The Coming Solar Storm

As humans we depend on the light of the Sun. The astrological Sun feeds our vitality and quality of being, and when there is a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection we are affected here on earth. Cosmic rays disrupt the electrical systems on earth, and as humans we are surrounded by an elecromagnetic grid that can be affected by solar changes.

- http://astrodynamics.net/astrologicalmusings/2013/08/06/the-suns-magnetic-field-is-about-to-flip/

"Every particle of rock or water or air has God by its side leading it the way it should go; The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness; In God's wildness is the hope of the world."

-John Muir, Travels in Alaska 

"I am an attendant of the sovereign Sun... A vehement love for the splendors of this god took possession of me from my youth; in consequence of which, while I was a boy, my rational part was ravished with astonishment as often as I surveyed his etherial light; nor was I alone desirous of stedfastly beholding his diurnal splendors, but likewise at night, when the heavens were clear and serene, I was accustomed to walk abroad, and, neglecting every other concern, to gaze on the beauty of the celestial regions with rapturous delight: indeed I was so lost in attentive vision...."

-Julian the Apostate, Oration to the Sovereign Sun 

“...he would be able to look at the Sun and contemplate its nature, not as it appears when reflected in water or any alien medium, but as it is in itself in its own domain....And now he would begin to draw the conclusion that it is the Sun that produces the seasons and the course of the year and controls everything in the visible world, and moreover is in a way the cause of all that he and his companions used to see.”

-Plato, Allegory of the Cave, Republic, 516ff)

"Our motion is regulated by some measure of the amount by which it has not yet been accomplished."

-NorbertWiener, Cybernetics, p.116 

Sunrise in Sunningdale (Photo CG Garvie)

Some Sundays, despite my love for worship, I would rather want to walk the beach or simply listen to the scheduled "Radio Amateur News Bulletin" than suffer spartan benches and discordant music!

I am a licensed Radio Amateur (ZR5ADZ). Not an active one but a philosophical one, one that constantly monitors the 2 metre bands networking with an invisible band of channellers. I even have an Android application (Echolink) to communicate worldwide (or should I say, after Bucky Fuller, "world-around"?) using my smartphone! Some regard "hams" as a somewhat esoteric breed of enthusiasts.

Last Sunday I did in fact tune in to the South African Radio League News broadcast and one item caught my attention. I was riveted. We are currently in the midst of a solar cycle peak. Solar Cycles and sunspots are a peculiar, ubiquitous interest of hams. Extreme arcane ghost-like concepts from electron holes to sunspots and even black holes interest us, indeed anything that has to do with propagation, transmission, or connectivity. Back to that news item....

SUN MAGNETIC POLES READY TO REVERSE

SARL NEWS SUNDAY 11 AUGUST 2013

According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to turn over. The Sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as our home star's inner magnetic field generator reorganizes itself signalling the mid-point of a Solar Cycle.

Todd Hoeksema is the Director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory which is one of the few that monitor the sun's polar magnetic fields. He says that we are no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal and that this change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system. This is because of the Sun's magnetic influence, also known as the Heliosphere, which extends billions of kilometres beyond the minor planet Pluto and almost to interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals they are also referring to something known as the Sun's Current Sheet. This is a sprawling surface jutting outward from its equator where it's slowly rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. As Earth orbits the sun, it dips in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet which in turn can affect radio propagation to some degree.

As the field reversal approaches, data from the Wilcox Solar Observatory shows that the sun's two hemispheres are out of synch. According to Solar Physicist Phil Scherrer the Sun's North Pole has already changed sign, while the South Pole is racing to catch up. Soon both poles will be reversed, and the second or downhill half of Solar Max will be underway. For amateur radio it likely means that good DX openings especially on the higher bands could be fewer and far in-between.

