OMNI-INTEGRITY OF SELF AND WORLD
OMNI-INTEGRITY OF SELF AND WORLD
By Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
Health as Tensional and Semiotic Integrity Tensegrity
The mathematician-design scientist R. Buckminster Fuller in Synergetics (1978) states:
Our modern conception of Universe is as a comprehensive system of energy processes. ...
Universe is tensional integrity (310.01)
As a portmanteau of ‘tensional integrity’ Fuller coined the term ‘tensegrity’, which designates
the structural integrity of all systems observed throughout the universe. Tensegrity is
generated by a dynamic integration of continuous tension and discontinuous compression.
Everything that exists in the universe has a structure that constitutes its spatiotemporal
identity. Tensegrity principles are what hold a structure with the minimum material,
maximum resiliency, and most efficient use of space.
Following Fuller, the biologist Stephen Levin in Tensegrity: The New Biomechanics (2006) coined the term ‘biotensegrity’ and extended the application of the tensegrity principles to biological structures. In evolutionary biology, it is observed that natural selection greatly favors biological systems that have higher degrees of tensegrity structure and organization.
Health as Tensegrity In Synergetics Buckminster Fuller also states:
Of all the sub cosmic, integrally interpatterning complexes that we know of in our Universe, there is no organic complex that in any way compares with that of the human being. We have only one counterpart of [equal] total complexity, and that is Universe itself (311.01).
The human organism is a tensegrity structure as complex as the universe itself. The human being is the ‘omni tensegrity’, comprising biotensegrity, psycho tensegrity, and sociotensegrity.
That which is called ‘holistic’ or ‘integral’ health is this omni tensegrity, holistically and integrally composed of the physical health (biotensegrity), the psychological health
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(psycho tensegrity), and the sociological health (sociotensegrity).
The health of the mindbody, of the psychosomatic system, as tensegrity is the primordial reality of the human organism. That is, the state of health is more primary than that of illness, which I define as localized, out-of-phase degenerations inside the natural tensegrity pattern dynamic of life, consisting of three cyclical phases of structuring (generation), destructuring (degeneration), and restructuring (regeneration).
The human organism maintains a necessary and sufficient level of tensegrity until the end. When the basal tensegrity becomes broken and the maintenance of it becomes impossible, the organism unstructures, that is, it dies.
Health is not the antithesis of illness. We can be healed with illness without being cured of illness. The philosopher James P. Carse states in Finite and Infinite Games (1987):
When I am healed I am restored to my center in a way that my freedom as a person is not compromised by my loss of functions. This means that the illness need not be eliminated before I can be healed... I am cured of my illness; I am healed with my illness (56).
Health is more primary in reality and higher in order than illness. Health includes illness, just as the whole includes the parts. A local disorder may disturb the whole system or a disturbance to the whole system may cause a local disorder, but the basic order of the whole is sustained.
Therefore, health is none other than the systemic tensegrity that sustains the order of the whole system, which restores the original whole order through the process of healing. Healing is the inner working of tensegrity that generates a response, movement, and process of restoring the original order.
Healing is tensegrity organically exercising its resilience. Healing is the activation and intensification of tensegrity functions. Healing is the restoration of tensegrity by and through tensegrity. Therefore, health heals, and only health heals.
Tensegrity as Semiotic Integrity
The tensegrity phenomenon can be seen from the semiotic perspective and defined as semiotic integrity, even as an energy transfer in the universe always accompanies an information transfer.
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The original work on semiotics by the American philosopher-scientist Charles Sanders Peirce has been taken up, for example, by the linguists Ferdinand de Saussure and Sebastian Shaumyan, the novelist-philosopher Umberto Eco, and the systems theorist-social scientist Niklas Luhmann.
Umberto Eco argued that every cultural phenomenon may be seen as semiotic phenomenon and studied as communication. Niklas Luhmann proposed that the basic unit that constitutes society is not the individual human being but communication.
