorean Plato as “Prelude to the song itself” (my underlining).McClain notes that “whatever the case, it is always a challenge to the philosopher to discover the extent to which he himself is the victim of the model through which he tries to infuse meaning into the world. And this applies as much to Plato, Aristotle, and the present writer” (McClain, p.131 - italics mine). And to me. And to you. In Johnson´s phrase - “there is no such thing as an immaculate perception” (Johnson, p. 134):

“What Plato possessed, and what he tried to inculcate, was. . . “Embodied Vision.” Such a vision is grounded in the arts and sciences of one´s culture when they are treasured in rich enough measure that one possesses alternative perspectives on any phenomenon.. . The art of mathematics holds a very special place in Plato´s esteem: it is essentially an art of changing viewpoints, of alternative perspectives, and it gives to those who pursue it seriously a release from the imprisonment of a single viewpoint. . . characteristically Vedic as well as Platonic.

“Whitehead summarised the history of Western philosophy as essentially footnotes to Plato. But Plato himself. . . is but a kind of footnote to even more ancient philosophers. With the rise of Aristotelian rationalism and the later emergence of theological dogmatism, Plato´s mode of thinking was misunderstood and misrepresented, and with fateful consequences. Plato himself invalidates all efforts to ground dogmatic philosophy on his authority”. . .

(McClain, p.133)

These comments of McClain were written over a decade before Varela, Thompson and Rosch´s views on an Enactive Paradigm to knowledge in The Embodied Mind that:

“Embracing the hermeneutic viewpoint that '...knowledge depends on being in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language, and our social history -- in short, from our embodiment. ' (p. 149)

“Carrying forth autopoietic theory's idea of cognition as interaction / coupling, where '...knowledge is the result of an ongoing interpretation that emerges from our capacities of understanding ... rooted in the structures of our biological embodiment but ... lived and experienced within a domain of consensual action and cultural history.' (p. 149)

This is the position of cognition as embodied action -- where '...cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities ... themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and cultural context.´ (p. 173).”

(Whitaker)

Therefore Whitehead’s observation that Western philosophy is essentially footnotes to Plato still holds in my view, together with my submission that in the twenty-first century Darwin and Pythagoras will hold hands and walk off together into the sunrise.

Provided, of course, that there are autopoietic systems (like us) capable of carrying forward the Pythagorean/Platonic and Darwinian memes! Provided that we don´t become victims of those same Darwinian forces that led to our ascendency through the processes predicted by views one or three! All living things die (but not just living things are autopoietic systems):

“ ‘An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components that:

1. through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and

2. constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they [the components] exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.'

(Varela, 1979, p. 13)

“Any unity meeting these specifications is an autopoietic system, and any such autopoietic system realized in physical space is a living system. The particular configuration of a given unity -- its structure -- is not sufficient to define it as a unity. The key feature of a living system is maintenance of its organization, i.e, preservation of the relational network which defines it as a systemic unity. Phrased another way, '...autopoietic systems operate as homeostatic systems that have their own organization as the critical fundamental variable that they actively maintain constant.' (Maturana, 1975, p. 318)”

(Whitaker)

That is the subjective experience of what Calvin submits is the neurophysiological Darwinian correlate in the brain´s pattern-making. Calvin submits 11 “aspects of the creative Darwinian process that bootstrap quality” (Calvin, 1998 [2], p. 21) which I find to be relevant for the Theory of Knowledge thesis of this paper:

1. “There is a characteristic pattern involved;

2. The pattern must be copied somehow;

3. Variant patterns may sometimes be produced by chance;

4. The pattern and its variants must compete with one another for occupation of limited work space;

5. The competition is biased by a multifaceted environment [with grass, for example], how often it is cut, watered, fertilised and frozen, giving one pattern [kind of grass] more of the work space than another;

6. There is a skewed survival to reproduce maturity (environmental selection is mostly juvenile mortality) or a skewed distribution of those adults who successfully mate (sexual selection), so new variants always preferentially occur around the more successful of the current patterns;

7. Stability may occur, as in getting stuck in a rut (a local minima in the adaptional landscape). Variants occur but they backslide easily;

8. Systematic recombination generates many more variants than do copying errors and the far rarer point mutations;

9. Fluctuating environments (seasons, climate changes, diseases) change the name of the game, shaping up more complex patterns capable of doing well in several environments. For such jack-of-all-trades selection to occur, the climate must change much faster than efficiency adaptions can track it;

10. Parcellation, as when rising sea level converts the hilltops of one large island into an archipelago of small islands, typically speeds evolution;

11. Local extinctions (as when an island population becomes too small to sustain itself) speeds evolution because they create empty niches.”

