What Future May Come

We are the first species in 4 1/2 million years  that can choose not to go extinct     "Before we can arrive at solutions to the planet's problems, we will have to arrive at solutions for our own internal problems. We're a troubled mix of fear and anxiety, and we escape through endless distractions. - Zhiwa Woodbury   We are becoming aware that much of what we have been doing is not working, and that fundamental changes are now required if we are to be able to create a sustainable future as a species.   Life conditions have totally shifted our context from historic local and tribal values to a new global scale. To deal with the problems we are facing, human beings will need to evolve to a higher lever of consciousness and a deeper level of maturity, because what is happening today has never had to be faced before.   If we can find a way to mobilize the spiritual community within this new frame work of global values, it can be very powerful, for this group holds the keys to immense innate knowledge from long ago about accessing and cultivating changes.   These religions span large boundaries around the planet and provide important, expert and crucial understanding of the processes of transforming transitional values. What is called for is a kind of master intelligence that transcends but includes the marvelous, deep rooted religious traditions and indigenous spirituality and that grew out of local and tribal values.    The idea of religion is to bring about a higher standard of morality. But the problem is that it often becomes a contest to see who can be the most pious (holier than thou). When compassion gives way to obedience or compliance, it can become just another "ism." Joseph Campbell cited the Star Wars character of Darth Vader as someone who becomes lost by giving up his individuality to "the system," where there are only rules and no heart. Institutions are very much bound up in their OLD STORY (history), and are products of their roots, with strong tribal and ethnic identities. God spoke to humans in the language of their cultures. The gentle beatitudes of Christ evolved out of an older, more stern and punitive system. Jesus came after Moses, not after Abraham, and this can be seen as a kind of evidence of an evolutionary flow. The Age of Patriarchs was followed by Moses (the law), then by Christ. So the old “eye for an eye and tooth for tooth” of the Old Testament began to gave way to the beatitudes.  Mohammad began teaching in Mecca about 610. Very conservative, closed systems that seek to discredit new ideas and institutions may not be able to change. They are products of strong and ethnic identities, and their message is their history. De-institutionalization of some of the most inflexible and primitive cultural systems may take place as THE NEW STORY begins to emerge, which is globalization.   So far, there is no spirituality for the modern context. But people everywhere are having transcendent, deep connections with life, with one another and with the world, similar to a religious experience, in a non-religious context.  In some ways science may be considered to have served as the religion of this epoch, in that science has been asked to explain how reality works, in much the same way as religion was in the past. But science has been trapped in a kind of fragmentation between the inner world and the outer world. This grew out of an early deal with the church. The agreement was that science would limit itself to material concerns, and the church would deal with all spiritual matters. So, from its beginnings, science had an experiential core, couched in skepticism about the transcendent. Descartes addressed the inner vs. outer world as being quite separate. This great rift or separation in which science was limited to only empirical considerations of the physical world, turned science  into a sort of orphan, barred from the spiritual banquet table. Biblical references to mans’ dominion over the world has turned into exploitation of the planet. The framework we are left with is empty consumerism. Breaking out of this illusion is what is needed. By the time of Goethe, we find references to a spiritual paradigm of science.As western science which has developed over the last few hundred years we have increasingly looked to science to explain how reality works. Interestingly, we are seeing recent references in scientific terms to the evidence of the evolutionary flow of spirit.     The contemporary paradigm is one of a kind of serpentine path between being isolated and alone in our individuation (discontinuity), and being somehow connected to the whole of the race, the planet and the continuous universe. The feeling is one of reaching toward the future, yet being trapped in the past. It seems almost like a strange dream of being stuck or abandoned and unable to move forward or back.   But a NEW STORY is beginning to be told, a story of a new world view, and a new science as well. This new story describes a kind of seamlessness quantum inseparability, which may become the basis for new theology or expression of religion about what life itself is. Some physicists and philosophers are even beginning to talk about religion again because of recent discoveries about how life itself is expressed, and evolving. Some even speak of a redefinition of spirit with more of a cosmic respect for the force of life itself.     We have come to understand that humans could not have evolved into their present biological complexity with only 35,000 genes in the human body, because there would not be time for the random choice process to work, unless some other kind of intelligence is behind it.  Also, we know that bacteria, viruses, genes and now memes, respond together in response to non-linear dynamics. When their external worlds threaten their internal capacities they re-calibrate their codes. In fact, there is, in all life forms a genius and adaptive intelligence. There is a new respect for and a redefinition of the cosmic force of life itself, which may imply a whole new concept of what is spirituality.     The new story is that there is only ONE and we are all THAT ONE, as an inherent part, that there is one world, one civilization.  The above is based on a telephone conference between Peter Singe, Don Beck, Brian Swimme, moderated by Andrew Cohen, Part 2.  Matthew Fox - Recovering the Sacredness of the Earth Quintessential Michio Kaku Anne Tucker

