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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Energetic Processes As The Basis Of Life

I do not mean to suggest chemistry plays no role at all in living systems, but that life is primarily an energetic phenomena, and the role of the chemical substances is highly variable. The fact that a copper compound instead of an iron compound (hemoglobin) can be utilized as an oxygen carrier in the blood of lobsters is an example of how a rather wide variety of different chemical substances can play the same role.

I do not think of the atmosphere as a living organism, but rather the reverse. The atmosphere is a more primitive example of the sort of energetic system the living organism is, but the living organism, defined by a fluid-filled membrane, as well as exhibiting energetic characteristics found in weather systems, is a more complex example of the type of system I mean.

I have no background in chemistry, but I have studied a fair bit of meteorology, and I tend to regard the functioning of the atmosphere as the basic prototype of systemic functioning in nature, with life, as defined, being a more specialized version of the same processes.

I also tend to think that the single living organism is not the basic unit that we should study. Life never exists by itself. It is always found as part of an ecosystem. It is the ecosystem, not the single organism, whose developmental process needs to be studied and explained. Conventional evolutionary theory concentrates on the development of individual species, not ecosystems.

There is no theory of the evolution of ecosystems. Only a theory of the evolution of species. But the species is a part of a unified ecological "super-organism" that exists from long before the individual species comes into existence until long after it ceases to exist. Every ecosystem is able to exist only because it functions as a unit. If it was merely a collection of individually-evolved componant parts, as orthodox evolutionary theory would have it, it could not function.

So I regard the ecosystem, not the individual organism or the individual species, as the object that should be studied to understand how life comes into existence and how it functions.

From this standpoint, the functional identity of ecosystem and atmosphere become obvious. And the chemical composition that happens to be found in this or that individual organism becomes merely incidental. If the ecosystem needs some function fullfilled, and this or that chemical substance is not available, the developing life-forms will either produce what they need or find something else to use instead.

Life is not something that comes first, with all the complex symbiotic interactions of an ecosystem following along afterwards. The over-arching already-existing environment into which the developing organism will fit exists first, and every organism that develops within it forms with the characteristics needed to fit into that ecosystem "patterned" into it from the start of its' development.

But this "patterning" is accomplished by energetic, not chemical means. This is the main factor that modern evolutionary theory has missed: The "genes" that regulate organismic form and behavior are not located inside the individual organism, but outside it, in the environment. And those "genes", not some chemical particle found inside the individual, but the energetic influence of the environment on the developing embryo, are not localized inside the individual, but permeate the space in which it develops.

Lost Knowledge

In 1987, the late Jay Mikesell and I spent some time at Eva Reichs' place in Maine, having tutoring in Orgone Biophysics from her. We paid her for that tutoring. As far as I know, we were the only ones ever to have such tutoring, and she once told me that of all the people who had asked her about her fathers' work, I was the only one who asked the right questions.

We taped the whole thing, and I still have about 22 hours of the seminar on tape. Maybe someday, if I ever get the money, I will have it transcribed and made into a book.

Since Jay died a few years ago, I guess that leaves me as the only person left to have had training in orgone biophysics from the person Reich designated as his successor. I have a letter from Eva Reich testifying to that, and saying she considers me "very knowledgeable in that field".

Maybe someday, if anyone is interested, I will give a seminar and try to pass on some of that knowledge.

Eva should have been teaching all those years after Reich died; the unfortunate circumstances that removed her as trustee of his estate and effectively prevented her from filling that role could have been countered if funding had been available to set up a school of orgonomy, but it never was. I tried on several occassions to raise funding for orgonomic work, and setting up a venue for her to teach orgonomy was one of my top priorities, but I never was able to raise the money.

And now, with the de facto sequesturation of the Reich Archives apparently becoming permanent, much of the unique body of knowledge brought into being by Wilhelm Reich is apparently lost forever.

How Much Radioactivity?

