Okay, this is a long essay, so don't expect to read it all in one sitting. Fortunately, it's got chapters and pregnant pauses, and, as usual, some humor and dirty words, so it's entertaining, too.A HOUSEWIFE IN AKRON
AS LEADER OF THE PLANET
Notes on Evolution, Risk and Responsibility
By Aman Bloom, Eugene, Oregon, 1993-99
copyright ©2009 all rights reserved
INTRODUCTION
In writing this essay, I drift from accepted procedure in several ways. Unlike many formal presentations, this essay incorporates the generous use of metaphor, appeals to (1) intuition (both mine and the reader's), (2) acceptance of limitations and (3) appreciation of wonder (awe).
The reader is asked to consider the continuing evolution of knowledge and awareness, illusions of borders established at all levels of exchange and the role of interpretation.
The reader is asked to be aware of the continuing evolution of knowledge and awareness, illusions of borders established at all levels of exchange and the role of interpretation. This caveat is repeated for a reason.
By avoiding an objective voice, even when talking science, by introducing subjective identifiers and admitting biases, I hope to give credence to processes outside of accepted, academic protocols.
Post-modern, logical credibility is also requested for any claims that are apparently outrageous, since many once-or-presently-accepted historical imperatives have evolved from similar starts.
My sources include: the genetic and cultural heritage from being raised Jewish in Boston in the 40s (frugal, intuitive, fractal); existentialism, particularly the romantics (Nietszche, Buber, Camus, Woody Allen); beatniks, hippies, environmentalists and eccentrics (Ralph Nader, John Muir, Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Walt Whitman, Buckminster Fuller, George Gershwin, to name a few); feminism (or equal- access-to-all-ism). Berkeley in the 60s, back to the land in the 70s, real world in the 80s, world peace in the 90s...
The notion of promotion has always intrigued me, along with poems and aphorisms. Maybe that's why I like ceramics and screen-printing, calligraphy, volleyball and tennis, bicycling, vegetarianism, working for free, babies, roses, sex... But I digress from my main purposes. More about me later.
POETIC INTRODUCTION
Consider our beautiful, beautiful brains
which harbor our wonderful floating minds
--yet the world is filled with pains
mainly caused by the base use
of this special vehicle: the brain/mind.
We are led by forces and principles that do not contribute
to the best interests of any long-term, forward-moving, creative process,
under the protocols and direction of individuals and groups
who care little for the good of the whole.
In our time, many of these pirates and players have been unmasked
--to little benefit for change—
and Awareness is now let loose.
The possibility that this may lead to Awakening is present.
I. THE SUSTAINING DANCE
For two decades I've been laboring over the premises for this piece: that there has to be a proper place for the human species within the dynamic evolution of life on this planet. There must be, because evolution is the four-dimensional process in which niches get blocked out and filled over time.
Example: the succession of tree species in the forests of the Pacific Northwest: fast-growing deciduous species quickly fall away, time-releasing nutritional reserves to the slow-growing, long-lived conifers.
Later, ancient-giant members of the dominant species also fall, releasing light and space into the marketplace; also becoming a slowly-dissolving nurse tree, releasing its accumulated store of sun-energy (manufactured by the plant into sugars) and mineral-earth nutrients which were sucked through its roots, to nourish its seedling descendants, while often toxic to many other species.
This is abundance.
Picture an arena made of many ledges. Every ledge is full or nearly full or barely overflowing with an assortment of symbiotic elements sharing in mutual exchange and being resource to each other.
No species, no system, no sort can evolve without there also evolving a concomitantly proper place or pattern into which it may evolve. Habit and habitat mutually evolve.
Not that there first exists a niche followed along by a species to fill it, but that there are the shadows of possible niches and the shadows of possible species (which might come along to occupy a niche which might open into being) --niche and its species evolving together as one, a habitat.
At the warm edge of niches, this is where the fires of evolution are fed. The nature of Nature is intrusion. Neighbors intrude upon each other; species scramble for scarce resource; forms engage each other; systems compete.
The nature of Nature is in relations and distinctions, the balancing in the human sphere of both “see no color” and “honor diversity.”
Example: The wonderful cheetah evolved to extend its lithe shadow over a thin line of resource: swift and strong enough to capture its prey; agile enough to spot and elude its hyena and lion predators. In this sense, I say that nature intrudes at the edges of the evolutionary procedure.
I want to live where nature intrudes. As animal, I have no need to overcome nature. As human, I don't want nature to overcome me. But I do want to allow nature the privilege of intrusion. I want to be near enough to the edge to witness and appreciate this process, to smell its sweetness, to wonder at its relentless, intent-less powers.
The coming together of forces, where ocean pounds land, where river spreads into ocean, as the fir succeeds the alder, this is where active lives are created. The intersection; the transition. The relation; the distinction. I accept that my body becomes a home to others, whether harmful, beneficial or benign; I allow that I live within another.
The dweller and the dwelling come into existence together. They affect each other; they expand and contract with each other.
The interaction of niche and species is mirrored in the interaction of niches and species that comprise a particular regional system, as well as the collection of interactions that collectively create the separate bio-systems and the total ecosystem as they and it exist from one moment to the next.
It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. No matter that the metaphor itself may be vacuous, this is just what that means. All the ledges get filled, not in clutter but as if collected in a (temporarily-)balanced installation, an installation whose changes are so subtle that tolerant patience alone reveals them.
Example: Simply look at the interaction of habitat and life forms along global meridians, crossing the continents with the consistency of fact: the flow of mountains, plains and deserts, and the residency upon these by appropriate animal and plant communities.
These animal and plant dwellers, and the vital habitat itself, slowly move across the scene as changing conditions demand. Sometimes an edge is breached, often leading to the extinction of a species or locale, and the eventual re-occupation by a new life-sustaining system, one that sustains lives a little differently than the previous occupants.
Herd animals and carnivores, Rainforest and birds, pollinators and carrion-eaters. Though the species and presentations may be different from one place to another, all interact with climate within bands which span the continents in a spiraling flow of life, much as lichen on an isolated boulder meticulously dance.
For various reasons, both subtle and blatant, rearrangements and replacements eventually occur: niches collapse, spaces open up due to failed or changing races, sometimes losing sync with the rest of evolution and becoming extinct (more clearly, they "evolve into extinction"), other times metamorphosing; forms enlarge or reduce, moving from land to sea, or to air, or vice-versa; conscious forms become adept, awaken or enlighten; continents split from larger masses and drift off, deserts encroach, water tables fall, rivers form or dry, islands pop into being, lake beds become mountaintops.
Nature is the great efficientizer. Efficiency sustains:
e.g., living forms concentrate minerals, salts, etc., then yield sustained release: fecal matter becomes fertile humus;
e.g., no waste, except in short-term POV, in, say, forest fire, but then the materials released by fire give the future forest a real pick-me-up, lost to us flitting on by (except for the millions of slash-and-burn farmers who, through force of numbers, may now be abusing this efficient, once-appropriate technique).
We know, or think we know, that matter is simply a gross reduction of energy, that nothing really gets "created" or destroyed, that recombinance is constant.
So there really is no waste in nature. Instead, there is the continual recombining and rearranging of materials and energies. The problem of chemical plastic, in the big picture, becomes temporary.
What we term "waste" occurs within a limited time-frame. Since there is abundance in nature, there is also no excess, except temporarily. It is important to note the difference between abundance, in which a system is filled to capacity, and excess, in which capacity is often grossly surpassed.
Excess exists in nature only until it is noticed and eaten up, eliminated, starved out or redistributed in some other relatively quick way. In other words, until it is accounted for.
Given this interpretation, it almost seems that waste and excess occupy the same conceptual niche within the infrastructure of material things. This may be true in the worlds of physics and economics as well. To see the world in this universal sense --where waste and excess are not long allowed and where they are totally accounted for-- would alter our views of life in general. This requires a collective, moral, cultural acceptance that cannot be connected to a system of belief. Belief systems yield inflexible dogmas incapable of traveling at the speed of evolution.
At present, the conscious-manipulative form of life, we humans, are developing methods --notably pronounced in technological nation-states-- which create apparent excess: we store, accumulate, warehouse, bank and assess the value of material goods, as well as symbolic representations of material goods.
This excess is amassed not only for immediate present need, but is also enabled to pass from hand to hand and through the generations. We have come to accept this as "normal" and "logical." It does make good sense to provide for the future and benefit from the past. Up to a certain point.
(Not to denigrate the wonderful and appropriate ability to capture meaning, to pass on memory and knowledge, to speak of yesterday and of love.)
For years I'd contended that the present course of consciousness-involved evolution may have already stumbled onto a "spur" on the naturally-derived evolutionary path, perhaps one not shared by certain other forms of life, the possible inheritors or, more really, the actual dominant form yet to emerge. As all spurs, this one likely leads to a literal and figurative dead end.
This spur route may have begun with the development of technological means, starting perhaps with agricultural farming, which brought the human species away from its proper at-the-time nomadic/pastoral niche and presented instead an increasingly-artificial niche which first operated in tandem with the natural one, but has now shifted into a dangerous incline.
The growth and dominance of concentrated, urban populations, along with their infrastructural needs and the pressures on the surrounding natural economies, are unfortunate cogent examples of this predicament.
Consequently, the species is eventually and incrementally losing its mystic connections with the force of natural evolution itself. That this force also includes elements of incredible destruction is not denied; that the force that we supply is inappropriately-applied is asserted.
It is as though there were a phantom niche, of our own near- choosing, upon which we’ve settled, finding apparent comfort and success, which now is proving to be lacking or inadequate, since it itself doesn't fit the larger niche of which intelligent life is but a component.
Lately, however, I've come to realize that all evolution is natural by definition, and that the human species is in danger of entering into a natural path to which I've already referred: that of "evolving into extinction."
Since we humans are conscious and aware, we are intuitively capable of preventing this from happening.
That this is a proper and just approach for an intelligent species is in no way disputed. One thing, however, is probable: if either of the two general approaches to conscious, organized social life were to prevail, the one being cooperation, the other being domination, the "end" product is still likely to be the elimination of present forms, if not to extinction, at least to humiliation.
Our knowledge of natural and cultural histories points to change as the operative force in the universe. Change is a shifting of relations and a redefinition of distinctions. All things, whether species or nations, decline and fall. There are no reasons to think any differently for us and ours. Everything, the redwoods, the great whales, every mountain, every river, all books, calendars, systems, every object, every molecule, will re-invent itself, re-distribute itself, crumble, drift, level, dry up and fall, over the course of time.
