At the quantum level, there’s a principle called non-locality. It refers not only to “the profound interconnectedness of the universe,” but to something called “entanglement,” a phenomenon whereby even electrons far apart instantly affect each other. How does non-locality pertain to human consciousness as it is, and as it could be? As a 2015 article in Scientific American, “How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange Non-Locality” pithily explains entanglement: “Physics experiments bind the fate of two particles together so that they behave like a pair of
magic coins. If you flip them, each will land on heads or tails—but always on the same side as its “They act in a coordinated way even though no force passes through the space between them. Those particles might zip off to opposite sides of the universe, and still they act in unison. The particles violate locality—they transcend space.” branches of physics now suggest that, at a deep level, there may be no such thing as place and no such thing as Contemplatives intuitively understand
the principle of non-locality and entanglement. They have direct experiencing of it because they often have no center or fixed point of reference, and go beyond surface layers of self and locality. That allows direct experiencing of nature and the universe. Of course such experiencing is opposed to our everyday experience of locality, not to mention the illusion of a separate self and belonging to a separate groups. In other words, our conditioned, culturally determined experience of reality, which underlie the tribalism of nationalism. The
actuality of the seamless wholeness of nature contrasts with the near dogma many progressives now hold about localism, the idea that we all inevitably belong to a particular place. From that premise they believe the solution to rapacious globalization is through devolving power down to the smallest possible units of community and municipality. The utopianism of localism is neatly expressed by one of its leading proponents, Eric Utne, who “We need a hyper-local Green New Deal. We need to come together in diverse, intimate, place-based
communities. And we need to segue now from the techno-industrial market economy to its sequel — much smaller-scale, less energy-intensive, more localized communities that prize food growing, knowledge sharing, inclusiveness and convivial neighborliness.” sounds wonderful until you realize that it precludes living first on the Earth as a whole and thereby confronting the extreme ecological and equity imbalances of the global Hyper-localism flies in the face of the way the nature actually works, which isn’t through atomism — the smallest possible units combining to make
a whole — but by the whole of nature giving rise to the tremendous diversity of life on Earth. As in nature, so too with humanity. We can go from the whole to the parts, never from the parts to the whole. Finally, dogmatic localism denies the interconnectedness of human beings and human consciousness. Localism is no remedy to the individualism that has been sweeping the world — the idea that each person has her or his own unique “agency,” and each home is its
own castle with its own moat, separating it from it from its neighbors. Of course, we cannot diminish the importance of our neighbors and communities in favor of some grand and grandiose conception of human wholeness. And it’s an excellent thing to grow one’s own food and use small-scale solar and other decentralized means to harness But when primary, localism breeds the kind of mentality that says, “That woman with a starving child in Sudan has nothing to do with me.” Obviously there has to
be planetary ecological and economic sustainability. But the idea that localism will eventually get us there is dangerously erroneous wishful thinking. Science has shown that every action we take affects, to some degree, everyone on Earth. Consciousness reflects, to the extent we creatively participate in non-locality, the emergence of intelligent life in the universe. Destroying the Earth is not enough for those who bow to what D.H. Lawrence aptly described as “the Mammon of mechanized greed.” They want to terraform Mars even as they de-terraform
the Thinking and feeling human beings understand that retreating into localistic or nationalistic mindsets, or continuing with rapacious globalization, is a false choice, two sides of the same coin. To regenerate ourselves and humanity, we can and must disentangle ourselves from the dead-ending consciousness of man, and have direct experiencing of the Earth’s non-locality and entanglement with the © Scoop Media
non-locality, entanglement, consciousness, localism, hyper-local Green New Deal, Eric Utne, quantum physics, ecology, equity, globalization, nationalism