The Biosphere Enhancing Features of Monad.
Certainly the Calendar & Health Event Scheduling Modes of MONAD are useful and important, but by far the most important feature of MONAD is its ability to bring the Earth’s biosphere into clear focus. Earth at the center of the celestial sphere is an essential model of wholeness. The celestial sphere is a conceptual container for the biosphere. The celestial sphere is where the rhythms of the Earth’s biosphere are measured. This is most clearly demonstrated by accelerating through time and observing the three main bio-rhythms of the biosphere: the 24 hour solar day, the lunar month & seasonal year.
Earth is the heart of a living solar system, a photosynthetic being. As above, so below, but in a different fashion. The Earth spinning relative to the Sun creates a rotary pulse of light-powered photosynthesis, which along with the tides, is equivalent to the beating of our own hearts. Plants breathe in light to power their physiology the same way animals breathe in oxygen to power cellular respiration. With a photosynthetic physiology, the cyclical progression of lunar phases of Moon-light at night are equivalent to the breath in your animal body. And the complementary alternation of the cycle of the seasons over the course of a seasonal year, 2 seasons out of phase at north and south ends of the Earth, is equivalent to the alternation of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity in your body; the sleep and wake cycle, the muscle movement vs. digest cycle, etc. These planetary, astronomical and agricultural rhythms are the bio-rhythms of the Earth’s predominantly plant-based biosphere.
It’s easy to see these rhythms with MONAD; the spin of the Earth, the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, and the Sun moving back and forth in the solar meridian, or date indicator, over the course of a seasonal year. But all this activity doesn’t appear all that biological unless you zoom in on the surface of Earth. Now, if you work in a garden regularly, or spend most of your time out in nature, without artificial light and electric or batter-powered appliances, then you already feel these rhythms all around you and inside you, and you know exactly what the biosphere is. The biosphere is life. Unfortunately, modern society has become mostly disconnected from the biosphere and this has resulted in an almost universal condition I refer to as Biosphere Blindness.
Speaking as a psychiatrist, the way modern society treats the Earth is literally insane. Anyone on Earth suffering from Biosphere Blindness is a danger to the Earth’s biosphere, themselves and others. Biosphere Blindness is a world-wide epidemic and if this epidemic is not cured soon, we might just kill the biosphere. My hope is that MONAD, the Planetary Calendar-Clock, can help us all rediscover a love of the biosphere, and lead us back to respect and love of Nature. (How to Heal the Biosphere: A 12 Step Program.)
The Hydrologic Cycle & Earth’s Circulatory System.
I’ve been working on various biosphere-enhancing features of the Planetary Calendar-Clock. I am particularly excited about modeling the Earth’s hydrologic cycle, taking place “within” the celestial sphere. The Sun (fixed at 12) heats the Earth directly below it, and some of the water on the surface of Earth is vaporized and rises in a vast column upward towards the Sun. But the Earth is spinning relative to the Sun and that column becomes a revolving disc of hot humid air which splits in two directions, north and south, as it cools and falls back to Earth, creating 2 complementary cyclones of spiraling air currents moving from high above the equator out to the poles, and then flowing back across the surface of Earth towards the equator. This is the basis for the circulatory system of the Earth.
Much like a human heart, the atmosphere surrounding Earth can be functionally divided into four chambers. There is a light half and a dark half of Earth, separated by the circle of illumination. And, at a 90º angle to the circle of illumination, the Earth is divided into north and south halves, separated by the Earth’s equatorial plane (and the disc of hot, humid air that divides the north and south hemispheres.) The light side of Earth’s atmosphere, where water vapor rises towards the Sun, is equivalent to blood flowing from the heart into the lungs. The dark side of Earth’s atmosphere is equivalent to blood traveling through the rest of the body, to and from the various end organs. I want to model this circulatory activity and give a clear form to this mostly invisible global circulatory system, taking place just inside the celestial sphere, which serves as a conceptual container for a process which is actually infinite. This dynamically flowing, complementary cyclonic-form is what gives rise to various currents of water in the ocean and currents in the air and atmosphere and to all the complex patterns of weather taking place all around the globe.
Seasonal Migratory Patterns.
Another biosphere-enhancing feature of MONAD that is coming relatively soon is called Migration; where the migratory pathway of various animal or insect species is depicted on the Earth over time. This feature works best in Astrology Mode, where the orientation of the Earth is relatively fixed over time with the Hour Hand always pointing straight up. This is the way animals experience nature. The Sun rises in the morning, crosses the sky from East to West and sets at night, and then different stars are visible in the sky at different times of year until the Sun rises again.
Most migratory movement occurs in a north – south direction, rarely crossing more than 1 or 2 time zones, unless the Migrants have to fly around extensive mountain peaks or avoid crossing the ocean. When the Migration feature is selected, animal (e.g. the Swallows of Capistrano) or insect (Monarch butterfly) Icons are shown at their appropriate locations over time, just above the surface of the Earth globe. At least one species is represented in each time zone, both north and south hemispheres of Earth, covering the continents and the oceans. As you accelerate through time over the course of a seasonal year, you will see a very colorful and beautiful depiction of insect and animal activity (Icons moving) all around the globe, a rhythmic pulsing movement of these Icons, moving back and forth, north and south over the course of a seasonal year, a clearly biological and rhythmic manifestations of the biosphere.
There are so many ways to reconnect to the biosphere. Carl Linnaeus discovered and developed the Floral Clock (Horologium Florae) in 1748. It works based on the fact that there are species of plants that open or close their flowers at set times of day. If you have access to a garden, create a circular plot of ground and divide it into 12 pie-shaped wedges. Plant each wedge with a species of plant which opens at the corresponding time marked on the Dial. The accuracy of such a clock is of course limited because flowering time is affected by weather and seasonal effects.
Bottom line is, it’s time to get back to nature. Doesn’t mean we need to abandon technology. Just that we need to respect and love nature before money, and before we resort to any activity which takes from the Earth in a violent or exploitative manner. Polluting the biosphere is self destructive and insane. We’ve gotta clean up the mess we’ve made. We must use the resources of the Earth sparingly, and give other species enough space to flourish also. Bio-diversity is essential and beautiful. Nature (and plants in particular) is our greatest wealth along with being the source of our food and oxygen we breathe.
I would like to conclude this article by thanking Greta Thunberg for all her activism on behalf of nature and this planet. She actually inspired this Migration feature of MONAD. I watched a video of her talk at the UN and it is clear to me that this is a young woman who intimately feels the threat to the biosphere. I started wondering what feature of the Calendar-Clock Greta would most enjoy and kids in general would appreciate, and that’s when I came up with the idea for the Migration feature of MONAD.