There is nothing dismal in this projection. Just the opposite. (As the song says, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.")
We might, then, succumb to violent greed, or to enlightenment (or to some natural disaster or disease or...). In any case, the species as we know it, all species, all cultures, will necessarily change beyond our reckoning, becoming unrecognizable or effectively eliminated.
One-time cultural capitols become dusty craters; huge populations level off and disappear. (Is Istanbul still Constantinople? Am I black or am I white?)
The cosmic experiment continually exchanges reagents and equipment as if operating in different dimensions, which it is. With our one-tenth of a second delay, we sentients require a relatively static appearance in order to recognize anything at all, but evolution is by definition.
"Because `energy' `travels' so `fast,' how could anything last?" For example, treating, e.g., weight-reduction, as if the body harbors adversaries, our technology supplies false information signals via the body's own sentinels and agents, so that the neural command center will release some of its supply of fat-fuel, and also quicken the digestive/elimination process (which had slowed in defense of its purposes.)
We could instead do without the premise and its manufactured arguments, the attitude and the drugs, by simply going to the energy itself.
[1]“Energells”
In physico-electro exchanges at the cellular level and below, matter may release energy-plasma or aura. The released, still-"warm,"
[2] energy, what I’ll call "energell," nevertheless crosses the apparent-but-prior expanse of space almost as fast as time, and passes its weightless message on to a more appropriate evolutionary position, much as we do in Parcheesi.
Energells follow "seams" or "creases" in order to get from one place to another so quickly, even though they may be immeasurably far apart in our reckoning, but only because we have names for such things.
In actuality, we have no explanation for the phenomenon, since it occurs in a multi-dimensional universe (at least 16, they say).
Following release of the energell-plasma, the living system's superstructure/infrastructure become proto or potential in a maintenance posture, awaiting re-generation from new energells.
The emergence of a species capable of handling whatever the physical world has evolved to challenge it eventually invests in the talent called apprehension, in which energell energy is examined and stored, thence evolve phenomena called awareness and self-awareness, in which there is a Core-You made up of an energell "tunnel," surrounded by a symbiotic sheath of differentiated "I"s (shaped like a series of flashing doughnuts spiraling around the core "tunnel" of what Life shares throughout).
Dealing with a core culture at the collective level, the "I"s are represented by "isms,” or belief systems, both recognized and not.
At the psychological level, dealing with core values, it explains the difference between authentic multiple identities (in which the individual manifests various displays of active/positive identity) and schizophrenia (in which the individual is hidden in confusion and fear).
In only these sorts of special cases does the personality exist in isolation. In all other cases, the personality exists only in relation to others. That is why, for example, I am strong and confident in one situation, yielding and diffident in another.
Since everything is part of a system, any pressure upon the system, no matter how “minute,” is consequential and is felt upon the fabric of the system. Energells respond to such pressure and “go” from “where they are” to “where they are needed,” simultaneously. Thus, they can be said to be “in two places at once” for the briefest of time or that they “travel” from one place to another without any movement of time.
They’re as if a rental car that you pick up one place and drop off at another, not needing return and left for the next use. (It’s not important to posit “energell storage places” since such concepts don’t apply to them, hence the quotation marks around conceptualizations usually considered standard and routine.)
We might learn several lessons from this. We might posit that this phenomenon exists at other levels so that, for example, energy comes into being at the same moment in which it passes on, from one reality system to another.
This concept might help explain how so-called “particles” of light or of electrons (which actually have mass) act contrary to Newton but in sync with Einstein: Along with atoms and other micro-particles, they leave and arrive as particles, but travel as waves.
With appreciation to Doris Lessing, energy might enter and depart material forms, be they systems or crystals, trees or human beings, and as it comes into being simultaneously exists and exits its previous “host form,” thereby somehow furthering the evolution of nature.
In this case, nature includes the present universe and any others, both material and otherwise.
Regarding deniability, there is no denying that something is going on. “And you don’t know what it is,” cajoles young Bob Dylan, “do you, Mr. Jones?” What it is, undoubtedly. That it is, undeniably.
At the cellular and imagination-of-the-heart levels, we know that it is. At the mental level, however, we don’t know that it is, and then we deny it or, worse, send it off first to mystery, then deify it, locking it in ritual and melodrama, promoting the courage of fear.
From this has evolved the concepts and conditions of the dominant Western culture, which came across, and passed on by, the truths. The alarms now sounding are mistaken for applause.
If the "God" of humans is (=) Pure Love, and Life is (=) the Refectory of Love/Manifest Energy/God energell, then what?
The freedom that results from this condition (remember: “nothing left to lose”) is our salvation.
Through our inherent strengths, we are enabled to return or evolve into appropriateness, to a rediscovery of the proper place for the human species within the dynamic balance of life on this planet in general, and to an application of that insight into fact.
Without this possibility, there would be little cause for persevering.
We would then simply allow ourselves to further devolve into mendacity, lust, decadence and folly. Warning: Some in our species are willing, through arrogance and self-imposed limitations, to risk this possibility, even to expect it.
Limited human sensibility, combined with the acquisition and abuse of power in the attempt to control resources and to overcome death, has led to the establishment of excess, an unbalanced condition intolerable to the normal flow of evolution.
The forms of excess of most concern to a deep ecology perspective are luxury and prosperity, since these are the two that presently threaten all life on the planet.
True luxury and prosperity are legitimate qualities, but not the ones of excess. The ones of abundant, aesthetic freedom are available to human consciousness within the fields of nature, the paradise upon which some of us were raised and in which almost all of us could choose to live. (The Mexico Cities of the world, though, they’d have to go.)
Under the evolving scheme, with the available niches properly filled for the present (whatever that could possibly mean), the biosphere sets up to temporarily sustain the interlocking systems that make it up. This means that there is enough of whatever is needed to keep things healthy and productive, i.e., to sustain, but with no assurances that the future is secure.
The planet, then, with natural forces as its laws, becomes set up to nourish the life forms and living systems which have come about to live upon it and to interact with it. Little is presupposed in this. The planet defines, but does not predict, its inhabitants. It is, rather, an active, integrative process, where one component or set of components react and interact with others or a set of others.
As all living systems, the planet evolves into its niche of the moment. The planet exists within its habitat, within the sunlit space in which it spins. With its thin films of water, land, atmosphere and biosphere, with its spinning core of molten metals, with its ebbs and flows, with its growth and regressions, the planet evolves and matures in the same way as any life form does.
In this way is planet Earth a living organism, by meeting all the conditions of life.
The planet is continually blossoming out of itself, exposing its inner layers to the light, and drawing in its outer layers to recycle below.
Though the planet is long-lived (from the limits of our perspective), it most certainly will eventually perish, whether burned to cinder by the exploding super-nova of the nearest star, the sun, or some other relative calamity, including ones that could be caused, assisted or fomented by the human species.
In a sense, life can be viewed as a holographic representation of the planet itself, each part mirroring the whole. Stress on any part is refracted in the other parts. The loss of any element projects into losses, effects and changes that reverberate throughout the system. There is no safety and no escape. There is also no long-term predictability.
Mishandled and abused by her human element, it is said that Mother Nature doesn't get mad, she gets even. (In no way is this meant to indicate conscious motivation on her part.) This comment is more true than funny. Nature is the efficient equalizer. Getting-to-even is what balance is. (There needn't be any great conscious event causing this to come about. Why would such a consciousness require balance as a quality? We can only claim and mean that it's just the way of this world.)
Thoreau asserted, "a man sits as many risks as he runs." Some may delude themselves into believing in a relative security, but we all must know (feel) differently.
“Sustainability”
Being part of it, life needs to be consistent with nature, in the sense that the discrete forms are holographic representations of the whole. Sustainability is the key to a species', a niche's, a planet's success.
Actively seeking habitat sustainability into the future may be key to the success of any conscious species while it manipulates material for its own ends. Thus, it contributes to and protects its own sustainability as well.
Among other things, sustainability requires harmony among competitors. Vanquishing nature or nature's creatures, harnessing resources and stockpiling energy in any form: some of these may represent means yielding apparent success, but they are not keys. At least, not to any meaningful locks.
As the human species evolved into its different modes, some cultures developed technological ways of acquiring and manipulating materials and goods, to the extent that the naturally-derived ways of life have been replaced in modern cultures by one in which accumulation and amassment (not just of goods) becomes the ultimate goal and purpose of the many. A records-keeping, paranoid and predictable culture results.
Since only death successfully interferes with property, the moguls of the new religions have purchased the afterlife for their gods. The faithful pay homage, and the gates of heaven are opened.
Greed becomes clinical, a psychotic reaction to the fear of death.
As such, compulsive human greed becomes less of a threat to life on the planet. Reclassifying it from a trait to a disease or addiction suddenly makes it curable.
In the midst of our present environmental crises, it still takes the likelihood of monetary profit to dislodge investment from other pursuits and introduce it into the ecological arena.
Example: The recent increase in the manufacture and use of recycled paper products in the industrial West is a case in point. Companies which last year wouldn't be seen dead wearing recycled coverings now boast their post-consumer waste percentages on the front of their packaging.
It is an indictment of the capitalistic system, I believe, to realize that PROFIT is the ultimate ruler and arbiter of the overall scene. Good causes often need to produce positive financial results in order to survive, hence the plethora of publications, gifts and pro formas that accompany their pleas.
Huge corporations are needed to support the most popular causes. So we see our Olympic Games sponsored by beer, tobacco, oil, automobiles --not the products which one might associate with amateur sport and healthful fitness. There's much profit to be made when the public is engaged in vicarious pleasures.
What is "profit" anyway? Isn't it whatever goes beyond the management of need? Isn't it whatever goes past sustainability? Isn't it made up of leftovers after all legitimate needs are served?
Need is personal and relative. To a child starving on the streets of Bombay, a handful of rice laced with dahl would be nice. To an average American child, need evolves to include khakis and Nintendo...(a mountain bike/tickets to U-2...).
Then the question becomes: Just what is needed? The answer is romantically simple. Only look to nature for it. I would like to believe that almost anyone could be called upon to show the common sense required to come up with the answer, perhaps with some encouragement or hints, and I mean more than the effortless Food/Air/Water/Shelter.
Almost anyone, that is, who is released from the prison of fear.
