SPACE
Our Current Spatial Myth
Our current myth of 'The World', is the Nation State conceptual framework. Of course, we now know intellectually that we live on an organically alive planet free-floating in the expansive depths of cosmic space. Yet we maintain an outmoded conceptual framework of 'The World' that completely ignores this fact. The reality of our planetary and Cosmic existence lies totally outside the bounds of our current sense of 'The World'. We've yet to fully integrate not only in terms of our spatial positioning - but on an emotional and cognitive level as well - the implications of our living on an organic curved sphere within truly vast Cosmic space. When it comes to the 'felt sense' of our non-local existence, we might as well still be living in The Dark Ages, still believing that our Earth is flat and that our Universe is composed of Copernican crystal spheres rotating in ever more preposterous and elaborate cycles and epi-cycles.
How we've conceived of the larger non-local space we're contained within (beyond what our senses can tell us) has always been a product of our human imagination. And in this respect the Nation State conceptual framework is no exception. National boundaries don't show up on satellite imagery. Nation States form a patchwork quilt of human territorial markers that reflect how our species has at present, separated out into sub-groups. This patchwork quilt of species-specific territorial boundaries is no more objectively real than the territorial boundaries which determine any other species' sense of 'The World', whether that's the urine scented territorial boundaries of a wolf pack in Minnesota, or the scat-scented territorial markers of an African lion pride. Our Nation State conceptual framework is only the most recent conceptual gridwork that we've super-imposed over the landmasses of our Earth, and that represents only our species' 'worldview'.
"The Age of Nations is past. It remains for us now, if we do not wish to perish, to set aside the ancient prejudices and build the earth!"
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Conceptual Frameworks are not 'Things'
It's not an easy task to free our minds from this conceptual framework. Attempting to do so is for the most part considered taboo in our current age of hyper-patriotic fervor. We're enculturated into it from a very early age. In schools everywhere, young children are taught the Nation/State conceptual framework of 'The World' in ways that confuse and merge it with the more objective and organic reality of our home planet. We're taught to believe that the two are synonymous, but this isn't so. The Nation States is an abstraction, something we as a species; have placed over our Earth in our minds only. It's a conceptual overlay that colors and distorts our perception of our home planet and largely obliterates in us any awareness of our more important biospheric dependence. We're taught to confuse this conceptual model with the specific landmasses of our Earth that this gridwork of boundaries and borders is associated with. From young ages we're shown maps and asked by our teachers "Where is France..?" (or Nigeria...or Russia). We're told by our teachers to "Point to India" on a globe, (...or Singapore...or Canada ...or Brazil). The problem is that unlike letters in a mailbox, or apples in a basket, conceptual frameworks are not 'things'. They're only consensually agreed upon abstractions that we project onto the phenomenal world.
"The 'nation' is one of the most mysterious categories of modern thought... There are not many things people are willing to die for that they cannot point to our touch or even adequately put into words."
Barbara Ehrenreich
The national boundaries we've placed over our home planet are like a sheet of clear plastic on which someone has drawn in variously shaped boxes, and then placed the clear plastic sheet over a tabletop. The drawn in boxes on the clear plastic sheet don't really divide the tabletop into separate areas. The table exists independent of whatever we place on its surface. Likewise, the Nation-State conceptual framework is not synonymous with the totally distinct and separate biospheric surface of our Earth. It's merely one out of many conceptual frameworks that we've conceived of throughout our human history to give us a sense of the larger non-local spatial matrix we exist within, but which lay beyond what our senses can tell us. It's only the way we currently conceive of, and structure our human presence over our home planet, and nothing more.
"(T)he life of all humanity is an eternal procession from darkness to light, from the lower conception of truth to a higher one..."
Leo Tolstoy