conscious of evolution as it evolves. ???

[Douglas D. Germann, Sr.]

Koos--

Thanks for jumping in!

For me, seeing ahead is becoming clearer. It is also clearer to me what the
quality of the direction of evolution is.

Of course, predicting the precise results of the future is always
impossible, susceptible as it is to initial conditions.

But if one looks at the broad outlines, the direction of the tracks seems
clear, so it is relatively safe to say in which direction the train will
travel.

For instance, what I understand of science tells me that things have
progressed from atoms to molecules to cells to plants to fishes to
amphibians to reptiles to mammals to humans--always on a track of getting
more complex, more interdependent. Consciousness--thought--appeared
sometime in the human line.

The human has developed from families to tribes to nations to united
nations and axis and allies and coalitions. Again on the track of becoming
more intertwined, more complex.

In the last couple hundred years, we have gone from farms to factories to
unions to corporations to multinational corporations. Similar track, same
direction.

The world we used to say is getting smaller. It is at least getting more
tightly woven. We in the United States are now counting you in Europe among
our friends. We extend our presence actively through e-mail and phones and
websites and passively through television and radio and satellite
positioning to all around the globe (and beyond it into space)
simultaneously--in a network of networks that boggles our minds and would
have left forbears as recent as our parents shaking their heads.

In short, we are heading toward more and more interplay with one another.
This is the direction of the tracks of evolution, and we can see this much,
if we look.

So where is evolution headed? Toward more complexity, more interplay. We
are drawn to each other.

The quality of evolution? Since we are drawn to one another, then we serve
evolution, the future, life, the good, the right, the beautiful, by doing
what enhances life. We speak out against violence and killing. We do what
we can to bring about connection and conversation--which says to me that OS
practitioners are in the center of the mix, the very best place to be, in
order to bring about evolution in a conscious way.

Part of the problem of getting conscious about it is, as you point out,
Koos, that we are often pretty foggy about what we mean by "evolution." We
think, but not too consciously at that, that evolution means that we will
end up with a new species of animal popping out onto the horizon. We miss
the fact that evolution took a turn when it invented thinking: our
evolution for the last thousand or two thousand years has been largely
outside the realm of the physical: we have developed nations and societies
and cultures and civilizations; we have developed associations and NGOs and
unions and movements; we have developed science and laboratories of
hundreds of scientists, and libraries and books so that we can store our
learning and do our thinking outside our own bodies and communicate with
our descendants; we have developed ways to come together. So again, our
evolution is apt to be in this area of complex intercourse. This is the
evolution I see, and it is more precise to me than the general thought that
there will be a new animal to come along who will be higher on the food
chain who will want to eat us.

So the way to get conscious about evolution, for me at this juncture in my
thinking, is to invite more and more conversation. We need not only to be
working on getting people conversing, but conversing well. In its essence,
this means center to center, cor ad cor.

So it is not about an academic discussion of the meaning of terms, to me.
It is about getting busy and doing something good for one another. And it
is more than that, but that is the start.

Where it ends up, I do not know, but the direction it is headed is there
for all to see who will look. It says to me that humanity is the stem and
latest shoot on life, which is a grand thing, indeed. The flower is in the
bud....

                              :-Doug.
                              Seeking people making change.

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