The specific radioactive element does not matter so much as the total, over-all amount of radioactivity and the concentration of it. The most important thing is the total, gobal burden of radioactive materials in the environment. Radioactivity affects the life energy in the atmosphere, not just inside living organisms, so if it is ingested or not is not so very important from a total biosphere point of view.

Much more radioactivity has been released into the environment than is usually thought. The focus on what particular element, and exactly where it came from, and where it went, and exactly how much, is misguided. ALL radioactivity is harmfull and should not be tolerated.

Keep in mind that, contrary to orthodox scientific opinion, radioactivity is not something that exists naturally on this planet. It did not exist untill a little over 5,000 years ago. It was created by cosmic lightning discharges caused by an astronomical accident of the earth being bombarded by a meteor storm.

The biological world can dispose of radioactive materials by incorporating them into living organisms, where the radioacivity is eventually eliminated by constant exposure to high levels of orgone charge. Since this natural protective mechanism of the biosphere is unknown to the scientific mainstream, their estimates of the amount of radioactive material in the environment are far from accurate. So are their estimates of the amount of harm done to the organisms which ingest it.

Science

The word "science" has come to mean something almost directly oposite to what it is suposed to mean. Science, in the modern sense of the natural sciences, is suposed to be the study of natural phenomena. In that sense, bird-watching is a scientific field of study. But in the last 100 years or so, "science" has almost reversed its meaning from the study of nature to the study of artificial, man-made phenomena which exist only in the laboratory or experimental set-up and are not found in nature.

The rise of a formal scientific culture with a set of admission requirements, a hierarchy of ranks, and rights and priviledges according to ones official standing has led to a set of standards that all scientific research must conform to, resulting in a systematized body of pseudoknowledge commonly called "scientific fact", but in reality, more like an official dogma.

I prefer the older form of science, the natural sciences, which can be investigated by studying nature, not by studying artificial phenomena in a sterile laboratory setting. There is no reason for a scientist, studying the natural world, to have any formal certification from anyone. Nobody has the right to say who is a scientist and who is not. And there is likewise no body of people who can dictate what form the study of the natural world can take.

In the old system of science, prior to about 1900 or so, someone like Van Leuenhoek, for example, could explore nature in his own way, at his own pace, and address the august Royal Society about his findings even thought he was a draper by trade. Every practicing medical doctor was also expected to publish his findings, based on his observations of his patients, not on controlled studies, in medical journals. A gentleman farmer like Thomas Jefferson could be a practicing scientist on his farm, like a former neighbor of mine who discovered a mash that would prevent poultry cancer and dug up dinosaur fosils on his chicken farm. He had the only combination chicken farm, dinosaur museum, and cancer research lab in the world.

Today, nobody thinks something is science unless it conforms to the arbitrary and politicized standards of an official science cult. Despite the rationalizations that this ensures better quality control in findings which are to be diseminated as fact, the real purpose of this custom is to ensure the continued dominance of the hierachy of science.

And in the process, a lot of valid observations and real knowledge falls through the cracks, lost and forgotten because it was not discovered in the approved way by the approved people and was not formulated in the approved manner and published in the approved journals.

So, yes, I do call what I do "science". And the opinion of the scientific cultists does not interest me

The Croftian Devices

In one post sent out to his mailing list, James DeMeo claims he fought a cloudbuster war with a group of Croftians in his neighborhood who were causing a drought. He says he was able to eliminate the drought tendency they had created by constant operation of their pseudocloudbusters.

If he reversed a drought tendency, that is good and he deserves credit for it. But the question occurs to me, how does he know the Croftians caused it? In his published report, all he says is that they were operating in the vicinity and that their devices, which are usually left in position permanently, over-excite the atmosphere and cause droughts.

I have some doubts about this. The Croftian devices are static devices. They do not move. There are some reports in the orgonomic literature of ungrounded cloudbusters having an effect on weather while in motion, as when Robert McCullough reported that on his way to Arizon he saw clouds constantly forming and breaking up ahead of his truck.

