A few thoughts on Dawkins and Bateson... and being enlightened through visual thinking.

It occurred to me this week thinking back on my reading of Bateson as I read Dawkins that these two authors manage to cover two ways of thinking about the levels of reality and evolution. Bateson exposes as much as he can the confusion of levels of logic type and their relationship to living mechanics and structural morphology; while Dawkins suggests that we're stuck in one level of thinking about evolution and overlook the importance of the smaller level, that of genes. I suggest that by combining these two concepts one comes out with a recognition that Dawkins is only half right and that Bateson's spiral is nearly the other half of the picture, that a cosmically grand however subtle combination of forces manifest themselves as what we describe as a finite molecular and living procreation, and thus delimit us within the biocentric slant of evolution having a purpose.  Genes do not by themselves manufacture life nor are they strictly speaking codes that determine life's eventuality.  Terrestrial molecules have been stroked just as gently or forcefully as any perennial in the garden by a mild or blustery wind—in their own dimension, where no human has been.  What inhibits our understanding is that we do not imagine, nor can we imagine rightly from the point of view of such an infinitely ambiguous dimension. And where these forces meet is where they are perhaps paradoxically one and the same presence in nature.  The concept of the Tao to my mind comes closest to tis idea, and yet no more can we rationally see the duality or plurality of any one origin nor imagine our ultimate fate as anything but that which derives from what we desire out of our confusion over this paradox.  I for one choose to remain in the realm of the arts as I try to fathom these portals to ultimate awareness.