conscious of evolution as it evolves. ???

[Jeff Aitken]

Dear Doug,

I've not followed many recent posts, but reading your post I wanted to chime in.

My chime is dissonant, however. I'm quite taken by the grandeur of your evolutionary
vision -- it's really extraordinary, especially the last several paragraphs. Some of the opening
assumptions, however, I want to question.

Put simply, I don't see many of my friends in a vision of social evolution from tribes to states to
international coalitions.  I'm afraid this vision can lead to the notion that five thousand
contemporary cultures have simply been left behind by the evolutionary sweep of
things. In the past, and currently, this perspective has become justification to horrific genocides because
if our scientists call it evolution, it's inevitable, just the way things are, manifest destiny.

In a similar way, I am greatly concerned by the notion that the multinational corporation is
a kind of evolutionary advance. Certainly it's a form of organization that wields immense capacity
to transform minerals into technologies and so forth. But the danger of calling it evolution is, again,
to deem it scientifically inevitable. Go along or get out of the way.

A different perspective on evolution might be like this: We are all evolving together, the humans and
the horses and the sea turtles and the redwoods and the bacteria. (Bateson: "the unit of evolution is organism
plus environment.") We optimize our capacity for continued life on this planet
when we preserve and enhance the biodiversity and cultural diversity which life and humans
can draw upon for new solutions to new evolutionary issues. In the human cultural realm, this work
requires choices and a wide openness to different voices, unimpeded by power dynamics. Clearly, we are not doing so well.

When organisms or social forms arise which threaten such diversity, such as white consciousness or multinational
corporations, I feel called to listen to diverse traditions and voices to counter these forms. In the past
few decades the voices from those 5000 cultures are breaking through the soundproof barriers constructed around
the worldview of social Darwinism and evolutionary inevitability (and cheap oil.)

Put another way, until modern societies actually become ecologically sustainable, can we assume we are not evolutionary dead ends? And what can we learn from (how do we listen to) the sustainable cultures in order to dissolve our current trajectory?

Doug, I totally agree that the emergence of a complex planetary conversation is a good thing! I simply suggest that a real planetary conversation will ask white people and modern/postmodern institutions to listen and confront the shadows of our worldviews. For me, a real worldwide Open Space will include many more voices (and realms) -- many of whom do not have email -- and I love that Open Space technology is beautifully suited to the task!

It's a gorgeous irony that our friend hho gathered a mix of african, hebrew, tibetan, angeles-arrien, stolichnaya, etc and accidentally concocted this modernity-dissolving brew.

I'll add a snip by one of my mentors, Jurgen Kremer. You can find his writing at http://www.sonic.net/~riva/

with respect,
-- Jeff

"History is not a unitary phenomenon, but a weaving of a multiplicity of stories. Concurrent to the historical lines identified in eurocentered academe we find a multiplicity of other histories (oftentimes de-valued as  ‘stories’ or ‘folklore’ or ‘legends,’ mere oral history) that enriches and/or questions the dominant story...

Denials of genocide, colonial occupations, slavery and other atrocities lead to one-sided supremacist stories. Witnessing the history, the stories of place, whether in the form (here) of Native American or African American (hi)stories, facilitates initiation into a form of collective consciousness that supersedes facile and individualistic interpretations of the term. Self-actualization and altered states now not only include the integration of shamanic or meditative realms, but also the integration of suppressed human storylines."


-----Original Message-----
From: "Douglas D. Germann, Sr." <76066.515 at compuserve.com>
Sent: Jul 22, 2004 7:53 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: conscious of evolution as it evolves. ???

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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