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Knowing this is somewhat tangential to the point you were making regarding determinism and enlightenment physics; later advances in math and physics may not have overturned determinism but did essentially make deterministic understanding of the universe impossible. Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, quantum physics in general. Some do take uncertainty as fundamental rather than a lack of knowledge, but that weakens the determinism aspect as breaking down the old world view. Plenty of ‘room for god’ when there are boundaries to knowability.

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I think attention is the key to unlocking new values. In addition to inheriting two-worlds mythology, the arena of information (and especially visual information) has outpaced and overwhelmed agents of biological evolution. To keep up, we break everything down into atomized bits. To glue the continuum back together we need to balance the sensorium again, and attention is the finger on the scale. We have to unupholster objects with a piercing inner gaze, to get at empty fruit inside that nourishes.

But maybe this is one of the "mistakes" you laid out, as seems to hearken to a tribal everything-all-at-once consciousness. Or perhaps a mix of tribal sensory equanimity with modern meta awareness of big history to instill a base of gratitude.

Looking forward to next installments!

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