We can also argue that biological, psychological, and psychosomatic phenomena are all semiotic phenomena: as the society consists of semiotic inter-communications, the body, the mind, and the mindbody consist of semiotic intra-communications.
The disciplines of biosemiotics and psychosemiotics have been in development for decades. For instance, the biochemist Jesper Hoffmeyer introduced biosemiotics to the public through his Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1993) and Biosematics (2008), while the psychologist Howard A. Smith did the same with his Psychosemiotics (2001).
Therefore, the physical health or the biotensegrity is equivalent with the semiotic integrity of the biological system; the psychological health or the psycho tensegrity with the semiotic integrity of the psychological system; the sociological health or the sociotensegrity with the semiotic integrity of the sociological system; and the integral human health or the omni tensegrity with the semiotic omni-integrity of the whole self-world/world-self system.
The conception of ‘health as tensegrity’ provides the perspective from which to comprehend the energetic-synergetic-structural dimensions of health; while the concept of ‘tensegrity as semiotic integrity’ provides the perspective from which to comprehend the consciousness- psychology as well as the communication-sociology dimensions of health.
Tensegrity is defined as
Biotensegrity and Biosemiotic Integrity
the structural integrity that exists throughout the universe, generated
by the dynamic integration of continuous tension and discontinuous compression.
The human body is an energetic-synergetic structural system, and its tensegrity structure is
beautifully demonstrated by the etheric-energetic anatomy of the acupuncture points and
meridians of the ancient Chinese medicine.
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Also, the human body has nine subtle energetic centers, which are the discontinuous
generative-radiative energetic vortices that constitute nine centers of compression. The energy-
wave emanating from these nine vortices or centers and their synergetic interactions and
interchanges form a continuous tensional totality. The human body thus can be seen as a
tensegrity structure.
The total tensegrity of the whole system is maintained through highly complex enneadic
semiotic interactions or communications in the form of outward signal transmissions
(‘sending’ or ‘speaking’) and inward signal receptions (‘receiving’ or ‘listening’). The maximal
tensegrity is equal to the optimal semiotic integrity, both of which are equal to the optimum
health of the body.
Healing means the maximization of tensegrity and the optimization of semiotic integrity,
which constitute the maximal energetic functionality of each vortex combined with the optimal
synergetic integration of all vortices. Optimum health means that there is an optimal degree of
communication from each center, which generates the optimal level of intra-communications
in and of the whole system.
As Buckminster Fuller says, the human organisms are as complex as the universe itself. He continues:
Universe is technology—the most comprehensively complex technology. Human organisms are Universe’s most complex local technologies (311.02)
Healing restores me to play, curing restores me to competition in one or another [finite] game. . . —James P. Carse
The historian Yuval Noah Harari describes in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017) 10
It has taken billions of years for the universe to evolve such complex organisms or
technologies. The human organisms—the most complex local technologies in the universe—
are thus endowed with the ‘strategic survival intelligence’ of an immense magnitude, which
the medical science has not yet been able to match. This intelligence of the human organism is
another name for the biosemiotic integrity of the body.
The contemporary medicine is the science and technology of curing, yet healing is still left to
the intelligence and ability of the human organism. Unfortunately a considerable number of
medical therapies intended to cure illness sometimes end up actually weakening the organism,
impeding and diminishing the intelligence of the body, and preventing healing from taking
place.
that the modern humans transformed plague (disease), plus famine and war, from
incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into humanly manageable challenges.
However, disease has become subtler and more stress-related than infection-related.
The intelligence or the biosemiotic integrity of the human body is what creates the resilience of
the body of which the immune system is a part. Any paradigm or modality of healing that
neglects or does not incorporate the intelligence of the body is fatally incomplete.
Healing proceeds and health is sustained through communicating with the body and trusting
the intelligence of the body. The intelligence of the body being a semiotic integrity, its
substance is communication, and therefore we can listen to, communicate with, and learn from
the body.
