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The Time-binding Trust <http://www.synearth.net/>
CommUnity of Minds <http://solutions.synearth.net/>
David C. Korten writes: “The following thought experiment frames the problem before us and the essential needs a planetary system of living economies must address.
“Six billion people live together on a crowded planet. A hundred million — less than 2 percent of the whole — enjoy extravagant material affluence and consume as much as half of the planet’s resources. A billion or so more account for an additional 25 to 30 percent of total consumption. The rest are divided between two billion who manage to make ends meet with difficulty, a billion who live in constant hardship, and a billion who suffer extreme and dehumanizing deprivation in a struggle for day-to-day survival. An uneasy and partial peace is maintained by the promises of the 100 million to the rest that with patience and work hard all will one day enjoy lives of extravagant material affluence.
“One morning all six billion wake up with a new awareness: their planet is actually a living space ship with a biologically based life support system so overstressed that it is on the verge of collapse. The economic system that promised it would eventually bring affluence to all is actually a suicide economy that is destroying the foundations of life.
“A few decide to arm themselves, kill off as many of their rivals as possible, and attempt to secure what they can for themselves. The vast majority, however, realize that violence is no answer. It will only increase the stress and accelerate the breakdown, with disastrous results for all.
“There is desperate need for a solution that works for all. What can be done?
“The essentials come quickly to mind. There must be an immediate reordering of priorities. The use of every resource must be optimized to assure the health and physical security of every person with minimal waste. The life support system must be restored to full function as quickly as possible. Everything must be recycled, with no release of toxics into the environment. There will be no luxuries for the few until the basic needs of all are adequately met.”
There are three types of humans to be found in our present world. Which type you are depends on what you believe about how the world works.
ADVERSARIES believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively DEPENDENT on others, and they best understand the language of FORCE.
NEUTRALISTS believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are INdependent and should be self-sufficient unless theyare too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of MONEY.
A new type of human is emerging called SYNERGISTS. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are INTERdependent and only can obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language LOVE.
But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use them.
Synergists must sometimes use the language of FORCE, and sometimes the language of MONEY, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies — when synergists are seeking to build community — they must speak the language of LOVE.
Synergists are trying to heal the wounds inflected by those who don’t understand how the world could work.
This then is the essential challenge to the Synergists. Can we work together and act responsibly in time to save our ourselves on this planet?
Truth, Love & Synergy
Timothy
Having reached the limits of an Era of Empire humanity is now compelled to make a conscious collective choice to live into being a new human Era of Community. It is a profound evolutionary challenge and an unprecedented opportunity to graduate from the excesses of adolescence to embrace the possibilities and responsibilities of species maturity in service to the living web of planetary life. Theologian Thomas Berry calls it the Great Work — a creative, life-serving work toward a more creative, vibrant, and fulfilling human future.
The Era of Empire has led to the pursuit of money as humanity’s defining value and hierarchy/domination as society’s organizing principle. It has led to the emergence of a corporate global economy — appropriately described as a suicide economy, because it is destroying the foundations of its own existence and threatening the survival of the human species. It is the Era’s final stage.
The human future depends on moving beyond the self-limiting and ultimately self-destructive ways of Empire to live into being a new Era of Community in which life is the defining cultural value and networking/partnership is the organizing principle. Ironically, the possibility of achieving such fundamental change resides in the awakening of hundreds of millions of people to the reality that humanity is on a path to social and environmental collapse, which create an imperative to accomplish the seemingly impossible.
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A few years ago, the newspapers of New York City were ablaze with a controversy about dozens of plots of derelict land that had been slowly turned into urban oases. Should these beautiful community gardens that neighborhoods had created on trash-filled lots be allowed to stay in the public domain? Or should the mayor and city government, heeding the call of developers, try to generate new tax revenues on the reclaimed sites by selling them to private investors?
