Practice of Peace in Sweden--A reflection on the Issue

Wed Dec 15 10:10:43 PST 2004

I will try to approach very simply to the question of  "are we evil and are conflicts and war natural?"

The only reason for us being so confused about all these issues is that we are conditioned in a wrong way.
Here are many wrong things that we have learned (taught and made feel)

We need security, we also need being accepted. But we tend to perceive erroneously following conditions
are necessary for that.       

* we can exist despite each other whereas we can exist only alltogether.
* competition, be better than, have more than others maybe a good motivator for growth but overdose of it
becomes killing.

We urgently need to replace these 2 basic beliefs and behaviours (at every moment of our lives) with following

* we can only exist alltogether, so we must pay attention to well being of others 
* the growth means to share better, to have more we need to share, giving needs to be appreciated rather than owning
keeping etc.

We create identities, get divided under countries, religions looking for power and security..with the fear of loosing
something..but we lose more when we are stuck in these identities. 

To summarize my ideas, our need for security is natural for life and growth but there need to be a conflict, evilness
around that need is wrong..but evil is completely real (as Alex mentioned)   

My ideas are mostly inspired by Krishnamurti and Steven Harrison's books

What these ideas have to do with OST?

i think a real OS is only possible when we leave our identities and beingness behind...and only then peace is possible..

peace is possible when we understand that we don't need to protect, win or keep anything..when we leave the space to others willingly, 
fearlessly.    

Funda

sorry for being so serious, but those whom i met at OSonOS 
know that i am not so serious and boring all the time,
will write something more fun next time.   

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Brendan McKeague 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 3:58 PM
  Subject: Re: Practice of Peace in Sweden--A reflection on the Issue

   Alex wrote:

    We cause wars. Us people. Something in us, some desires, tendencies, needs, whatever, makes us do the things that start and perpetuate wars. If we didn't have those sides to our nature, there would be no wars. But here's the question: If we didn't have those sides to our natures, what else would we be losing? As Tom Waits sings it: "If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too". Our drive for destruction also drives much in arts, science, music and life in general that would not otherwise be possible. Is it worth the price? I don't know!

  G'day folks - I've been scanning the list regularly for a while now -  flicking through bits of conversations while doing some reading among other things - including a fascinating book by Joseph Chilton Pearce (author of the Crack in the Cosmic Egg), called the The Biology of Transcendence..A Blueprint of the Human Spirit (Park Street Press, 2002.   For further details, see: Amazon reference )

  I'm quoting at length (below) from the Pearce's introduction to his book - it is very insightful in light of our 'quest for peace' - and the need for new models of 'evolutionary intelligence' upon which to base our human desires to imitate (Rene Girard explains the 'mimetic' dimension of behaviour - the need to imitate others in our 'tribe' so as to 'feed the need' to belong )

  My curiosity, hope and passion combine to posit that, just as the great individual icons of nonviolence and peace have presented such models of human evolutionary intelligence, so too does Open Space provide an expression of evolutionary wisdom in a contemporary shape, a process that has the potential to enable humans to 'rise and go beyond' ie to transcend....

  I wonder what others think?

  "The ability to rise and go beyond" is the definition of transcendence and the subject explored in the following pages. While this force constitutes our nature and fires our spirit, an honest exploration of it must contend with this counterquestion: Why, with a history so rich in noble ideals and lofty philosophies that reach for the transcendent, do we exhibit such abominable behaviours? Our violence towards ourselves and the planet is an issue that overshadows and makes a mockery of all our high aspirations.

  ..from this background I make two proposals here that are necessarily hypothetical: First, the crux of our ever-present crisis hinges on failure to develop and employ both the fourth and newest brain in our head (one added quite recently in evolutionary history) and its dynamic interactions with our heart brain. Second, the great saints and spiritual giants of history (even though overlaid with myth and fantasy by cultural counterfeits) point towards, represent, or manifest for us our next evolutionary step, a transcendent event that nature has been trying to unfold for millennia. 

  Creator and created as a co-inspiring dynamic make imperative a simple natural law: intelligence, no matter how innate or genetically encoded, can unfold within us only when an actual model for that intelligence is given us. All dynamics must have their generative source, even if the source can never be factually determined - if there are two mirrors reflecting each other in an infinite regress, which one could we say initiates the reflection? From the beginning of our life, the characteristics of each new possibility must be demonstrated for us by someone, some thing, or an event in our immediate environment - but the same chicken-egg paradox will always emerge if we try to determine or bring closure to the riddle of an origin.

  This need for a model is acutely the case with a new and unknown form of intelligence such as that offered by our fourth brain and heart brain. The striking contrast between our ordinary human behaviour and the actions of the great beings of our history (Jesus, Krishna, Lao-tzu, Buddha, Eckhart, George Fox, Peace Pilgrim and a long line of like geniuses) is what makes these figures stand out in time even as shifting or warping history itself.  Our great beings arise through a natural process that we will explore here, though the process unfolds in that infinite regress that obscures its origin. They come into being as models of nature's newest possibility, our next evolutionary step manifested by our newest neural structure, transcending violence to create a new, viable reality. 

  In every case, however, rather than developing the capacities these great models of history have demonstrated, humankind has projected both the capacities and the image of the models demonstrating them. That is, we invariably build religions around our spiritual giants or use them to support a religion in order to avoid the radical shift of mind and disruption of culture these rare people bring about, shifts we interpret, ironically, as threats to our survival and thus instinctively reject.  Bioculture effects, once initiated, tend to self-generate. Projected by us, we perceive the behaviours demonstrated by our great models as powers out there to which we are subject, rather than potentials within ourselves to be lived. 

  Our fourth brain is the way by which the intelligence of our heart can guide the intellect in our head from its ancient survival strategies to a new and greater form of intelligence. But nature's dilemma - and thus ours as we are, in effect, nature herself - has been how to stabilise a new and largely undefined intelligence in a powerful neural environment millions of years old.  Though nature has provided appropriate models as the opportunities have arisen, behaviours encoded in our ancient primary brains are thoroughly entrenched, whereas the new ones offered are tentative at best. And it is from just this tenuous uncertainty of a higher intelligence locked into our firmly entrenched survival systems that our wild contrasts of lofty ideals and deadly real behaviours emerge. 

  The following exploration revolves around the insights gleaned from the research of this new cadre of biologists and neuroscientists and from the ideals and behaviours modelled for us by the great beings of our history - specifically by, in my opinion, the greatest model of all, Jesus.  An odd couple to find between the covers of the same book, you might think - Jesus and the new biologist.  But if we drop the mythical and/or religious projections surrounding Jesus, we will discover a common ground.

  .As a model of a new evolutionary intelligence, Jesus met, and continually meets a grim fate at the hands of this cultural effect. But the cross, the instrument of his execution, symbolises both death and transcendence for us - our death to culture and our transcendence beyond it. If we lift the symbol of the cross from its mythical shroud of state-religion and biblical fairy tale - which is to say, if we can rescue Jesus from the Christians - then the cross proves to be the "crack" in our cultural cosmic egg.

  .May this [new one] throw more light and help us to open ourselves to nature's new mind, wherein lies our true survival."

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