Self-Organization...More...

[J. Paul Everett]

Michael, Jeff, Prasad, et. al.;

Thank you for your thoughtful posts.  It prompted me to go deeper into the
metaphor and especially George Land's model for change in Grow or Die.  I
remembered that the third phase, Mutualism, reaches back and integrates those
elements that were left out, or replaced, when the second phase change
occurred (from Accretive to Replicative).

How that might fit (and Michael, I sure liked the integrative viewpoint you
have brought to this thread) is that when we were experimenting with
villages, farming, herdskeeping, etc., we were very busy trying to find what
worked.  Hunter-gathering was dropped because it no longer worked well
enough.  Then, for 6000 years or so, we were busy Replicating what worked out
of the Accretive phase and only in the past 250 or so have we been moving
into a long arc Mutualistic phase.  We are probably just on the very
left-hand edge of it (the bump just before the phase change is "permanent" is
the "back to the basics" movement in several sectors of our society, like
education, which indicates that the old is really dying) and we are again
experimenting with "what works" as we move forward.  Lots to trying and
failing---failure being absolutely essential to learning.

Part of the Mutualistic phase is the reaching back into the Accretive and
early Replicative and bringing forward elements that must now be integrated
into the third phase in order that it may fully flower.  So, Chris, you are
probably a leading edge person who is trying to find out how hunter/gathering
fits in the emerging epoch.  Reaching back to bring forward.  A significant
challenge that Michael helped to place in context.

Assuming Land's model to be somewhat correct, we must also remember that
while Mutualism is growing and flowering, another Accretive phase is
beginning to build right underneath it where something significantly new (a
macro paradigm shift, if you will) is forming while Phase III is happening in
all it's glory.  Wonder what that is going to be?  Considering the time spans
we have been looking at, and the fact that change is also accelerating at
near warp speed, we might get a glimpse of it before we die and we might not.
 Maybe it will be our 5th-generation-out children that will begin to see it
emerge.  Ah, to be a healthy, vibrant Methuselah.

Mentioning Methuselah, there is a delightful poem about him that begins:

"Methuselah ate what he found on his plate,
And never as we do now,
Did he note the amount of the calorie count,
He ate it because it was chow."...............

A little humor on a Sunday morning......

Paul

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