But there is no reason to think an ungrounded cloudbuster would have an effect on weather if it was not moving.

There is also no reason to think a cloudbuster could continue to affect the atmosphere on a long-term basis if it was not moved from time to time. All experience indicates the cloudbuster stops drawing after a while of drawing from the same spot. The atmosphere becomes accustomed to the stimulus and stops responding to it. A cloudbuster set up to draw constantly from a single spot soon becomes inoperative. This is in fact, why the countless metal pipes that are accidently aimed at the sky in construction sites, etc. do not function as cloudbusters, at least not for long.

The Croftian devices are not cloudbusters. If they do anything at all, a claim of which I am still not convinced, they are orgone shooters, a strong orgone field with a conduit, either a straight pipe or a flexible tube, it does not matter, connected to it, so orgone is drawn out of the accumulator by the orgonomic potential of a stronger charge at the other end of the conduit.

I have used an orgone shooter to break up small cumulus clouds and jet aircraft contrails, but it only works with a bucket of water inside it. A pipe connected to an accumulator without any water involved does not provide a strong enough draw to noticeably affect the atmosphere, even for a small-scale, short-range operation like cutting a jet contrail in half, let alone cause a serious and long-lasting drought.

The Croft devices are composed of a resinous matrix with metal filings mixed into it. They are usually made by using a bucket as a mold, into which the mixture of resin and filings is poured and allowed to set. This is not an orgone accumulator, or at least not a very effective one, though it might have a field around it that could be detectable by a sensitive individual or by some sort of instrument.

But as a means of exciting the atmosphere, it does not seem very likely that it would be more of an excitation than almost any run-of-the-mill electrical device. Radio and television transmitters, radar, microwave, high-tension wires, and numerous other everyday apparatus are far more likelt to create a significant amount of oranur than a small, rather weak accumulator, with or without a pipe grounded into it.

I may be wrong. It might be that the Croft devices are affecting the weather in harmfull ways, just as James DeMeo thinks they are. But I suspect there is an ideological issue here as well. Blaming a drought on a gang of Croftian cultists playing around with orgonomic technology they do not understand may look better to James Demeo than blaming human civilization in general, and the wide-spread use of electrical technologies which most people assume are here to stay.

In numerous posts in recent years, Dr. DeMeo has seemed relectant to cast blame for droughts and other weather-related problems on the nuclear industry and its associated military nuclear weaponry, and has chosen instead to push the hypothesis that long-term natural cycles and changes in the output of the sun are the main, and perhaps the sole, reason for climate disruptions.

If he is trying to get the modern industrial civilization off the hook by blaming climate changes on natural cycles, he might be trying to get industrial civilization off the hook by blaming at least some droughts on Croftians monkeying with things as well.

Until somebody does some real research on the effectiveness of the Croft devices, we simply shall not know. But the result of my theoretical analysis is that the large-scale effects of the Croft devices are likely to be minimal at most.

Mental Illness

Orthodox science claims it is not possible for a human being to feel or otherwise detect radioactivity without instruments. All the textbooks say that. If anyone suggests to a scientist or some layman with a reasonable amount of scientific knowledge, that they can feel radioactivity, they will be assured that that is impossible. If they persist, or are so ill-advised as to tell a psychiatrist that they can detect radioactivity without instruments, they are very likely to be institutionalized as subject to paranoid delusions. Practically all mental health professionals would regard such a claim as a symptom of mental illness.

Yet if you ask a physicist or biologist to tell you exactly what research there is that shows it is impossible to feel radiation, they are unable to do so. There is not a single scientific paper, not a single study, not any refereed published research, that would provide any evidence that the unaided human organism is unable to detact radiation. The question has never been the subject of any study or research of any kind.

