A Design Portal for Cocreating a Global Wisdom Community
Intro Section I
by Bill Ellis
CHAPTER #1 -- THE FOUNDATION
For some 2000 years or more civilization has been ruled by a social paradigm on which all aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are been based -- the “dominator paradigm.” In the past 2 two decades a new social paradigm has been emerging that could have the most, deep, fundamental impact on human civilization since humanids first came down from the trees. The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some super normal power for the domination and use by man. The new paradigm we’ll call “A Gaian Paradigm,” suggests a spontaneously self-organizing universe in which humanity is but one of the created interdependent webs of being.
THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM
The “dominator paradigm,” has had a long evolution. It grew from the Jewish creation myth that held that the earth was created for the use of and domination by man. It was strengthened by Greek philosophy with its postulate that "Man is the measure of all things.” The early Church held that a "chain of being" put man at the top of a hierarchy with only a few celestial being above. Below were women, children, other races, animals, plants and the Earth. Each there to serve and be dominated by the rungs above. The “dominator paradigm” was stamped in the minds of Europe by the thousand year Inquisition that burned some one million people, mostly women, at the stake for believing in Earth as our creator. It was spread to the East by the crusades that destroyed “infidel” humans, cities and nations. During the Age of Colonization and Discover it was perpetuated and made worldwide by the sword (technology), the cross (Christianity), and the flag (nationalism). Newton’s clock work concept of that cosmos, and Darwin’s development of evolution of humans were interpreted to “prove” the validity of the dominator paradigm. It was fixed in our moral secular system by the acceptance of Adam Smith's economy that claims that human "self-interest" competition and materialism should, and does, dictate all human actions. This abomination as the essence of humanity now rules the world.
THE GAIAN PARADIGM
The new paradigm, which I’ll call “A Gaian paradigm,” not only has many roots but, can be, and is becoming, the underpinning of a new global network of cultures replacing the now dominant and domineering man-centered Industrial cultures. The new cultures will, like all cultures, be holistic unified coherence of interdependent components == religion, economics. social and others. The emergence of the Gaian paradigm is resulting in a deep fundamental transition of our world-view, our social institutions and our lifestyles. The need for this transition is being made obvious by the growing numbers of dangers inherent in industrialism. And the transition is happening, and being made real, in the introduction of many positive and creative social innovations.
This millennium is being looked upon as a time of radical and fundamental change. Minds are opening to new ideas. People are looking for new actions. It is in this spirit of a hopeful deep fundamental social transformation that this book is addressed. These are the concepts we’ll explore in the next few chapters.
FOUNDATIONS FOR A GAIAN PARADIGM
Many basic scientific observations led to this new scientific/social paradigm. The advancement of the Gaia theory; the establishment of Chaos and Complexity theories and new concepts of evolution were among them.
The observation that biological evolution did not progress as Darwin predicted by a series or minute changes which led over time to the emergence of new species. Rather, biological evolution happened in quantum leaps. Major biological changes and new species are created in relatively short periods of time after long periods of stability. This observation was designated by Stephen Jay Gold as "punctured equilibrium".
James Lovelock, a scientist working for NASA, observed that the biosphere of the Earth was radically different from all other planets. It stayed amazingly constant, and within ranges which supported life. Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, at the same time, was studying the evolution of micro organisms over the billions of years before animals appeared on the face of the earth. She found that life forms were interdependent. Life was able exist on Earth because of a symbiosis among all life forms. Everything was interdependent with everything else. Life created its own biome. Lovelock and Margulis proposed that the whole earth was a self-organized, self-supporting ecological system At the suggestion of a neighbor of Lovelace, William Golding, author of Lord of the flies, they termed this living Earth system Gaia, after the Greek Earth goddess.1
A theoretical understanding of how Gaia, or in fact any system, might spontaneously self-organize came from other fields of science including mathematics, physics and particularly computer science. Chaos and Complexity theories made possible by computer modeling have moved science beyond the limits imposed by linear mathematics, algebra and calculus. Study of the transition of order into chaos, or chaos into order, and the formation of complex systems from simpler ones has opened a whole new area for science. Two particular breakthroughs in the field are relevant to the Gaia concepts.
"Self-organizing criticality" is an idea proposed by Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist, Per Bak. His first computer model representing self-organizing criticality was of a pile of sand. As you pour grains of sand on a spot it slowly builds into a stable inverted cone. As you continue pouring the cone becomes unstable until sand slides and avalanches restore a new larger stable cone. He showed that biological evolution occurred in such bursts. Simple entities formed more complex systems, which remained stable until internal pressures built up and caused a rapid reorganization. There seems to be a law of nature, self-organizing criticality, by which new forms come into being
'Autocatalysis,' developed by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute is another concept which provides a theoretical base for the evolution of Gaia. Autocatalysis holds that systems of biological entities may promote their own rapid transition into different forms. Kauffman uses the simple example of the slippery footed fly and sticky tongued frog. The mutation of slippery footedness gave no environmental advantage to the fly until the mutation of the sticky tongued frog. Only then did Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest come into play. Networks of potential mutations may develop and remain dormant until triggered by an environmental change or other phenomena that brings on the avalanche of transition. Autocatalysis, linked with survival of the fittest explains how complex organs like the eye, or new species emerge. 3
'Self-organizing criticality" and "autocatalysis" are among the scientific concepts that show how biological entities self-organize in quantum like leaps from simple cells to linked complex networks of cells, organs, plants and animals. More than that, physicists like Lee Smolin and Nobel Laureate Murray Gellmann have extended self-organizing back to the beginning of time at the Big Bang, suggesting that the same principle may apply to the self-organizing of fundamental particles into atoms, atoms into molecules and molecules into galaxies, solar systems, planets, and life. At the same time economists like Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Brian Arthur, and Jon Holland have extended the new paradigm in the other direction, to include economics, social organization, and human consciousness. 4
This new scientific/social paradigm suggests that people have no superior divine mandate within a universe created for them. They are not independent of, above or beyond the natural world in which they are imbedded. They do have the unique ability to understand, through science, the laws that govern them, to envision future worlds, and to co-create those future worlds within the laws of science. The coming millennium will evolve radically differently from anthropocentric paradigm which has dominated the past 2000 years.
Cyberspace and the Networked Universe
“Everything is connected to everything else” is one way of stating the Gaian Paradigm. It is a fact of science, and is a social mindset. But it is more than those, it is a fact of technology. “Networking” was identified by John Naisbit in Megatrends, as one of the major new trends of the century. As he saw it, it was a social and political trend. It was made possible by the railroad, the automobile, the telegraph, and the telephone, each of these technologies made the Earth smaller and put people in more rapid and reliable touch with one another. The real quantum jump in networking is only now before us. Computers and the Internet are providing a challenge that has hardly been explored. Cyberspace is a global phenomenon providing humanity the opportunity to work globally in real time. This takes networking well beyond the concept about which Naisbitt wrote only a few years ago, or the concept of transnational networking which was the root of the formation of TRANET, the organization with which I’ve been working since, 1996.
The Gaia Hypothesis, the theories of chaos and complexity, the Gaian concepts, and the computer technologies which now face us grew independently of one another. But they form a unity. They in themselves, are an example of the self-organizing principle which shapes all of cosmic evolution. Together make up the Gaian Paradigm. They challenge us to prepare ourselves for an avalanche of social, political and economic change in the years ahead. The coming millennium will evolve radically differently from man-centered paradigm which has dominated the past 2000 years.
Chapter 2 --
GOVERNANCE
The new is a scientific theories explains many phenomena in cosmic evolution. But they are more than that. They suggest a new world view or mindset by which humans can examine current phenomena with respect to their long range future. Futurists are no longer dependent on examining history and technological trends. In fact, puncture evolution and self-organizing criticality suggest that new social, as well as physical and biological, phenomena spontaneously self-organize, like an avalanche, unpredictably. We may not be able to foretell them with accuracy, but we can examine groups of related social phenomena that are close to chaos. And we can foresee possible future happenings of social importance. This is not unlike the mountaineer’s warnings of avalanches, the meteorologist’s prediction of weather, or the geologist’s foresight of earthquakes. The mathematical accuracy of physics, the model science of the past, applies only to a very limited range of phenomena. Even those, as quantum theory says, are only very highly probable. Nature is nonlinear and unpredictable.
Punctuated equilibrium applies equally well to social and cultural evolution as as it does to biological evolution. As long as a society is adapted competently to the values and needs of the people it serves, it will tend to preserve those values and practices that have sustained it, and will resist change. But again, when things deteriorate (economic downturns, street violence, family disintegration, warfare, religious uncertainty, famine, ecological collapse, or whatever) deeply rooted cultural premises are quickly abandoned. A power of uncertainty and chaos sets in. If new knowledge reveals a profoundly different view of the world, a new cultural and social structure replaces the old. Society today is in its most profound period of chaos and change ever.
In the coming years it is most probable that every social institutions that has been developing for the past 2000 or more years will be deeply, fundamentally, and radically reexamined in the light of the New Scientific/Social Paradigm. The new mindset gives humanity a new powerful tool to foresee and prepare for the uncertain future. There could be a flood of self-organizing social phenomena replacing the old. In the following we look at three. The burgeoning Civil Society and the possibility that it could emerge into a new mode of global governance. The growth of homeschooling which could be the forerunner of a radically different, community based learning system. And the convergence of science and religion which portends a unified knowledge system.
In 1982, in a European journal on communications I wrote an article on “Transnational Networks and World Order” John Briggs and F. David Peat in one of the early books popularizing “the new science of chaos” quoted it as an example of the application of the new science to social and political structure. It was pretty primitive thinking, but may perhaps suggest the direction that more thought should be applied as we move further under the new Gain paradigm. The quote suggested that:
“A future world government can be pictured as a multidimensional network of networks which provide each individual with many optional paths through which s/he can provide for his or her own well-being and can participate in controlling world affairs. ... [It will be] composed of links between nodes. [It] will have no center. Each member of the network [will be] autonomous. Unlike an hierarchy no part or member will be controlled by any other. Various members may draw together for special projects or on different issue, but there [will be] no bureaucracy demanding action or conformity.”5 This was not meant to be the prediction of a classical anarchistic state, but rather a possible fruition of a participatory democracy made possible by new knowledge, new technologies, and new world views.
That the current social/economic/political system is on the edge of chaos is made too obvious by daily newspaper headlines to require much confirmation here. Random killing of tourists in Florida and Egypt, depletion of the ozone layer, teen suicides, world hunger, global warming, Washington gridlock, the failure of global governance in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Ceylon, and the Middle East, the widening rich-poor gap, the inability to solve, or even confront global pollution problems, child labor, street crime, and sweatshops, racism and the glass ceiling, the wanton waste of natural resources, downsizing of industries, the break down of the family, are mere symptoms. The basic characteristics of civil society is lost in the current market/government orientation, which fosters competition, free trade, self-centeredness, profit-over-people, globalism, and widespread alienation. Deep systemic problems give a clear picture of a civilization on the edge of chaos. An alternative system is spontaneously self-organizing.
In the past two decades there has been a rapid rise of citizen organized GrassRoots Organizations (GROs, often called Nongovernmental Organizations or NGOs) in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has been initiated by the failure and near chaos brought on by the Industrial Countries’ intrusion into culture they did not understand. This subversion of other cultures to the Western way started with Columbus who, with the strength of the sword (technology), the flag (national organization), and the cross (religion) started the subjugation of all non-European cultures. The subjugation of people around the world during the periods of ‘discovery’ and colonizing that followed, are well known. It is enough, here, to say that indigenous cultures have been overwhelmed by the dominant and domineering EuroAmerican Industrial Cultures.
