POST-MOD CRUMPING VS. MODERN BREAKDANCING

POMO culture parodies Modern culture. It is important to understand this if you are to read sense into POMO "absurdity." Just as POMOS are the direct offspring of Moderns, POMO culture references Modernism. It is vital, however, to understand that POMO culture is not incidental. As a cultural movement, it is unique in that it acquiesces to the gravity of Modern culture by parody: an intentional but cynical compliance in which it is "forced" into.


For example, breakdancing belongs to the Modern because it imitated the technology of Modern industrialized culture: the reduction of matter to hydraulic motion, robotic movement, and wave theory. What made the dance Modern was its emphasis upon precise mechanical imitation and the most number of rotations exploited from an efficient move. Just like the mechanistic, Modern world-view, breakdancing was a mechanistic expression of that worldview. That is not to say anything negative about the dance, per se, unless a person has bought into the mechanistic worldview. I am only trying to contextualize it. Many customary norms of the Modern can be observed in every strata of culture that link it back to its mechanistic emphases, not just breakdancing.


In the following clip, notice the predictable "orbital" motion of the floor moves. Notice the "waves" and "machining" of the popping moves. Also, notice how the breakers dance, synchronized to the music, not against it, indicating the "staged" choreography. Perhaps, the most obvious Modern convention is the fact that the dancers are spaced or "alienated" from each other at a generous distance from each other so as to be discerned from each other. Also, each dancer specializes in a particular section of the dance genre: fracture. You are watching Modern compartmentalization in action.



As the 1980’s came to a close and the world spirit shifted from a Modern, deterministic view of reality to a Post-modern, spiritual one, breakdancing lost media favor and gave way to a Hip-Hop form more compatible with POMO culture: crumping. Whereas breakdance was predictable, crumping defined itself by its impredictability and attendant absurdity. It is the quantum version of breakdance in that it sections a predictable dance move into exponentially small portions and reframes them in a stream of glitches, aesthetically imitating the uncertainty principle. In fact, properly done, no two Crump dances ought to look the same (RIZE documentary).

In the video clip first listen to the deconstruction of the classic song at the beginning, a post-mod convention. Next, watch the several selections of crumping. Notice in several of the dance selections how close in proximity the onlookers are to the main crumper: the onlookers are "feeding" the crumper energy just as they are "receiving" that energy back. Notice that they do not respond to "staged" moves but only to the novel move or the "unprogrammed" move. These dances are not staged. Also, notice in a few sections how the crumper "stutters" or "skips" very much like a scratched CD "loops" back on itself. It is as if they are breaking out of a "predetermined" act. Also, notice the definitive movements that have a "pull back" to them and the aggressively angular contortions that go no where. Do not watch to criticize. Watch to understand.



What is intriguing about this "ghetto ballet" born out of the 1996 L.A. Riots is that crumpers looked on breakdancing as bling or show because it was fashionably simplistic, pretentious, and commercial. Breakdancing was interested in the precise imitation of mechanics whereas crumping was in revolt against mechanics. Being Modern, I have been culturally partial to breakdance; that is to say, I understand it and can appreciate it.



I have told my students that with my new understanding over the past decade, I would fall on the side of crumping because it is a relevantly cultural expression of the signs of the times. In the proper spirit, it is beautifully choreographed post-modernism exhibiting no faith in truncated predictability and running with a wide-arm embrace towards the unknown or "faith in faith." And I wouldn't crump on stage or in a circle surrounded by an non-participatory audience either like breakdancing demands, being performance-oriented. I would crump outside the circle, in the crowd, on a building, in a tree. I would crump until I was exhausted. I would crump until the Modern crowd went from ridiculing me to awkwardly murmuring about my nonsense to finally giving in to a reverent silence until someone in the crowd says "I think he's trying to say something." And I would do it as a Modern full of compassion for this generation, and not as some POMO wannabe sporting tattoos I really don't want or eyebrow rings I really don't like or speaking a lingo I really don't know or listening to music I really don't understand. No, I would do it as a member of my own optimistic but narcissistic Modern generation before 1989.


And what would I be saying? I would be saying that it is time to wake up to the fact that the world is no longer a Modern world! Even though Modernism has two hundred years of momentum, I am telling you that if you are a Modern you are being marginalized. You are becoming quickly redundant. And it is no fault of the encroaching post-modern world, because eras are subject to change. It is the fault of the nostalgic Modern who wishes it to be 1940 again or 1950 again or, God forbid, the 1980's again when those decades themselves embodied cultural failures we have so tried to escape. Can a man crawl back into his mother's womb and be born again? Of course not, and neither is it a solution to talk about the "good old days" when in reality they were only good because they were familiar.