II. THE TREATMENT
In the mid-seventies I had this notion to open a center where people could receive "Lifestyle Rehabilitation" training. They would be introduced to ways of life otherwise threatening or even “perverse;” they would receive encouragement to mentally pursue personal wishes and whims; they would be asked to question.
Of course, one can hardly teach another to change. Willingness is a critical component, and many first-world people, even the have-nots among them, are not willing to re-assess their lives, except perhaps to complain.
So I use the words "encouragement" and "hint" to indicate the nature of the treatment tools. Perhaps there is little time for subtleties, but it is ill-advised to seek change through the use of the technologies which have brought us to this particular brink: the technologies of speed and force, themselves fed by excessive greed, the very ground I seek to disturb.
To the end of introducing a sense of placement in the human psyche, this work evolves. Those who include intellectual, empowerment or spiritual pursuits as an activity have a certain access to this potential, and those who remain in simpler contexts have their certain access, too.
There are those, of course, who need no such excuse or rationalization. These are the current practitioners, indigenous to the evolving planet, our progenitive instructors.
A HOUSEWIFE IN AKRON
I imagine a housewife in suburban Akron (married to an autoworker, two children, a decent person) to be the subject of this campaign. Reaching her, allowing her to listen to her own voice, finding the information available to her understanding and critical to her values --this is the challenge. Without her approval, I don’t think there can be a successful result.
There is also another housewife in Akron who is the American Buddha, who is in fact the all-compassionate nurturer of pure love. Her thoughts and feelings reach out into the open, to empower her ballot, once she is free from the internal and external oppression/repression which now cloud her view and cramp her being.
In addition, of course, the technologically-vulnerable Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, the people at the bottom of the first and third worlds, the ones who are barely surviving and the ones who are emotionally on edge, all these must first find their footing.
The media may be enlisted, the government will offer aid, we can appeal through the educational system, directly and through the children, but some more subtle device is needed, something more substantial and lasting. Failing this, we may fail.
Failure means the continued loss of access to decisions, strategies, tactics and policies that combine to threaten the existence of life as we know it. That’s for the short term. In the long term, we probably need to rid ourselves of our belief in the Organized Way.
Institutions have been tried and tested; they've had their chances. Solutions do not reside within their purview, being part of the technological problem in the first place, being human creations (artifice) in the second. Mega-institutions (global commerce, politics, religion) in fact occupy only a second-order rank as a social phenomenon; that is, a transition, like an empire or an alder tree.
The second order is now in apparent control. Nuclear power, transportation, nutrition, urban society, communication. Transition is not a condition; it is a conduit traveled with critical awareness and caution. If it is imprudent to burn your bridges behind you, it is moreso inadvisable to burn them ahead of you.
To do so would trap us in transition. Caging us, so to speak, in a cell as real as prison. A cell sinking in toxic muds.
III. LEADERS OF THE PLANET
Beyond the few oughts and givens mentioned in this essay, I've not finished a lifestyle rehabilitation curriculum, and am myself perhaps a candidate for it, though I knew more about it in my youth. We're all capable of righteousness when in good cause.
A few years ago when visiting my family in Atlanta, during a night-time lightning storm which I watched from my bed, the command to pledge to deny all false and worldly desires entered my consciousness. In examining these highly charged words, I've realized that they require me to avoid the artificial and the contrived; the "worldly" as opposed to the "earthly" values. They mean to overcome desires for dominion.
This is related to another notion: to seek to be selected someday as a Leader of the Planet --such designation to be placed upon me by circumstance, not by intent.
Now, I'm thinking that this designation might apply not only to me, but to a community of like-minded individuals, all seeking to be selected as "leaders of the planet," not in a stewardship mode, which only preserves the myth that the human species has dominion over the earth, but in a rehabilitative mode, that is, of re-inhabitation. To seek to be selected by right of HABITAT, by right of belonging. That we might become the most-appropriate intelligent life form inhabiting the landmasses of the planet. (I’m giving the oceans back to the marine mammals, sharks and octopuses.)
Lifestyle only exists in habitat; species occupy niches. Conscious beings come to inhabit the planet as its proponent: serving as leaders for the sake of sustainability. To refuse this charge is to deny evolution, is to deny our niche, is to evolve into extinction.
Realize, however, that the world is only threatened by humans. If humans hadn't evolved, there would be no need for them to protect the world from their excesses. The planet is not threatened, only the world is. Without human awareness, there is no threat. Our problem and our definition are the same.
This might encourage us to believe that the evolution of a humankind may go beyond the material needs of a planet.
Most of us don't often actively realize that evolution is continual. In geology, for example, what is called erosion, earthquake, volcano, desertification are different forms of the evolution of rock and soil, as much as the evolution of sand to marble or of plant to diamond.
Even less evident is the ongoing evolution of the human species and social systems. Science tells us that the human form is not likely to change much anymore, except for such micro-phenomena as increased height in the Japanese as a result of the proteins introduced to their post-WWII diet.
This may be so, but not when looking at human systems. Not only do social systems radically differ from culture to culture, but also there is active growth and change within individual cultures.
This was noticed and named during the sixties: The Generation Gap. Due to the sudden power of communications media, this
ordinary phenomenon became accelerated into substance at that time, and continues apace. (Its most recent spin is in taking credit for the collapse of the Soviet Socialist State.)
More importantly, attitudes toward institutions change and, more clearly, the institutions themselves evolve in response.
The institution of marriage is a case in point. Liberated attitudes regarding divorce per se, and therefore to life-long bonding, have revealed the concept of serial monogamy as a possible adjunct or alternative, as a new habitat.
Such a possibility surfaces as a result of larger shifts within the social environment, most of which is too complex for anyone to divulge.
“Synchronicity”
Another phenomenon, variously termed "Synchronicity" and the "hermetic circle," and re-introduced to the twentieth century by Carl Jung and Hermann Hesse, acts within this context.
Events which interact on their own, which technical society deems "coincidental" (and thereby belittles), might actually be connected with larger, natural forces operating upon conscious awareness manifested in time, that is, upon us.
Certain people may come together, and their exchange and interaction become a small part of the evolutionary process, not as an ingredient in a cookbook recipe destined to yield a certain flavor, but as part of a natural experimental force that fosters the growth of appropriate habitat. In this context, appropriate habitat is that which may be needed for the future.
Perhaps consciousness is eventually privileged to select its own niche, to participate in the construction of its own habitat, but not in the ways of those adolescent forebears whose desire for dominion created the conditions for some of the predicaments we now discuss.
Perhaps this is the present juncture --our dilemma, our challenge, even our place.
To sum up, (1) We should be more aware of the worth of evolution as a process.
(2) Institutions are living systems that exist in habitat.
(3) Perhaps we come together in order to share and grow, not only as self-concerned individuals engaged in particular frames of reference, but as free-thinking representatives of a larger planetary network, as “leaders (i.e., followers) of this planet.”
IV. TIME AND PLACE
Perhaps it is time to define our habitat, not in general, but in particular. Habitat is very complex, since it takes into account all of the forces acting upon an individual, all of the forces acting upon those forces, and the force of that individual in response as part of the overall process.
The more complex the creature or system, the more complex the habitat. (Habitats have habitats, too) A rainforest is habitat to thousands, to tens of thousands, of species, but it exists within a habitat, too.
To see a rainforest as an individual, as well as a collection of individuals, is a major breakthrough in our relationship to the planet as a whole. To see a volcano as an individual-- as affected as it is effecting…
To think in terms of bio-systems; to see weather as a continuum stretching as a shawl around the surfaces of the planet, woven by the planet as well; to see the interaction between the community of wildebeests and the community of termites over the past five million years -- this is the positive legacy of double-edged technology evolved from the genes of humankind.
Technology, too, has its niche.
The forces operating upon humankind are those of situation, but they include the force of awareness, of sentiments and sensitivities, of the ability to consciously manipulate thoughts and objects, and the force of mystery.
Consciousness as phenomenon is entirely within the natural order. Once energy slows into matter, once energy becomes ordered into substance, the necessary process leading to movement, consciousness, the manipulation of matter, awareness and enlightenment, comes into potential.
Ordering begets further ordering; existence precedes essence.
Matter is a necessary and sufficient condition for enlightenment.
This is not to intimate any guarantees, beyond the guaranty of the expression itself. Enlightenment is a possibility whenever matter exists, but there is no need for it to occur, and no guarantee that it might. Many false starts, pitfalls and failures lay in the long path from the beginnings of matter to this particular fulfillment of its potential.
Many indigenous people, the early tribes, were intuitively aware of the connection between sustenance and habitat. Some appreciated this and worked to maintain a healthy connection. In so doing they correspondingly gained in consciousness.
(Apparently, however, not enough of them were sufficiently enlightened to prevent the occurrence of the present stage. Or perhaps they were so enlightened that the notion of preventing the present stage was not pertinent to them. Or they were so tied with nature that these are merely absurd ramblings not worth any attention, since the grapes are so sweet.)
This led to observations and conclusions. This led to an understanding of nature, first at the surface, then from the surface by extrapolation and intuition into the depths of nature, into confrontation with the forces of nature.
That epoch in the history of humankind on this planet was a state of grace, similar to the paradise habitats posited in many ancient writings.
This also led to the ability and desire to discover order -- simultaneously signaling the systematic degradation of idyllic habitats, mixed with the fear for its loss and the desire for its return.
Perhaps it was the eventual lovers of order who insisted that the forces of nature conform to their observations. This, of course, limits interpretation to particular times; setting them in the past; preventing the understanding from evolving; ultimately creating artificial niches occupied by fictions, but apparently carrying the force of nature.
This condition persists into the present, coloring it and threatening it.
However, it is a treatable condition.
V. THE ARTIFICIAL HABITAT
As acculturated beings we moderns accept our habitat all too casually and, for the most part, uncritically. Very infrequently do we pause to consider our cultural or personal time-frames. Daily habits become accepted as real and entirely appropriate.
We begin to think that all people must live this way, should live this way, have always lived this way, will live this way, or want to live this way --without appreciating that there are or have been many ways, some quite opposing ours, as efficient or satisfying to their subscribers as our ways are to us.
For example, technology has created an artificial habitat for us, which is called the "days-of-the-week." Each named day has taken on its own special significance, which varies from culture to culture and from time to time.
Today we live within this calendar-habitat as certainly as we live within a bio-system; it restricts our movements as much as a mountain range or a weather system.
It is as a firestorm in front of me, blinding me to whatever's on the other side, with its wavering heat and roaring flame, so that sometimes I cannot see through at all or don't even care to.