Memes and Isms

The English suffix -ism was first used to form a noun of action from a verb, as in baptism, from baptein, a Greek word meaning "to dip". Its usage was later extended to signify systems of belief. The first recorded usage of the suffix ism as a separate word in its own right was in 1680. By the nineteenth century it was being used by Thomas Carlyle to signify a pre-packaged ideology. It was later used in this sense by such writers as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw. In the present day, it appears in the title of a standard survey of political thought, Today's ISMS by William Ebenstein. The -ism suffix can be used to express the following concepts: doctrine, theory or religion (e.g. pacifism) theory developed by an individual (e.g. Marxism) political movement (e.g. feminism) action, process or practice (e.g. terrorism) characteristic, quality or origin (e.g. heroism) state or condition (e.g. pauperism) excess or disease (e.g. botulism) prejudice or bias (e.g. racism) characteristic speech patterns (e.g. Yogiism) There are long lists of isms. To over simplify, an ism is a way to think about a group of people who do something different. This is a way to think about cultural changes or paradigms. The more followers or participants an ism attracts, the more likely it will be to affect the status quo. The early isms were apparently about regional, racial and linguistic distinctions which eventually became codified as social norms, politics, rules, regulations and laws. Such moral implications turned into religious prohibitions (thou shalt not). In some ways religion helped stabilize cultures and the family unit, but at a terrible price. Anytime a belief system tries to separate the human psyche into a good and a worthless portion, there is great danger. This tactic of "divide and conquer" has always been used to bring about mankind's greatest inhumanities. This polarization has been at the root of almost all murder, war, and the primary instrument of oppression. The idea that "we are good and they are bad," is invariably used to justify the worst atrocities, usually under the deceptive guise of religious bigotry. Both political and religious restraints sometimes act as a hedge against anarchy and chaos. Such repressions are usually good for the state but not so good for the individual. Old Chinese common law was severe; "steal an orange, lose a hand."  Even more cruel and repressive conditions resulted from the caste systems such as in India, where people born into a lowly cast were permanently condemned to subservient poverty. Prohibitions against women and dark skinned races were once almost universal. But perhaps the most pervasive form of repression is elitism, which insures advantages for the wealthy. This has become so bad that we now live in a world where virtually everything is for sale to the highest bidder, resulting in the commodification of everything including the very planet itself -- the land, the water, and the atmosphere, as well as the plants and animals. This behavior is menacingly self destructive. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that unless it changes drastically and soon, this planet cannot sustain anything like 7 billion humans, much less the 9 billion that is projected statistically. Over time we have become so accustomed to the exploitation of any and all natural resources that we somehow failed to see this as a sort of economic Ponzi scheme. The paradigm of plundering nature and exploiting the poor lasted a long time, but is apparently unsustainable and coming to an end as natural resources dwindle. The economies and systems predicated on such exploitation must fail along with the institutions that support them. Where then can we turn for a better way? A meme is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. The word meme was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion and architectural technology. Proponents theorize that memes may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance, each of which influence a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts. Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesized that one could view many cultural entities as replicators, and pointed to melodies, fashions and learned skills as examples. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior. Because humans do not always copy memes perfectly, and because they may refine, combine or otherwise modify them with other memes to create new memes, they can change over time. Dawkins likened the process by which memes survive and change through the evolution of culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution. So an idea that spreads quickly through the Internet is an Internet meme. This process speeds up the development of  concepts and seems to be one of the more promising aspects of technology. If technology (industrialization) got us into this, maybe it can help with a solution. An idea whose time has come can get millions of hits almost instantly. Who says it has to be about gossip, matchmaking, music, porn, or buying and selling. If somebody comes up with a way to save the humans, wouldn't you want to know? Recent developments in contemplative neuroscience seems to offer some hope.  Brain plasticity occurs throughout life and it is evident that compassion can be learned by training the human mind using attention and intention. Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain Sustainable links list Futurism    links list New Age links list Pacifist links list Holistic links list Law of Attraction Brain plasticity Epigenetics Most popular internet sites Isms