The movie Beat Street (1984) which featured the East Coast New York City breakers was about breaking out of poverty. The movie ends with a death and a memorial. The plot of the movie Breakin 2 Electric Boogaloo featuring West Coast Electric Boogaloo was about "breaking the system." However, the breakdancers capitulated to the system by using an aspect of Modernism to fight Modernism. In the end their promise to revolt ended up in their raising money to save a local arts hangout. Crumping is different in that it is very very personal. You can't "get crump" unless you are spiritually and emotionally motivated. It does not come any other way. Crumping has finally become commercialized to the ire of its many founder-contributers, but it will remain grassroots because of its emphasis on individual expression.


Youtube breakdancing vs. crumping. You will see that the two Hip-Hop dances have no love for each other. That is because they are two different world-view expressions. Crumping is a quantum expression of breakdancing which is what I mean by POMO culture parodying Modern culture. POMO culture, being derived of Modernism, will always use a Modern sensibility as its reference point. But the key to understanding POMO culture is a veneer of compliance plus a cynic's twist.

A WELL-MEANING, CULTURAL ATHEISM

The POMO will not compartmentalize life while his parents' chief goal in child-rearing is the creation of an automaton with formatted body, mind and spirit. The POMO cringes when expected to compartmentalize his life. I have listened to hundreds of students express as much to me, to each other, and to their parents. They write it in their essays. They talk about it at lunchtime. They etch it on their skins. They express it in their clothing. In their insomnia. In their boredom. The POMO aspires that all compartments of life be a fluid one and only one. Ultimately, this is what a POMO means when he speaks of being genuine or true or honest or authentic. How authentic is it to express truth in Newtonian terminology when Newton's simplicity denies the extraordinary complexity of the universe we now know? The POMO believes that most, if not all, of life's categories are artificially imposed, propping up a very artificial system he is told is reality. As artificial, those categories are hampering to the pursuit of an successful and enjoyable life that desires above all things to exist in harmony with itself and with the world around it.

The fundamental confusion of the Modern Christian’s logical (doctrinal) position is that God (as absolute) is to be seriously considered in one area of reality but not in another. For example, many Christian schools teach students that an object returns to the ground because of gravity, yet in a “spiritual” sense (though functionally impractical) because God wills it (if they ever get around to saying that). But that reality is not sensible. Newton argued that, because God wills it, an object will return to the ground and that, if gravity works, it works because God wills it. Natural law and supernatural law are not to be divorced if both are to make sense. Natural law exists in a practical and predictable form upon which men can project material results because God is already there willing natural law to work.

On one hand, the Modern Christian mindset demands exhaustive and logical, physical knowledge of the universe in a way that it does not expect exhaustive and logical knowledge of the “spiritual” world. The result is that blatant, logical glitches in “spiritual” truth pockmark the Christian faith and become the logical reasoning of a totalitarian subculture.

I encourage you to compare and contrast the levels of consistency you expect from scientific knowledge and church doctrine, respectively. You will find more often than not that the tendency is either to speak haphazardly about spiritual things but to speak with precision about physical things or to speak with precision about theoretically spiritual things that do not make one iota of difference in this world and to speak theoretically with precision about physical things that make no difference in this world. Either way, you have a bifurcation of spirit and matter, where it is either the world or the spirit that matters at any one time in any one place. This dual expectation is an arbitrary value shift which is as equally atheistic as a “totally” atheistic position, because God is to be barred from where it truly and effectively matters.

The POMO is different. He tends to speak haphazardly about spiritual things AND physical things because his is one world. The sincerity with which he combines both worlds into one is the absurdity against which the Modern revolts. That absurdity (which the Modern does not so easily recognize) is the POMO parodying Modern culture.