As other social frameworks built by humans over time, this artificial, historical habitat imposes barriers to understanding far superior to many of nature's barriers. Preventing us from appreciating this day for what it really is, we instead inherit a day with limits attached, a lesser day. In the present western world, take a beautiful day, call it “Monday,” and ruin it. I call this “the tyranny of the calendar.”
Peak experiences might never occur on a day with a bad name.
I remember with superb clarity that Jack Kennedy was killed on a weekday, but the name of same escapes.
It is almost impossible to ignore these designations of name and value for long, but when I have I've felt a freedom unsurpassed by any other, a lifting into another element or, more appropriately, a merger or blending, in which instinct and awareness cohabit.
I am then closer to my element, to my true habitat, and it is here where I belong.
I've met, or think I've met, people who live within this more conditionless environment. I've been struck by one notion: that they seem to find JOY in every day. They expect to find joy. Not consciously looking for it, they nevertheless are not surprised to find it.
Is this a particularly human phenomenon? In a book of aphorisms that I wrote in the early seventies, there is the following entry: "Once you realize that ignorance is bliss, you are no longer ignorant. Awareness is a barbed harpoon: once in, you can't pull out --you must push through to JOY."
What then of this ability, to choose to have fun?
Perhaps the flow of evolution leads to this current stage, of a species that can laugh.
VI. WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT
Back in the sixties, we thought we knew what it was all about. Those years conditioned us to believe in ourselves. Brash and eager as we were, somehow many of the answers that boiled out of those turbulent years still hold true. The intervening times have proved them valid.
Even as many of those words and values continue to be ridiculed by political and cultural reactionaries and condemned by many critics, there rises a near-universal acceptance of their base.
In the west, one can always be assured that an idea or message is core whenever the establishment and corporate media attempt to denigrate or co-opt it.
Perhaps I part company with many of the rest of you when I claim that there doesn't have to be any meaning to life; that we don’t need to find one, that is.
Not to say that any individual life is void of meaning as it occurs, but that generic life requires no prescriptive intent in order to be judged substantial.
The human psyche eventually seems to demand larger meanings. The assumption that this requires definitions for life's purpose constitutes an immature reaction to dilemma, perhaps even creates dilemma in the first place.
From what we know, most indigenous peoples discovered no such conflict between their world, their world concept and themselves. They lived comfortably (or not) within their niche within their habitat. Perhaps they moved on, but never outside of themselves.
At some point, the individual was discovered and placed at the core. (In its recent analysis of the previous millennium, the New York Times called it the “My-llennium.”) Unraveled, however, as the symbolic onion in Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and the individual seems lacking a center. The individual is then left with a core with no center.
VI. CORE WITH NO CENTER
The center of our beings, as active, purposeful beings, is actually in relationship: relationship to each other, to the living systems, to the forces of nature. Individuals do not survive without the core of interaction, bearing upon habitat and submitting to it.
Humans look upon the ants and bees with wonder, positing the colony as an individual, marveling at the collective awareness and the willingness to sacrifice.
We civilized ones like so much to preserve our individuality intact that we see these others as ordered differently. Of course they are. Then again, not so differently as we imagine.
The reason why some people’s lifestyles need reassessment and rehabilitation is because they are in conflict with our human core.
The sicknesses and addictions within society are caused in part by this conflict.
Until and unless the sicknesses and addictions are recognized and diagnosed, and until and unless they are brought to a cure by a willing populace battling the forces of entrenchment, greed and ignorance, then the threat will worsen and the relationships will continue to deteriorate.
In the same way as relationships between individuals, these larger relationships can end in separation and divorce. Since they appear to be at the core of our beings and sustain us, we are subsequently weakened as a species, and our survival becomes jeopardized.
Our niche, as it were, opens to possible new tenancy.
In the rainforest jungles of the Amazon, this phenomenon is occurring --the relationship having been ruptured by both internal and outside forces. The losses in species and to the rainforest itself are common knowledge.
The very latest species to be threatened in the world's ecological hot spots is the human species.
Loss of relationship contributes to evolving into extinction. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
To be sure, it could be that a new balance is somehow struck, that the universe is more appealing than we think; that living systems can adapt more quickly than we imagine; that poisons can be tolerated and processed before disaster strikes. All this is possible, within the world of risk.
Thus, we can choose to gamble with the planet.
(It's curious that America's gambling capital, Las Vegas, is also growing as a center for spiritual information.) Yet losing at a gamble is not the same as engaging in sacrifice.
There are few among us, I think, who are really willing to sacrifice "the planet" in order to accomplish their own separate ends.
Very few.
Here’s the model that typifies materialistic thought. “If I get an exercising machine, then I’ll exercise,” instead of exercising first, then requiring (or not) the machine. It’s just this sort of thinking which gets us involved in predicaments like Vietnam. (Please, follow this claim through, rather than accepting or rejecting it outright or, worse, allowing it to pass.)
VII. SACRIFICE
A scary word: sacrifice.
Images of a reluctant virgin offering, resigned to its fate.
The individual who must apparently give more than its share, unto all that it has, for the alleged benefit of the whole.
Charity. Much better. Voluntary; painless; select. From love, duty. Righteousness.
True relationships require full and complete sharing. They do not receive, as in charity; they demand, as in sacrifice.
Not what I am willing to offer, but what I must give.
The former may simply not be enough or proper; the latter need not be seen as sacrifice, only that it is enough and proper. Is it a sacrifice to gain, say, peace, love and understanding, by dropping a few points in the poll?
Perhaps we like to think that the notion of charity is a civilized version of the notion of sacrifice. In western terms, it is the New Testament replacing the Old.
I don't mean to offer a facile treatment or acceptance of this phenomenon. It is, after all, a major cultural event, one that has colored the present as no other. It represents no less than the mental replacement of nature with artifice.
As if, unwittingly, termites were degrading an elegant edifice.
Some might say that it represents the replacement of the gods of nature with the gods of artifice, but it is the actual replacement as well. Nature itself is deteriorating; as if it were a species confronting a competitor busily degrading its niche. Yet the competitor is itself-intruding-upon-itself. After all, Nature consists of just about everything.
True, however, that the gods are changing. That's why civil histories are filled with so-called transformations, enlightenments and renaissances, while less verbal tribes see them in less shining terms, if terms at all. This is partly because they have suffered our sacrifice, as well as suffered our charity.
Charity results from a partial sharing of excess. It stretches toward efficiency. If we are to eliminate excess, then it simply must be sacrificed (recycled) to the common good. (There is allowable excess, as when grain is stored for use in the winter and as seed.)
The fact of excess creates the need for charity.
Charity has another component, the Not-In-My-Back-Yard or NIMBY phenomenon, in which the manifestations of charity do not affect the giver's personal quality of life in any way, except perhaps to assuage collective feelings of guilt, to satisfy longings of service or to purchase position or status. True Love is not a charitable act.
Sacrifice may demand that you share your backyard (or at least reduce its size).
I used to remind my children that no matter how poor we seemed (living on the edge of the American economy), we were better off materially than ninety percent of the world's population. By having a relatively secure shelter and food supply, we had made ourselves wealthy in comparison to most others.
Not that we need to be reminded or convinced, but:
· Of 20,000 plants native to the U.S., 4,200 (21%) are threatened, 750 (4%) will extinct in the next 10 years.
· For their cooling water, power plants kill ONE TRILLION fish per year, at all life stages, on the Atlantic coast of the U.S. alone.
· Once, 16 million salmon swam the Columbia River; in 1992, 1.5 million.
· In 1993, industrial nations accounted for 22% of the 5.5 billion people, yet consumed 70% of the energy, 75% of the metals, 85% of the wood, 60% of the food.
Similar disparities occur within nations, including third-world nations, where, e.g., women and children are allowed to consume less than men. Distribution, not population, is the main problem so far.
The largest food producing nation in the world, the United States, through different means, wastes 20 percent of the food produced, either left on the plate, tossed as spoiled, or turned in the fields –-enough to feed all the world’s starving every day of their lives.
Our relationships might become more equitable; might become ones of parity, not dominance.
This does not resolve all the conflicts or dilemmas facing life today, but it goes a long way toward such resolve, as well as going a long way toward rehabilitating individuals.
It is suggested that one percent of the world's individuals control ninety percent of its resource. (Others may show more moderate figures, but the force of the fact remains the same.)
That means that if we had a tribe of one hundred people, then only one of us would control all commerce and communication, i.e., the means of production, the delivery of goods and services, the making and maintaining of laws. Not only does this go against democratic principles; it goes against common sense.
If we had a tribe of 1000, then 10 would control. We can easily see this in a town or city, but it also exists at the level of the nation-state and hemisphere.
Common sense tells us not to allow so much control to be placed in the hands of so few.
Regardless, and for purposes already proposed in this paper, there are those people who desire that much power. The rest of us, against our better judgment, allow it and even honor it, if only to hold our own alleged places on the ladder or out of fear for the alternatives.
And you thought that sacrifice was scary!
We've really sacrificed our independence. Many of the psychologies that emerged in the twentieth century encouraged good health by recommending that individuals become more actual, authentic, aware.
This involves entering into risk, something that we encounter willingly or not. ("A man sits as many risks as he runs," remember?)
In general, organized systems of education do not teach children to encounter or appreciate risk. Even though the philosophy of psychology generally equates conscientious risk-taking with good health, our societies prefer to create submissive work forces governed by domineering individuals, rather than planetary warriors or what I've called leaders-of-the-planet.
Many people realize too late the fault in this system of societal management, but by then they are so deeply invested in it that they're afraid to challenge it. For then they would suffer the sacrifice.
(Could it be as anathema to come out of the closet on this one as it was for gays in the fifties?)
Too bad that they don't realize that to be washed in the fire of sacrifice would cleanse them, make them healthy, renew them, rehabilitate them, release them; that it would lead them to appreciation, to authentic existence, to daily fun...
Too bad that they don't realize that they sacrifice nothing if they follow this awareness; that they sacrifice all if they don't.
And to our Akron housewife, what do we say?
Would a cure kill her, or would she be one who requires more from the rest of us than we are willing to deliver? More likely, she would be so threatened by these suggestions that her system couldn't tolerate the information and would reject it. This is fear of freedom.
VIII. LIBERATION
Revolutions speak of liberation. Liberation implies that there are oppressive forces, local or colonial, which demand from us other than we would prefer.