Springing from the land, uninvited and often resisted by outside developers, and even their own governments, people are now recreating their own coalion and communities with new and indigenous technologies, and taking over where governments and industries have failed. Often stimulated by a special unique local need, these local Grassroots Organizations (GROs) grow to become more broadly socially and politically active, linking up with other GROs to form networks for participatory democracy and mutual aid. Outside aid to GROs is provided by Grassroots Support Organizations (GRSOs) formed most often by middle class professionals and technicians who recognize the inequities engendered by the current economic-political system. GRSOs reach out to give in-kind assistance and to legitimize the actions of the peasants and disenfranchised in their bids for empowerment and local self-reliance.6 Techniques, technologies, information, and service from the industrial countries are supplied through links created by International non-govern mental organizations (INGOs)
Nongovernmental organizations are also becoming a greater force and better recognize in the Industrial countries. The problems facing humankind cannot be solved by governments or markets alone. Nor can governments or corporations create a people center democracy. But we-the-people are solving our problems world wide by the third leg of governance, Civil Society. That is, by citizen participation on a local community scale. New citizen initiated social innovations are sweeping North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Japan. These social innovations are being borrowed and exchanged among nearly every country around the world.
From England came the cooperative movement, started in Rochdale England in 1844 by some disenfranchised weavers. It spread to the U.S. with producer co-ops during World War I, and with a plethora of consumer co-ops during the 1960s. The Mondragon network of co-ops, in the Basque area of Spain, added the concept of creating secondary co-ops to serve the primary co-ops. Banks, Insurance Companies, Management Services, and other businesses owned by the primary co-op serve the member co-ops . The Seikatsu Club of some 10,000 Japanese housewives organized by “hans,” local co-ops, create their own businesses when the market does not meet their social, ecological , or economic demands.
From Bangladesh came the Grameen Banks that introduced a new credit technique by lending money through groups of borrowers who guaranteed one another‘s loans. From Canada came Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS), a local citizen owned computerize exchange system. Local scripts, such as Ithaca Hours, help local businesses and individuals create local jobs and exchange goods and services regardless of the inflow of federal dollars. “Time Dollars,” systems promote baby sitting pools, senior citizen services, and other forms of local service based on hours worked not dollars spent.
From Denmark has come CoHousing, in which families build their own homes but with common ground and common space including child care facilities and community dining rooms bringing a new sense of community solidarity. This, of course, adds to the array of communes, community land trusts, intentional communities, and ecovillages in which citizen provide the planning and development so lacking in government and corporate housing developments.
From Switzerland comes Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) bringing farmers and citizens together to produce local food with local resources. The consumers sometimes own the land, share the produce, and participate in the work, paying a professional gardener to manage the growing. Other innovations in the food and agriculture area include farmers’ markets, homesteading, and the rapidly growing development of home gardening.
From India came the concept of Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and the Gandhi nonviolence that has already transformed social protest and citizen action.
Many other social innovations such as citizen patrols, homeschooling, community learning centers, community loan funds, peace brigades, homesteading, and community bulletin boards are building community solidarity, empowering citizens at the grassroots and promoting local community self-reliance without relying on governments or “the market.”
It is all there. A living body of networking organizations has emerged to fill the niche produced by dysfunctional postcolonial governments. A plethora of unique interdependent social cells have developed organs assuming specialized functions that serve the whole. They have almost magically become the social/political body that promises better life for the people in developing countries, and the whole Earth. The natural laws of self-organizing criticality and autocatalysis are working on the social level.
Through the revelations of science, an understanding of the cosmic process is slowly emerging. Perhaps with this new understanding, humanity can participate in the co-creation of a sustainable and lasting civilization based on citizen participation in local community organizations -- a Gaian global governance.
The First Phase of Democracy
Like any step in cosmic evolution this would be a unique happening. But like any step in cosmic evolution it would be subject to the natural evolutionary laws. It was 250 years ago that the first phase of democratic governance was a unique happening introduced on the planet. The times then, like the times now were chaotic. The ruling powers, and the ruling system, had outlived its usefulness. Masses of people recognized that they were missing out on many to the benefits that their toil had created. “It was the best of times, and the worst of times.” The American and the French revolutions happened.
The first phase of democracy was a foolish idea to the leaders of the day. Monarchs held their power by the “divine right of kings.” Neither the churches nor the governments were friendly to the idea that the people could rule themselves, nor even participate in government. The ideas of voting, representation, legislating, human rights, politics, constitutions, or social contracts were little more than hazy academic notions played with by abstruse philosophers. The Magna Charter had given large land owners a degree of power over their lands and its serfs, but these posers were subject to the Kings will. It took the Voltaires, the Frnaklins, the Paines, and the Jeffersons to bring the ideas of everyman’s rights to the public. And it took the Boston Tea Party, the Bread Riots, and the revolutionary wars, to bring down the old regimes and make possible the self-organization of the new.
Self-organization is the right word. The avalanche of change hit an unprepared society. No one had predicted the rise of national democracy. There were no plans, no designs, or instruction books for the first phase of democracy. There were few constitutions, no concept of checks and balances, no rules for voting, no loyal opposition, no political parties, no civil society, no GROs.
The American colonies had assumed a degree of self-control under the British Crown. Direct democracy was practiced in the forerunners of the New England town meeting and in some colonies. Voting rights were usually denied women, blacks, Catholics and Jews. Suffrage was extended to only landholders of some substance often as much as 50£ (a goodly sum in those days). Probably no more than 1/3 of the adult free men could vote. Office holding was even more restricted. Often to hold elected office a man had to own at least 500 acres and 10 slaves, or thousands of pounds sterling in other property. Like with today's GROs, ideas and actions were separate and disparate. 7 No associations were ready to exercise political control of society. The task was daunting. But it did happen. In spite of the later failure in France and earlier failures in Athens and Rome, the first phase of democracy was born to last in America.8
I have used “the first phase of democracy” to describe the political innovation of 1776 because, as we know today, it was only partially successful. It was only partially successful for many reasons. Primarily because it arrived on the world stage without preparation. The technology of the times made participatory democracy impossible beyond the town meeting. Communication was measured in days or weeks, not as today in nanoseconds. Because of that, we-the-people could only be “represented” in the halls of power. Franklin and Jefferson, following the Native American model, advocated that all decision be made by consensus at the local level, and that representatives be limited to arguing the case for their communities. But Madison and others, following the concept of British parliamentarian, Edmond Burke, argued that representatives should be empowered to make decision in the name of the people. Burkian representation was accepted by most colonies and the Constitutional Assembly. This has made the government dominant and limited the voice of the people.
In spite of extending suffrage, the voice of the people has been steadily eroded as government has grown in size and power. People’s control of corporations was taken away in 1844 in the Supreme Court’s decision that corporations had the same rights as flesh and blood citizens. Earlier, communities or states could revoke corporate charters if a corporation was deemed to not be in the public interest. The rise of corporate power over the people increased with the opening of Free Trade with no restrictions on the outflow of capital or jobs, and no global standards for safety, health, or protecting in environment. The high cost of getting elected and the free flow of money into politics from the wealthy elite, banks, and businesses, has made even the first phase of democracy far less a people’s government than was envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers.
Emergence of the Second Phase of Democracy
The rise of Civil Society, modern technology, and the new scientific understanding of how evolution works has made possible the emergence of a second phase for democracy. We-the-people now have a voice in our civil society, we have the technology to communicate around the globe, and we have the new understanding of social evolution .
Complexity theory shows that ordered complexity is the natural state of the universe. Biological evolution is the most obvious example of the tendency toward the ordering of simple entities into more complex systems. Every step of cosmic evolution since the Big Bang has been a step toward increasing ordered complexity. Creation occurs on the borderline between rigid order and random chaos, “at the edge of chaos.” If an entity is too rigidly ordered it can not change to meet the contingencies of a change in its environment. Flexibility is one of the cardinal biological principles of evolution. Without flexibility a life form is not sustainable, it cannot change to meet new conditions. Without flexibility progress is impossible.
But governments, like corporations, have been organized on the concept that good management means rigid order directed from the top. In the first phase of democracy the people elected their governmental representatives, but all power resided in the government. Humans have been locked into the world view in which rigid order was highly respected. Rigid order was the goal of organization. Humans are taught to be afraid of chaos, and to avoid complexity. Yet, the new science/social paradigm show us that the edge of chaos is where progress happens with the self-organizing of complexity. If society is to meet the challenges that face it, it needs to live closer to the edge of chaos. It must welcome a degree of disorder.
Democracy since its modern inception has suffered from its self-guilt of being inefficient. Critics and supporters alike have held that democracy is too chaotic. They have searched for ways to move democracy toward more controlled management without surrendering the human rights they saw as the great strength of this form of government. The Gaian Paradigm sees democracy in a very different light. The seeming weaknesses of democracy are its strength. The theories of Gaia, Chaos and Complexity suggest that spontaneous self-organizing on the edge of chaos is natural law. It requires the messy flexibility inherent in democracy, and absent in more efficient forms of government. People are only beginning to realize that no form of government, except democracy, provides the freedom and potential of complex ordering to meet the changing demands of modern times.
The rise of civil society, the burgeoning of GROs, the growth of social innovation, community involvement in meeting their own needs, are all parts of the progressive agenda provided by nature. We may not see clearly today the final organization which will emerge if we continue to build the decentralized autonomous communities linked together in worldwide mutual aid. But, that is the way of cosmic evolution as it is seen from the new world view. It purports the emergence of a second phase of democracy. One in which people in community at the grassroots have a direct input to all decisions which affect their lives. A new form of global governance.
*********End Chapter 2 ************
Governance
CHAPTER #3 --
A COMMUNITY LIFE-LONG LEARNING SYSTEM
The potential for a new global governance rooted in civil society is only one example of the emergence of spontaneous self-ordered complex networks. Another interesting example of self organization on the edge of chaos is the emergence of Cooperative Community Life-Long Leaning Centers (CCL-LLCs).
Early American schools were strict disciplinary centers in which students sat stiffly at their desks in abject obedience while stern teachers taught them the three Rs by rote memory. It’s purpose, at least during this century, has been to prepare workers for an industrial culture. It worked well. Laborers in American mills and factories surpassed all others in bringing wealth to our nation.
An increasing number of educational critics, like 1991 New York teacher of the year, John Taylor Gatto in Dumbing us Down, have decried the schooling system. They contend that it is the form of schooling that is teaching the wrong lessons. The monopoly state schools restrict the individual’s natural curiosity and desire to learn. They teach authoritarianism, self-repression, and strict obedience to the clock. The teacher, under controls set by the state and now the national government, determines what is to be learned. The clock and the calendar determine when and how long a child can learn it. Much of this criticism of schooling has been reflected in a report to the president, A Nation at Risk.
Well before the current attacks on schooling and educating, John Dewey and other philosophers assailed this concept of education with their creeds of “learning by doing” and “child centered education.” Although the philosophy of education changed the form didn’t. Twenty or more children are still gathered in one school room, each one trying to do his or her own thing. The result is that neither teaching nor learning is possible. Many schoolrooms become centers of confusion. Education is now at the edge of of chaos, ripe for a radical transformation.
