Systemic totality

The complexity of the interactions of a world that we discover increasingly complex is such, today, that it is likely to disconcert the intelligence. The forest is not seen any more, hidden by a proliferation of trees. To embrace the whole of our complexity with its multiple interactions calls for a new tool of intelligibility. It is called systemic. It is not to be confused with 'systematic'! Because this kind of intelligibility is not coming from one 'system' and is not dependant on the internal contents of a system. On the other hand, it apprehends the systems, any system, as a system. It makes it possible to understand the whole without necessarily having to understand the internal complexity of each part. It is enough to treat it like a 'black box'. The parts are indeed infinite, and, therefore, ask for an infinity of specialists on bottom of an infinite debate. So that in extreme cases the world can fall into pieces before foreseeing the beginning of a possible comprehension.

It occurs as if, at the image of the material world, the spiritual order were spread out in a specific ecosystem of spiritual energy. In the biosphere there are vital elements like water or air which are however quite common. We take really cognisance of it only when they are suddenly missing. The same occurs with the spiritual dynamics. Until today we did not know that its absence was mortal. We lived unconsciously with its superabundance. We produced it quite naturally more than we consumed it. Our tanks overflowed with it.

Human realities, spiritual realities, are understood through the paradigm of natural and material realities. It is necessary to start by reflecting on what is an ecosystem and how it is threatened with death when an opening is refused it. The total human space, our large 'house' - oïkos in Greek - who integrates the systems of our earth in interdependent unit and in interaction is called ecosystem. An ecosystem is closed in relation to the elements. This means that it functions with a finished quantity of material possibilities. The ecosystem has to balance its assessment. On the other hand it is open in relation to energy.

The reality and the operation of the human reality can be regarded as systemic at the image of any alive organic system. It functions according to the paradigm of every 'system' with an entry, an exit and a function, in interaction with other included or including systems. It has borders which mark the difference between an 'inside' and an 'outside', between a 'fence' and a 'opening'. This essential opening is denied only under penalty of death. A system can certainly function within its fence. But only for a time. Here any autonomy is function of available reserves. A system can remain closed only as long its tanks are not empty and the internal recycling of its waste is possible. Theoretically a system is 'absolute' provided that it is not included by a more including system.

There is like an interactive interlocking of the systems from smallest on to the largest. Between the smallest possible micro-system and the totality of the cosmic macro-system, 'a' system is each time a set which functions between other sets. So nature functions as a solidarity of tangled up systems. On each systemic level, there are thus an entry and an exit in interactive connection with the entries and the exits of the other systems, included and including ones.

The human space time defines each time what is thinkable and what is unthinkable, what is feasible and what is not feasible, what is possible and what is impossible. Because everything is not possible anywhere and at any time. Thus, for instance, the thirteenth century has it possibilities that we do not have any more and misses the possibilities that we have today. Whereas we do so easily believe that our thinkable and our possible of today are 'impassable', how will the future thirty-fifth century, for example, perceive it?

Such a space is characterized by a reference frame, a horizon, axes and a centre. A reference frame which determines the fundamental dimensions. A horizon which traces the limits of its theoretical and practical possibilities and impossibilities. Axes marking the broad outlines of force according to which this possible is articulated. A centre, node of convergence of the fundamental axes.

You cannot find the key of intelligibility of the human realm in the included contents. You find it in the including whole. The interior becomes fully understandable only starting from outside. It is from 'outside' and from outside only that the 'whole' appears in truth. The forest explains the trees and not the reverse. The whole is more essential than the parts.

The schizoid anthropocentric enclosure by which modernity gets to itself buckles humanity on humanity. For the first time since man exists, the 'human make up' system starts to function in strict enclosure. This means the human reality has continuously to heat itself, in strict autonomy, its hot source of sense and of significances. This means also it has to find ways for recycling efficiently its waste and to reload by itself and from itself its semantic accumulators.

However, up to its extreme finite enclosure, modernity does not cease, indeed, taking part, often in spite of it, and more unconsciously than consciously, of some 'transcendence'. Without this subterfuge it could not survive a long time without succumbing to asphyxiation. Thus the rupture with the hot source is never consumed. And especially the accumulators are never completely discharged. Even the most radical absurdity does not succumb to its own logic becausethe powerful accumulators of semantic energy are not yet flat. Especially those of Judeo-Christian signifiance.

More than it dares to acknowledge it, our modern world functions despite everything, even by surreptitious participation, on a formidable reserve of sense, true capital of spiritual energy made up during the Western history.

The ecosystem of the sense is the large house of the sense, the large spiritual matrix in which humans are generated and educated as humans.

 

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