There is also liberation from addictive forces, equally oppressive, but seeming to arise from our own preferences.
We want to liberate ourselves from those who would eat our babies AND we want to liberate ourselves from blindly eating our own babies out of ignorance or gracelessness.
For the general good of the niche or habitat, in nature, babies are sometimes let to perish, usually not without a fight. There are species that in hard times sacrifice the young in order to keep fertile adults surviving.
Some human groups allow infants to die in this fashion, often based on a preference for one of the sexes, usually the male.
Animal nature, however, prefers its fertile females to survive, requiring relatively few males to provide their essential service.
Many humans attempt to live outside of nature. Even though there have been and continue to be groups and tribes of people that discard or abandon babies for a variety of worthy reasons, most present-day societies place high value on the survival of babies.
Education and information are available which might instruct on the oppressive and addictive forces that presently govern our behaviors and threaten our existence. For the most part, this data is ignored, minimized or denied.
Even catastrophe commands limited attention.
Obfuscating the situation, many people keep their addictions for their pleasures.
They choose to run a risk, apparently for personal betterment, yet refuse to run the risk of liberation, settling instead for an inferior existence and second-level satisfactions.
It used to be that good health, activity and a sharp mind were enough. Now that these are denied by the dominant culture and the environment it produces, we are left with our vices.
As an existentialist, I regard choice as a major element in the human environment, and choosing to be free as a necessary step toward authentic existence.
Ethics becomes situational in such a setting, so trust becomes critical, so higher ends are often served. There is risk in this, of course, as there is in everything.
Freedom from vice, a re-defining of what constitutes vice, is the possible reward.
Beyond freedom, there is responsibility. Authentic and free, the actualized individual chooses to be responsible for his or her choices. Without responsibility there may be no freedom or authenticity.
Lamp, genie and wish-maker, all-in-one.
Liberation is the act of recognizing and taking on the true tasks of life.
IX. ACCESS PATHS
Not too long ago I was struck with a bold thought. There are two living substances which are light enough and well-protected enough to both (1) overcome gravity and escape beyond the earth's atmosphere into outer space and (2) remain viable against the elements and forces of deep space, so that if they were ever to descend on some other planet where conditions allowed for their success, they might find (carve) a niche and inhabit it.
It occurred to me that these substances could have arrived on our planet in this way. They are spores and pollens.
Whole pollens have been found in fossilized materials. The rock materials can be pulverized to dust and dissolved in hydrochloric acid, but the pollen emerges whole, only slightly polished by the process.
Light enough to escape; strong enough to survive.
Life on a planet could be enhanced at least geometrically by the arrival of these materials. Not as foodstuffs alone, not just as oxygen-producing organisms --but when some of these substances encounter conscious life forms a universal awareness phenomenon results. The telephone rings until someone out there answers.
Now if evolution follows an erratic but logical pathway, it might be that this phenomenon is consistent (that it constitutes a possible psychic habitat). It might be that proto-human ancestors of our present species were accelerated into an awareness of larger realms through contact with plant and fungus materials that expanded their vision and imaginations, and thus contributed to their evolution, in exactly the same way that physical conditions bent the evolution of finches.
I realize that, within the context of this discourse, these thoughts lead to controversial conclusions. Yet the time is right for risk-taking, even when theorizing, and the need for some center is critical.
It could be that our knowledge and awareness of self and the other come from early contact with mind-opening materials which permeate the universe, awaiting encounter with appropriate receptacles, as clearly and mysteriously as sperm encounters egg.
I'm reminded here of the wonderful display of egg-dropping and sperm-clouding which occurs on the living face of a coral reef. At one magical moment, all of these creatures who are inextricably bound, immobile and locked, let a flurry of eggs drop, while a simultaneous burst of sperm clouds the sea, there to mingle and produce.
Perhaps in a similar way the seed of awareness is planted in the soil of consciousness across the light years of eons and the distances of cosmic space.
The modern world has rejected such suggestions, so strongly that one might wonder why. Could it be that the INVESTMENTS won't allow such dalliance, that the notion threatens structure, that the true meaning of "peace and prosperity" has been lost?
Likely that my Akron housewife has stopped listening. (Likely many of my other readers, too.)
Not too long ago, the so-called “string theory” of matter was rebuked and maligned. Since then, it’s been accepted and now may be on its way out, yet we notice the bumps and slices of its plausible dimensions, once buried from our view.
The point is that at some time in the development of human societies, rather than there being or in addition to there being an anarchic/chaotic cave-dwelling or nomadic group fighting for survival against the elements, carnivores, disease and other humans, there may have been a concerned, sympathetic group of opportunistic gatherers who intuitively respected the rights and places of each individual member, endeavored as a team or extended family to pursue daily livelihood and common goals, and acted within its niche in relative harmony with local plant and animal communities.
We see perfect examples of both forms among some of our primate cousins.
Only later did the mistrust and enmities leading to the modern condition overcome the cooperative mode, and this after some human species or individuals misplaced their bond and contact with the rest of the natural forces.
Though I experimented and indulged in psychedelics in the past, I've turned away from the mystical experience, claiming that I need to be responsible for raising children and making house payments. Perhaps I am being ultimately irresponsible instead?
X. RESPONSIBILITY
This last is not to say or suggest that legalization or appreciation of the psychotropics alone is, would or could be, a solution to the consciousness/awareness predicament that currently contributes to the present crisis.
(On the other hand, if a culture were willing to chance a return to the mystical relationships of the past, the ones which likely fostered the emergence of true human sentiments onto the planet, it could become more capable of resolving the environmental and population crises, of overcoming the ethno-racial separations, and of negating the use of force and violence as means or sport.)
Are Akron housewives capable of hearing any positive statements regarding these substances, or even hearing of the crisis itself? Who knows? (Last year, she was smoking tobacco in the nursery!)
And that's not all our housewife denies.
Television brings starving children briefly to her attention, while the click of a button carries her to a well-fed media moron giving away trips to Europe for the answers to some trivia.
If she were to even think of it, she would abjure any responsibility in these arenas.
She would hardly see herself as victimized.
She refuses to be a witness.
She lives unaware in her habitat.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on her. Perhaps she does know and care about the problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, though probably she doesn't know about the range, depth and scope
(Does anybody really?).
Yet, what can she do to prevent this abuse; how could a change in her lifestyle, in the way she lives her personal life, have any effect at all?
We all know stories of how one person's attempt, or that of a small group, has made a difference, but I'm not referring to that here. We know of the hundredth-monkey phenomenon, in which change occurs not when all parts are affected but when only a few are, much as a salting seed causes crystallization to occur, but I'm not referring to that here, either.
As a race of beings empowered with consciousness, through whatever means and channels, it becomes our responsibility to discover our proper place, to define our habitat and to respect it. If the human species uses this power for self-aggrandizing purposes alone, the resource base will eventually become depleted, since conscious, efficient self-aggrandizement is contrary to the care and maintenance of healthy, natural habitat.
This responsibility comes to us not through some outside aegis, but as a law of habitat itself. It evolves along with.
Abuse of power and denial of responsibility are tandem actions.
A modern example of how irresponsible manipulation of situation in a holographic setting by short-sighted, ego-active power addicts has resulted in an expanding dilemma: In response to Soviet activity in Afghanistan, the United States and others arranged to bring Islamic fundamentalists (many of whom were considered undesirable in their home countries) into Afghanistan; then equipped them, armed them, and set them upon the Soviets.
After the Soviet withdrawal, the attachments between this Jihad army and the United States military were severed. No loyalty had resulted, of course, since no shared goals, beyond harassment of an occupying force, were ever sought.
What the manipulators couldn't foresee was that this army would soon declare war on its foreign instigators --as worldwide terrorists, for example, in the bombing of New York's World Trade Center. (NB: this was written before the 2001 airplane crashings, refers instead to the earlier truck bombing of WTC.)
I suggest an extrapolation from this example to our relations with the natural environment and our attempts to influence, alter and control it.
Western cultures teach that power is a reward for accomplishment. This notion is respected by people in and out of power, including those who never expect to claim any personal power in their lifetime.
In this model, since they have access to the tools of control, the power agents also act as the responsible ones. Responsibility accrues to them, sometimes as an encumbrance, unwillingly accepted along with the accolades and rewards.
So, this is the situation:
(1) Responsibility has become a group-membership phenomenon. Membership in the group usually involves personal and financial investment in the exploitation of resources, in the abuse of power, in near-psychotic, self-aggrandizing activities. Not the sort of people to entrust with our heritage and habitat.
(2) Those who see themselves as living outside the chain thus absolve themselves of responsibility, claiming lack of access. They further deny their victimization and abuse by the system, and even refuse to act as witnesses. If they have anger, it is often channeled into pursuits and outlets which themselves are ultimately destructive to sensibility or the environment.
(3) Cultures are set up and manipulated by the power brokers to support this set of conditions. The culture is made willing to fight in their defense, and will refuse credence to any systems or suggestions designed to improve the quality of life if they are interpreted to include a weakening of the present structure.
(4) There are those who are outside the power-link, but have become self-empowered. These are capable of committing themselves to change the bases or the results of the set of conditions.
Not all commit, but rather choose to assist others in so doing, by offering financial and moral support or by voting properly.
Others aren't aware of their core involvement, but still contribute greatly in many liberal ways: by being good parents, recycling, careful consuming, standing up for their rights and the rights of others, paying attention to their personal growth.
Of course, there are the front-line activists, without whom the messages don't arrive.
The need for a new worldview is apparent. Conscientious people are definitely holding the line; positive results are seen daily. Yet, overall, conditions worsen.
Required is rehabilitated lifestyle in a re-inhabited bio-system, governed by awareness, encouraged by true leaders of the planet, in a world where life is respected, abundance is natural, risk is inherent.
We have examples of indigenous peoples living in harmony with the natural flow and in touch with the forces of life. Through reflection, the historic record and common sense, it becomes apparent that the human species provides integrity and definition to the scene; that it is an active witness, the chronicler, the channeler.
Through the requirements of its niche, the human species is nature's assistant or apprentice, not its competitor or antagonist; its willing servant, not its steward or master.
Someday, we could re-name them "the responsible animal."