THE CULTURAL STRESS-FRACTURE

One hears the term "absolute" quite alot amongst Moderns in religious and political discussions: absolute truth, absolute values. In this sense, absolute is the antithesis to "relativistic" which I have already explained is often confused with legitimate relativity. A premodern view of "absolute" would reserve the term for God or as descriptive of God, not as a term for the entity of creation or for any material particular. Because matter is created, it is transient. Because it is transient, it is not absolute. Only God is absolute. What about ideas or culture derived of God? It does not matter: as derivative they are transient. The Modern ultimately believed scientific law to be absolute and spiritual truth derived of that scientific law to be absolute, too. So, for example, an evangelist who scientifically "proves" to an individual the existence of God is expected to necessarily convince him of the Christian faith. Material, imminently discernible, is primary. Spirituality, less discernible than matter (in this view), is derivative.

The Modern orientation acknowledges that a mechanistic system encases the total of natural law and, as a system, is independent of any other factor. For those who subscribe to deity, it is outside the system so as not to affect the integrity of the mechanistic system. James Gleick says of Modern science "A God that does not intervene is a God receding into a distant, harmless background." Modernism does not rely upon an a-material entity for a total answer to reality that embraces both physical and spiritual realms. From beginning to end, the Modern mind is formatted with the architectural blueprint, with the five-year business plan, with family planning, with the fiscal budget, with the Romans Road. Even the concept of the business core value is conceptually structured as an independent solar system affected by no more factors than the material environment in which it finds itself.

The strength of the Modern is that he can project with scientific accuracy the end of many material things. He can do that because his logical reliability projects a constant into the future, be it only a physical constant. The Egyptians did not have this kind of reliability, and to them is attributed the 24-hour day, the 365-day solar year, the decimal system. The Greeks and Romans did not have this reliability either, though to them has been attributed the foundations of mathematics and Western civilization. Each of these civilizations had a complexity of mythological deities that diluted the logical reliability unique to our Modern view.

After the advent of the Modern system, a man could do what men before the system could only hope to do: make approximate or accurate material projections with no consideration of deity whatsoever. That is what James Gleick meant when he said of the Scientific Revolution "The more competently science performed, the less it needed God." In here we have two admissions. First of all, Modernism was a transitional era where a classic Christian consideration of God was greater before the advent of Modernism. Secondly, Modern sensibilities are best understood on the basis of quantitative measurement. "The equation knows best." (Heisenberg)

The POMO mindset does not naturally embrace this framework for two critical reasons. First, the optimistic Modern worldview was crushed and finished with the end of the Cold War. Any serious view of Modernism since then has been jettisoned for the preferential consideration of shattered ideological systems. Secondly, any child born after 1989 is no true Modern, no matter how hard a parent might try to constrain him or her into faith in Newtonian predictability. The POMO hears, ingests and frames information differently.

The Modern is surprised when this generation rejects Modern sensibilities. "Why would a POMO want to forfeit the certainty of projecting a physical constant?" they ask. True, having confidence that the universe and its parts are programmed with a reasonable measure of accuracy is a strength. It is especially a strength if an entire culture is programmed to operate that way. However, what if that view of the physical world is only a truncation of total reality? What if a physical constant does not properly demonstrate the broadest possible view of accessible reality? And of what practical, cultural use is it if the culture is no longer organized that way?

The chief weakness of the Modern mindset is the tendency to subject life to an efficient scientific view of reality. The uniformity of natural causes deals only with matter. The Modern applies scientific law to spiritual reality when scientific knowledge is partial and indefinitely in flux. In other words, mechanics is not the ultimate constant or final reference point. Necessarily, the Modern is conditioned to be satisfied with the material results of material projections. The POMO, oriented to a much broader awareness of reality, refuses to organize all data on the basis of the scientific, the categorical, or the observable. The POMO is not oriented to satisfaction with material results. This is the main stress-fracture between the two generations.

MODERN MECHANISTIC REALITY

The Christian Modern affirmed the existence of Deity, but argued for a dominant mechanistic reality over which God had no practical input or control. The Christian Modern would argue. However, ask a Modern Christian what causes an object to fall back down after being thrown into the air, and he will more than likely reply “gravity.” Tell him “The answer is 'God', not 'gravity,'" and he will go "ah" because you should have clarified yourself. He did not understand you to be speaking spiritually but scientifically. Why did the Modern have to speak in terms of disclaimers, clarifications, and rejoinders when speaking about spirituality? Because the largest context and overall tone of Modernism was that what can be known can be known apart from God.

How can two kinds of answers exist for the same question if the Modern Christian really believes that God created one world? How can the spiritual answer be God and the scientific answer be gravity? In this two-dimensional world, which dimension is the more practical? The overwhelming consensus would agree that the practical answer is gravity while the impractical answer is God. Why? Gravity is more practical because gravity is pervasively experienced as a natural law, and natural law has definite negative (flying a plane into the ground) and positive (flying a plane to Rome) consequences.


