Today, I received a note of comment from a reader on More Than the Sum of the Parts. He goes on to comment on the GAIA dialogues which have attracted a lot of interest this week.

Timothy:

For the longest time I wondered how it was possible for the greatest minds of this world to create their theories without the knowledge that was necessary for them to put the pieces together, thereby creating a final whole. Finally I simply listened to their explanation of how they did it and realized that for them the finished product came first, and then they disassembled it to create the component pieces.

We think of an equation where the answer is known only after it is mathematically calculated; but for them they knew the answer first and have to work it backwards to complete the equation. We think 1+1=2

They know the answer first so 2=1+1 There is an external intelligence that reviled its understanding to them as a way to help the evolutionary process, necessary now because of the dangers to the survival of human civilization.

— — — 

You believe that very intelligent aware humans created GAIA and it is getting stronger.

Not quite. I think humans have an important role to play in GAIA, but they did not create her. I see GAIA as a synergic emergent from LIFE on planet earth. I think her beginnings are very old. LIFE itself is 3.5 billion years old.

The Synergic Principle of  “The Whole is More Than the sum of the Parts” explains:

From the study of light, we wouldn’t predict atoms. From the study of  atoms, we wouldn’t predict molecules. From the study of molecules, we wouldn’t predict plants. From the study of plants we wouldn’t have predicted animals. From the study of plants, we wouldn’t have predicted humans. And from the study of humans, we wouldn’t have predicted GAIA.

I see GAIA as a unitary organism in which all of Nature’s parts form a new whole. Maybe it has always been Nature’s intention to create GAIA. We humans suffer from thinking we are the end point of biological evolution. Perhaps we are only the endpoint for the formation of the Central Nervous System for a larger organism of which we are a part.  —Timothy

I believe that it is billions of years old, pre-dates the earth, and appears to be more active now because we have evolved to better communicate with it.

Your writing is most interesting.

George

Jivan Vatayan. responds to yesterday’s dialogue posted at CommUnity of Minds. The topic is GAIA and humanity’s role in her organization.

Jivan Vatayan Responds

Yesterday, Timothy Wilken wrote: The concept of GAIA is well known to synergic scientists. As I understand it the term Ecodiversity Lifeform is unique to your writing. If I have mischaracterized your term as just another name for GAIA, I apologize.

No reason to apologize. My preference is for a phrase that I see as more descriptive of this phenomenon. To me the word Gaia has induced human-centered and new age projections.

Timothy -> I am arguing that humanity is just as much a part of LIFE as any bacterium. We are just as much a cell in the body of GAIA as any slime mold. We humans are not separate from LIFE.

Yes, analogically the human species is (for the most part) a virulent cancer cell in the body of Gaia. Although present day technology makes it unlikely we will kill the whole body we live inside of, we can do and are doing damage to the health of the body, damaging its resilience (its analog of an immune system) and its ability to robustly create. We are living in an era of human-induced ecological catastrophe.

 

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Earlier, I wrote: There is NO evidence up to now (that I can discern) that The Ecodiversity Lifeform benefits whatsoever from human neurons. Rather the coupled and interdependent systems of compatible genetically adapted ecosystems and organisms that drive the Ecodiversity Lifeform are manifestly endangered by the human presence.

Timothy ->I absolutely agree that present humanity — Adversary humanity that believes success requires someone to lose. And, Neutral humanity that believes everything is only a product to be offered for sale, and that all problems can be solved with money. — have very little to offer GAIA. However, a future humanity committed to co-Operation, viewing itself as part of LIFE, with a responsibility to all LIFE and to EARTH could be of great value to GAIA.

I often use “Starhawk’s” term of power-with rather than power-over to describe the difference between adversarial and co-operative relations.

 

The power-over human-centered worldview continues to gain momentum in a fear-based world. The busy-ness of this world allows very little available energy left (in most people) to consider a complete change in the way the entire species views, lives and behaves on Earth. When people entertain such utopian notions their views tend to be so radically divergent that step one of an infinite number of steps to create a new world is hardly ever agreed upon.