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Hello everyone. My name is Arthur Noll. Timothy Wilken invited me to join him here as a contributing editor. We have been corresponding the last couple of months or so, and finding a lot of agreement on fundamental ideas.
The background I bring is a formal education in mechanical engineering, some time spent in conventional industry, some time with wind energy, time spent as a carpenter and house fixer, and time spent in rural areas, on farms, struggling with environmental issues, sustainable food production, figuring how people can live in harmony with nature and each other. I’ve also struggled a lot with my personal health, it has taught me a lot about the importance of efficiency and being strong. It taught me not to take things for granted.
I started thinking about problems bigger than myself more than twenty years ago, reading E.F. Shumacher’s book, “Small is Beautiful”. If you haven’t read it, the central premise of that book, was that people acted as though the “problems of production”, the way we got basics like food, water, clothes and shelter, had been solved. He was an economist with personal experience with coal mines being worked out, when he looked at the finite supply of fossil fuel and all that it supported, he realized that we didn’t really know how to live in a sustainable way. I’ve taken that as the premise for what I’ve worked on in the last twenty years, that we don’t know, right down at the base of things, how to live. Nothing I’ve learned since then, has made me change my mind about this premise, though I’ve had to change my mind about many other things as I got closer to the reality of things. I had to quit being a vegetarian, for one example. And reduce my expectations of renewable energy sources. Yet I did find things that worked with unexpected ease and beauty. Like living in a canvas yurt, herding goats, gathering wild vegetables, tending trees, and many other things. I’ve indulged my talents as a mechanical design engineer and come up with some modifications on old ideas, that seem to work better.
Most importantly, I’ve made observations about human nature, and human needs and social structure, to solve the problem of the premise that we don’t know how to live sustainably with nature and each other. Basically, I think instincts formed in the stone age, prevent most of us from acting rationally with regard to sustainability, and how we treat each other. Technology that enables us to take more from nature than can be sustained over generations, is judged to be an unqualified good thing by most people. Long term awareness of problems doesn’t compete with their short term drives. If a cow gets into a grain bin, they literally eat themselves to death. Technologists have claimed over and over that their inventions have overturned the balance of nature. When we discovered hard, tough metals, we found the key to the “grain bin”, and have been gorging without restraint ever since. The world was a large grain bin, and it has taken about three thousand years to get to this point, where the stomach ache is getting severe.
I am moved to say something about business. I occasionally hear people say that they are not anti business, but only against what businesses often do. I agree that the actions are often abhorrent. The trouble I see, is that businesses act as they do in response to forces that are inherent in the system that they operate in. So I have to be against capitalism, against markets, if I have seen these webs of cause and effect properly. Let me outline the major problems I see.
The fundamental rule of markets, is that they value abundant things as cheap. This causes all sorts of trouble, because it is an inherent incentive to ignore conservation of resources. If it is cheap, you use it. You don’t worry much about waste and sustainability. Economic models assume that as resources are used, prices will go up, and cause conservation, but the factors seldom work as smoothly as that. Resources can be so abundant that prices don’t rise in response to shortages, until several generations of people have increased population on them. Then you may well be trapped with unsustainable numbers of people. I think this is how we find ourselves right now.
Another problem is that it is an observable fact that people are interdependent. Yet using money makes people into independent agents, everyone is doing their own thing to the highest degree possible. Anyone who has played the game Monopoly, knows that someone “wins”, they end up owning everything. Real life markets are not much different. A few people “own” nearly everything, the rest are collecting a paycheck as they go around the board, and do well to stay even as they go around. This way of playing at independence from everyone else, exacerbates the market forces that label things as either cheap, or expensive. If you are bringing in a resource that is considered cheap, you have to bring in lots and lots of it, in order to make a living. This will definitely ignore the balance of nature. Something considered highly desirable, may bring a high price, which doesn’t protect it, people find it worth the time and energy to go out and hunt down a scarce but desired resource. Abundant people are considered cheap, even though we are clearly interdependent with each other, and no one who contributes in a positive manner can really be considered cheap, expendable.