The organization of the new learning system is somewhat difference than the self-organization of local GROs into a Global Civil Society. For the example we examined above, organization came from moving from chaos, a disordered conglomeration of disjoint new organizational cells, through the borderland of the edge of chaos into order. GlobaL Civil Society, like democracy before it, is self-organizing itself where nothing, or little, existed before. For the learning system reorganization is happening, in part at least, from the failure and disintegration of a too rigidly ordered system.
One element of the reorganization of learning started two decades ago when some families started taking corrective actions one family at a time. It was called homeschooling. These actions grew in concert with Paul Goodman’s urging that schools make more use of community facilities and issues, with Ivan Illich’s seminal book Deschooling Society, and with John Holt’s Instead of Education (1976), and Growing Without Schooling (1977) on how children learn.
In the beginning, only a couple of decades ago, homeschools were autonomous family units, each one setting it own curriculum, and providing its own supplies and services. As homeschooling grew in the 1970s and 1980s practitioners began forming associations primarily to exchange information and to confront state laws that limited their rights. There are now some 700 homeschooling associations in the United States. About 50 of these have a nationwide constituency.
Most of the services provided to homeschoolers, like Growing Without Schooling, or Home Education Press, are primarily publications emphasizing exchanges among homeschoolers. Others like the Clonlara School Home-Based Education Center provide a by-mail service with curricula, tests, and diplomas for homeschoolers. Still others are newsletters written and exchanged by homeschoolers themselves. A few like Home Schoolers Defense Organization help homeschoolers with legal and legislative matters. One or two have books, equipment and other material for loans to homeschoolers. Some like ????? and Aerogram are publications condemning the authoritarian, monopolistic state school systems and supporting alternative educational systems.
Closely associated with the home schooling movement are a broad variety of alternative schools which are moving in the direction of child-centered education. Jerry Mintz in his Handbook of Alternative Education lists 2500 Montessori schools, 100 Waldorf schools, and 60 Quaker schools as well as the 700 homeschools programs. 9
In additions to these is a growing number of Folk schools patterned after the Folk Schools of Denmark, “schools-without walls,” “Open Universities” and learning centers which do not fall within the province of being substitutes for the K-12 governmental schools. It is this later group of learning facilities with which this paper is interested.
In the last two or three years local homeschooling networks have started providing themselves with a new form of learning social institution. They don’t yet even have a universal name. To start examining them I will call call them “Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers (CCL-LLCs).” These community centers are cooperatively owned and controlled by the member families they serve. They provide counseling, mentoring, supplies, facilities, workshops and classes. They serve everyone in the community regardless of age or past learning. They use all aspects of the community as learning facilities. Libraries, YMCAs, churches, museums, local businesses, farms, government offices, the streets, and the parks are all part of the learning system.
As Gene Lehman put it in one of his Luno broadsheets “life long learning relies heavily on daily life activities, deep and varied interactions among people, contact with nature , and a popular culture which is abundant, diverse, profound, and cheaply accessible to all. Most importantly, a holistic approach to lifelong learning relies on developing some kind of face-to-face community of friends and neighbors who cooperate in order to share the essential burdens and delights of life. ”10
In 1998 Community Learning Centers became of governmental interest when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act dedicated $40 million to expand after-school programs. But this program was limited to school districts, and administered by U.S. Department of Education. It’s goal was primarily to get the kids off the streets, rather than to stimulate life-long or community learning. It was thus directed more at saving a decaying schooling system than experimenting with new futuristic systems of learning.
Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers may be one of the most seminal innovations of the past decade. They may be the seed for a deep fundamental change in the education/learning system of the future. Community Life-Long Learning Centers are to a large extent an outgrowth of the rapidly growing homeschooling movement. It is conceivable that CLL-LLCs could completely replace the state controlled schools.
Civil Society and Learning
The transition to a Community Life-Long Learning System is much more than a change in educational practices. It is a transformation of the whole mind set of the value of knowledge and the value of the person. “Teaching,” “educating,” and “schooling” imply that society, or government, is acting on, controlling, indoctrinating and forming some amorphous lesser beings. It is an hierarchical system of control from the top down. It is inherent in the first phase of democracy which accepted many of the tenets of rule from above, the divine right of kings and its transition to the divine right of government. It is in harmony with the fading world view that the cosmos, and the Earth, are parts of the chain of being in which man is a semi god controlling the Earth from above, and all lesser forms including women, children, animals, plants and the Earth’s natural resources are but resources for the use of man.
Every single word in ”Cooperative,” “Community,” “Life-Long,” “Learning,” and “System” carries a different important connotation. “Learning” is not something a superior being does to a lesser one. Learning is an act of self-volition. It is a self-actuated process of creating skills, discovering knowledge, and satisfying one’s own natural curiosity. It is built on, and it teaches, the inherent right and responsibility of every individual to set her is his own standards. It honors the diversity of evolution. It is in harmony with the new Gaian world view that everything is interdependent with everything else. It respects the new understanding that each of us “belongs” equally to Gaia.
“Belonging” in this sense is much more that merely “being a member of.” Belonging is the scientific fact that we are all interdependent systems within systems, or holons within holons if you wish to use the systems jargon. Each of us is a whole made up of smaller wholes and imbedded in larger wholes. Gaia and the Cosmos are among the larger wholes of which each individual is a smaller whole. “Belonging” implies not only being a whole within wholes, but that we are subject to downward causation, we are subject to natural laws. “Belonging” to Gaia means belonging to the Earth and to one another. Belonging is an ethical proto-value inherent in the New Science/Social paradigm. It says that each individual is an integral part and responsible for the health and well being of the family, the community, Gaia, and each of the larger systems of high he or she is a part. Inherent in this scientific concept of belonging is much of the perennial wisdom of the sages which have recognized that humanity cannot continue to exist on Earth without laws of conduct which emphasize our responsibility to and for one another.
This transition from “educating” to “learning” is being recognized by a wide variety of scholars. Management guru Peter Drucker in his “Post Capitalist Society” writes of a society based on knowledge. One in which all society is an open life-long learning system in which every person can enter any level at any time. From the other end of the spectrum peace scholar Elise Boulding reports that a common feature of the many “Imagine a World Without Weapons” workshops she has held with people of all walks of life and all ages, was the vision of a “localist society,” One in which communities were self-reliant and “Learning appears integrated into other community activities. ... everyone is a learner, and education is life long.” This theme of the “Learning Community” is fully integrated with the growth of civil society and all other aspects of the emerging Gaian Cultures.11
Chapter #4 -
RELIGION
A third aspect of the New Science/Social Paradigm is more amorphous and far more sensitive than the two I’ve suggested so far. It is the melding of science and religion.
Perhaps in no time since Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the door of the Castle church at Wittenburg (1517), or Calvin published his Institutes (1534) has religion been in such spiritual chaos. No one set out the serious concern of this age of religious chaos better than did Fritz Schumacher in “Guide to the Perplexed.” Other scholars of the times like Gregory Bateson, Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead and others had a clear but unproclaimed religious character to their works. Schumacher’s was the first, most profound, and most open declaration of the age of spiritual turmoil.
The religious chaos of the 1960s and ‘70s was most clearly and dramatically proclaimed by the beads, incense, granny dresses, long hair and horned rimmed glasses of the hippies. It was also declared by movements such as T.M., est, Hari Krishna, the search for Eastern religions, the return of paganism, shamanism and Wiccan. It was expressed in the Broadway musicals Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar, and in the attempt to escape from social hills with psychedelic drugs. The concept of “New Age” started out to be, more like Schumacher's “Small is Beautiful,” a critique and correction of the excesses of the Industrial Age. It ended up being identified, particularly by its critics, and the press, as being an off beat and occult religious movement, more likely to end up with the Johnstown and the more recent UFO induced suicides or other strange behaviors than in any serious revival of a deeper sense of spirituality.
Schumacher in “Guide to the Perplexed” took the high road and recognized that the meandering search for meaning of the hippie generation was a deeper and more profound expression of the age than was being recognized by mainstream society. In “Small is Beautiful” Schumacher had been concerned with what we do. In “Guide to the Perplexed” he was concerned with why we do it. He recognized two kinds of science. One was “knowledge for manipulation,” the other “knowledge for understanding.” The former led to techniques and technologies for the satisfaction of the lower visible level of human wants. The later led to the higher values, meaning and purpose for life. As he said:
“It may conceivably be possible to live without churches; but it is not possible to live without religion, that is, without systematic work to keep in contact with, and develop toward, Higher Levels than those of ordinary life. ... Everywhere in the modern world there are experiments in new life-styles ...and it is sometimes tolerated even in polite society to mention God.”
The Evolution of God
Belief in powers beyond the human level have been with us since humans first became conscious of themselves and the world into which they were born. Stories of creation, and speculation on the higher power have filled the human mind, and were the rocks on which cultures were built in every part of the world.
Throughout history humanity’s understanding of that great power that created and controls the universe has grown, like the understanding of the physical cosmos and of biological life, through many transitions. The evolution of our understanding of the Christian God is the one most familiar to us.
The first God of the Bible was a fierce and vengeful god to be feared. He was one of many gods (or baals) each of whom ruled over a limited people in a limited territory. The God of Abraham could command human sacrifice. Jacob wrestled all night face to face with his God. By the time of Isaiah, God had grown to be the creator of the world, the greatest among all gods. Jeremiah taught, God was not in the Temple but in the heart of humans. He had created the world for human use. The god of Moses lived on a Mountain in the Sinai desert from which he handed down the ethical rules for his chosen people, the Jews. With the teachings of Jesus, god took off his demeanor of wrath and punishment to become an all loving god promising eternal life for his people who did not sin. 12 With Paul there was one all powerful Christian god for all people. To Augustine the universe was a Chain-of-Being with humans near the top, and a hierarchy down through women, children, and lesser animals. Vastly above man sat God, with the Chain-of-Being filed with angels and other demigods. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, God was a omnipresent spiritual form more than a human like being. His existence was as discernible through reason as through revelation
The view of God as creator of the universe that was to be ruled by man, was amplified by the Greek philosophers who first conceived of the idea that the universe was an ordered unity, and that man had the capability to understand it. To Socrates, Plato and Aristotle the ordered and purposeful universe was obviously for human use. All plants and animals were in a natural hierarchy with man at the top. The Roman Empire, Mediaeval Church, and European Monarchs, continued and expanded the idea that humans (more correctly ‘man’) was the caretaker for all creation.
The Dichotomy Between Science and Religions
This view of man’s dominion over the Earth prevailed until the time of Bacon and Descartes who had little respect for the non-human world, but divided human life into two realms, the physical and the spiritual. They did not challenge the concept that the purpose of the universe was the use of humans. But, did contend that humans were created with the power to understand and dominate that universe. With the founding of economic theory on the principles of self-interest and survival-of-the-fittest, the material side of life became dominant. In the past 200 years mastery of the external world has become the single most powerful driving force of humanity. A belief in God has remained as separate from the material world, as the 2000+ years in the evolution of God has reached to the edge of chaos.
This dichotomy between science and religion was established when the mediaeval Christian clerics refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. For them, the scriptures had revealed that there could be no moons around Jupiter. It was not fear of knowledge that held their hands. It was fear of social dissolution. The moral certainty of the Mediaeval Church was based on man being at the center of the spiritual universe. This in turn rested on man’s home, the Earth, being the center of the physical universe. It was feared that if the Earth were proven to not be at the center of the universe, the whole fabric of spiritual and social adherence could disintegrate.