XI. BEAUTY OF DEMOCRACY
One of the beauties of democracy is that since the power of the government is derived in part directly from the will of the governed, when conflict occurs the government is expected to adjust its will at will, thus both augmenting and strengthening its claim and right to govern while maintaining the sanctity of the popular sentiment. If democracy and the polity are true to the principles of equality, then such adjustments would always operate in behalf of the governed, if such determination could be correctly ascertained. Natural imbalances lead away from this principle, however. For example, a benefit which aids the health and safety of the community at large could appear less beneficial to certain components or interests of the system in particular.
Regardless, with the addition to democracy of free-market capitalism, principles are often compromised, with the result that benefits may be distributed disproportionately, following power rather than number, for example. Democracy's feudal base is then reflected: centralized and concentrated power, oligarchies and patronage systems, favoritism and nepotism, corruption in general.
The concept of meritocracy then develops. In itself benign, it becomes increasingly tilted toward established elites, those already successful in business and industry, who control power bases (the military and organized religion), who direct the flow of information (media establishments and academia), and, of course, those in the government itself. Obvious problems of access, control, development, prioritization, definition, protections, mythology and sustainability result.
Just as the monarchies and colonial systems of the past centuries were replaced by models which did not exist in the political sense prior to their emergence as such, so, too, this essay proposes that there exist two proto-systems not presently political in nature which might connect and arise as a proper replacement. These are (1) cooperativism and (2) environmentalism.
Even though, it is true, both these concerns are in the modern world, neither is fully developed as a political option (Green parties and socialist models notwithstanding) or make any claim as such. This is reason enough to find them attractive.
Further, no matter how they might become developed as such, their ruling principles require a dedication to fairness, especially protecting the rights of weak and disenfranchised elements, the voiceless, even the decrepit. This is not always a result of compassion or justice, which are both susceptible to compromise or interpretation, but rather from a pure economy reflective of nature itself. One might complain that nature usually allows the weak and decrepit to perish. This doesn't result from a denial of compassion or justice, but out of the same economy just mentioned.
This is not double-think or contradictory.
There is an intent of universal protection built into the cooperative/environmental model; that this may occasionally fail is inherent, as it is in nature.
Abandonment is not a principle of nature. The frail or inefficient are let go only in the final resort, following innumerable attempts at rescue.
It is important not to dwell on the failures of a more natural system, since these come about as part of the natural course, not from self-service on the part of those entrusted to wield the power.
This is not an anti-democratic or even an anti-capitalistic stance that is attempted here. Rather, it is supportive of the concepts of democracy and even of capitalism in its basic form, but is opposed to the contemporary manifestations of the two in tandem, neither of which (I maintain) uphold the principles which their true proponents espouse. Equality has been replaced with privilege, ethics with subterfuge, compassion with law, access with ceilings, happiness with satisfaction. That this has led to post-modern depression is no surprise.
If that were all, we could recover, but that is not happening. The recoveries are as short-term as anything else, and fall into the same morass, becoming banal and expected and providing little relief. The dilemma is endemic. The western course has run aground; its well is running dry.
John Calvin has met Beevis and Butthead.
The promise of awareness, however, is renewed. The second Dark Ages, once self-named the Industrial Revolution, the present Age of Short-Sightedness, is coming to its end. The cold light of rational positivism, of expansion, of greed and exploitation, of aggrandizement, is sputtering out. The pompous nation-state is proved unwieldy. A world dominated by politics in all its forms becomes a planet lit by art in all of its.
***
Cooperativism is a socio-economic system in which production is determined through the sifting of skills, while each individual retains an equal voice and receives equal benefit. Compassion is a by-product.
Environmentalism centers on sustainability, that each element in a system must be properly served in order for the system as a whole to survive. The fundamental quality is one of respect. Justice is a by-product.
XII. A HOUSEWIFE IN AKRON
Even as we are aware of our culture and as we attempt to overcome those parts of it with which we don't agree, even as we rebel against it, our culture operates within us as surely as a software program operates within a computer.
Even rebellion is governed by notions of rebellion as dictated by our cultures.
As I attempt to know and change, as an American, I'm still held by the conflicting concepts inherent in the American way: democratic ideals, individualism/dualism, Calvinism, frontier mentality, power-brokered, competitive, racist/sexist...
Even as I've stopped subscribing or have never subscribed to some of the elements within my culture, they are operative within me as patterns, sometimes outside of my consciousness or comprehension. They texture my habitat. They make a starting place of somewhere I don’t even want to go. They are as a virus within me, deluding my cells into accepting them as proper. As any habitat, some elements can be simultaneously negative and positive.
Cultures have evolved as an aid in getting things done; to provide a measure of order, a system, a common base. The Muslim culture gets things done equally well as the Judeo-Christian cultures. Indigenous cultures feed their young and heal their sick, just as technological cultures do.
What is the culture of this housewife from Akron, how does it govern her, and what do we need to do to allow her to accept the title "leader of the planet?"
She is a shopper. She buys foodstuffs and household supplies at a supermarket. The food is in cans, cartons or boxes; some is frozen. She and her family need new clothing periodically, which she buys off the shelf.
The purchase of items on a credit basis is a given. Monthly bill-paying is an accepted ritual, often the subject of rhetorical complaints and sad jokes.
She feels responsible for the moral training of her children, especially since they reflect upon her character. She is devoted to them, to their upbringing and their safety.
She accepts the typical role-play that provides tasks and privileges for her and her husband. These make life more convenient, fairly certain and secure.
She believes in a supreme being that is depicted as male, all-powerful, relatively unapproachable, yet concerned with the safety and well-being of her and her family, although often mysterious in his ways of doing so.
Most of her beliefs and ways have been passed on to her by the prior generations through her parents, family, teachers, church, the mass media and the government. She has hardly ever consciously accepted or doubted them. They are what they are; they seem to work; everybody does it this way.
She celebrates calendar holidays with customary rituals, mostly revolving around special meals and gift-giving.
Through the media, she is aware of the world outside. She takes interest in the private lives of famous people. She is aware of disaster and war. She knows that the environment is endangered, but trusts technology and the government to resolve the issue.
She has several close friends, all of whom believe and act almost exactly as she, and gets together with them as a group of women for games or with their spouses for dinner on a regular basis.
She believes that coffee and sugar are proper substances for human consumption, alcohol or tobacco in moderation, and can relate funny stories about people when they've been drunk. All drugs are out, unless they’ve been prescribed.
She is embarrassed regarding her physical person, and would be horrified to be seen nude by almost anyone. She doesn't discuss her sexual needs or desires with her husband or in mixed company.
She thinks that radical or progressive points of view belabor issues, stretch the truth and exaggerate; that they are unrealistic, too intellectual and involve concepts which are usually confusing and contradictory.
She is only affected by the views of people she respects, yet she is capable of losing respect for a person who doesn't share her views.
She is hardly aware of her self as persona, barely aware of herself as a person. She is entered fully into the masses, and often acts more as a representative of a particular set of “oughts and shouldn'ts” than as an individual with free will or decision-making capacities.
She is full of fear and denial; is, in other words, dysfunctional.
Yet she is sweet and sincere; sympathetic, benign, loyal and good-humored. She is trusting, in some situations. She is somehow hungry for knowledge. She wants a wholesome and secure future for her children and for her own old age. She is willing to do her part, within the context of her own power base, to improve the conditions of life, but not to any dramatic levels, which are beyond her.
She would eschew the title, "Leader of the Planet," as if it were a red-hot poker.
This latter out of habit, fear, low self-esteem, embarrassment, fluster, ignorance, impotence and, let's face it, selfishness.
So, we need to confront someone in her fear, her hardened beliefs, her weaknesses, her addictions and dependencies.
Whenever I first meet someone personally, I center in on those elements of her personality which shine; I actively encourage those elements most beautiful and, therefore, most human. I attempt to comfort and charm, without being patronizing or false.
This approach can threaten some people, but most respond. After all, there is a sweet, little baby inside each of us, since that is what we all once were.
XII. THE MYSTIC, THE BULLY AND THE FOOL
Human habitat has changed from being mainly rational, healthy, proper and natural to one that is mainly absurd, intense, abusive and artificial.
For example, in modern western cultures it is acceptable for men and women to gather in dimly-lit, smoke-filled, noisy rooms where many imbibe so much alcohol that they are rendered intoxicated, sick, violent, cruel or stupid.
Many of the women are painted and clothed to excite the lascivious senses; many of the men use crude and threatening language and gestures. They call this "socializing."
Via the mass media, this behavior is promoted and legitimized as fun-loving and normal, regardless that it is destructive to the participants, their psyches and self-respect, and constitutes a negative influence on the growth of the culture.
Contrast this to a less accepted behavior available to people outside the urban/suburban stretches, with whom I've lived for a while, though not now. There, men and women gather at the sweat lodge, with hot rocks and fragrant herbs, to chant and sing, to appreciate each other and all the relations and the planet, to pass a pipeful of tobacco and a jug of water, to the point where they are rendered peaceful, content, cleared and energized. They are all nude and stand around the fire afterwards talking like human beings.
This behavior is seen as weird and obnoxious by the majority culture. It is not promoted or exposed, or even allowed in the mass media, except by careful extrapolation as curiosity.
A human culture has developed in which the bully and the fool have more credibility than the mystic.
The acceptance and development of the monotheistic concept of Godhead has contributed to this inappropriate condition, by placing a centralized, paternalistic, dominator-style hierarchy in between consciousness and understanding, and a system of sins and rewards in between humankind and natural evolution.
In the process, mystical experience has been denied to the ordinary person, on grounds that it is unavailable and dangerous to the uninitiated.
When I speak of mystical experience I don't mean anything beyond connection, harmony, loss of fear, sense of place. There are so-called spiritual humans out there who, from devotion and dedication, have contacted the forces behind these feelings, and can serve as guides and interpreters, but for many their specialness is one of effort.
These are a few of the corrosive results of the last four thousand years of monotheism:
1. to apply all powers into a single, conscious force;
2. to suppose that force to be wholly interested in the development of a single species inhabiting a minor planet;
3. to abjure all responsibility to that being and to ancient testimonials regarding that being;
4. to assert that one particular interpretation regarding the nature of that being is superior to all other interpretations;
5. to wage war and create enmity over these differences of interpretation;
6. to claim exclusive access to that being by an elite group;
7. to build cultures around the worship of that being;
8. to elevate religious priests or false mystics to positions of political leadership.
9. The worst effect is the denial of those individuals and those experiences, modern and indigenous, which are truly in touch with the forces behind evolution.
10. The final tragedy being that these experiences in their early forms, lost in time, gave rise to the interpretive impulse in the first place, which has resulted in the oppressive religions and belief systems of the present day.