 

Nevertheless, the possibility of a future utopian humanity with an entirely different worldview, way of being and living on Earth and relating to existence is an enthralling dream. Proposing the dream (no matter how unrealistic it appears to be) is the first stage in giving the dream any possible reality.

 

———————–

 

The four EarthSelf principles represent an Earth Self (Gaian – if you will) bonding to four basic ways of experiencing the mystery of reality – (1 – body), (2 – feeling-relation), (3 – story-mind) and (4 – spirit). (Bonding represents our connection to existence. You have touched on the third EarthSelf principle with your statement:

“However, a future humanity committed to co-Operation, viewing itself as part of LIFE, with a responsibility to all LIFE and to EARTH could be of great value to GAIA.”

The third principle (story) asks – What is going on? What is the deeper story, the laws of life connection?

 

The existence of the holons (cells, individuals, species, ecosystems, The Ecodiversity Lifeform) of life, and life’s elaborations and diversity suggests that the role of competition, and power-over (that we humans have emphasized) is nested in and subservient to a greater field of cooperation. For life to assemble its dramatic array of evolving developments the role of disassembly and conflict must give way to the greater role of cooperation. Life elaborates through creative symbiosis. This is the deeper basis of cooperation and connection from which all predator-prey relationships and all forms of competition/cooperation arise. From this insight (for instance) it is now understood that parasitism is an essential form of symbiosis that drives evolution. The third principle states that to be synergetic with The Ecodiversity Lifeform we need to understand the deeper story of synergy and cooperation (creative symbiosis) as the basic compelling and underlying story we bond to.

Timothy -> Yes, as previously written here, we could protect GAIA from a comet. We could also clone and replace important, but lost species of plants and animals. We could begin protecting GAIA’s ecosystems instead of exploiting or ignoring them. In fact, we haven’t even begun to imagine the good we could do if we simply committed to helping Nature.

The essential protection we can do for the body of life appears to be to protect it from our own violent predations. This repressed field of hurt and harm to the body of life can be seen to come from our progressive ability to manipulate Nature, while we experience a lack of connection, feeling and understanding of ourselves and the body of life we live inside of.

Timothy -> The Trustegrity Guardians accept as their primary responsibility the protection of humanity as community and humanity as individual.

To be synergetic with the The Ecodiversity Lifeform the prime value needs to be the body of life itself rather than any of its parts. To change we need to value the health of the essential matrix of life needs to more than of any of its components. This is the first principle. The first principle looks at the question of what is the body of life? The tentative proposed EarthSelf response is to bond with The Ecodiversity Lifeform as prime value.

Earlier Timothy wrote: GAIA is a new organism that is currently self-organizing. Gaia is still a fetus. She had not yet been born. This is my fundamental point. The Earth and all LIFE presently on the Earth represent the tissues and organs of GAIA.

I disagree. The Ecodiversity Lifeform was likely born as soon as life became a planetary phenomena. As archaeabacteria spread across the Earth and began exchanging genes the entire Earth soon became the initial stage of the Ecodiversity Lifeform – the Bacterial Superorganism. Presumably – right from the beginning – through fits and starts – this superorganism began selecting for bacteria that stabilized the superorganism.

Timothy -> I would say that you are only describing the body of GAIA. In a fetus, life begins with two cells. The last part of the organism to be developed is the central nervous system. The brain continues developing even after birth. We do not consider human children fully capable of reponsibility until they are 18 years of age.

I do not see that the ontology of human development has anything to do with the elaboration of the integrity of The Ecodiversity Lifeform. To me your attempt to equate this with Gaia is a false and human-centered analogy.

Timothy -> We are now entering the final phase of GAIA’s evolution. This is where the brain of the new organism will emerge.

I do not see any evidence for this contention.