Calvin also notes that there are also catalysts acting at several removes, quoting Darwin´s example of how cats can improve clover.

So what of that aggregation of autopoeitic systems whose brains have been so bootstrapped in quality to form the human race? Well, for them, “there is a universal passion to find symmetry in the world” (Johnson, p. 56):

In fact, in the language of the new physics, the symmetries are said to give rise to the forces. In this new way of carving up reality, it is these mathematical harmonies that are now considered to be the physical bedrock, with the forces regarded as secondary epiphenomena. So deep is our passion for geometry that we have come to believe that symmetries we cannot directly experience are more fundamental than the forces we feel whenever we lift a rock or touch a bare electrical wire. Of course, where the symmetries themselves came from was another question. Were they woven into the universe as platonic essences or generated from by the human mind as it strives to find order?”

(Johnson, p.48)

Or - both?

Conclusion

Many such dichotomies dissolve with the view that consciousness is a stranger in the universe - our quirky, peculiar, possession. Progenies of such views, like materialist scientism and scientific materialism, like all creeds in fact, become "demonic" (if not already) when asserted to be "the only legitimate kind of truth in all moments" (see Torbert and Jefferson above). I have raised materialist scientism in particular to ask - just how fundamental can matter now, at the end of this millennium, claim to be?

The science meme of the twentieth century, e = mc², can be re-expressed in this context as m = e/c², resonating with the observation that the fundamentals of the universe are not matter at all, but light, energy, and information - that is, light and energy pattern into matter: "Light and the way it plays with electrons is as fundamental as anything can be; it is the very reason atoms stick together to form matter . . . with every step we take, it is electrons exchanging photons that generate the repulsive force that stops our feet from going through the sidewalk, that creates the illusion of solidity" (Johnson, p. 133; italic mine).

Above this play of light and energy, material and informational hierarchies emerge, transcending and including patterns in a process involving Darwinian pressures all the way to us, that dialectic continuing in my mindset as I write this, and in yours as you read it. It may involve a change in stage development - "the person who is growing, will look for more and more adequate ways of solving problems" (See Kohlberg's fourth observation, quoted above), but there may be no more inevitability to it than that I will become a great concert pianist without bothering to learn a note.

The culmination of that evolutionary patterning process, to Plato, may have been to see that the world was “a visible living creature. . . a perceptible god” (McClain). If Plato is right, we are autopoietic systems of that world. But the Vedic tradition, which McClain considers Plato to be a manifestation of, and which in certain aspects is itself a nested subset of what is now termed the perennial philosophy - that Vedic tradition goes much further. And so too, it now appears to me, did Jesus. So I am now able to answer Pilate´s question better than when I first embarked upon writing this. I find that Jesus had already given the answer to Pilate (the one which brought Him before Pilate in the first place) when He made the astonishing claim:

“ ‘I and my Father are one´.

“Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. . . for blasphemy, ‘thou, being a man, makest thyself God.´ Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? . . . If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in Him”.

John 10:30-38

And when He said “the kingdom of God comes not with observation, neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17.20-21), He might equally well have said, “the truth comes not [just] with observation, neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold, the truth is within you”. Jesus´s claim is astonishing in that it could meet with the Delphic maxim to “know thyself”to know Truth. The truth as re-membered, real-ised, within our evolved, autopoietic selves by a process of development, towards the insight within the Hindu Upanishads - tvam ast asi - thou art that. As is noted in autpoietic theory, “every act of knowing creates a world”; and now, from superstring theory, we have a tasty ‘first approximation´ model - the reciprocal Universe - but applicable to the mental world vis a vis the world “out there”. We are more processes in processes than things.

“Ye are gods” is written in Psalm 82. It goes on to say “and all of you are children of the Most High” - which means, all of those referred to are sons or daughters of God, not only Jesus. All of whom? Those who “Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They (the wicked) know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course” (Psalm 82: 3-5).

In other words, those who have developed along Kohlberg´s (quoted above) and others´ hierarchies (such as Maslow´s), to realise selflessness naturally. Or, as Mirdad put it - “you live that you may learn to love; you love that you may learn to live.” It´s a hard road to hoe, to grow. But, sooner or later, you can get to where there is caring to know, and knowing to care. “Seek the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. Seek ye first truth and righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

More: in terms of the Kena Upanishad, when addressing Pilate´s question centuries before he posed it: What is Brahmin (Truth)?