What caught my attention was the remark, "..... this change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system." Disturbing, apocalyptic language, as this may sound, there is nothing to be alarmed about really. I myself have lived through six such flips already and have happily survived....May 1947, March 1958, November 1968, December 1979, July 1989, March 2000, and now August 2013! Of interest to radio amateurs, of course, is the effect of solar activity on propagation, communications, and electronic equipment. Cosmologists, Astronomers, Astronauts, Electrical Engineers, Neurologists, Psychologists even Astrologers and Homing Pigeons are interested in these solar rhythms too. Perhaps Cybernauts and Theologians should be too. Every Sunday evening I religiously tune in to "Sterre en Planete" ("Stars and Planets) on RadioRSG to get the week's update on what is up with the Sun. Julian the Apostate would be impressed by my devotion!

Magnificent CME_Eruption (Wikimedia Commons)

Little ripples can have humongous consequences but we are not expecting Earth to be toasted to a crisp this time round. These ripples are relatively subtle. Your GPS might be out of kilter for a bit so watch where you are going. The Internet might go down here and there much to the annoyance cyber junkies. There could be a power outage like the New York blackout of 1977. ATMs might be uncooperative. But the Solar Flip does not have to be a conflagration. It could be a joyful, expansive jubilation moment, a time of illumination. Clement of Alexandria said: “The healthful Word or Reason (the Logos), who is the Sun of the soul...has risen within the depths of the mind, the soul's eye is illuminated” (Exhortation to the Greeks 6). In the Hermetic Corpus we find: “But when the Sun did rise for me, and with all-seeing eyes I gazed upon the hidden [mysteries] of that New Dawn...” (Virgin of the World, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, III,60). Let us see where the ripples takes us.

We touched on this in my previous blog about "Trim Tab"Fuller.

We talk about feedback loops, chain reactions, the butterfly effect, cybernetics, governors , or servo control systems. Positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events while negative feedback have a dampening effect. Jesus may also have alluded to small effects with massive outcomes when he spoke of the mustard seed and the leaven in the lump.

For instance, in Stellar Physics the theory is that a remarkable magnetic braking system controls, governs, or regulates stellar effects such as the angular momentum of a star including our Sun. Mysterious mechanisms shields us from harmful bombardments. All parts of a complex but delicately balanced control system.

Coronal Mass Ejection (Wikimedia Commons)

We know that solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME), if directed earthwards can knock out entire power grids. Could they not also impact on our behaviour? Do we flare up in sympathy with solar activity? There is considerable evidence that we do! These are called "circadian rhythms". Inasmuch as some might be moonstruck we can also be solstruck. One might even speculate whether there are magnetic braking systems governing our own physical and psychological well being at molecular DNA levels ensuring balance and equilibrium in harmonious resonance with the Sun and/or even the Galaxy as Plato deduced: “the Sun … controls everything in the visible world.”

Dr Robert Becker said back in 1963: Subtle changes in the intensity of the geomagnetic field can affect the nervous system by altering the living body's own electromagnetic field." (Newsweek, 13 May 1963). Changes elsewhere in distant galaxy pulsates through us affecting and effecting us in subliminal ways modulating waves as they pass through us. We are an intrinsic element in a vast cosmic self-adapting ocean.

MichelGauquelin of the Psychophysiological Laboratory at Strasbourg University in 1966 wrote:

....the sun is responsible for a mass of strange effects which seem to influence all of life on this sphere through the weather, the atmosphere, and magnetic disturbances.

However, perhaps not all cosmic effects on earth come from the sun and the moon. There remains in the universe a huge field of influences which have yet to be explored: the influence of galactic forces, the disturbing influence of planets in the solar field, cosmic rays coming from distant space, and no doubt many other things which we know nothing about at the moment. When we do know more, we will understand better what goes on between the sky and ourselves.

(Astrology and Science, p.199)

More recent studies have refined these assumptions.