The language of the intelligence or the biosemiosis of the human organism is the language of
Nature. Therefore, to understand the language of the intelligence of the body requires that we
understand the language of Nature. It is often said that mathematics is the language of Nature.
This is only partially true. The language of Nature is not limited to the Newtonian language of
mathematics but includes Goethean and Freudian language of phenomenology and poetry.
Nature is thus multilingual.
To master the language of Nature requires the fluency in both the languages of light and
darkness—in both the knowing as light and the knowing with light. It requires the meditative
attunement to both the internal and external worlds. It requires the sensibility of a
mathematician and the sensitivity of a poet.
Harari further states in Homo Deus:
[M]edicine is undergoing a tremendous conceptual revolution. Twentieth-century medicine aimed to heal the sick. Twenty-first-century is increasingly aiming to upgrade the healthy. Healing the sick was an egalitarian project . . . In contrast, upgrading the healthy is an elitist project . . .
What Harari calls “healing” is what James Carse and I call ‘curing’, which is different from
true healing. With the constant advance in medical and various other technologies,
“upgrading the healthy” will happen with a high degree of probability. Yet, the evolutionary
framework for this upgrading is uncertain and undetermined. In my view, the proper
framework would be to use technologies not only for the augmentation but for the
enhancement of the semiotic integrity or intelligence of the human organism, the whole
mindbody system, itself.
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In the age of rapidly advancing technoscience, humanity needs to learn the language of Nature
with renewed rigor and greater depth. It is more important than ever before that we develop
our ability to commune with Nature within and without. Otherwise, we will likely end up
fortifying the Matrix with the advanced technology.
Psycho Tensegrity and Psychosemiotic Integrity Character as Psycho Tensegrity
The traditional term for psycho tensegrity is character. Character etymologically means ‘distinct mark (or imprint) on the soul’.
In Integrity: the Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality (2006) the psychologist Henry Cloud defines character as “the ability to meet the demands of reality”, consisting of six character dimensions as follows. According to Cloud, the integration or integrity of more of these dimensions produces a greater and more wholesome character:
The ability to connect authentically (which leads to trust)
The ability to be oriented toward the truth (which leads to finding and operating in
reality)The ability to work in a way that gets results and finishes well (which leads to
reaching goals, profits, or the mission)The ability to embrace, engage, and deal with the negative (which leads to ending
problems, resolving them, or transforming them)The ability to be oriented toward growth (which leads to increase)
The ability to be transcendent (which leads to enlargement of the bigger picture and
oneself)
An excellent list of character dimensions applicable to the theme of our work, but one important character dimension is missing, or at least it is not made explicit. That is, the ability to be oneself authentically—the ability “to thy own self be true” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet). This ability to be oneself, to be true to oneself, is at the very heart of the development of character and maximization of psycho tensegrity.
Authenticity
The influential German philosopher Martin Heidegger introduced the terms Eigentlichkeit and
Uneigentlichkeit, translated into English respectively as Authenticity and Inauthenticity. The
English words ‘authenticity’ and ‘inauthenticity’ do not mean the same as Heidegger’s original
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German coinage. In my view, the English version is better because of the etymological
connotations of the term authenticity.
The term authenticity shares the same etymological root as author and authority. Authenticity
thus implies self-authorship and self-authority. Therefore, to be authentic means to be the author
of your own life following your own inner authority, whereas being inauthentic means to live
your life according to a script written by external authority (parents/teachers/society).
Heidegger’s original conception of eigentlichkeit and uneigentlichkeit is explicitly Manichaean,
but it is better to view authenticity and inauthenticity as a continuum, because no one is one
hundred percent authentic or inauthentic. Heidegger views them sharply dualistically, and in
spite of his claim that these two terms are value-free, he differentiates eigentlichkeit and
uneigentlichkeit in the same way in which the Manicheans separate good and evil, laden with
value judgment.
Nevertheless, the distinction between authentic and inauthentic that Heidegger originated is
important and instructive because the cultural vector of humanity, in the Matrix, for
generations has been toward inauthenticity. We have all been told to be “somebody” (the ‘not-
self’) but not taught to be “your true self” (the authentic self).