The Galileo compromise, later clarified by Descart's dualism, was that scientific knowledge should be developed to aid man in his understanding and domination of the Earth. That is, in creating technology. Religion should dominate the realm of the deeper meaning of life and the moral codes which create harmony among the people of the Earth. Science would not be recognized as a process for enlightening humans as to their place in the universe.
This bifurcation was operable as long as the development of technologies was beneficial to humanity. That is, before the challenge of the excessive use of natural resources, the pollution of air, water and soil, the threat of global warming, the discovery of thinning of the protective ozone layer, increased health risks due to toxic chemicals, the loss of jobs brought on by labor saving automation and foreign trade, biotechnology threatened to privatize all life, automobiles and highway separated citizens from one another, and, in general, technology became our master rather than our slave. These unanticipated consequences of technology have spurred the creation of technology and environmental assessment programs by the government. They also initiated a deep reassessment of the value and use of science as well as technology.
GOD AND GAIA
Part of the reassessment of science has been in concert with the reassessment of religion in a holistic revaluation of the place of knowledge in society. A new search for meaning and spirituality emerged from the peace, human rights, feminist, and ecological movements of the 1960’s. The search for meaning was intensified by the bold adventures into “New Age” cults and fancies, the deep searches through Eastern Religions, and the unfettered acceptance of questionable pseudo sciences. However, it was brought to fruition, with some deep scholarly theological redefinition’s of deep religious and scientific tenets.
Pope John Paul II, in acknowledging that homosexuality is a phenomena of nature, in his apology for the Church’s condemnation of Galileo, in his acceptance of evolution as a valid scientific theory, and in his admission if the Church’s error in failing to oppose to the Holocaust, has made the Catholic Church seem to recognize it own fallibility, and to see science as a joint venture in the search for knowledge of the cosmos and humanity’s place in it.
Fr. Thomas Berry has been one of the leaders of this movement. He holds that our modern society’s creation myth is the scientific story of cosmic evolution.13 No creation myth could produce more awe, wonder, and mystery than the revelation of how the universe, the planets and life emerged from the Big Bang. Other theologians like Bernard Lonegran S.J.. and Laurent Leduc have gone a step further. They suggest that religion, like science, is a search for the truth not the last immutable word. Theologians like those in the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology (ITEST) see theology as accepting the scientific view of nature, but acting as a sort of watchdog for recognizing that there is a bigger picture that we can not completely understand nor appreciate from a natural viewpoint.
From the scientific end there is a growing humility. Science accepts justifiable condemnation for the technologies derived from it, and their detrimental affect on society and the environment. In addition, the certainty that surrounded Newtonian Mechanics and Darwinian Evolution was taken to extremes by many disciplines and by some scientists. As Alfred Whitehead warned. the success of physics in explaining and predicting one set of phenomena led many so called scholars to apply the methods of physics beyond their sphere of relevance, in what he called “misplaced concreteness.” That is, building mathematical structures on uncertain premises. Both the limits of and the fallibility of science are now emphasized, giving more room for a rational religious speculation.
A New Age of Science
At the same time, the advent of quantum and relativity theories, and even more in the new sciences of Gaia, Chaos and Complexity, it is being recognized that science is relevant, to use Schumacher’s words, as “knowledge for understanding.” Today, science is not just as a base for new technologies; but science reveals what little reasonably certain factual knowledge we know about the cosmos and cosmic evolution. This limited knowledge is relevant to humanity’s place in the universe. It implies rules to live by if humanity is to continue to exist. A new age of science is dawning.
We made one mention of this in our discussion of learning above. That is the scientific fact implicit in the Gaia Hypothesis that everything is dependent on everything else. That is, that humans belong to Gaia . We “belong” to Gaia not just as parts of it, but “belonging” is a proto values for our lives. Belonging implies both being subject to and being responsible for one another and for the Earth.
Beyond that, as Gregory Bateson points out in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, a living organism can continue to exist only if it meets three biological principles. 1) Health, the ability to exist within its environment, 2) Competence, the ability to draw sustenance from its environment, and 3) adaptive flexibility, the ability to change as its environment changes. These principles are as applicable to social systems as they are to biological systems. They instruct us as to how we must live if humanity is to sustain itself. Tom Ellis states the ethical implication of the Gaian theory in a new categorical imperative: “Make all decision based on whatever promotes the health, competence and adaptive flexibility of oneself and of all the larger system of which one is a part.”14 Science joins with religion in uncovering the code of conduct necessary for human existence.
This melding of science and religion follows Spinoza’s belief that God is nature and Einstein’s concept that a religion is feeling of cosmic awe, wonder and mystery which comes with the deep concentrated study of what is, science. It surpasses human understanding. It is ‘feeling’ the ultimate reality. God, in this sense, cannot be reduced to human characteristics. God, so defined, is pure spirit invisible to humans. God is beyond the materialism and foibles of human frailties. For humans to quibble over His attributes is to diminish His grandeur. You just can’t use the word God and describe it. It is a state of being rather than a conscious attribute. It transcends definition.
The new sciences of Chaos, Complexity and Gaia provide a new world view, that humanity is an integral, and equal, part of a self-organizing cosmos. Each part of, the cosmos as a whole, is equally sacred and to be revered. The Gaian paradigm, that all there is -- is webs of being, suggests a new concept of God-as-cosmos, and Science-as-revelation.
Humanity may well be on the verge of a new age of science and a new age of religion. A unified search for fundamental knowledge, which may save it from the apocalypse by which it is threatened,
These three brief examinations only hint of the holistic and comprehensive cultural transition in the offing. They were not meant to be accurate prediction of the future. A central theme of chaos and complexity theories are that self-organization cannot be fully guided by human intervention, the best we can do is to examine possible option and prepare for any of them to happen. The emerging New Scientific/Social Paradigm radically changes the way we will look at all aspects of our culture in the millennium ahead. The future of economics, health, transportation, habitat or all other social institutions could as well be taken as examples examples. Or we might have examined the lifestyles we will live if this Gaian Paradigm become universal. in the decades ahead Earth citizens may well look back at the society in which we now live as not far removed from our cave dwelling ancestors. Technophobes can point out a myriad of technological possibilities now on the shelf awaiting development and exploitation. Highly respected scientists, like Freeman Dyson in Imagined Worlds, speak of radio telepathy, designed biomechanical intelligent beings, bioengineered biomes in space, and other wonders we now read of in science fiction. 15
The coming millennium, will first have to solve the social, economic, health, education, ecological and other problems which beset today’s world. Without solution, the current world problematique dooms humanity to a degraded existence reminiscent of H.G. Wells “The Wars of the Worlds.”
In Gaia, Complexity, and Chaos theories we see the opening of an opportunity to choose between a number of possible scenarios.
***********END CHAPTER 4*********
RELGION
CHAPTER #1 -- THE FOUNDATION
For some 2000 years or more civilization has been ruled by a social paradigm on which all aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are been based -- the “dominator paradigm.” In the past 2 two decades a new social paradigm has been emerging that could have the most, deep, fundamental impact on human civilization since humanids first came down from the trees. The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some super normal power for the domination and use by man. The new paradigm we’ll call “A Gaian Paradigm,” suggests a spontaneously self-organizing universe in which humanity is but one of the created interdependent webs of being.
THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM
The “dominator paradigm,” has had a long evolution. It grew from the Jewish creation myth that held that the earth was created for the use of and domination by man. It was strengthened by Greek philosophy with its postulate that "Man is the measure of all things.” The early Church held that a "chain of being" put man at the top of a hierarchy with only a few celestial being above. Below were women, children, other races, animals, plants and the Earth. Each there to serve and be dominated by the rungs above. The “dominator paradigm” was stamped in the minds of Europe by the thousand year Inquisition that burned some one million people, mostly women, at the stake for believing in Earth as our creator. It was spread to the East by the crusades that destroyed “infidel” humans, cities and nations. During the Age of Colonization and Discover it was perpetuated and made worldwide by the sword (technology), the cross (Christianity), and the flag (nationalism). Newton’s clock work concept of that cosmos, and Darwin’s development of evolution of humans were interpreted to “prove” the validity of the dominator paradigm. It was fixed in our moral secular system by the acceptance of Adam Smith's economy that claims that human "self-interest" competition and materialism should, and does, dictate all human actions. This abomination as the essence of humanity now rules the world.
THE GAIAN PARADIGM
The new paradigm, which I’ll call “A Gaian paradigm,” not only has many roots but, can be, and is becoming, the underpinning of a new global network of cultures replacing the now dominant and domineering man-centered Industrial cultures. The new cultures will, like all cultures, be holistic unified coherence of interdependent components == religion, economics. social and others. The emergence of the Gaian paradigm is resulting in a deep fundamental transition of our world-view, our social institutions and our lifestyles. The need for this transition is being made obvious by the growing numbers of dangers inherent in industrialism. And the transition is happening, and being made real, in the introduction of many positive and creative social innovations.
This millennium is being looked upon as a time of radical and fundamental change. Minds are opening to new ideas. People are looking for new actions. It is in this spirit of a hopeful deep fundamental social transformation that this book is addressed. These are the concepts we’ll explore in the next few chapters.
FOUNDATIONS FOR A GAIAN PARADIGM
Many basic scientific observations led to this new scientific/social paradigm. The advancement of the Gaia theory; the establishment of Chaos and Complexity theories and new concepts of evolution were among them.
The observation that biological evolution did not progress as Darwin predicted by a series or minute changes which led over time to the emergence of new species. Rather, biological evolution happened in quantum leaps. Major biological changes and new species are created in relatively short periods of time after long periods of stability. This observation was designated by Stephen Jay Gold as "punctured equilibrium".
James Lovelock, a scientist working for NASA, observed that the biosphere of the Earth was radically different from all other planets. It stayed amazingly constant, and within ranges which supported life. Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, at the same time, was studying the evolution of micro organisms over the billions of years before animals appeared on the face of the earth. She found that life forms were interdependent. Life was able exist on Earth because of a symbiosis among all life forms. Everything was interdependent with everything else. Life created its own biome. Lovelock and Margulis proposed that the whole earth was a self-organized, self-supporting ecological system At the suggestion of a neighbor of Lovelace, William Golding, author of Lord of the flies, they termed this living Earth system Gaia, after the Greek Earth goddess.1
A theoretical understanding of how Gaia, or in fact any system, might spontaneously self-organize came from other fields of science including mathematics, physics and particularly computer science. Chaos and Complexity theories made possible by computer modeling have moved science beyond the limits imposed by linear mathematics, algebra and calculus. Study of the transition of order into chaos, or chaos into order, and the formation of complex systems from simpler ones has opened a whole new area for science. Two particular breakthroughs in the field are relevant to the Gaia concepts.