Abundant people who act to exploit nature in unsustainable ways, will be treated as expendable by nature, however.
Garrett Hardin wrote about the “Tragedy of the Commons”, where people acting in their own interest, as independent agents, will destroy resources held in common. It is felt that ownership of land, of resources, will prevent this problem, but it doesn’t. If your neighbor is exploiting the resources of his land, and sells cheaper than you, it doesn’t matter if his practices are not sustainable over the long term. Over the short term, if you don’t match his production, meet his prices, you will lose your piece of land.
Over the short term, markets reward those who exploit nature and other people. Over the long term, exploitation fails to compete, it runs out of energy. Nature always swings the balance back in the end.
There is a lot more I could say, but I won’t try to say it all right now. Most of the arguments are in my book, available on the web at: http://www.synearth.net/harmony.html
I know all this is quite radical, but I hope we can discuss these ideas and what to do about them.
In the spirit of truth and harmony,
Arthur Noll
In a interesting article published in 1997, author David Korten writes:
What is this madness? The economy is booming. The stock market is setting new records. The US is again heralded as the world’s most competitive economy. We are assured that we are richer than ever before and getting richer by the day.
Yet we are also told there is no longer enough money to provide an adequate education for our children, health care and safety nets for the poor, protection for the environment, parks, a living wage for working people, public funding for the arts and public radio, or adequate pensions for the elderly. According to the official wisdom, even though richer, we can no longer afford what we once took for granted. How is this possible? What’s gone wrong?
A quick hint. The problem most definitely is not a lack of money. The world is awash in it. The world’s 450 billionaires alone have combined financial assets greater than the combined annual incomes of half of humanity.
The problem is this: a predatory global financial system, driven by the single imperative of making ever more money for those who already have lots of it, is rapidly depleting the real capital the human, social, natural, and even physical capital on which our well-being depends.
This article seems just as wise in 2001 as it did in 1997. Take a look…
Timothy
It has been my pleasure and privilege to publish the first edition of Arthur Noll’s small book Harmony. In the second half of his book Noll begins with a discussion of reproduction:
“I’d like to go into some more detail on reproduction, since it is such an important part of the story. Lets start by remembering the logic about it I gave at the beginning.
“If any organism overpopulates, the most likely survivors are the ones that are the strongest and most efficient. One way to be more strong and efficient is to put less energy into reproduction. We see the result of this in animal populations. Predators do not reproduce at the same rate as prey does. Predators do this in many different ways. The eagle may lay only two eggs, and raise only one chick. The lion has a litter of cubs, but mother may go out hunting, not return for two or three days, and after a few episodes of this, 75% of the cubs are dead. I seem to recall that this was in desert country, and in richer country, more cubs are likely to survive, but the principle is clear. In a pack of wolves, only the dominant pair will have young. Again, this is likely to vary with the resources available, but there is a definite mechanism to limit reproduction.
“A question arises, though, when we look at herbivores like wildebeast, zebras, other large herbivores, living with the lions and other predators. These animals are frequently prey for lions, yet they give birth to one baby a year. How to explain this? We have to remember that herbivores are predators of grass, and that while they have vulnerable periods of life, growing up, growing old, when living as healthy adults in a herd, they are very difficult for predators to catch. It has been noted by biologists that it is disease that is the greatest check on their population, not more conventional predators. So such a low rate of reproduction still fits. They reproduce to fill up their ecological space, to go beyond that exposes them to problems like hunger and disease, which can knock the population a long ways down, and once again, those that put less energy into reproduction would be favored. Since they are so successful at evading lions and similar predators most of the time, it would seem that their low birth rate is a function of such success.