Societal problems or ‘functional deficits’ and psychosocial problems or ‘actualization deficits’
can be seen as the inevitable results of the culture of inauthenticity in which people are
programmed to pursue to become “somebody (worthy)” that is their ‘not-self’, that is, their
inauthentic self.
To this suboptimal, unwholesome, and unnatural condition of the world, of the Matrix, people
react with the sense of frustration, irritation, anxiety, rage, sadness, or depression. Even those
who succeed in becoming “somebody” worthy by the standard of society, they would still feel
empty inside if they did not be or know their own self.
The emptiness inside is the void of failing to be one’s authentic self—the sign of a life devoid
of real meaning or fulfillment. By succeeding in becoming “somebody”, one has become
nobody.
Know Your Self, Be Your Self
Gnōthi sauton)
The Delphic maxim/the Socratic injunction “Know thyself (
thyself”, for knowing your self (epistemology) implies and is inseparable from being your self
” can also mean “Be
(ontology). Integrated character development therefore involves the development of real self-
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knowledge.
Since the time of Socrates, a very small portion of humanity has followed the Delphic maxim,
because following it requires that you live your life as a never-ending quest with ever-greater
clarity but without any final answer—without any certainty. The quest belongs to infinite
game, not finite game.
This implies that you develop the vehicle of quest—i.e., your being, character, and
intelligence—constantly and consistently, so that your quest becomes increasingly more
authentic and that you become increasingly more able to ask authentic questions.
Humanity has not developed a culture in a significant enough scale that enables, encourages,
and empowers such a quest, which is the highest expression of what it means to be human.
If we can allow ourselves to be and to love who we truly are in pursuit of the mystery and the
wonder of our own self in relation to the world and the universe, we are unlikely to act out our
frustration or rage, seeking political power to control others, to engage in violence, or to wage
war.
Truth and Dare
The seven character dimensions—the six character dimensions identified by Henry Cloud plus
the ability to be (true to) oneself—constitute the seven compression vortexes of
psycho tensegrity. That which interconnects these discontinuous compression points and
engenders the continuous tensional integrity is the integrated intra-psychic semiotic
interchange or communication.
The individual with a high degree of psycho tensegrity is psychologically healthy. With the
seven character dimensions integrally developed, the individual would live an authentic life of
integrity and successfully meet the demands of reality. With the integrated whole intra-
psychic semiotic interchange activated, the individual would be highly intra-communicative
and hence conscious and aware of the world of his/her psyche without fragmentation and
without denial—without the “disowned self”.
Far more critical than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person’s [character] by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions. . . . The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it. —Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms (2006)
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Conversely the strength of a soul—psycho tensegrity—is inversely proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it. If no truth needs to be kept from you, your soul has attained the highest degree of strength. Then, there is no resistance to any problem or issue. Your heartmind matures to become pristinely innocent (childlike, not childish), totally open to wonder, explore, inquire, and learn.
They say “Truth liberates” or “Truth heals.” There is truth that we want to know. There is truth that we would rather not know. The truth that liberates and heals is not usually that truth which we want to know but we would rather not know—the truth that in truth we do not want to know.
It is when we can dare to know the truth that we do not want to know that we begin the process of liberation and healing, and eventually attain the state of pristinely innocent openness. It is not “truth or dare” but truth and dare. The truth that heals requires daring.
Through the process of liberating and healing, of maximizing psycho tensegrity and optimizing psycho semantic integrity, we develop intellectual honesty and integrity and emotional maturity and intelligence, and acquire clarity that is beyond the dichotomy of certainty and uncertainty, and of security and insecurity.
Sociotensegrity and Socio Semiotic Integrity
When we conceive of society as a tensegrity structure, we perceive individuals as discontinuous compression vertices and communications or semiotic interchanges between and among them to be continuous tensional edges or connections. Thus conceived, the health of society depends on the vitality of individuals and the viability of communications. That is to say, sociotensegrity or socio semiotic integrity requires, in addition to the psycho tensegrity of individual participants of the society, the systemic functionality of inter-communications.