Timothy -> The brain doesn’t decide what to do. Decision making is not controlled centrally in the brain. The mind-brain appears to act as a coordination and consensus system for all the cells, tissues, and organs in the body. The brain doesn’t decide to eat. The cells of the body decide to eat, the brain coordinates their activity and carries out the consensus will.

 

The brain is a ‘government’ that truly serves its constituents– the cells, tissues, and organs that make up the human body. The apparent ‘I’ is not real. It is really a ‘we’. We have mistaken self-organization for directed organization.

I do not dispute this model. However, this view of decision-making does not support your contention that:

 ”The Internet can furnish the basis for the creation of the ‘brain’ to serve a unified species serving GAIA or your contention that Gaia’s brain is now emerging.”

The Internet can, however, be a useful way to communicate and distribute information. If the human-induced ecological catastrophe is to be addressed the Internet is now set-up to be a good way to spread important ideas.

More Than the Sum of the Parts

Timothy Wilken, MD

The strategy of physics called reductionism has been one of the most powerful tools in the history of science. What is reductionism? How does it work? Lawrence Krauss1993 explains: 

A physicist, an engineer, and a psychologist are called in as consultants to a dairy farm whose production has been below par. Each is given time to inspect the details of the operation before making a report.

The first to be called is the engineer, who states: “The size of the stalls for the cattle should be decreased. Efficiency could be improved if the cows were more closely packed, with a net allotment of 275 cubic feet per cow. Also, the diameter of the milking tubes should be increased by 4 percent to allow for a greater average flow rate during the milking periods”.

The next to report is the psychologist, who proposes: “The inside of the barn should be painted green. This is a more mellow color than brown and should help induce greater milk flow. Also, more trees should be planted in the fields to add diversity to the scenery for the cattle during grazing, to reduce boredom”.

Finally, the physicist is called upon. He asks for a blackboard and then draws a circle. He begins: “Assume the cow is a sphere….”.

This old joke, if not very funny, does illustrate how—at least metaphorically—physicists picture the world. The set of tools physicists have to describe nature is limited. Most of the modern theories you read about began life as simple models by physicists who didn’t know how else to start to solve a problem. These simple little models are usually based on even simpler little models, and so on, because the class of things that we do know how to solve exactly can be counted on the fingers of one, maybe two, hands.

I like the cow joke because it provides an allegory for thinking simply about the world, and it allows me to jump right in to an idea that doesn’t get written about too much, but that is essential for the everyday workings of science: Before doing anything else, abstract out all irrelevant details!”

Reductionism means to reduce the problem being studied down to its component ‘parts’. Then by understanding the behavior of the ‘parts’, you can assemble an understanding of the behavior of the ‘whole’. Historically science has divided Nature into ‘parts’ in order to study natural phenomena. Some of these ‘parts’—light, particles, atoms, molecules, plants, animals, and humans—form the focus for the classical sciences—optics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology.

But, Universe is process rather than structure as will be explained more fully in the next chapter. What classical science has called ‘parts’ of the structure are in fact ‘wholes’ or stages of process. We humans will need to revise all our sciences to bring them up to date with Universe 2002—our most current model of Nature.

In Universe 2002, some of these stages of process are simpler—light, particles, atoms, small molecules, and some of these stages of process are more complex—large molecules, plants, animals, and humans. Those scientists who focused on the simpler stages of process have most benefited from the reductionist strategy. Those scientists studying the evermore complex stages of process have found reductionism less useful.

As the focus of science has shifted from the simpler to the more complex processes, reductionist strategy begins to exclude relevant details. M. Mitchell Waldrop writing in1997 explains: 

Complexity theory attempts to provide a general scientific understanding of “complex” systems, both in nature and in the human world. Examples of complex systems include ant colonies, immune systems, brains, economies, and human cultures. Even though these examples may seem very different on the surface, they do share a number of properties that make them alike at a deeper level.