When faith hardens into belief, systems form and seek to become self-sustaining by avoiding evolution and abridging awareness.
We have inherited this ancient battle between the mystic, the bully and the fool.
The bully is the one who, though powerless, is abusive; the fool is the one who, though ignorant, has access to power. The masses are hungry, tired, angry. So, fascism.
By dropping righteous pretense, propaganda, emotional ties and political chauvinism, the last great global conflict, World War II, can be viewed as a war between rival, fascistic nations, some merely more fanatical than others.
The United States at the time, far from fulfilling its wonderful words, was (and may still be) at least mildly fascist in relation to people of color, non-Christians, the alter-abled, the poor, the elderly, the young, "deviants," freethinkers and others. (Flip this list over to find out who’s in control.)
What Terence McKenna chillingly terms "beige fascism" has become the mode for most of the developed and developing nations. The people have been bled into believing that they must trust the bullies, fools and false mystics.
It has become government by vampire.
The natural tendency to hesitate when meeting a stranger has often been unfurled into a full hatred of the Other. The survival skill that allows one to keep and protect a territory is smelted into a weapon of mass destruction.
Where have all the mystics gone, to network from a computer?
Is this okay? Do we have any real choice?
XIII. CONCLUSION
Recently I received a flyer with a message and an appeal that was very similar to mine. Even used the words "leader" and "sacrifice," among others.
But I was not attracted to the style and tone of his charge, which suggested that I needed to learn networking technique...at a workshop...for a fee...
I'm not suggesting that his program is not worthy or worthwhile; most likely it is. It is a wholly western and technological approach, supposedly leading to an intimate and humanistic connection. It must be meant to be inspiring, without itself being inspired.
How else, you ask, can we reach all ears, lift enough hearts, affect enough minds, with all due speed and efficiency?
Even though I agree that the powers of the present technological devices are immense --you and I both take advantage and benefit from them-- are we in any way assured that they are more capable than other wondrous inventions which were also predicted to change the course of life for the better, often with disastrous results? Look at fire, for example, or the automobile. Suburbia!
There have been worldwide awareness movements in the past, which gained adherents and followers with astounding speed, but none of these have had the global impact and overall acceptance required to overcome the present difficulties.
It's as if everything has come to one head.
I know that I don't really have to touch my Akron wife; she'll obviously go with the flow when it comes around to her, as she's done in the past, although I would prefer her willing participation, especially now that I've come to appreciate and love her.
The fulfillment of the race may not require a universal uplift in consciousness, a storm of enlightenment in which all equally acquire, as claimed in some eastern teachings.
Although professing faith in synchronicity, I myself am no practitioner of any esoteric art, am no conscious believer in any system, am no adherent to any formal set of rules --your harsh pronouncements to the contrary, already admitted in a prior section in which I accepted the impact of culture upon any one of us, myself included.
We carry the baggage of our native cultures, a burden built of things we don't know. But, as Saturday Night Live's unfrozen caveman lawyer says, "There's one thing I do know." And so do all of us know one thing.
XIV. THE ROLE OF FUN
It seems that this little dude is serious about the crisis and strict about the solutions. Enjoying life is more than being proper, however.
Once more, in another time, I wrote: "I can't be serious without a smile."
Above all --beyond contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment, accomplishment, happiness, authenticity, liberation, respect, approval-- life should be fun. Literally, a free-for-all. Free for all.
To enjoy the material life, not be mired in it. And to learn the lessons, pass the messages, be graceful.
After the longish trek, at the gate to the valley were the Rainbow Gathering is about to be held, the just-arrived wanderer is often greeted with the call, “Welcome home, stranger.”
XXX
MORE CONSIDERATIONS
THE EARTHWORM IN THE COMPOST: Secure till the shovel.
QUESTION: Have vain attempts to capture memory allowed loss of "memory-most-valued," plus increased the cost of services not needed in the past?
ANSWER: No matter, never mind.
Let's say you were denied something. Let's say it was...water.
The Press (4th Estate) once protected the rich and powerful --politicians, moguls, military and sports heroes, the royals, the justly famous-- under the excuse that their credibility granted them certain rights of excess.
PREMISE: Everyday life is constantly changing --the day-to-day way is always being re-defined within cultures and between times...
DISCUSSION: We are deceived by the constructed material world into thinking that this version of reality is all there is...
ANECDOTE: But I've been to the 5-million-year-old Collective Birthing of the East African Wildebeest Herds on the plains of the Serengeti...
ANTIDOTE: There's always more than a single version of any phenomenon.
There is no PURPOSE but the evolution of purpose.
WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES. Voluntary homosexuality/lesbianism as natural population control. Must have been a time when the sexes contributed equally to the social order, since all of our primate relatives live that way. I wonder when it was, or where it is now among the quickly disappearing indigenous 6th order, or where it could be in the future.
Human Definition: TIME, LIFE, GOOD
Outer selves, Motivating metaphors (personal icons, models, archetypes), Mammalian/Vertebrains, Cellular awareness, Energell. (see poem: For Example, I)
HORRORSCOPE 3-27-96 There might even be huge shoulders of life slicing obriquely through ours, and ours through theirs, so some might be "spirits" to us, and some of us to them, and others might be "masters." Be wary of both.
The "aliens" are concerned about how we're fumbling with life on the planet. They know the reasons, but no matter how stupid we get, we still manage our own survival, at least for now.
They want us to fear them. Since we're barely adolescent, they don't want us to become as children by demanding their aid.
They know we know the answers, but wonder why we don't employ them.
FOOTNOTE 1
My friend and colleague, ex-Congressman Jim Weaver, in his recent book, Two Kinds, posits two human geno-types, what he loosely calls "hawks" and "doves," the former being aggressive, the latter cooperative.
Both kinds are needed for survival in the indigenous mode. Hawks for protection; doves for harmony. One reason for our present-day problems is the dominance of hawks in business and government, partly a result of the technological habitat in which we live. Feminism has emerged partly as a counter to such dominion, although it, too, has recently entered a hawkish phase.
However true Jim's accounts may or may not be, in my simple dualism humans fall into two different groups: nomads and settlers.
Settlers provide substance and form, create a place, house certain institutions, establish trust, conduct business, set limits, are slow to change.
Nomads provide perspective and vision, carry the messages, interact with strangers, engage in trade, are responsive to changes, test limits.
In the modern habitat, these two types interact creatively. There are the centers and there are the pathways connecting the centers. I think there is something essential about this form of interaction, something necessary for the health of the species.
In the U.S., for example, the average length of residence in a home is seven years. Some people stay in the same home for thirty years or more, others for two or less, in order to result in this seven-year statistical average. The qualities provided by both groups are essential if the community is to continue evolving in a healthy fashion.
Otherwise the negative qualities of prejudice and chauvinism gain an upper hand. Recent events in Eastern Europe and Africa attest to this predicament.
HERE IS A SPIRAL
Here is a spiral. It has an unseen beginning and no apparent end. Along its path are interrelated and interconnected elements or systems. They can interact with each other or others along the pathway and across it. The notion of "awareness" floats in the middle of the spiral. This spiral is named "Symbiotic Sustainability," and includes the following systems, for example:
-Plants
-Herbivores & Ungulates
-Fungi -Humans
-Earthworms & Termites
-Rodents & Birds
-Carnivores.
The intent of this representation is to show that the interaction of elements within a living system
(1) places none in the center,
(2) eventually results in awareness and
(3) places one of the results of interaction (via the medium of intelligence), i.e., awareness, in the center.
SYMBIOTIC SUSTAINIBILITY
A. The Maintenance Function of a Living System
1. Meeting in time (Rhythm) /--> HARMONY
a. mutual competition (symbionic) /-->
b. collective awareness (synchronicity)/--> (BALANCE
& MOVEMENT)
c. the web of life (16-dimensions of warp and woof)
i. in a spiraling, not a line or lines, not a circle
ii. shifting and changing over time
B. Evolution as Process
1. Myth of order
2. Fact of flux
3. Awareness called "knowledge"
4. Truth as a fabrication of rational mind
* * *
Here is another spiral. In its center floats the sun, a sustaining source, the provider of almost all energy to the earthly systems, past, present and future. It takes the place of the phenomenon called "awareness" in the previous spiral, although several qualities of each do not hold in the other. The same goes for the elements.
In this spiral, the systems include, for example:
-Energy slowing into Matter
-Plants transpiring Oxygen
-Time & Pressure solidifying Rock
-Earthquake & Volcano building Mountains
-Decay and other Break-Down Mechanisms yielding Soil
-Ocean & Sun providing Weather
-Tectonics & Erosion leaving Sand, Sediment and Clay.
In this reductive/productive environment, all systems leave building blocks for the others; eventually the sustaining energy returns full circle (though not back to the sun, which is not replenished and which will eventually fade and die). Oxygen fuels mammals, earthworms excrete humus, rock returns to sand. Over time, forests creep over ridges and mountains crawl to the sea. Inexorable is a keyword for life.
FROM FIRMAMENT TO PREDICAMENT
It is not until the arrival in time of Awareness (Sun) that any of this is a concern or possibly even a fact or event. Nothing is created or destroyed in nature (i.e., once "Nature" exists).
As far as we reckon now, the sun and the other stars eventually coalesced from gas particles created during the first one-tenth of a second of time (Big Bang). Our solar system of planets and asteroids was in turn coalesced from parts of the unsettled sun and remaining particles, or spun off from them in chunks. On planet earth, friction and fortune combined to allow for the existence of water and electrical energies. Complex organic molecules matured into chains of four amino acids (thymine, adenine, cytosine, guanine) which led to organized, independent, self-replicating systems (life). As part of the natural course of increasing complexities, life evolved into awareness, of self, not-self and the part of not-self designated as mystery. (From there, the notion of "problem.")
* * *
Almost all of our energy comes from or came from the sun. Coal, wood, petroleum, animal power (including brainpower), wind and rain owe their being to forces generated or aided by sunlight and sunheat, which create the conditions, supply the power and build the materials. The processes or procedures that allow for combusting, harnessing or channeling cause the release of stores of energy, often much more rapidly than it has been accumulated. Energy is thus concentrated and decanted through the mechanisms of nature and technology. Technology is a means by which intelligence mimics nature or recreates itself in the image of nature, but faster.
Examples of this evolution:
-sun –plant –peat –coal –diamond.
-sun –rain –river –dam –electricity.