If you ask a psychiatrist why he assumes mental illness instead of objective fact when someone tells him they can feel radioactivity around them, he cannot tell you of a single paper, not a single study, not a single research report, that would form the basis for his unshakable opinion that anyone who claims to feel radioactivity is mentally ill.

Evaluating Nuclear Power

Regarding the long-term effects of the Chernobyl nuclear incident,

there is some dispute as to exactly which numbers are correct.

Much of the discrepancy is a matter of how large an area you are
talking about, and how long a time frame you are using. The Soviet
government tried to make it look like nothing big had happened. They
lied. The anti-nuke movement tried to make it look more alarming than
it was. They lied too. Both sides tried to give an impression that
would serve their agandas by playing games with the numbers.

If you
count just the local area near the plant, and just the immediate
short-tern effects, you can get statistics showing nothing happened
that was worse than a normal holiday traffic death toll. If you count
the entire area of Europe, and figure how many deaths there are going
to be over the next 5,000 years, you get more deaths than World
War Two.

And that is without even going into the question of do you
count misscariages, stillbirths, and fatal birth defects as deaths,
or do you calculate cases of sterility as deaths because that is the
effect they have on population statistics?

But the whole discussion
of "deaths" is misleading anyway. Non-fatal illnesses, some of which
last a lifetime, are far more prevalent, and in terms of suffering
and impact on a population, far more important. The dead can be
burried. The sick must be tended, often for a lifetime.

To properly
ascess the long-term impact of just this one single accident, you
must calculate how many cases of brain damage will result in behavior
that the psychological theories of some psychiatric cult or other
will blame on upbringing, or that some religion or other will blame
on sinfullness.

If crime rates go up six generations from now, is
that a delayed result of radiation exposure? The epidemic of
homosexuality that began in the 60s was caused by the fallout from
atomic bomb tests in the late 40s and 50s. The AIDS epidemic of the
80s and 90s was also caused by radioactive fallout from bomb tests.

Looking at the numerous and incredibly varied biological effects from
oranur, the narrow focus on "deaths" that can be attributed to
radiation by classical science is of little use. What is needed to
properly evaluate the impact of this or any other nuclear "incident"
is a full ecological study of the entire planet.

For example, if birds die of radioactivity in Europe during the summer,

they will then be absent from their winter range in Africa, so there

might be a plague of insects there because the birds are not there to

eat them. So do you count the deaths from insect-bourne diseases in

Africa in the death toll of a nuclear event in Europe?

And at this late
date, trying to separate out the effects of one single reactor
meltdown from all the rest of the radioactive pollution of the past
60 years is not a usefull line of research.

From a Reichian
standpoint, the global increase of DOR and oranur is causing a
generalized biological decline in functioning of all individuals of
all species all over the world. This is having a destabilizing effect
on all ecosystems, with resultant ecological imbalances that
percolate throughout the biosphere.

At the same time, the atmospheric
orgone is reacting with irritation and and instability, or with
chronic stagnation, so the weather is becomming chaotic. This has
effects on ecosystems at least as great as the direct biological
effects of oranur and DOR.

All research to date has been on the effects of
radioactivity on individual organisms. There has never been any study
made of the impact of radioactivity on an ecosystem as a whole. Such
a study, if it were ever done, would be of far greater importance
than studies of the effects of radiation on single organisms.

Mass
die-offs of one species or another of wildlife occur from time to
time, and the effects on other species remain unknown. Even a decline
in reproductive rates by a single species could have far-reaching
consequences for many other species with which they interact.

Studies
of the impact of nuclear technology on the biosphere should be
devised to take this into account, but so far, none have looked into
the ecological effects of man-made
radiation.

To be fully comprehensive, though, such a global ecological study

would have to include the meteorlogical effects of the entire worlds

nuclear industry, as well as the direct biological effects, and it would

have to determine the effects on the ecosystem of the changes in

climate resulting from nuclear technology and combine them with the

directly biological effects to reach a real evaluation of the total impact

of nuclear technology on this planet.