"Self-organizing criticality" is an idea proposed by Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist, Per Bak. His first computer model representing self-organizing criticality was of a pile of sand. As you pour grains of sand on a spot it slowly builds into a stable inverted cone. As you continue pouring the cone becomes unstable until sand slides and avalanches restore a new larger stable cone. He showed that biological evolution occurred in such bursts. Simple entities formed more complex systems, which remained stable until internal pressures built up and caused a rapid reorganization. There seems to be a law of nature, self-organizing criticality, by which new forms come into being
'Autocatalysis,' developed by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute is another concept which provides a theoretical base for the evolution of Gaia. Autocatalysis holds that systems of biological entities may promote their own rapid transition into different forms. Kauffman uses the simple example of the slippery footed fly and sticky tongued frog. The mutation of slippery footedness gave no environmental advantage to the fly until the mutation of the sticky tongued frog. Only then did Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest come into play. Networks of potential mutations may develop and remain dormant until triggered by an environmental change or other phenomena that brings on the avalanche of transition. Autocatalysis, linked with survival of the fittest explains how complex organs like the eye, or new species emerge. 3
'Self-organizing criticality" and "autocatalysis" are among the scientific concepts that show how biological entities self-organize in quantum like leaps from simple cells to linked complex networks of cells, organs, plants and animals. More than that, physicists like Lee Smolin and Nobel Laureate Murray Gellmann have extended self-organizing back to the beginning of time at the Big Bang, suggesting that the same principle may apply to the self-organizing of fundamental particles into atoms, atoms into molecules and molecules into galaxies, solar systems, planets, and life. At the same time economists like Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Brian Arthur, and Jon Holland have extended the new paradigm in the other direction, to include economics, social organization, and human consciousness. 4
This new scientific/social paradigm suggests that people have no superior divine mandate within a universe created for them. They are not independent of, above or beyond the natural world in which they are imbedded. They do have the unique ability to understand, through science, the laws that govern them, to envision future worlds, and to co-create those future worlds within the laws of science. The coming millennium will evolve radically differently from anthropocentric paradigm which has dominated the past 2000 years.
Cyberspace and the Networked Universe
“Everything is connected to everything else” is one way of stating the Gaian Paradigm. It is a fact of science, and is a social mindset. But it is more than those, it is a fact of technology. “Networking” was identified by John Naisbit in Megatrends, as one of the major new trends of the century. As he saw it, it was a social and political trend. It was made possible by the railroad, the automobile, the telegraph, and the telephone, each of these technologies made the Earth smaller and put people in more rapid and reliable touch with one another. The real quantum jump in networking is only now before us. Computers and the Internet are providing a challenge that has hardly been explored. Cyberspace is a global phenomenon providing humanity the opportunity to work globally in real time. This takes networking well beyond the concept about which Naisbitt wrote only a few years ago, or the concept of transnational networking which was the root of the formation of TRANET, the organization with which I’ve been working since, 1996.
The Gaia Hypothesis, the theories of chaos and complexity, the Gaian concepts, and the computer technologies which now face us grew independently of one another. But they form a unity. They in themselves, are an example of the self-organizing principle which shapes all of cosmic evolution. Together make up the Gaian Paradigm. They challenge us to prepare ourselves for an avalanche of social, political and economic change in the years ahead. The coming millennium will evolve radically differently from man-centered paradigm which has dominated the past 2000 years.
Chapter 2 --
GOVERNANCE
The new is a scientific theories explains many phenomena in cosmic evolution. But they are more than that. They suggest a new world view or mindset by which humans can examine current phenomena with respect to their long range future. Futurists are no longer dependent on examining history and technological trends. In fact, puncture evolution and self-organizing criticality suggest that new social, as well as physical and biological, phenomena spontaneously self-organize, like an avalanche, unpredictably. We may not be able to foretell them with accuracy, but we can examine groups of related social phenomena that are close to chaos. And we can foresee possible future happenings of social importance. This is not unlike the mountaineer’s warnings of avalanches, the meteorologist’s prediction of weather, or the geologist’s foresight of earthquakes. The mathematical accuracy of physics, the model science of the past, applies only to a very limited range of phenomena. Even those, as quantum theory says, are only very highly probable. Nature is nonlinear and unpredictable.
Punctuated equilibrium applies equally well to social and cultural evolution as as it does to biological evolution. As long as a society is adapted competently to the values and needs of the people it serves, it will tend to preserve those values and practices that have sustained it, and will resist change. But again, when things deteriorate (economic downturns, street violence, family disintegration, warfare, religious uncertainty, famine, ecological collapse, or whatever) deeply rooted cultural premises are quickly abandoned. A power of uncertainty and chaos sets in. If new knowledge reveals a profoundly different view of the world, a new cultural and social structure replaces the old. Society today is in its most profound period of chaos and change ever.
In the coming years it is most probable that every social institutions that has been developing for the past 2000 or more years will be deeply, fundamentally, and radically reexamined in the light of the New Scientific/Social Paradigm. The new mindset gives humanity a new powerful tool to foresee and prepare for the uncertain future. There could be a flood of self-organizing social phenomena replacing the old. In the following we look at three. The burgeoning Civil Society and the possibility that it could emerge into a new mode of global governance. The growth of homeschooling which could be the forerunner of a radically different, community based learning system. And the convergence of science and religion which portends a unified knowledge system.
In 1982, in a European journal on communications I wrote an article on “Transnational Networks and World Order” John Briggs and F. David Peat in one of the early books popularizing “the new science of chaos” quoted it as an example of the application of the new science to social and political structure. It was pretty primitive thinking, but may perhaps suggest the direction that more thought should be applied as we move further under the new Gain paradigm. The quote suggested that:
“A future world government can be pictured as a multidimensional network of networks which provide each individual with many optional paths through which s/he can provide for his or her own well-being and can participate in controlling world affairs. ... [It will be] composed of links between nodes. [It] will have no center. Each member of the network [will be] autonomous. Unlike an hierarchy no part or member will be controlled by any other. Various members may draw together for special projects or on different issue, but there [will be] no bureaucracy demanding action or conformity.”5 This was not meant to be the prediction of a classical anarchistic state, but rather a possible fruition of a participatory democracy made possible by new knowledge, new technologies, and new world views.
That the current social/economic/political system is on the edge of chaos is made too obvious by daily newspaper headlines to require much confirmation here. Random killing of tourists in Florida and Egypt, depletion of the ozone layer, teen suicides, world hunger, global warming, Washington gridlock, the failure of global governance in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Ceylon, and the Middle East, the widening rich-poor gap, the inability to solve, or even confront global pollution problems, child labor, street crime, and sweatshops, racism and the glass ceiling, the wanton waste of natural resources, downsizing of industries, the break down of the family, are mere symptoms. The basic characteristics of civil society is lost in the current market/government orientation, which fosters competition, free trade, self-centeredness, profit-over-people, globalism, and widespread alienation. Deep systemic problems give a clear picture of a civilization on the edge of chaos. An alternative system is spontaneously self-organizing.
In the past two decades there has been a rapid rise of citizen organized GrassRoots Organizations (GROs, often called Nongovernmental Organizations or NGOs) in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has been initiated by the failure and near chaos brought on by the Industrial Countries’ intrusion into culture they did not understand. This subversion of other cultures to the Western way started with Columbus who, with the strength of the sword (technology), the flag (national organization), and the cross (religion) started the subjugation of all non-European cultures. The subjugation of people around the world during the periods of ‘discovery’ and colonizing that followed, are well known. It is enough, here, to say that indigenous cultures have been overwhelmed by the dominant and domineering EuroAmerican Industrial Cultures.
Springing from the land, uninvited and often resisted by outside developers, and even their own governments, people are now recreating their own coalion and communities with new and indigenous technologies, and taking over where governments and industries have failed. Often stimulated by a special unique local need, these local Grassroots Organizations (GROs) grow to become more broadly socially and politically active, linking up with other GROs to form networks for participatory democracy and mutual aid. Outside aid to GROs is provided by Grassroots Support Organizations (GRSOs) formed most often by middle class professionals and technicians who recognize the inequities engendered by the current economic-political system. GRSOs reach out to give in-kind assistance and to legitimize the actions of the peasants and disenfranchised in their bids for empowerment and local self-reliance.6 Techniques, technologies, information, and service from the industrial countries are supplied through links created by International non-govern mental organizations (INGOs)
Nongovernmental organizations are also becoming a greater force and better recognize in the Industrial countries. The problems facing humankind cannot be solved by governments or markets alone. Nor can governments or corporations create a people center democracy. But we-the-people are solving our problems world wide by the third leg of governance, Civil Society. That is, by citizen participation on a local community scale. New citizen initiated social innovations are sweeping North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Japan. These social innovations are being borrowed and exchanged among nearly every country around the world.
From England came the cooperative movement, started in Rochdale England in 1844 by some disenfranchised weavers. It spread to the U.S. with producer co-ops during World War I, and with a plethora of consumer co-ops during the 1960s. The Mondragon network of co-ops, in the Basque area of Spain, added the concept of creating secondary co-ops to serve the primary co-ops. Banks, Insurance Companies, Management Services, and other businesses owned by the primary co-op serve the member co-ops . The Seikatsu Club of some 10,000 Japanese housewives organized by “hans,” local co-ops, create their own businesses when the market does not meet their social, ecological , or economic demands.
From Bangladesh came the Grameen Banks that introduced a new credit technique by lending money through groups of borrowers who guaranteed one another‘s loans. From Canada came Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS), a local citizen owned computerize exchange system. Local scripts, such as Ithaca Hours, help local businesses and individuals create local jobs and exchange goods and services regardless of the inflow of federal dollars. “Time Dollars,” systems promote baby sitting pools, senior citizen services, and other forms of local service based on hours worked not dollars spent.
From Denmark has come CoHousing, in which families build their own homes but with common ground and common space including child care facilities and community dining rooms bringing a new sense of community solidarity. This, of course, adds to the array of communes, community land trusts, intentional communities, and ecovillages in which citizen provide the planning and development so lacking in government and corporate housing developments.
From Switzerland comes Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) bringing farmers and citizens together to produce local food with local resources. The consumers sometimes own the land, share the produce, and participate in the work, paying a professional gardener to manage the growing. Other innovations in the food and agriculture area include farmers’ markets, homesteading, and the rapidly growing development of home gardening.
From India came the concept of Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and the Gandhi nonviolence that has already transformed social protest and citizen action.
Many other social innovations such as citizen patrols, homeschooling, community learning centers, community loan funds, peace brigades, homesteading, and community bulletin boards are building community solidarity, empowering citizens at the grassroots and promoting local community self-reliance without relying on governments or “the market.”
It is all there. A living body of networking organizations has emerged to fill the niche produced by dysfunctional postcolonial governments. A plethora of unique interdependent social cells have developed organs assuming specialized functions that serve the whole. They have almost magically become the social/political body that promises better life for the people in developing countries, and the whole Earth. The natural laws of self-organizing criticality and autocatalysis are working on the social level.
Through the revelations of science, an understanding of the cosmic process is slowly emerging. Perhaps with this new understanding, humanity can participate in the co-creation of a sustainable and lasting civilization based on citizen participation in local community organizations -- a Gaian global governance.
The First Phase of Democracy
Like any step in cosmic evolution this would be a unique happening. But like any step in cosmic evolution it would be subject to the natural evolutionary laws. It was 250 years ago that the first phase of democratic governance was a unique happening introduced on the planet. The times then, like the times now were chaotic. The ruling powers, and the ruling system, had outlived its usefulness. Masses of people recognized that they were missing out on many to the benefits that their toil had created. “It was the best of times, and the worst of times.” The American and the French revolutions happened.
The first phase of democracy was a foolish idea to the leaders of the day. Monarchs held their power by the “divine right of kings.” Neither the churches nor the governments were friendly to the idea that the people could rule themselves, nor even participate in government. The ideas of voting, representation, legislating, human rights, politics, constitutions, or social contracts were little more than hazy academic notions played with by abstruse philosophers. The Magna Charter had given large land owners a degree of power over their lands and its serfs, but these posers were subject to the Kings will. It took the Voltaires, the Frnaklins, the Paines, and the Jeffersons to bring the ideas of everyman’s rights to the public. And it took the Boston Tea Party, the Bread Riots, and the revolutionary wars, to bring down the old regimes and make possible the self-organization of the new.