Jo A Joselyn in a paper, "The impact of solar flares and magnetic storms on humans" says:

Solar flares may disrupt radio communications in the HF and VLF ranges. Energetic particles pose a special hazard at low-earth orbit and above, where they can penetrate barriers such as spacesuits and aluminum and destroy cells and solid state electronics. Energetic solar particles also influence terrestrial radio waves propagating through polar regions. Magnetic storms may disturb the operation of navigation instruments, power lines and pipelines, and satellites; they give rise to ionospheric storms which affect radio communication at all latitudes. There is also a growing body of evidence that changes in the geomagnetic field affect biological systems.

Sometimes our chronobiological clocks might miss a beat or two in sympathy with the Sun. 

Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell "became profoundly aware that each and every atom in the Universe was connected in some way, and on seeing Earth from space he had an understanding that all the humans, animals and systems were a part of the same thing, a synergistic whole. It was an interconnected euphoria," says Ian O'Neill in an article "The Human Brainin Space: Euphoria and the 'Overview Effect' Experienced byAstronauts". 

One need not be a Moon Astronaut to experience this "interconnected euphoria". It can be enjoyed equally in the woods and desert places of our own planet. Naturalist, John Muir wrote: "When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Visiting Yosemite he wrote, "We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us."

In short...the solar cycle has a direct effect on humans. There could be solar butterflies affecting emotional tornadoes in our minds and behaviour on our streets, in our universities, temples, mosques, synagogues and churches. Possibly the Arab Spring has its wells on far distant planets or deep within the magnetic poles of the Sun.

So hang on to your hats and sunblocks, take off your shirt and feel the Sun...you never know precisely when the Sun will flip your mind!

Sunset in Sunningdale (Photo: CG Garvie)

Further Reading:

Anthropic Principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
Bioelectromagnetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectromagnetics
Butterfly Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Chronobiology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology
Grandfather Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox
Holism: http://www.environment.gen.tr/holistic-view/111-what-is-holism.html
Retrocausality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality
Reversal of Stellar Magnetic Field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_magnetic_field
List of Solar Cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles
Stellar Magnetic Fields: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_magnetic_field

Teleology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

"Trim Tab" Buckminster Fuller

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.

It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.

So I said, call me Trim Tab.

-Designer and Inventor Buckminster Fuller, Playboy, February 1972

The Grave of Buckminster Fuller (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Genealogy, and by extension biography, has always fascinated me and in many respects changed me, opening up surprising new worlds and insights for me. Reflecting back I notice I tend to be attracted for some unknown reason to more unusual, extraordinary, off-beat personalities. One of these is American creative thinker, inventor and designer, Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). So I felt a little “trim tab tribute” to "Bucky" Fuller should feature sometime as I muse here about small feedback influences with huge effects in my "cybernetic" (from the Greek, kubernesis, meaning "a rudder") blogs.* Trim tabs work much like the butterfly effect in Chaos Theory and Automatic Frequency Control in radios except that they are more controlled than random butterflies.

Out of the box thinker, Buckminster Fuller, is probably best remembered for popularising the notion of "Spaceship Earth".  In 1968 he published his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth in which he laments the exploitation of Earth's resources...

...we can make all of humanity successful through science's world-engulfing industrial evolution provided that we are not so foolish as to continue to exhaust in a split second of astronomical history the orderly energy savings of billions of years' energy conservation aboard our Spaceship Earth. These energy savings have been put into our Spaceship's life-regeneration-guaranteeing bank account for use only in self-starter functions.

Fifty years later and our “bank account” is in overdraft and we are morally and spiritually bankrupt.

1927 (he was 32) was a crucial, crossroads, year in Fuller's life. He had hit rock bottom and was deeply depressed. He felt responsible for the death of his little daughter some ten years previous. He had lost his job and was financially ruined. He was at the end of his tether. He contemplated taking his life so that his family could benefit from a life insurance policy. He found himself a disappointed, broken man on  the shores of Lake Michigan when out of the blue he had an extraordinary life changing experience.

