Self-Organization...More...

Winston Kinch kinch at sympatico.ca
Sat Nov 17 06:06:55 PST 2001


All of this about long waves and grand sweeps puts me in mind of a really great book I read recently called "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas.  I'm not sure who recommended it to me; it may well have been someone on this list; but no matter: from the hunter/gatherers to today in philosophy, psychology, science, spirituality, it is a wonderful and instructive read... ending with the author's version of the cusp or brink or discontinuity we seem to be approaching. If any of you knows the book and is aware of an equivalent work covering the Eastern Mind, I would sure like to know about it.
Winston



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: J. Paul Everett 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 10:39 PM
  Subject: Re: Self-Organization...More...


  In a message dated 11/16/01 11:54:47 AM, corcom at interchange.ubc.ca writes:

  << My preferred metaphor is that of the hunter/gatherer.  For a
  hunter/gatherer, the landscape is rich to begin with and requires no
  further intervention to make it that way.  Hunters and wildcrafters
  protect systems by using them sparingly, thus preserving and sustaining
  their yield without threatening the context in which they operate.  And
  if the system collapses, hunters can move on to another piece of land.
  They are adaptable, resourceful and flexible.  Gardeners (and by
  extension, farmers) fence off their land, battle against the elements
  and try to preserve what they have.  If the system collapses they are
  hooped. >>

  Chris,

  Well, this prompted a thought on your thought.  When we look at the long wave
  history of humankind, we see only two eras of truly fundamental change.  Not
  that change didn't occur in the other epochs, but it wasn't a truly
  paradigmatic shift.  The first was when mankind stopped being
  hunter/gatherers and became farmers and herds- keepers.  This was an enormous
  change that gave rise to civilization and more importantly, a small, very
  small, slice of the population that could then be supported by the rest and
  who then had time to think---and all elements in this world of human origin
  are first a thought.  The invention of mathematics by an Indian genius, the
  invention of cities, record keeping, writing, etc., mostly in Sumer, were
  monstrous leaps up off the veldt 6000+ years ago.  And, they enabled many
  more people to live, and therefore, many more thoughts to appear/be had, and
  therefore, human-created newness to happen.

  To illustrate my thesis that then no further fundamental change happened for
  a very long time, take King Solomon and George Washington, living about 3,000
  years apart.  Yet, they had, essentially, the same heating, the same
  lighting, the same transportation (nobody went faster than a horse on land or
  a sail boat would go on water), same mode of communication (written or
  verbal, delivered by a person), slave power and very similar medicine.  In
  fact, it was not until 1939-40 that medical science had something that would
  reliably, knowledgeably (on the part of the prescriber) fight a disease
  inside the human body---that was sulfanilamide, followed in short order by
  penicillin, etc.  (Saved my brother's life, btw).

  The next big change in human consciousness about man's relationship to
  reality came someplace in 1740-1785/90 when the Enlightenment fundamentally
  altered ideas about the source of change and what humans might do about it.
  From that incredible shift we have the modern civilization that we exist in,
  filled with ever-increasing rates of change on multiple fronts.  Is it any
  wonder that the Modernists and Post-Modernists are much hated by the
  Medievalists?  We are destroying what existed for millennia.  And, that we
  have multiple troubles adjusting to that pace of change on so many fronts.
  But, in the process mankind is becoming even more free, at least those able
  to avail themselves of technologies and new thoughts that generate newness,
  world wide.

  Therefore, I challenge whether the hunter/gatherer is a viable metaphor for
  any organization in this epoch of man.  It certainly can't support the
  aggregation of brains necessary to create what we now have.  It would seem
  rather that Prigogine's model, or George Land's model, or some other model
  might better describe what works best at this point in humankind's history.
  Perhaps the cybernetic model, or Open Space as a model, together with it's
  self-organizing characteristics is what's really required in these times.
  Chaos, complexity and emergence seem to be expanding our understanding of the
  Universe, at least it appears so to me.

  Just a thought or two.

  Paul Everett

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