“People who have studied hunter gatherer groups often find that reproduction is in balance. Several factors are at play. If the conditions are difficult, northern or southern deserts, tropical forests full of disease, then people naturally die faster from the harsh conditions. Birth rates are slowed by women not conceiving well when they are always on the verge of hunger, or nursing babies, and the food is coarse and babies need to nurse longer. Marjorie Shostak writes about this with regard to the !Kung people. In richer areas of the world, warfare between groups seems to have make up the difference, this added enough stress to groups to make up for the fact that the living was easier.
“If we have understanding about the source of disease, this always gives us a little edge on the problem. If we herd animals, nurture plants appropriately, that also gives an edge on hunger. Having better tools and knowledge of microbes also allows food to be better stored for lean periods. But if people aren’t dying so much of disease, and hunger is lessened so that women conceive easily, we can and have gotten into trouble. We can’t put knowledge back in the bottle, we don’t like high death rates. But we have to choose, either we take a high death rate or we have a lower birth rate. Farmers have lessened hunger with unsustainable food production, and welcomed a higher birth rate to have labor, which they really need lots of.. But even without farming, birth rates have to come down.
“It all comes down to energy efficiency. We only have so much energy to spend on any one thing. Birth control has to be as cheap as possible. The cheapest and most effective is a mental ability to abstain from sex when conditions call for it. Under conditions of stress, that tends to happen naturally. The question is what a person regards as stressful. Someone who can see logical connections to disasters looming will feel a lot more stress and back away from reproduction. Those who can’t see will still be engaged in reproduction, unaware of danger signals. They get trapped. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can’t easily move and get away from problems. They need a lot of extra care.
” When conditions are more peaceful, there are simple solutions to the problem. Vasectomies are simple and cheap, relatively. They don’t help much right now, since they aren’t easily reversible, and we would want to survive and still be able to reproduce. There are other possibilities. Basically, they have to be energy efficient and sustainable. But right now, the best option looks like abstinence.”
Harmony is Arthur’s term for synergy. The second part of his book was published today. It can be seen online here.
Bound through synergy,
Timothy
“Korzybsi”
Alfred Korzybski was born on July 3, 1879, in Warsaw, Poland.
In 1921, Korzybski, a mathematician and scientist published what this scientist considers one of the most important books ever written. That book called Manhood of Humanity is now available online.
Manhood of Humanity was Korzybski’s initial disclosure of his Theory of Time-binding. Korzybski classified Life with precise and accurate operational definitions of plants, animals, and humans. He defined the plants as energy-binders, the animals as space-binders, and we humans as time-binders. Korzybski explained that:
The plants adapt to their environment through their awareness and control of energy. The animals adapt to their environment through their awareness and control of space. And we humans adapt to our environment through our awareness and control of time.
Energy-binding-the power of plants
The power of energy-binding is transformation, growth, and organization.
Energy-binders have the ability to transform solar energy to organic chemical energy. The plant is a solar collector. It spreads its leaves and harvests the ultraviolet rays directly from the sun.
Energy-binders have the power of growth.The plant draws water and minerals from the soil organizes this energy and nutrients into growth through cell division. The growth of the energy-binder and its self-propagation through progeny are the resultant of cell division – if the cells remain together we have growth; if they split off into a separate entity we have progeny. Energy-bindings have the power of organization. Organization possible through the ability to time the release and binding of energy. Timing based on knowledge – energy knowledge.
Space-binding - the power of animals
The power of space-binding is mobility – the ability to move about in space. This is not the simple motion of plants. This is mobility – running, jumping, leaping, swinging, swimming, creeping, stalking, crawling, diving, and flying.
The space-binder moves towards a specific and attainable goal – water, food, a mate, shelter – and in any direction. The mobility of the space-binder is not just motion, it is controlled motion. The space-binder moves in search of food. For grazing animals the quest is continuous; for predators, occasional but more strenuous. And all animals are under constant threat from natural enemies. The animal, therefore, requires sense awareness – awareness of the space in which he lives. The space-binder uses his awareness to find food and to warn him of the approach of enemies. A deer may be motivated by thirst to go to a waterhole, but if it senses a lion, it will refrain. It must continuously evaluate conflicting stimuli and choose between alternatives, alternatives of pleasure or pain, alternatives of good space or bad space. Space-binders are aware of space, they are aware and they think, they think and they decide – constantly making controlled choices as to where and when to move.