LloydSteven Sieden relates this amazing story in his, Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work:

After several hours of internal debate over the question "Buckminster Fuller - life or death," Bucky was suddenly seized by an experience which would transform his life and his overall perception forever. As he would later recall, he experienced what he thought was the most significant of many seemingly mystical events which occurred throughout his life. During almost all of the lectures which followed that experience, he would recount that he had unexpectedly found himself suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in a "sparkling white sphere of light." During the incident, time appeared to stop while he listened to a voice speaking directly to him. Although the experience was difficult for the pragmatic Fuller to accept as reality, he remembered not resisting and allow himself to savor it fully. Because of that, he was able to remember the exact words he heard. The voice declared, "From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth." It continued, "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others." Although we will never know if that "voice" was simply Fuller's inner thoughts or some higher guidance, it did result in a vastly transformed individual.

It was an epiphany that changed the course of his life. Henceforth he sought to live such that others would benefit.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow called such moments of unexpected grace, "peak experiences”. Rationally inexplicable, we suspend judgement and marvel contemplating such life transfiguring, "Damascus Road" experiences with a sense of overwhelming awe and wonder. 

I have advocated journaling as a spiritual discipline but Fuller deliberately took the practice to extremes. He wrote what he called his "Dymaxion Chronofile" in which he sought to record every fifteen minutes of his life from 1920 to 1983! It is the ultimate personal scrapbook! He said, "I decided to make myself a good case history of such a human being and it meant that I could not be judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put everything in, so I started a very rigorous record" (Oregon Lecture #9, p.324, 12 July 1962). His diary rivals everything envisaged by Pepys and John Wesley! 

Spaceship Earth at Epcot, Walt Disney World, a Fuller Geodesic Sphere.

(Wikimedia Commons)

An idiosyncrasy was the manner in which Fuller wrote and spoke sometimes "levitating" us out of our own traditional comfort zones. He invented words and used neologisms with dramatic koan like effect. “Dymaxion” was a word that came to be associated with Fuller and his designs. He readily adopted it as a personal trademark. It was a portmanteau of "dynamic maximum tension" and was so descriptive of his life and work.  Wikipedia explains his mind-shifting language further... 

Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and said it was important to describe the world as accurately as possible....

Fuller used the word Universe without the definite or indefinite articles (the or a) and always capitalized the word. Fuller wrote that "by Universe I mean: the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated (to self or others) Experiences."

The words "down" and "up", according to Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction inconsistent with human experience. The words "in" and "out" should be used instead, he argued, because they better describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the Earth. "I suggest to audiences that they say, 'I'm going "outstairs" and "instairs."' At first that sounds strange to them; They all laugh about it. But if they try saying in and out for a few days in fun, they find themselves beginning to realize that they are indeed going inward and outward in respect to the center of Earth, which is our Spaceship Earth. And for the first time they begin to feel real 'reality.'"

"World-around" is a term coined by Fuller to replace "worldwide". The general belief in a flat Earth died out in Classical antiquity, so using "wide" is an anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth —a spheroidal surface has area and encloses a volume but has no width. Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads intuition. Other neologisms collectively invented by the Fuller family, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder, are the terms "sunsight" and "sunclipse", replacing "sunrise" and "sunset" to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican celestial mechanics.

Fuller was not simply a stickler for precision. He was wanting us to rise above old, dated, confining paradigms and be caught up in life transforming orbs of light ourselves. Such are the minds, thoughts, and experiences of others that have not only amused me in the course of my own life but also inspired me to realise that there is much more to being human than simply a constricted Space-Time-Energy-Mass (STEM) Box prisoner of circumstance and misfortune. Huge is the impact of a singular life upon another that in time reverberates down the generations with awesome tidal consequences and outcomes.

A Geodesic Sphere (Wikimedia Commons)

oOo

* Along these lines I commend the South African based novel of BryceCourtenay,  The Power of One...another story I resonate with. 

Acknowledgement:

Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Ecclesiastical Cybernetics: The Need for Loving, Inclusive Communities

I should elaborate a little more about "Cybernetics" and the Church.