Gravity is "upon" us every single moment of our lives and is immediately appreciated or sensed. What of God? Well, in a more "spiritual" sense God is upon us, but that explanation is unreasonable within a mechanistic framework. That explanation is not saying anything at all. The Modern is often more conscious of the "pull" of gravity than he is of the "pull" of God. This is his scripting. Oftentimes, the answer “God” has been given as an argumentative acquiescence to Christianity and practically nothing more because it lacks the manifestation "material" things afford.

This schismatic reality is not the systematic reliability Isaac Newton had in mind when he codified the laws of motion. Newton understood that the world has a machine portion that is mechanistically integrated. However, that mechanistic portion is not all that exists. Newton never said it was all that existed. The monotheistic God as described in the Bible was Newton’s Final Reality. Newton's God is infinite, "bracketing" the finite, mechanical portion of reality. Because His God is infinite, He has of His own volition made Himself intelligibly known. Because He has made Himself understood by intelligible means, He, too, has a definite and practical relationship to the world: He created it. He is the most liberal context ever.

Newton did not have to leap from physical to spiritual worlds. Inconsistency in one did not force him to find cover in the other. He did not have to operate within a dichotomy, which is one of the reasons Newton and his generation did not manifest the anxiety disorders so rife throughout Modern and POMO cultures. Newton’s concept of causes illustrates a consistent flow and reference of material to the immaterial, of finiteness to infinity, of physics to metaphysics, of the world to God. Newton’s world is one world.

Newton did not even know the material cause of gravity, but his logical reliability did not hinge upon that specific lack of scientific information. His logic was not rooted in information or in the machine portion of reality. Newton's system was not an exhaustive system that sought to reconcile all data on the basis of matter. Finite things are subject to change, so science can be expected to develop, progress, and expand. He did not have to know everything there was to know in order to say that something was so. He did not have to pretend to stand on "absolutes" in order to validate his faith in God. Newton was free from that mindset which can be described as premodern if anything.

RELATIVITY THEORY AS AN ENVIRONMENT

I am always curious about use of the word "relativism", because it directly derived of Einstein's Realtivity Theory. Einstein never proposed that scientific law was absurd or incontinent (popular use of the term "relativism" or "relative"). He emphasized the uniqueness of relativity in respect to observation: the rules are what they are but appear to be more or less, relative to the position of the observer. Sure, Einstein appears to have undermined Newton's overtly Christian position as theoretical and highly simplistic for modern times; however, simplicity is no fault of Newton. He was an 18th century man and profound for his time. Nature and knowledge by design is transient.


However, when I talk about "funny", to another individual in a different referential frame it will translate as "totally inappropriate." When I talk about "complicated", to another individual I might mean "completely normal." Nevertheless, Relativity Theory is still contingent upon a point: the entire theory leverages a point. That is no inconsistency unless an individual coddles a fictitiously infantile perspective about context.
Around this time was borne the new “relativists” who clearly did not translate Einstein's idea well at all. They gloated over the death of Newtonian simplicity and many of them gloated over the death of Newton's God. Einstein was infuenced by the idea of time travel (the fourth dimension) which was becoming a popular discussion amongst intellectuals. H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895, and Henri Poincare wrote Science and Hypothesis in 1902, a text that discusses the measurement of time. We know, for example, that Einstein read Science and Hypothesis and that Pablo Picasso learned about Poincare's book from a Maurice Princet.

I mention Pablo Picasso because he was experimenting with relativity theory in art. Picasso, the Father of Cubism, would break up a painting and depict the various parts of the painting from various perspectives so that as one scanned the painting, one would "see" all perspectives at the same time. Of course, most people, I am sure, did not know what he was doing. It is true that Picasso was morally disreputable, habitually abandoning family after family. However, Picasso's experimentation with relativity did not cause his moral failures. Perhaps, his misunderstanding of relativity supported his infidelity, but that does not diminish the truthfulness of relativity.