Thinking for the space-binder is wholistic. The animals base their decisions on the whole situation. When the rabbit hears a sound in the thicket, he must react instantly, “fight or flight” and the decision must be made now, based on the whole situation. There is no time for analysis. Only wholistic thinking has the rapidity and flexibility to allow survival in the adversary world of space-binders. The power to allow animals move instantly towards good space – space that enables one to survive, and away from bad space – space that produces injury or death.
But the animals are not only space-binders, they also have some of the power of energy-binders. While they cannot transform solar energy directly into organic chemical energy, they can transform the tissues from the plants and animals they eat into organic chemical energy, they can also grow, and they can also organize energy. To the fox who sees the rabbit, success at seizing this opportunity for a meal depends not just on his ability to know when and where to move, but also on his ability to control the energy which he will need to power his movement. He must have adequate energy stored so that he can release it at the proper moment to catch the rabbit. And the rabbit can only escape if it uses its knowledge of both space and energy effectively.
Time-binding-the power of humans
We humans are Time-binders. We possess the power to understand and through that understanding to control and dominate planet Earth.
The power of Time-binding is to understand – to observe and remember change over time. Understanding comes from the awareness of time – an awareness that allows humans to experience time as sequential or linear.
Tomorrow follows today as today followed yesterday. Time always moves from the past to the present, from the present to the future. Change is bound in time. And time-binders understand change in space because they are aware of time.
Time-binding is a new way of thinking – analytical thinking. The Time-binder can make decisions based on understanding changes in his environment over time. Time-binding analysis is sequential analysis – linear analysis – focused on the parts rather than the whole.
Analytical thinking recognizes cause and effect. Time-binders are the masters of cause and effect. When humans understand cause and effect, they make scientific discovery. They make knowledge. When humans make choices based on knowledge, they make inventions. They make technology. Time-binders are the creators of knowledge and technology. When knowledge is incorporated into matter-energy, it becomes a tool. Humans are above all else toolmakers. Most of our knowledge is embedded in our tools. Human knowledge grows continuously and without limit. As we incorporate our evermore powerful knowledge into tools. We produce evermore powerful tools.
Time-binding is also that unique human ability to pass that ‘knowing’ from one generation to the next generation. Both animal and human offspring begin their lives in nearly total ignorance. The differences that exist between them are small, but what advantage in knowing that does exist belongs clearly to the animal. While the animal seems to begin life with a greater store of inherited knowing, it possesses little ability to learn from its parents. The animal is condemned to rediscover over and over, every generation must discover anew the knowings of its parents. The wise old owl may know a great deal, but he has no way to pass what he knows to his offspring and they have no way to receive it. We humans are very different in that respect. We can and do pass our knowing from one generation to the next. Alfred Korzybski explains:
“Human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them – I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-previous lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the inheritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.”
We humans bind time and are bound together in time. The record of our time-binding is everywhere. It is in all that activity that we so innocently call progress. It is the very motor of obsolescence. It is imbedded in just about every thing associated with humans and yet most humans are unaware of the very power that makes them human. We humans catalogue and store our various knowings in libraries, universities, colleges, data banks, and information services. We store our knowing in many formats – books, tapes, films, movies, newspapers, magazines, video, microfilm, photos, computer files, etc., etc., etc. We are time-binders and the mark of human power is everywhere.
But, humans are more than just time-binders with the power to understand. We also have the the power of space-binding – mobility and the ability to think wholistically, and the power of energy-binding – conversion of plant and animal tissue to organic chemical energy, growth and organization of energy.
“korzybski-sd”
Now you can now read the original text of Manhood of Humanity on line. A short biography of Korzyski is available here.
Happy Korzybski Day
Timothy