Self-organization is the right word. The avalanche of change hit an unprepared society. No one had predicted the rise of national democracy. There were no plans, no designs, or instruction books for the first phase of democracy. There were few constitutions, no concept of checks and balances, no rules for voting, no loyal opposition, no political parties, no civil society, no GROs.
The American colonies had assumed a degree of self-control under the British Crown. Direct democracy was practiced in the forerunners of the New England town meeting and in some colonies. Voting rights were usually denied women, blacks, Catholics and Jews. Suffrage was extended to only landholders of some substance often as much as 50£ (a goodly sum in those days). Probably no more than 1/3 of the adult free men could vote. Office holding was even more restricted. Often to hold elected office a man had to own at least 500 acres and 10 slaves, or thousands of pounds sterling in other property. Like with today's GROs, ideas and actions were separate and disparate. 7 No associations were ready to exercise political control of society. The task was daunting. But it did happen. In spite of the later failure in France and earlier failures in Athens and Rome, the first phase of democracy was born to last in America.8
I have used “the first phase of democracy” to describe the political innovation of 1776 because, as we know today, it was only partially successful. It was only partially successful for many reasons. Primarily because it arrived on the world stage without preparation. The technology of the times made participatory democracy impossible beyond the town meeting. Communication was measured in days or weeks, not as today in nanoseconds. Because of that, we-the-people could only be “represented” in the halls of power. Franklin and Jefferson, following the Native American model, advocated that all decision be made by consensus at the local level, and that representatives be limited to arguing the case for their communities. But Madison and others, following the concept of British parliamentarian, Edmond Burke, argued that representatives should be empowered to make decision in the name of the people. Burkian representation was accepted by most colonies and the Constitutional Assembly. This has made the government dominant and limited the voice of the people.
In spite of extending suffrage, the voice of the people has been steadily eroded as government has grown in size and power. People’s control of corporations was taken away in 1844 in the Supreme Court’s decision that corporations had the same rights as flesh and blood citizens. Earlier, communities or states could revoke corporate charters if a corporation was deemed to not be in the public interest. The rise of corporate power over the people increased with the opening of Free Trade with no restrictions on the outflow of capital or jobs, and no global standards for safety, health, or protecting in environment. The high cost of getting elected and the free flow of money into politics from the wealthy elite, banks, and businesses, has made even the first phase of democracy far less a people’s government than was envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers.
Emergence of the Second Phase of Democracy
The rise of Civil Society, modern technology, and the new scientific understanding of how evolution works has made possible the emergence of a second phase for democracy. We-the-people now have a voice in our civil society, we have the technology to communicate around the globe, and we have the new understanding of social evolution .
Complexity theory shows that ordered complexity is the natural state of the universe. Biological evolution is the most obvious example of the tendency toward the ordering of simple entities into more complex systems. Every step of cosmic evolution since the Big Bang has been a step toward increasing ordered complexity. Creation occurs on the borderline between rigid order and random chaos, “at the edge of chaos.” If an entity is too rigidly ordered it can not change to meet the contingencies of a change in its environment. Flexibility is one of the cardinal biological principles of evolution. Without flexibility a life form is not sustainable, it cannot change to meet new conditions. Without flexibility progress is impossible.
But governments, like corporations, have been organized on the concept that good management means rigid order directed from the top. In the first phase of democracy the people elected their governmental representatives, but all power resided in the government. Humans have been locked into the world view in which rigid order was highly respected. Rigid order was the goal of organization. Humans are taught to be afraid of chaos, and to avoid complexity. Yet, the new science/social paradigm show us that the edge of chaos is where progress happens with the self-organizing of complexity. If society is to meet the challenges that face it, it needs to live closer to the edge of chaos. It must welcome a degree of disorder.
Democracy since its modern inception has suffered from its self-guilt of being inefficient. Critics and supporters alike have held that democracy is too chaotic. They have searched for ways to move democracy toward more controlled management without surrendering the human rights they saw as the great strength of this form of government. The Gaian Paradigm sees democracy in a very different light. The seeming weaknesses of democracy are its strength. The theories of Gaia, Chaos and Complexity suggest that spontaneous self-organizing on the edge of chaos is natural law. It requires the messy flexibility inherent in democracy, and absent in more efficient forms of government. People are only beginning to realize that no form of government, except democracy, provides the freedom and potential of complex ordering to meet the changing demands of modern times.
The rise of civil society, the burgeoning of GROs, the growth of social innovation, community involvement in meeting their own needs, are all parts of the progressive agenda provided by nature. We may not see clearly today the final organization which will emerge if we continue to build the decentralized autonomous communities linked together in worldwide mutual aid. But, that is the way of cosmic evolution as it is seen from the new world view. It purports the emergence of a second phase of democracy. One in which people in community at the grassroots have a direct input to all decisions which affect their lives. A new form of global governance.
*********End Chapter 2 ************
Governance
CHAPTER #3 --
A COMMUNITY LIFE-LONG LEARNING SYSTEM
The potential for a new global governance rooted in civil society is only one example of the emergence of spontaneous self-ordered complex networks. Another interesting example of self organization on the edge of chaos is the emergence of Cooperative Community Life-Long Leaning Centers (CCL-LLCs).
Early American schools were strict disciplinary centers in which students sat stiffly at their desks in abject obedience while stern teachers taught them the three Rs by rote memory. It’s purpose, at least during this century, has been to prepare workers for an industrial culture. It worked well. Laborers in American mills and factories surpassed all others in bringing wealth to our nation.
An increasing number of educational critics, like 1991 New York teacher of the year, John Taylor Gatto in Dumbing us Down, have decried the schooling system. They contend that it is the form of schooling that is teaching the wrong lessons. The monopoly state schools restrict the individual’s natural curiosity and desire to learn. They teach authoritarianism, self-repression, and strict obedience to the clock. The teacher, under controls set by the state and now the national government, determines what is to be learned. The clock and the calendar determine when and how long a child can learn it. Much of this criticism of schooling has been reflected in a report to the president, A Nation at Risk.
Well before the current attacks on schooling and educating, John Dewey and other philosophers assailed this concept of education with their creeds of “learning by doing” and “child centered education.” Although the philosophy of education changed the form didn’t. Twenty or more children are still gathered in one school room, each one trying to do his or her own thing. The result is that neither teaching nor learning is possible. Many schoolrooms become centers of confusion. Education is now at the edge of of chaos, ripe for a radical transformation.
The organization of the new learning system is somewhat difference than the self-organization of local GROs into a Global Civil Society. For the example we examined above, organization came from moving from chaos, a disordered conglomeration of disjoint new organizational cells, through the borderland of the edge of chaos into order. GlobaL Civil Society, like democracy before it, is self-organizing itself where nothing, or little, existed before. For the learning system reorganization is happening, in part at least, from the failure and disintegration of a too rigidly ordered system.
One element of the reorganization of learning started two decades ago when some families started taking corrective actions one family at a time. It was called homeschooling. These actions grew in concert with Paul Goodman’s urging that schools make more use of community facilities and issues, with Ivan Illich’s seminal book Deschooling Society, and with John Holt’s Instead of Education (1976), and Growing Without Schooling (1977) on how children learn.
In the beginning, only a couple of decades ago, homeschools were autonomous family units, each one setting it own curriculum, and providing its own supplies and services. As homeschooling grew in the 1970s and 1980s practitioners began forming associations primarily to exchange information and to confront state laws that limited their rights. There are now some 700 homeschooling associations in the United States. About 50 of these have a nationwide constituency.
Most of the services provided to homeschoolers, like Growing Without Schooling, or Home Education Press, are primarily publications emphasizing exchanges among homeschoolers. Others like the Clonlara School Home-Based Education Center provide a by-mail service with curricula, tests, and diplomas for homeschoolers. Still others are newsletters written and exchanged by homeschoolers themselves. A few like Home Schoolers Defense Organization help homeschoolers with legal and legislative matters. One or two have books, equipment and other material for loans to homeschoolers. Some like ????? and Aerogram are publications condemning the authoritarian, monopolistic state school systems and supporting alternative educational systems.
Closely associated with the home schooling movement are a broad variety of alternative schools which are moving in the direction of child-centered education. Jerry Mintz in his Handbook of Alternative Education lists 2500 Montessori schools, 100 Waldorf schools, and 60 Quaker schools as well as the 700 homeschools programs. 9
In additions to these is a growing number of Folk schools patterned after the Folk Schools of Denmark, “schools-without walls,” “Open Universities” and learning centers which do not fall within the province of being substitutes for the K-12 governmental schools. It is this later group of learning facilities with which this paper is interested.
In the last two or three years local homeschooling networks have started providing themselves with a new form of learning social institution. They don’t yet even have a universal name. To start examining them I will call call them “Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers (CCL-LLCs).” These community centers are cooperatively owned and controlled by the member families they serve. They provide counseling, mentoring, supplies, facilities, workshops and classes. They serve everyone in the community regardless of age or past learning. They use all aspects of the community as learning facilities. Libraries, YMCAs, churches, museums, local businesses, farms, government offices, the streets, and the parks are all part of the learning system.
As Gene Lehman put it in one of his Luno broadsheets “life long learning relies heavily on daily life activities, deep and varied interactions among people, contact with nature , and a popular culture which is abundant, diverse, profound, and cheaply accessible to all. Most importantly, a holistic approach to lifelong learning relies on developing some kind of face-to-face community of friends and neighbors who cooperate in order to share the essential burdens and delights of life. ”10
In 1998 Community Learning Centers became of governmental interest when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act dedicated $40 million to expand after-school programs. But this program was limited to school districts, and administered by U.S. Department of Education. It’s goal was primarily to get the kids off the streets, rather than to stimulate life-long or community learning. It was thus directed more at saving a decaying schooling system than experimenting with new futuristic systems of learning.
Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers may be one of the most seminal innovations of the past decade. They may be the seed for a deep fundamental change in the education/learning system of the future. Community Life-Long Learning Centers are to a large extent an outgrowth of the rapidly growing homeschooling movement. It is conceivable that CLL-LLCs could completely replace the state controlled schools.
Civil Society and Learning
The transition to a Community Life-Long Learning System is much more than a change in educational practices. It is a transformation of the whole mind set of the value of knowledge and the value of the person. “Teaching,” “educating,” and “schooling” imply that society, or government, is acting on, controlling, indoctrinating and forming some amorphous lesser beings. It is an hierarchical system of control from the top down. It is inherent in the first phase of democracy which accepted many of the tenets of rule from above, the divine right of kings and its transition to the divine right of government. It is in harmony with the fading world view that the cosmos, and the Earth, are parts of the chain of being in which man is a semi god controlling the Earth from above, and all lesser forms including women, children, animals, plants and the Earth’s natural resources are but resources for the use of man.
Every single word in ”Cooperative,” “Community,” “Life-Long,” “Learning,” and “System” carries a different important connotation. “Learning” is not something a superior being does to a lesser one. Learning is an act of self-volition. It is a self-actuated process of creating skills, discovering knowledge, and satisfying one’s own natural curiosity. It is built on, and it teaches, the inherent right and responsibility of every individual to set her is his own standards. It honors the diversity of evolution. It is in harmony with the new Gaian world view that everything is interdependent with everything else. It respects the new understanding that each of us “belongs” equally to Gaia.
