Dr Sahtouris on the current state of human ecological and social crisis
and how this condition relates to the larger picture of planetary evolution.
Stella: this is a great way to make accesible a lot of very good but highly theoretical strands of modern thinking.
Sahtouris speaks as a biologist but also as a wise woman and skilled story-teller.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
from part 3:
what we have to focus on iscan we build a viable butterfly, a butterfly that really can fly, because that's not guaranteed.
so if we put our energies into building all the alternative ways of doing things - and we can learn from nature about how we can go about this process of evolution that's called for today, we can build alternatives for the old models of education, of law, of healthcare ... all of this we are doing ... and we know we can function as a global family because we have global systems of comunications ..
.. internet by the way functioins as a real self-organizing living system, ... (we need to be) ..linking our minds, our concepts, our visions..
Stella, dic09: For me the crucial parts of this story (see Part 3) are what do those trends mean for the permaculture movement: where are we really co-operating with each other and other progressive movements and really able to vision (something as weird as!) a butterfly, and where are we still going along with the big caterpillar story and basically visioning an 'alternative' o 'greener' caterpillar - and actually getting in the way of evolution?
I think I see both things happening, right here inside the permaculture movement, as well as in the wider 'aternatives' movement.
As Sahtouris says,
the butterfly is not a certainty
.. yet there seems to be a lot of 'magical thinking' out there, betrayed by the attitude (surely very strange coming form designers..) that we don't have to bother to design any organizational structures, or that those who are are (necessarily) limiting the process or evoution.
Permaculture is a design science, based on observation, that integrates all human activities into a whole system based on natural patterning and ecology. In a word, Permaculture=Relationship. Penny Livingston
An 'ecological' orientation alone, outside of a critical social framework, is dangerously unstable.The record of fascist ecology shows that under the right conditions such an orientation can quickly lead to barbarism.Art26
"Truth is a state of mind in which there is no contradiction. A person perceives his idea as true because he has heard no contradiction. The less one knows, the easier it is to be dogmatic and to be sure that what one knows is true. We tend to defend dogmatically as true the things we are taught, whereas the things we learn from experience and experiments tend to be properly couched in sometimes-contradictory reality."
I think the thing about ideology that fascinates me so much is how powerfully it functions as a mechanism of social control. I mean, it's so powerful because it makes its home in our brains. When it's like that the dominant classes don't need to point guns or tanks or even threats at the ordinary citizens of the state. It's unnecessary - we'll police ourselves, we'll consent to our own subjugation. Pinky
In an evolutionary context, the goal of the spiritual life is not peace; it's perpetual development. It's about the ecstasy that compels us to create the future. And it's not a future that's going to unfold by itself, it's a future that we must create through direct, conscious, intentional engagement with the life-process itself.(Andrew Cohen)
There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns. Ayn Rand
At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem... Ken Wilber
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