-big bang –time –solar systems –complex molecules –replicating molecules (life) –social systems –awareness (of self and not-self) & judgment –(notions of) goodness.
Everything on or in our planet earth, every speck, every drop, the weather system, the day and night, everything owes its origin and being to the sun. No wonder in our initial reckoning, the sun was recognized as source and eventually worshiped as such. Early humans understood that mystery/wonder is out there and that it was both beyond them and accessible to them. Based in their own image, animism led to various renditions of godhead. Energy became spirit.
Examples of this evolution:
-energy –big bang –matter (atoms, molecules, complex molecules, self-replicating amino acids) –awareness of self/knowledge of not-self (distinctions) –goodness.
-god (spirit) –time –the universe/day & night –life –knowledge of good & evil – (notions of)ethics
-chi –sha –yin & yang (harmony) –life/community –judgment (discrimination)
Premise: Evolution is a necessary and sufficient condition for (the notion of) goodness.
I.e., good and evil do not exist apart from evolution. I.e., evolution is a causal condition for notions of ethics. I.e., given enough time for intelligent life-forms to develop, notions of goodness arise out of the state of evolution.
I.e., evolution precedes life and defines awareness.
Thus, there is not a concept of goodness out there that we are seeking, which, in our stumbling around, eludes us. Concepts of goodness involve us; they evolve with us as examples of intelligent life (awareness). It’s not that goodness is a result of intelligence, however, but is adjunct to it.
* * *
This time the image is of a spiral encased within/encasing a cubed rectangle. Neither have an obvious beginning or ending. This represents the 21st century, in which spiral thinking is combined with cubed thought, not only bringing the notions of science and humanities together, but also energy and matter, spirit and substance, essence and existence, yin and yang.
Goodness is not something that comes from without and enters within, something that is discovered like a gem or even a gemstone. Goodness grows with the race and emerges out of it, in tandem with it, defining and being defined by it, is created by it, out of the same substance and spirit from which intelligent beings themselves emerge.
Evolution is defined as “forward process.” It comes to an end only with extinction. All life forms, all particles, are in the constant process of evolving. Human being cannot be the end of creation; creation has no end except its final end.
The ebb and flow of energy into matter and vice-versa is more constant than the tides. The vibrations of energy allow the rhythms of matter. Without the flowing of energy, there is no matter. There are no particles if there are no waves.
* * *
We casually speak of “energy” as if we understood what it is.
It’s easy to admit that we don’t “understand” electricity or
magnetism or gravity –-all partially physical phenomena. Yet the
force (or forces) behind these (so-called “energy”) is a word
that gets tossed around as if it were understood.
“Energy. You know: energy!”
While our Current best Guess (CBG) now claims that energy and
matter are related, it is in a realm beyond our senses and
sensibilities that such notions are entertained. Some, as I, are
content with calling this phenomenon a mystery.
THE COURSE
I. The Problem with Problem-Solving
A. Problem-defining
II. Imagination of the Heart
A. post-Jungian psychology
1. deconstructionism
B. pre-technical (indigenous) cosmology
III. Sustainability
A. the nature of Nature
B. dynamics of habitat
C. charity vs. sacrifice
1. instability of excess
a. prosperity
i. joy
IV. Evolution of Goodness
A. evolution as process
B. evolution as improvisation
1. the roots of goodness
a. synchronicity
V. Deep Ecology
A. definitions of habitat
B. distinctions and relationships
1 1. in nature
2 2. in society
a. problems of anthropocentrism
truth and reconciliation
The symbiotic relationship between Sustainability and the Rights of Place:
Sustainability is when all systems interact symbiotically, so that the sum of all elements or sets of elements leads to positive contribution toward the so-called living systems. All systems interact similarly, their living edges stay fertile and they prosper in good times and stay clear of disappearance in bad. Symbiotic relationships create synergistic systems; synergy results when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A place has rights insofar as we can see that it is a living system, fragile and sustaining. No place is stable and unchanging over time, but is itself evolving in response to stresses, both internal and external. Places move across their habitats, following food, retreating from attack, evolving in response to other pressures. Places are synergistic.
Balance between the tendency toward sustainability and the rights of place only exist in human discourse, since it is humans who define and/or consciously create pressures. Some pressures partially result from human efficiency (desertification); from human error (reclaiming wetlands); from both (overfishing). Other circumstances of nature (e.g., ice age, flood and fire) become cause for human concern, thus “creating” more pressures.
If sustainability is a value, then future decision-making must be concerned with the rights of place, hence the decisions, in addition to being practical and legal (i.e., concerned with civil and human rights), must be ethical ones (i.e., concerned with animal and environmental rights and the rights of place).
Being aware of flow and contributing to it through yielding and tending is no easy or simple task.
“The environment is man’s first right,” wrote Ken Saro-Wiwa, the murdered Nigerian writer. Respecting and agreeing with this martyr’s intent, I add the corollary, “Man is the environment’s first right.” Look, all beings or forms are here because they have been sustained. Otherwise they’d have disappeared. The dinosaurs were sustained for over 150,000 years. They were well-sustained for a long while. The wildebeest have traveled the plains of east Africa for five million years, through climatic catastrophe, abject predation and human hunger. That’s sustainability.
Unless they fail completely, all systems evolve into something else. There’s no middle road. All systems are living systems, whether a forest or fields of rock, an earthworm or the planet earth. As place, systems have rights and are in balance with other systems. Systems come into being through natural evolution or are created by intelligent beings, both human and non-human (e.g., the unknown effects of the societies of marine mammals), and by the hyper-states brought on through the auspices of other non-human forces manifested in brain chemistry and some so-called drugs.
Is there an epidemic of extinction in the Twentieth Century? Does resolution require the survival of the human species? If science is a quest for truth, is it for science to delimit its searches, even if its discoveries create a threat to sustainability?
20%
aman bloom, grahamstown, south africa, may, 2000
So, is it your choice that if there are 20% of the people controlling 80%
of the resources and goods, you would want to be one of the 20%,
or would you want a more egalitarian economy?
"Well, I worked hard to be one of the 20%,
I was fortunate to become one of them."
You mean, you and your forefathers were able to work hard,
and able to wrest away goods and resources from the other 80%?
"So, what can I do, now that I've prospered?
Am I to simply give up the benefit for the sake of the great unwashed?"
Yes, much of it.
"But this is the law of nature, to compete and prosper.
Look at the lions in the jungle..."
Carnivorous predators. We are opportunistic.
"Exactly! Look at the great forests,
each species competing with others
to dominate the slope or the streambank..."
Collectivization. Selective adaptation. Sustainability.
"Some in nature starve or fail to procreate
while in competition with others of their species,
then fall victim to predation or disease.
Why should we be any different?"
If there is the question, the answer must be "yes," we are different.
It's become for us to be of nature and also to interpret nature.
It's not death that's unjust; it's unnecessary death.
The carrying capacity for humans is soon reached.
Soil and Water are getting scarce.
The warming’s coming.
Yes.
"But, if we let them have a fair share, they'll just piddle it away.
We'll all be left with less, maybe even not enough.
Things could get worse than they are now.
The wheels of industry and commerce could stop.
The stock market would collapse; there'd be world-wide catastrophe."
You're not paying attention. There already is world-wide catastrophe.
"How would taking from the rich and giving to the poor help?
The human population would increase; there'd be less industry,
less capitalization, fewer consumer goods, more unemployment.
The loss of balance could lead to strife."
So, you're recommending that we ride the cart right off the edge?
"I'm saying, give free-market democratic capitalism
a chance to work out the kinks."
I think the fascists already tried that last century.
"Play fair."
Why? You don't.
"Because you said so."
Give up your goods.
"I'm addicted."
End of denial.
"I like smooth sheets and a soft bed at the end of a hard day."
Softy.
"I enjoy a good cigar."
Hedonist.
"I've got my kids to think about."
Racist.
"I ought to smack you one."
True to form.
"I'll kill you, motherfucker!"
Quid pro quo.
"Fuck you!"
20%.
Xxx
Complicated: unwieldy piles of dilemma
Complex: juggling in elegant balance
THE MOUNTAIN IS REALLY NOT THERE.
The mountain is really not there. What I see is an interpretation of light wave energy bounding off or from the matter energy resource. Seeing is a regenerated interpretation of energy through experiment with its components in time.
The mountain is really in my mind, A reinterpretation, a representation, of the reflection of light energy bouncing off/from the physical mountain out there.
The mountain is really there, but what I'm seeing is a result of bio-electrical impulses, registered at a rate of ten impressions per second, ordered by my mind into sensibility --perhaps a fair, but loose, portrayal of the complex object that is the mountain.
More energy arrives from the object than my seeing sense is able to interpret. Thus, we say that an eagle sees better than I, a dog hears more.
Focussing on a part, more energy is absorbed, more detail apparently exposed.
Closing my eyes, its still partly there, distorted but recognizable. I "see" and "imagine" in the same place. A painting or drawing from memory is still a representation of the mountain, even to another.
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.
ENERGROUP
If energy and matter are the recombinant same --matter consisting of energy slowed down enough to create particles and waves-- perhaps there's an in-between state, part energy, part energy-to-matter, what I now term "energroup," a grouping of energies which accounts for several scientifically-unexplained phenomena:
(1) the set of epiphenomena, often misnamed "supernatural," especially those involving the accumulation, directing and channeling of energy patterns;
(2) resonant centers, where bands of energy intersect and attract interest from humans and other living things;
(3) inner reckoning, evidenced on one level as imagination of the heart and at another level as spirit, partly responsible for notions of divinity;
(4) resonant, harmonic energies contained within the vibrational matrix of non-living substances, such as elemental metals, crystals, stones and water.
The dichotomy between energy and matter must now be seen, as many other dichotomies, as only apparent. The boundaries between the two are vague and often inconstant, bending in time and according to unknown rhythms. Something can seem to be energy while in transition, yet seem to be matter when leaving and arriving. This apparency may suit our sense of drama, but the true explanation may be much simpler.
Energy may be the fire; matter, the ash. Yet, what is the difference, really, between fire and ash? Grace?
Once beyond the human sensibility, into a more universal sentiment, where we see that the purpose of evolution is itself, that the appearance of intelligence is not uniquely human or necessarily so, that the human approaches are numerous and particular, that all knowledge is subjective, that the universe is far more glorious than our words allow, that perseverance will continually recycle the past, that reality is always more spectacular than speculation.
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