“Belonging” in this sense is much more that merely “being a member of.” Belonging is the scientific fact that we are all interdependent systems within systems, or holons within holons if you wish to use the systems jargon. Each of us is a whole made up of smaller wholes and imbedded in larger wholes. Gaia and the Cosmos are among the larger wholes of which each individual is a smaller whole. “Belonging” implies not only being a whole within wholes, but that we are subject to downward causation, we are subject to natural laws. “Belonging” to Gaia means belonging to the Earth and to one another. Belonging is an ethical proto-value inherent in the New Science/Social paradigm. It says that each individual is an integral part and responsible for the health and well being of the family, the community, Gaia, and each of the larger systems of high he or she is a part. Inherent in this scientific concept of belonging is much of the perennial wisdom of the sages which have recognized that humanity cannot continue to exist on Earth without laws of conduct which emphasize our responsibility to and for one another.
This transition from “educating” to “learning” is being recognized by a wide variety of scholars. Management guru Peter Drucker in his “Post Capitalist Society” writes of a society based on knowledge. One in which all society is an open life-long learning system in which every person can enter any level at any time. From the other end of the spectrum peace scholar Elise Boulding reports that a common feature of the many “Imagine a World Without Weapons” workshops she has held with people of all walks of life and all ages, was the vision of a “localist society,” One in which communities were self-reliant and “Learning appears integrated into other community activities. ... everyone is a learner, and education is life long.” This theme of the “Learning Community” is fully integrated with the growth of civil society and all other aspects of the emerging Gaian Cultures.11
Chapter #4 -
RELIGION
A third aspect of the New Science/Social Paradigm is more amorphous and far more sensitive than the two I’ve suggested so far. It is the melding of science and religion.
Perhaps in no time since Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the door of the Castle church at Wittenburg (1517), or Calvin published his Institutes (1534) has religion been in such spiritual chaos. No one set out the serious concern of this age of religious chaos better than did Fritz Schumacher in “Guide to the Perplexed.” Other scholars of the times like Gregory Bateson, Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead and others had a clear but unproclaimed religious character to their works. Schumacher’s was the first, most profound, and most open declaration of the age of spiritual turmoil.
The religious chaos of the 1960s and ‘70s was most clearly and dramatically proclaimed by the beads, incense, granny dresses, long hair and horned rimmed glasses of the hippies. It was also declared by movements such as T.M., est, Hari Krishna, the search for Eastern religions, the return of paganism, shamanism and Wiccan. It was expressed in the Broadway musicals Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar, and in the attempt to escape from social hills with psychedelic drugs. The concept of “New Age” started out to be, more like Schumacher's “Small is Beautiful,” a critique and correction of the excesses of the Industrial Age. It ended up being identified, particularly by its critics, and the press, as being an off beat and occult religious movement, more likely to end up with the Johnstown and the more recent UFO induced suicides or other strange behaviors than in any serious revival of a deeper sense of spirituality.
Schumacher in “Guide to the Perplexed” took the high road and recognized that the meandering search for meaning of the hippie generation was a deeper and more profound expression of the age than was being recognized by mainstream society. In “Small is Beautiful” Schumacher had been concerned with what we do. In “Guide to the Perplexed” he was concerned with why we do it. He recognized two kinds of science. One was “knowledge for manipulation,” the other “knowledge for understanding.” The former led to techniques and technologies for the satisfaction of the lower visible level of human wants. The later led to the higher values, meaning and purpose for life. As he said:
“It may conceivably be possible to live without churches; but it is not possible to live without religion, that is, without systematic work to keep in contact with, and develop toward, Higher Levels than those of ordinary life. ... Everywhere in the modern world there are experiments in new life-styles ...and it is sometimes tolerated even in polite society to mention God.”
The Evolution of God
Belief in powers beyond the human level have been with us since humans first became conscious of themselves and the world into which they were born. Stories of creation, and speculation on the higher power have filled the human mind, and were the rocks on which cultures were built in every part of the world.
Throughout history humanity’s understanding of that great power that created and controls the universe has grown, like the understanding of the physical cosmos and of biological life, through many transitions. The evolution of our understanding of the Christian God is the one most familiar to us.
The first God of the Bible was a fierce and vengeful god to be feared. He was one of many gods (or baals) each of whom ruled over a limited people in a limited territory. The God of Abraham could command human sacrifice. Jacob wrestled all night face to face with his God. By the time of Isaiah, God had grown to be the creator of the world, the greatest among all gods. Jeremiah taught, God was not in the Temple but in the heart of humans. He had created the world for human use. The god of Moses lived on a Mountain in the Sinai desert from which he handed down the ethical rules for his chosen people, the Jews. With the teachings of Jesus, god took off his demeanor of wrath and punishment to become an all loving god promising eternal life for his people who did not sin. 12 With Paul there was one all powerful Christian god for all people. To Augustine the universe was a Chain-of-Being with humans near the top, and a hierarchy down through women, children, and lesser animals. Vastly above man sat God, with the Chain-of-Being filed with angels and other demigods. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, God was a omnipresent spiritual form more than a human like being. His existence was as discernible through reason as through revelation
The view of God as creator of the universe that was to be ruled by man, was amplified by the Greek philosophers who first conceived of the idea that the universe was an ordered unity, and that man had the capability to understand it. To Socrates, Plato and Aristotle the ordered and purposeful universe was obviously for human use. All plants and animals were in a natural hierarchy with man at the top. The Roman Empire, Mediaeval Church, and European Monarchs, continued and expanded the idea that humans (more correctly ‘man’) was the caretaker for all creation.
The Dichotomy Between Science and Religions
This view of man’s dominion over the Earth prevailed until the time of Bacon and Descartes who had little respect for the non-human world, but divided human life into two realms, the physical and the spiritual. They did not challenge the concept that the purpose of the universe was the use of humans. But, did contend that humans were created with the power to understand and dominate that universe. With the founding of economic theory on the principles of self-interest and survival-of-the-fittest, the material side of life became dominant. In the past 200 years mastery of the external world has become the single most powerful driving force of humanity. A belief in God has remained as separate from the material world, as the 2000+ years in the evolution of God has reached to the edge of chaos.
This dichotomy between science and religion was established when the mediaeval Christian clerics refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. For them, the scriptures had revealed that there could be no moons around Jupiter. It was not fear of knowledge that held their hands. It was fear of social dissolution. The moral certainty of the Mediaeval Church was based on man being at the center of the spiritual universe. This in turn rested on man’s home, the Earth, being the center of the physical universe. It was feared that if the Earth were proven to not be at the center of the universe, the whole fabric of spiritual and social adherence could disintegrate.
The Galileo compromise, later clarified by Descart's dualism, was that scientific knowledge should be developed to aid man in his understanding and domination of the Earth. That is, in creating technology. Religion should dominate the realm of the deeper meaning of life and the moral codes which create harmony among the people of the Earth. Science would not be recognized as a process for enlightening humans as to their place in the universe.
This bifurcation was operable as long as the development of technologies was beneficial to humanity. That is, before the challenge of the excessive use of natural resources, the pollution of air, water and soil, the threat of global warming, the discovery of thinning of the protective ozone layer, increased health risks due to toxic chemicals, the loss of jobs brought on by labor saving automation and foreign trade, biotechnology threatened to privatize all life, automobiles and highway separated citizens from one another, and, in general, technology became our master rather than our slave. These unanticipated consequences of technology have spurred the creation of technology and environmental assessment programs by the government. They also initiated a deep reassessment of the value and use of science as well as technology.
GOD AND GAIA
Part of the reassessment of science has been in concert with the reassessment of religion in a holistic revaluation of the place of knowledge in society. A new search for meaning and spirituality emerged from the peace, human rights, feminist, and ecological movements of the 1960’s. The search for meaning was intensified by the bold adventures into “New Age” cults and fancies, the deep searches through Eastern Religions, and the unfettered acceptance of questionable pseudo sciences. However, it was brought to fruition, with some deep scholarly theological redefinition’s of deep religious and scientific tenets.
Pope John Paul II, in acknowledging that homosexuality is a phenomena of nature, in his apology for the Church’s condemnation of Galileo, in his acceptance of evolution as a valid scientific theory, and in his admission if the Church’s error in failing to oppose to the Holocaust, has made the Catholic Church seem to recognize it own fallibility, and to see science as a joint venture in the search for knowledge of the cosmos and humanity’s place in it.
Fr. Thomas Berry has been one of the leaders of this movement. He holds that our modern society’s creation myth is the scientific story of cosmic evolution.13 No creation myth could produce more awe, wonder, and mystery than the revelation of how the universe, the planets and life emerged from the Big Bang. Other theologians like Bernard Lonegran S.J.. and Laurent Leduc have gone a step further. They suggest that religion, like science, is a search for the truth not the last immutable word. Theologians like those in the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology (ITEST) see theology as accepting the scientific view of nature, but acting as a sort of watchdog for recognizing that there is a bigger picture that we can not completely understand nor appreciate from a natural viewpoint.
From the scientific end there is a growing humility. Science accepts justifiable condemnation for the technologies derived from it, and their detrimental affect on society and the environment. In addition, the certainty that surrounded Newtonian Mechanics and Darwinian Evolution was taken to extremes by many disciplines and by some scientists. As Alfred Whitehead warned. the success of physics in explaining and predicting one set of phenomena led many so called scholars to apply the methods of physics beyond their sphere of relevance, in what he called “misplaced concreteness.” That is, building mathematical structures on uncertain premises. Both the limits of and the fallibility of science are now emphasized, giving more room for a rational religious speculation.
A New Age of Science
At the same time, the advent of quantum and relativity theories, and even more in the new sciences of Gaia, Chaos and Complexity, it is being recognized that science is relevant, to use Schumacher’s words, as “knowledge for understanding.” Today, science is not just as a base for new technologies; but science reveals what little reasonably certain factual knowledge we know about the cosmos and cosmic evolution. This limited knowledge is relevant to humanity’s place in the universe. It implies rules to live by if humanity is to continue to exist. A new age of science is dawning.
We made one mention of this in our discussion of learning above. That is the scientific fact implicit in the Gaia Hypothesis that everything is dependent on everything else. That is, that humans belong to Gaia . We “belong” to Gaia not just as parts of it, but “belonging” is a proto values for our lives. Belonging implies both being subject to and being responsible for one another and for the Earth.
Beyond that, as Gregory Bateson points out in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, a living organism can continue to exist only if it meets three biological principles. 1) Health, the ability to exist within its environment, 2) Competence, the ability to draw sustenance from its environment, and 3) adaptive flexibility, the ability to change as its environment changes. These principles are as applicable to social systems as they are to biological systems. They instruct us as to how we must live if humanity is to sustain itself. Tom Ellis states the ethical implication of the Gaian theory in a new categorical imperative: “Make all decision based on whatever promotes the health, competence and adaptive flexibility of oneself and of all the larger system of which one is a part.”14 Science joins with religion in uncovering the code of conduct necessary for human existence.
This melding of science and religion follows Spinoza’s belief that God is nature and Einstein’s concept that a religion is feeling of cosmic awe, wonder and mystery which comes with the deep concentrated study of what is, science. It surpasses human understanding. It is ‘feeling’ the ultimate reality. God, in this sense, cannot be reduced to human characteristics. God, so defined, is pure spirit invisible to humans. God is beyond the materialism and foibles of human frailties. For humans to quibble over His attributes is to diminish His grandeur. You just can’t use the word God and describe it. It is a state of being rather than a conscious attribute. It transcends definition.