What is communication? Communication is not merely speaking and listening, nor is it merely an exchange of information. In order for communication to be true communication, understanding needs to occur. Communication is semiotic interchange beyond mere ex- change.
Communication is the dynamic tetradic (four-fold) system in which information is transformed to understanding in the tensional integrity of speaking and listening.
When communication takes place, listening and understanding become congruent. Therefore,
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the tetradic system that is communication (consisting of speaking, information, listening, and understanding) can be reduced to a triadic structure of speaking (utterance), information, and understanding. Communication happens when and only when these three structural elements – utterance, information, and understanding—are present.
That which communicates is not the human beings but communication as a whole system. It is communication that communicates and it is only communication that can communicate. When one of the three structural elements is missing or insufficient, communication does not happen. This is seen as a breakdown in communication, but in reality it is a breakdown of communication: the tensegrity of the semiotic interchange becomes weakened and the semiotic integrity incurs a missing link.
Breakdowns of communication can lead to diseases of communication that cause the erosion, collapse, or destruction of society. For example, if two nations in conflict have a breakdown of communication and either nation no longer listens to what the other says, then a war is likely to ensue.
War is the state of the absence of communication in which the people become hyper-sensitized to words that are spoken inside the nation while they become immune to words from the outside. Where communication ends violence begins, and when violence comes to an end communication resumes.
Healing the Disease of Communication
In communication, consisting of information, utterance, and understanding, information means true and accurate information, utterance means articulate utterance of truth, and understanding means precise understanding of truth uttered and contained in information.
The disease of communication is prevalent throughout the world because of the world- systemic pathology of misinformation, disinformation, and noninformation. The power structure of the world, with the willing assistance of the sycophant media and the elite academia, manipulates and controls the populace by perpetuating the anti-culture of misinformation, disinformation, and noninformation, and by thus creating negative information asymmetries.
Important decisions are made in secrecy in the name of the security of the nation and the people. All the vital intelligences that affect our lives are centralized (e.g., “Central Intelligence Agency”) without transparency. Truth is hidden and trust is lost. A large portion of the human population is so utterly uninformed, misinformed, or disinformed and so victimized by
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negative information asymmetries that people are unable or disabled to make any informed and rational assessment or judgment on unfolding vital local and global events.
With the advent of the information-communication computer technology, for the first time in history, we have the means and the instrument to radically transform the world-system, and exponentially increase the sociotensegrity and the socio semiotic integrity of the world. It is now critical to create an omnicentric open-source intelligence network throughout the planet of which every individual can equally partake.
In The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2012), Steven Pinker
demonstrates how violence in society has declined overall throughout history and continues to decline today. Yet it is also true that there have been 15,000 wars in the last 6,000 years, and that violence still persists, including psychic (mental-emotional) violence.
One of the fundamental causes of the disease of communication, and of violence and war, is that human beings in general do not know how to sustain their participation in communication in the face of disagreement.
Instead of sustaining a civil and rational conversation, and mutually evolving understanding of each other’s different perspective, people either stop speaking with one another or start a verbal combat that leads to nowhere intellectually but to possible violence physically.
There are a large number of people who appear to be perpetually “offended” by those who hold different points of view from theirs, while the movement of “political correctness” has taken over the society and “thought-policing” has become rampant.
The basic cause of the inability to sustain a conversation in the face of disagreement and of the intolerance of different points of view and of those who hold them, is emotional immaturity and insecurity, manifesting as the ideological tribalism and ideospheric territorial covetousness.
The systemic increase of psycho tensegrity or psycho semantic integrity (character development), integrally coupled with the systematic increase of sociotensegrity or socio semiotic integrity, can make humanity move in the direction of the systemic increase of omnitensegrity of the human self-world/world-self system.