ABSTRACT
The potency or efficacy of a miasma is dependent on our allegiance to it. Such critical thinking is complicated by the fact that miasmas are by their nature illusions as well as delusions. As illusions miasmas lead us to see things that are not present and/or to fail to see things that are plainly there. To speak of disaggregation is to presuppose a whole that is taken apart. In the process of being segmented, the importance of the whole to any sense-making endeavour is attenuated if not denied. This view has long been embraced by mystics and tribal people and aspects of it have more recently found support among physicists and ecologists. What is immediately striking is the transformation of the meaning of conscience from inner knowledge, understanding, conviction, feeling and acknowledgement of something, to its current sense as being about the recognition of moral qualities, the faculty to judge right and wrong.