Wikipedia says, "The term cybernetics stems from the Greek  kubernetes  (kyberne-te-s, steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder, the same root as government). Cybernetics is a broad field of study, but the essential goal of cybernetics is to understand and define the functions and processes of systems that have goals and that participate in circular, causal chains that move from action to sensing to comparison with desired goal, and again to action. Studies in cybernetics provide a means for examining the design and function of any system, including social systems such as business management and organizational learning, including for the purpose of making them more efficient  and effective. Cybernetics was defined by Norbert Wiener, in his book of that title, as the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. and it includes the study of feedback, black boxes and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations including self-organization."

The helmsman of a ship, the conductor of an orchestra, the bishop of a diocese or district, are examples of a "cybernete". The term applies to all systems whether cosmological, biological, electronic, ecological, neurological, etc including even, ecclesiastical systems. In fact, it is one of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit in 1 Cor 12:28:

And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. (1Co 12:28 NIV)

My introduction to cybernetics was by way of the guidance and tracking systems involved in spacecraft destined for Venus and Mars that I had participated in. This involved not only the delicately tuned guidance and trajectory systems on board a spacecraft orientating it in space with respect to the Sun and  the star Canopus in order to reach its Destination or Goal but also the locking it into a communications link and network back on Earth. The Mar's Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been amazing examples of cybernetic systems that have survived all odds. 

Later, once I moved out of space communications into church administration, I discovered that similar guidance principles, metaphorically speaking, applied in preaching a sermon; conducting church services; leading church choirs; or controlling a youth group before "all hell breaks loose"; and developing church accounting systems. Theologically, there are also the fascinating subjects of "Divine Guidance"; "Spiritual Direction"; or just maintaining loving relationships and holding people together in hostile mission environments with a singular goal or objective in mind. In the case of my own denomination, “to spread Scriptural Holiness (Perfect Love) throughout the land.”

Intrinsic to any control system is what in electrical (eg. radios) and mechanical systems (eg. the servosystem of a tracking antenna) is called "feedback". In organisations such as churches this is termed "referral"; "consultation", or simply, "active listening", as in a counselling situation. Stafford Beer called it “the science of effective organization.” Just watch a flock of Egyptian geese in flight! Gordon Pask extended it to include information flows "in all media" from stars to brains.

In a religious context, however, cybernetics explores questions such as what happens within a system when we include or exclude people; when we suspend, discontinue, dismiss or defrock priests without considering the consequences or fallout; what signals do we send out by tolerance or intolerance, by theological liberalism or fundamentalism, or by espousing orthodoxy or unorthodoxy? We see all this play out in dramatic fashion in the Gospel stories.

When effective feedback is negative; consultation is overlooked; due process is ignored; directives aren't followed; or, mediation fails, the system goes into failure. Goals and objectives aren’t reached. The system  "malfunctions". An ant colony "succumbs". A spacecraft begins to "tumble". An aeroplane goes into a "tailspin". A nuclear reactor goes into “meltdown”. A misguided missiles results in “collateral damage”. An institution becomes economically or morally “bankrupt”. A church goes into “decline”.  It is no longer efficient and becomes redundant, "lukewarm". In theological terms, the Holy Spirit is quenched! It is the Laodicean Church of Revelations. The Scallops and Sprats will die.

Conversely, what are the effects of positive feedback mechanisms on a community of believers such as acceptance; recognition; affirmation; esteem; excellence; and, self-concept? Such are the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Maxwell Maltz believed that a person must have an accurate and positive view of one's self; otherwise he or she will get stuck in a continuing pattern of limiting beliefs. He believed that self-image is the cornerstone of all the changes that take place in a person. If one's self-image is unhealthy, or faulty, all of his or her efforts will end in failure. The same applies to ecclesiastical systems. Given positive, unconditionally loving and inclusive churches and communities and the Scallops and Sprats will thrive.


References:
Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living out of Life, 1960, Prentice Hall
Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, 1948, John Wiley

Amazon:

Ecclesial cybernetics;: A study of democracy in the church
Cybernetics, society, and the church (Themes for today)