Arnold Schoenberg, the 20th century composer, did a similar thing with music. The Father of Atonality, Schoenberg did not set out to create absurd music. He created music based upon the twelve tones of the chromatic scale instead of the traditionally harmonious eight-tone octave. His music had a logical relationship from one tone to the other and from each tone to the whole within the framework he developed. Did people understand what he was doing? Probably not at first. At one concert, Schoenberg's atonal composition was so misunderstood and caused so much emotional agitation amongst the audience that a fight broke out. The police had to be called in, and Schoenberg threatened to end the concert. People initially did not understand what he was doing with music. They assumed it to be both new and disruptive. In this sense, I like to tell my students that Schoenberg is the father of punk music. And that was at the beginning of the 20th century.

Einstein disliked his Relativity Theory being used to support the idea of a sinister moral relativism: the notion that no moral framework is uniquely privileged over all others. Of course, Einstein was a scientist, not a philosopher. Further, he was an exile in America where his ideas and their cultural applications became widely popularized, probably because of media. What we do know is that relativity grew to become the new social framework of the 20th century and was directly responsible for the erosion of "traditional norms" like colonialism. Colonialism could not survive in a framework of relativity (except under very special circumstances) because a political expression of relativity opposes the political subjugation of nations. Under relativity, the nations "parallel" each other: each nation is its own entity. Einstein's relativity was the impetus of the relativist cultural tendency (and of several self-consciously associated cultural movements like Ghandi and Martine Luther King) for wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western culture in the early 20th century as much as its misunderstanding provided a toehold and then an eventual foothold for many destructive changes as well.

It is no mistake that the shakers and movers of the 20th century felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life to be outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of the 20th century. Because nature is finite, it is transient and must change. Relativity, however, was the equivalent of a "quantum leap" and moved at a faster rate than the general culture and its various sub-cultures were able to monitor or regulate. So the beginning of the 20th century was not only the undoing of Newtonian Physics but ultimately the undoing of the religious axioms that underpinned Newtonian Physics. In this way relativism (and its association with relativity) is negatively viewed as a questioning of the axioms, including religious axioms, of the previous age. Relativity, however, is something very different. It is the air that both liberal and conservative Moderns breathe.

EINSTEIN & THE CLOSED SYSTEM

Newton's laws codified the idea of the integrated system and contributed to the normalization of the common Modern man an unwavering logical reliability in the material consistency of the universe. The idea eventually splayed into two very broad, divergent interpretations of Newton's system.


One view was the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system: the material world is all that exists. This scientific emphasis says that material laws are "high" or ultimate. If God exists, he is within the system as a material portion of that system. Because material begets material, God, in any personal sense, is necessarily the product of the material universe. This strictly scientific interpretation of reality was the dominant mindset of the Modern world and can be generally described as atheistic because, as a closed system, it claims a functionality independently of God or any deity whatsoever.


Following the popularity of Newton's discoveries, the 18th century Enlightenment galvanized the closed system position. That closed system can be described as all of natural law, including the total of natural causes and effects in the universe, is integrated (uniformity) into a reasonable way (closed system). To the Modern this goes without saying. To predecessors of Modern, scientific discovery, this was an epic revelation. So the pull of gravity on the moon relates to the pull of gravity on earth in such a way that all objects on earth weigh about one-third their earth-weight on the moon.


I can say “all” because within the Modern systematic mindset is a reasonable relationship between the pull of gravity on the earth and the pull of gravity on the moon. Materially, the entire universe is one environment. Its natural laws are self-contained and provide the Modern with a rigid form of consistency to which he can attribute his logical reliability and subsequent common sense. Consequently, the closed system perspective allowed the West to wrest from nature its mathematical formulae. The Enlightenment was committed to understanding the natural world on the basis of reason alone without the influence of religious belief. To sum it up, it can be said that the Modern worldview converges upon the focal point that what can be known can be known apart from God.


Scientists contributed to Newton's discoveries for the next two hundred years until Einstein changed physics altogether. In his Laws of Motion, Newton's “object” was an idealized particle in which he theorized an infinitesimally small “center” without consideration of the other real particles making up the object. Though eventually proven to be an oversimplification, the idealized particle was used to illustrate such complex behaviors like planetary motion and human behavior. Strict interpretation of Newton's Laws would apply to every particle of the object, resulting in exponentially erratic behavior of the object not yet understood by classical science.


Einstein published his Special Relativity in 1905. Einstein's discovery was a science of space, not objects, per se. Classical physics bifurcated position and motion, studying each separately from the other. Einstein was interested in how objects relate to the overall behavior of space. What he discovered was that space “bends.” Consider how water responds when an object is submerged. It responds totally appropriately: absorbing the object and totally integrating itself with the object's every blemish. Space is similar. An object inserted into space, “disrupts” that space, creating a uniquely complimentary environment. Further, if that object is hurtling through space, how unique is the relationship now between space and the object?


