The Rainbow Connection

What Is Mereology?

Mereology is the study of “parts and wholes,” exactly like a puzzle. Solving a large puzzle involves investigating and sorting the individual pieces by property (in a simple 2D puzzle, for example, this involves observing shape and color) and investigating how those individual pieces relate to other nearby pieces and the greater picture whole.

Humanity has gone down a path of investigating individual puzzle pieces to a level of precision that reduces, or even eliminates, our capacity to see the greater picture whole. It is as if we have completely forgotten we were completing a puzzle, and we are now investigating individual puzzle pieces, looking for precise differences, ultimately breaking the puzzle down into more and more pieces based upon those differences.

The unifying premise is simple: Planet Earth is a living biological system, or organism, that we are all inside of. It breathes like we do, it sleeps like we do, it has a circulatory system, etc. We are to the Earth as our organs are to us, our organs are to our bodies as the individual cells are to the organ, and they are all unified by a single metabolism. That larger metabolism goes by many names: God, Spirit, Advaita, Brahman, Nirvana, Tao, Source, Yahweh, and many others.

To Humanity: Our species is losing its connection to the greater being we are inside of (this includes the physical body, leaving us unaware of how to live healthy lives as individuals), leaving many of us wondering what the purpose of being alive is or what reality is. It is absolutely imperative that we come together under one shared and cohesive reality, share our information, and apply it in such a way that leads to fulfillment.

“The Best for the Group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself AND the group.”

John Nash, Economist and Award Winning Mathematician

In other words, helping the world around you comes from within, first and foremost. A healthy individual creates a healthy environment; an unhealthy individual creates an unhealthy environment. Poor public health measures are affecting societal outcomes.

Here is what I believe our greater purpose to be: The separation between ourselves and Nature has gifted us the capacity to observe Nature from the outside in, collecting information about itself. Nature cycles between periods of extreme warming and cooling, inevitably causing extinction events. We have the opportunity to come together and use the information we have collected to prevent that from happening, by intelligently designing and redesigning our environment, as it changes, to prevent those cycles from causing excessive damage.

To Women: There is a universal misunderstanding regarding the role of women in society, and there is a universal misunderstanding of the role of estrogen in our bodies. The purpose of estrogen became clearer to me through studying metabolism: A large number of anti-inflammatories that prevent systemic disease and cancers are phytoestrogens, or plant estrogens. The most famous role of estrogen is reproduction, but it is also tied to sleep, healing, attention, fair economics and resource allocation between body systems, apoptosis (death to entities not serving the greater whole), harmonizing the body systems through communication, and guiding cellular differentiation (teaching a cell or child to have a necessary purpose within a larger system). These are all absolutely critical roles for a healthy society to thrive, and they are missing or diminishing within our species, on the micro and macro levels.

Our species is trending toward less and less healthy estrogen production. You can see the lack of female presence in a society/body that lacks a cohesive reality and is breaking into dualistic binaries (fragmentation/lack of harmony), you see a lack of female presence within a society/body that cannot rest adequately (quiescence), you can see the lack of female presence in a society/body that is wasteful in its energy usage and producing a high level of toxic waste (metabolic disease), you can see a lack of female presence in a society/body that is highly competitive within itself (autoimmunity), you can see a lack of female presence in a society/body that is too large to adequately provide for the individuals within it (a lack of growth inhibition), and you can see a lack of female presence in a society/body that cares only for linear, left-brained, logical thought that leads to forward progression without regard for providing our bodies and children with a safe and healthy place to live. My challenge to you is simply to step into that energy and be the glue that society needs to heal and hold itself together. Please reach out with questions, and I will be sharing further guidance.

To the Philosopher of Mind: The statement “…and they are all unified by a single metabolism” is equivalent to a “mind first” approach. That is the greater consciousness. My challenge to you is to develop an understanding of metabolism and cellular differentiation, because a lot of wisdom can be gained by viewing yourself as a community of billions of individuals, both with individual free will/identity and a necessary connection to a community and a greater being.

To the Monotheist (Abrahamic Religion): A “sin” is a symptom of a disorder. Notice how God is often referred to as a source of order, the opposite being a disorder. There is no need to overcomplicate language. If you believe someone around you is “sinning,” I urge you to approach people with the curiosity of a scientist, including yourself. Sins are symptoms of metabolic disorder, and an individual with metabolic disorder is nothing to be afraid of. What needs to be addressed is why society has repeatedly seen spikes of metabolic disorder throughout our history without evolving and learning any kind of lesson.

To the Atheist: My challenge to you is to reframe your conceptual understanding of religion. Religion was not intended to help our ancestors explain isolated events occurring in the world around them from a position of ignorance. At its core, religion is intended to outline mathematical patterns of forces in nature, giving them personality. Our ancestors recognized our behavior as potentially problematic, and passed down a lineage of stories and predictions to help us understand nature and to prevent and/or predict nature disasters in response to our behavior. There are valid reasons not to believe in monotheistic principles, all of which will be discussed in due time, but there are scientific reasons to believe that we are part of something greater than ourselves.

To the Veterinary Community: Our species has accidentally gone down a path of self-confinement, preventing us from engaging in our natural behaviors, and resulting in stereotypic behaviors. Confinement over many generations is causing epigenetic changes that are being passed to our offspring, making those stereotypies permanent. We also struggle deeply with parenting, which is why spiritual practice has such an emphasis on reparenting the self. My challenge to you is to take everything you have learned about environmental enrichment and parenting in nature, and pass that information to me, to medical doctors, to people in early intervention, and to our educators, so that we can thoughtfully design our environments in a manner that meets our biological needs from an early age.

To the Human Medical Community: The veterinary community has an absolute mastery of heuristic decision-making (heuristics are rules-of-thumb that can be applied to guide decision-making based on a more limited subset of the available information) because our patients cannot be directly communicated with. When you rely too much on technology, specialization, and the assumption that your patient is capable of communicating with you fully (no animal is fully willing to admit to weakness), you are forced to treat disorder symptomatically rather than systemically. In other words, you are forced to wait until the disorder is overtly visible to the observer, at which point the disorder has been brewing inwardly for quite some time. My challenge to you is to educate yourself beyond the human scope: Observe animal behavioral patterns, have conversations with veterinarians, etc. It will open doors into new and creative ways to diagnose and treat chronic disorders earlier and more effectively.

To the Economist: Metabolism is a resource economy. Here is how it works: During waking times, our body systems operate somewhat as capitalists. In other words, the body systems are allowed to operate as individuals to meet their own needs. During resting periods, our bodies operate as communists. The body is placed in a state of quiescence, and sacrifices its excess and waste to the brain for removal of waste and redistribution of excess. Capitalism and communism are two sides of the same coin. When you rely on communism only, the entire society is put to sleep. When you rely on free market capitalism only, the sheer amount of waste production and accumulation of excess ultimately puts the entire society to sleep anyway, while appearing to be productive. Free market capitalism has the same outcome as communism due to human design, and that outcome is failure. There is a perfect balance between the two that leads to a balanced and productive economy, and that will never be reached via a one-sided strategy.

To the Politician: Conservative and liberal are intended to also be two sides of the same coin that work together for the masses. Conservative practices are supposed to represent the tried-and-true cultural rituals and beliefs that work for everyone, while the liberal side is supposed to represent the freedom to search for new information during times of change, when pieces of conservative ideology are no longer supporting the masses. Conservatives must be fluid enough to accept new information in times of change, and liberals must be grounded to the needs of the masses. There is a perfect balance between the two that leads to a balanced and productive government, and that will never be reached via a one-sided strategy or warring between the two sides.

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