The new sciences of Chaos, Complexity and Gaia provide a new world view, that humanity is an integral, and equal, part of a self-organizing cosmos. Each part of, the cosmos as a whole, is equally sacred and to be revered. The Gaian paradigm, that all there is -- is webs of being, suggests a new concept of God-as-cosmos, and Science-as-revelation.
Humanity may well be on the verge of a new age of science and a new age of religion. A unified search for fundamental knowledge, which may save it from the apocalypse by which it is threatened,
These three brief examinations only hint of the holistic and comprehensive cultural transition in the offing. They were not meant to be accurate prediction of the future. A central theme of chaos and complexity theories are that self-organization cannot be fully guided by human intervention, the best we can do is to examine possible option and prepare for any of them to happen. The emerging New Scientific/Social Paradigm radically changes the way we will look at all aspects of our culture in the millennium ahead. The future of economics, health, transportation, habitat or all other social institutions could as well be taken as examples examples. Or we might have examined the lifestyles we will live if this Gaian Paradigm become universal. in the decades ahead Earth citizens may well look back at the society in which we now live as not far removed from our cave dwelling ancestors. Technophobes can point out a myriad of technological possibilities now on the shelf awaiting development and exploitation. Highly respected scientists, like Freeman Dyson in Imagined Worlds, speak of radio telepathy, designed biomechanical intelligent beings, bioengineered biomes in space, and other wonders we now read of in science fiction. 15
The coming millennium, will first have to solve the social, economic, health, education, ecological and other problems which beset today’s world. Without solution, the current world problematique dooms humanity to a degraded existence reminiscent of H.G. Wells “The Wars of the Worlds.”
In Gaia, Complexity, and Chaos theories we see the opening of an opportunity to choose between a number of possible scenarios.
***********END CHAPTER 4*********
RELGION
Comment
-
Comment by Discovery Fuel on March 11, 2009 at 8:34pm -
Wonderful Bill.
Is this your work or whose?
I am putting together a series of online studies and collaborations for the near future. Are you interested in putting on something relating to this work? Email me at Vic@DiscoveryFuel.com if you'd like to talk about possibilities okay??
Vic Desotelle
About
Events
Blog Posts
A poem that speaks to deep changes in normal
My Christmas card speaks to a deep change in normal. What does this poem bring up for you? Make some comments below, or join the religion/spirituality domain and start a little discussion there.
Vic
Vic
Posted by Discovery Fuel on December 25, 2009 at 3:30pm
The Awakening (Author unknown)
The Awakening (Author unknown)A time comes in your life when you finally get…when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on December 13, 2009 at 1:09pm
Inspiration, Innovation, and Invention: Defining a bigger picture for the human creative process
Innovation is a misrepresented characterization of humanity's creative process. It is too often used to describe the entire process of manifestation. Whereas innovation is actually sandwiched in… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on September 11, 2009 at 10:00am
The Emergence of a New Global Mythology (What is a 'Myth'?)
Posted by Discovery Fuel on August 18, 2009 at 10:00am
First Steps Into The Changing Normal Portal
Posted by Discovery Fuel on August 14, 2009 at 10:03pm
Discovering Our Collective Global Mythology
It is essential that the world collaboratively discover our collective global mythology. Only through this act can sustaina… Continue Posted by Vic Desotelle on July 10, 2009 at 5:30pm
Going Beyond: We live within the Great Soup of the Universe
I added a new potent domain 22. Categorized as a 'non-triad domain, it moves us beyond awareness here to awareness out there. This is so critical if we are to move beyond survival and into thrival.… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on July 4, 2009 at 12:30pm
Transforming Our World Through Myth: The Sacred Dance of Masculine and Femine Energies
One thing I ask as you read this brief article: How does myth (and related archetypes) help us to create new forms of culture?In my below introductory article, I… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on June 24, 2009 at 3:30pm
Changing Normal REQUIRES Experimentation and Failure
ChangingNormal-ists,Yesterday I sent out a couple things that went awry. First, I sent 're-invites' to what I thought would go to those who were invited but had not respo… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on June 21, 2009 at 1:07pm
From Static To Dynamic Knowing
… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on May 23, 2009 at 10:56am — 3 Comments
A word on white elephants, expectations, and changing normal.
A few of you have begun to ask questions. THIS IS SO WONDERFUL!Interesting though, I am watching the level of expectation that immediately follows a question that is not getting quickly answered in a satisfying way. I noticed how quickly frustration set in because they didn't have… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on May 6, 2009 at 7:03pm
Introducing the new silo .... same as the old one :/
One of the biggest flags that I want us to watch out for is 'silo' reproduction. By this I mean that, as we build new structures to contain new knowledge, we must recognize and ask pointed questions about the silo's design. New knowledge held in (what are called) new silos, more often than… Continue Posted by Discovery Fuel on May 4, 2009 at 8:01pm
Togther let us "PAINT PARADISE, THEN GO IN"
Ahhh; dream land ...
Do you really know what Alice in Wonderland is all about? ??
Alice has the ability to step through mirrors ...
She is our own reflection,
Of what WE can do.
She is US.
She is our own expression,
Of love, truth, and beauty.
She symbolizes our own Spirit,
Impressed int… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on April 2, 2009 at 9:00pm
To Change Normal - Attempt To Know Your Place In The Nest
To Change Normal ...What if we first assume our assumptions are mere assumptions? What if we assume something different about what we assume about our assumptions? (hmmmmmmmm; gotta think about this for a minute :/ ) Such as for example: What if our place in consciousness is embedded within a Greater System of conscious Knowing , and that is made up of other Systems, which is enmeshed w… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on March 30, 2009 at 5:30pm — 1 Comment
Challenges of Community and Collaboration
Being an aficionado for collaboration, so much so that I've created a job for me being a Collaboration Ecologist, recently more often than not I've come to inquire into the question, "If, as seems to be the case, many if not most people and organisations in the world seek coll… Continue
Posted by Mushin J. Schilling on March 17, 2009 at 11:19am
The Reappearance of Mythical Dragons ... Portal to 'Changing Normal'
Mythical dragons appear,
During this renewed era of 'once upon a time',
As we realize a collectively conscious global culture.
---
"Tell me about the Dragons." (says Andrew)
---
Vic says ...
"Ahhh yes: The Dragons.
They will begin to appear in the sky;
Fireballs of hell will be one's first impression -
An explosion of Universal vomit upon Earth… Continue
During this renewed era of 'once upon a time',
As we realize a collectively conscious global culture.
---
"Tell me about the Dragons." (says Andrew)
---
Vic says ...
"Ahhh yes: The Dragons.
They will begin to appear in the sky;
Fireballs of hell will be one's first impression -
An explosion of Universal vomit upon Earth… Continue
Posted by Vic Desotelle on March 11, 2009 at 9:30pm — 5 Comments
Intro Section I
by Bill Ellis
CHAPTER #1 -- THE FOUNDATION
For some 2000 years or more civilization has been ruled by a social paradigm on which all aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are been based -- the “dominator paradigm.” In the past 2 two decades a new social paradigm has been emerging that could have the most, deep, fundamental impact on human civilization since humanids first came down from the trees. The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some super normal power for t… Continue
CHAPTER #1 -- THE FOUNDATION
For some 2000 years or more civilization has been ruled by a social paradigm on which all aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are been based -- the “dominator paradigm.” In the past 2 two decades a new social paradigm has been emerging that could have the most, deep, fundamental impact on human civilization since humanids first came down from the trees. The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some super normal power for t… Continue
The World is "Standing By"
Will you stand by me? Sing along with this video of the world as it re-design's itself through conscious acts of creation. Posted by Discovery Fuel on March 9, 2009 at 6:30pm
The Question is the Answer in a World of Uncertainty
In the name of a principle that I live by, namely: "The Question is the Answer", I propose the following elaborate questions. Maybe you can come up with a few yourself and build on this set? (There are no stupid questions. Rather, what is stupid are our assumptions that the answers should be known without as… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on December 4, 2008 at 11:30am — 4 Comments
Web Technology as Sacred
The Web has reached a level of maturity where it can be viewed as an extension to our interconnected conscious selves. With the Planet now growing its own neural network (i.e. a global brain) 'Learning' takes on a new integral role as meta-teacher/student. This perspective brings a new dimension to our idea of 'global awareness' and stretches the meaningfulness of '… Continue
Posted by Discovery Fuel on January 26, 2009 at 5:00pm
Notes
Sacred Geometric Configuration For Organizing Domains
Created by Discovery Fuel Dec 14, 2008 at 1:54pm. Last updated by Discovery Fuel Dec. 15, 2008.
Earth Wisdom
Created by Discovery Fuel Nov 23, 2008 at 8:50pm. Last updated by Discovery Fuel Nov. 24, 2008.
Green TV online
Created by Discovery Fuel Nov 23, 2008 at 8:40pm. Last updated by Discovery Fuel Nov. 24, 2008.
Appropriate Technology Wikipedia
Created by Discovery Fuel Nov 15, 2008 at 10:16pm. Last updated by Discovery Fuel Nov. 24, 2008.
Notes Home
Created by Discovery Fuel Nov 8, 2008 at 1:12pm. Last updated by Discovery Fuel Nov. 24, 2008.
Badge
INTRIGUED WITH IT ALL ??
Well then JOIN US ! ... I know, I know: You're over worked, over your limit, over the edge and just plan overwhelmed with it all. And now we want you to do even more ... right? Don't worrrrrry; Beeeeeee happy. You've don't have to commit yourself to a whole bunch of time. For now, just SIGN UP to show your interest.
********************************************
This Changing Normal community is sponsored in part by DiscoveryFuel.com: Group Facilitation, Team Building, Sustainable Innovation, and Collaborative Design.
********************************************
ChangingNormal.com by ChangingNormal.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at DiscoveryFuel.com.
********************************************
SHARE THIS PAGE WITH FRIENDS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
Orrrr ... Donating even just $3.33 will help keep this adventure going. Only three dollars and thirty three cents (3 is a magic number for me : ) A few green-backs (3 1/3 to be exact) start to add up. So your donation will actually go a longggg way in helping to 'change normal' : )
HELP KEEP THIS ADVENTURE GOING. Consider donating between $3.33 or $33.33 to help make it so. Email me, Vic Desotelle, if you have any questions.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
********************************************
This Changing Normal community is sponsored in part by DiscoveryFuel.com: Group Facilitation, Team Building, Sustainable Innovation, and Collaborative Design.********************************************
ChangingNormal.com by ChangingNormal.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.Based on a work at DiscoveryFuel.com.
********************************************
SHARE THIS PAGE WITH FRIENDS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
Orrrr ... Donating even just $3.33 will help keep this adventure going. Only three dollars and thirty three cents (3 is a magic number for me : ) A few green-backs (3 1/3 to be exact) start to add up. So your donation will actually go a longggg way in helping to 'change normal' : )
HELP KEEP THIS ADVENTURE GOING. Consider donating between $3.33 or $33.33 to help make it so. Email me, Vic Desotelle, if you have any questions.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
© 2009 Created by Discovery Fuel on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
You need to be a member of ChangingNormal.com to add comments!
Join this Ning Network