The complexity of Einstein's genius is that he created a science independent of the referential frame of any observer. The simplicity of Einstein's genius is that two observers in the same referential frame (fixed point) moving at the same velocity of earth are likely to observe a single, similar phenomena while two observers in different referential time frames (and, therefore, moving at different speeds relative to each other) may not observe the same phenomena. Though relativity here is contingent upon the referential frame of two observers, the entire theory is contingent upon a point that exists independently of each observer.


Einstein's relativity challenged the simplicity of Newton's assumption of how mass and motion interact. As it became popularized, the effect of Einstein's theory was a significant contribution to the undoing of other classical assumptions that were largely religious and naturally underpinned a multitude of then current cultural expressions. Once Einstein's Special Relativity was published (his General Relativity followed in 1917), Western culture was self-consciously experimenting with the ramifications of relativity.

THE BASELINE OF MODERN LOGICAL RELIABILITY

Modern logical reliability is no core value of the POMO. The most competent of POMOS prefers debilitating ignorance, mental anguish and copious amounts of anxiety medication to the common sense of Modern predictability, and this repulsion spans every cultural variant in his life from airbags to religion. The problem, I believe, hinges upon a proper framing of the Modern concept of truth.

For many reasons I will provide, the Modern "liberal" and "conservative" concepts of truth are both relative. I know that the especially conservative Modern argues that he has stood and continues to stand solely upon "absolute" truth, but I am going to eventually explain how every Modern, regardless of his religious or political affiliation, is a product of a relative view of truth. Then I am going to explain how the POMO's context and baseline of truth has been this relative view of truth. Then I am going to illustrate from the POMO's cultural perspective how if truth is relative, then the POMO is obligated to "play" with logic.

Modern logical reliability relies upon a mechanistic system indispensable to the rational thought of the Modern, whereas the POMO navigates mechanistic systems with incessant suspicion ultimately undermining his ability to reason with Modern logic. The net result is his genuine inability to logically deduce within the constraints of Modern thought-forms. Let me be clear: Modern and POMO thought forms are not the same. Because of incompatible referential frames, Modern common sense is not the same common sense to the POMO. And I am talking about a baseline standard.

Key to understanding the matrix of POMO reasoning is analyzing contrasts between POMO and Modern cultures. Observing their differences in science is a demonstrable way to extrapolate the values of each. I will outline the development of these two views through three scientific developments: Newton's Laws of Motion (1687), Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1905) and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (1927).

Newtonian Physics is the direct ancestor of Modern logical reliability and largely responsible for the development of Modern sensibilities, aka, common sense. In his Laws of Motion Newton outlines three rules of deduction to be applied to physical objects:

Law 1: Every object remains in a state of rest unless acted upon by an equal or greater outside force. Every effect has a sufficient (strong) cause, so that it is impossible to attribute an effect to an insufficient (weak) cause. For wood to burn (effect), it must be produced by a cause strong enough to produce the burning. A series of sufficient causes and effects is called a “chain of events” and makes it possible to trace an event back to its original cause. The ability to "link" ideas in this way is a Western value and a hallmark expression of a free individual.

Law 2: Any object enacted on by an outside force will respond in the direction of a right line from the point at which it was enacted upon. An object forced upon by another object is “forced” to move in the direction of a right line from the point of impact. Notably called the law of entropy, an object at rest will move in the direction of a right line eventually to return to a state of rest once more. A fire will burn up wood until the wood is no more. A fire “wants” to extinguish itself. So the Western aspiration to satisfactory “conclusions” was codified. Perpetually inconclusive motion (like anxiety) is no original Western value.

Law 3: The effect of an action upon an object results in an equal and opposite reaction of the subject. The action-reaction law or reciprocal motion maintains that not only does fire interact with wood, but the wood reciprocates by “wanting” to be burned. The wood, assumed to be passive, is equally contributive. So the Western value of reciprocal motion (reciprocal engagement) via organically covenantal or mutually contractual relationships is an expectation unique to the Western Hemisphere.

Newton's laws codified the idea of the integrated system and contributed to the normalization of the common Modern man an unwavering logical reliability in the material consistency of the universe. The idea eventually splayed into two very broad, divergent interpretations of Newton's system.