AN EVOLUTIONARY STEP

INTRODUCTION (The four paragraphs under the ORBIT title are new.

I've stumbled onto a subject variously know as the theory of knowledge and epistemology. I assume that since there are various theories of knowledge, there must be various theories of epistemology. I'm more than open to correction. So for the sake of argument, I'm saying that humankind is stuck between two kinds of epistemologies, or understanding of their world. I call one the epistemology of air, and the other, the epistemology of orbit. They interrelate mysteriously. There are surely better ways to describe them.

Why the air epistemology seems to give me so much trouble is that I'm trying in vain to fit an orbital epistemology into it, which doesn't work. Air automatically flows to fill in any volumetric space from which it isn't physically barred from entering. It is good at passing through even tiny cracks. I operate like air in that my attention can't seem to stay in any fixed place. it simply flows around and through everything it possibly can. It does not want to get too involved with distinctions between one thing and another. It can therefore be seen as confusion, sloppiness, vagueness, fuzzyness. BUT...since my mind wants to float about unimpeded by obstacles, it appears to be less suited to the atmospheric realm--the realm of air--which is also the realm of gravity, where we tend to look sideways, with limited perspective, and rarely panoramically, and where we are weighted down. 

So this is where I find the mysterious relationship between the air and the orbit theories. Air has the same quality of effortless flow as orbit does, where no effort is requited for orbiting objects to flow with unbelievable, frictionless speed around the earth. Air doesn't seem to flow as rapidly, and gravity may affect it, even as it affects humans more noticeably. My very provisional theory is that the realm of air to which we have been confined since the dawn of humankind, while totally indispensable for our past and continued existence, is analogous or even complementary to the various levels of brain structure we have evolved, starting with the tiny so called lizard brain and leading to the very large cerebral cortex of modern humans. One speculates whether the modern human brain, having to do with various factors like bi-pedal stance, cooking food, etc, isn't due for another step in its evolution where we can think in terms of globular space holistically.

My point, I suppose, is that humankind is now at the gate of the orbital state of thinking, while resisting entering with all its might.

ORBIT

- Orbit uses physical forces that are inherent, requiring no strictly necessary supplemental energy in the orbiting process

- Find issues that serve like booster rockets taking us into orbit. 

The energy it takes to run our networked, globalized economic system is finite. It becomes increasingly hard to acquire, and so, more expensive to produce. While there is massive global concern over its putative effect on global climate--and there is very creditable research on how it produces a "greenhouse effect," locking in the radiant heat that formerly could escape Earth's atmosphere--it is quite probable that the more immediate problem with our energy is its effect on our infinitely complex global economic system, without which our current civilization would end. There is also no foreseeable replacement for it, although I believe there are ways to move constructively toward some.

A marine sanctuary works through effortlessness. Mainly, it is a place that humans leave alone and that regenerates by natural processes beyond human intervention. Abandoning an area, as with ancient Mayan cities, or due to catastrophes like Chernobyl, leads to their reforestation. Ecologist, John D. Liu, implies that merely dumping organic material on desertified land can lead to its regeneration. In all these cases, as with orbital flight, you let go and go with the flow. 

I believe this letting go is the tonic for a world system that overprescribes technological fixes that demand ever more external (or supplemental?) energy to effect. At the same time, we have paradox. (Is paradox a law of the universe?) It is technology which leads us to understand orbitality. But it's as though we oversubscribe to technology in the wrong place. Perhaps we use air thinking about technology when we should be using orbit thinking.  As a global society, we use such connective technology like Facebook to talk about our breakfast, never anything to do with orbit. Google Satellite mapping might be useful to some professionals, but when you use it to see foreign places, ordinary people avoid that discussion. They are not happy with this orbital means. But they do manage their digital cameras and Smartphones well.

That's the trouble with those booster-rocket issues. You can see how revoking the permit for a dolphinarium in one place could empower a coastal plan that prohibit dolphinaria...among a great number of related considerations. That is the purview of planning. But air thinking says that those are distracting considerations. The only thing to consider is the one single dolphinarium next door. Ironically, such tunnel visioned attention tends to succeed far better than a wider view. So we strive to translate these narrow victories into booster rockets to where those wider views are seen