First of all, complex systems typically contain very many interacting parts. Thus, a brain consists of billions of interacting neurons, and an economy consists of millions of people and thousands of firms. Many other complicated objects, such as computers, also have multiple parts, but in a complex system there is nothing like a computer’s central processing unit. Moreover, the components often are not only leaderless but also “active,” in the sense that they constantly adapt their behavior in response to what is going on around them. Thus, animals in an ecosystem will change their foraging behavior when their customary food grows scarce, and consumers in an economy will change their purchasing plans in the face of a recession.

Even with no one in charge, complex systems can often spontaneously shape themselves into highly organized patterns and structures. When weather conditions are right, for example, randomly moving molecules of air and water vapor above the Gulf of Mexico will organize themselves into a hurricane. When technological conditions were right for the personal computer industry to emerge, hundreds of new start-up firms organized themselves into a few locations.

Finally, such spontaneously formed patterns are constantly changing. Complex systems never seem to settle down to a state of equilibrium. Upheaval and change are the norm.

The above properties make complex systems very difficult to understand by the conventional methods of science. Physics and chemistry, in particular, have achieved enormous success over the centuries by a strategy known as “reductionism”—dividing up the world into comparatively simple pieces to study with mathematical precision. With complex systems this strategy rarely works. The interactions are as important as the individual pieces, and all of them have to be taken into account at once.

Yesterday, Arthur Noll wrote:

This notion that: “The whole is more than the sum of the parts.” is a statement I have strongly disagreed with in the past, and yet I agree with much of what Timothy writes, I am moved to think more about the matter, and see if we cannot reach agreement about it. Someone else … talked about emergent properties as things were put together. … The question in my mind, is if there was anything mystical, anything unexpected about the process. The energy and mass are all accounted for.

Arthur, synergic science is real science. The term synergic comes from the root word synergy. The dictionary defines synergy as the working together of two things to produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects. A simple example might be two muscles working together or two medications combined to treat a medical illness. R. Buckminster Fuller writing in 1975 explained:

Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately. Synergy means behavior of integral, aggregate, whole systems unpredicted by behaviors of any of their components or subassemblies of their components taken separately from the whole. Synergy is the only word that means this. The fact that we humans are unfamiliar with the word means that we do not think there are behaviors of “wholes” unpredicted by the behavior of “parts”.

 

Synergy can best be illustrated I think, by chrome-nickel-steel – chromium, nickel, and iron. The most important characteristic of strength of a material is its ability to stay in one piece when it is pulled – this is called tensile strength, it is measured as pounds per square inch, PSI. The commercially available strength of iron at the very highest level is approximately sixty thousand PSI; of chromium about seventy thousand PSI; and of nickel about eighty thousand PSI. The weakest of the three is iron.

 

We all know the saying, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. Well, experiment on chrome-nickel-steel, pull it apart, and you will find that it is much stronger than its weakest link of sixty thousand PSI. In fact it is much stronger than the eighty thousand PSI of its stronger link. Thus the saying that a chain is as strong as its weakest link doesn’t hold. So, let me say something that really sounds funny: Maybe a chain is as strong as the sum of the strength of all its links. Let’s add up the strengths of the components of chrome-nickel-steel and see. Sixty thousand PSI for iron and seventy thousand PSI for chromium and then and eighty thousand PSI for the nickel, that gives you two hundred and ten thousand PSI. If we add in the minor constituency of carbon and manganese we will add another forty thousand PSI giving us a total of two hundred and fifty thousand PSI.

 

Now the fact is that under testing, chrome-nickel-steel shows three hundred and fifty thousand PSI–or one hundred thousand PSI more than the combined strength of all the links.

 

This is typical of synergy, and it is the synergy of the various metal alloys that have enabled industry to do all kinds of things that man never knew would be able to be done based on the characteristic of the parts.”

R. Buckminster Fuller, SYNERGETICS–Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, Volumes I & II, New York, Macmillan Publishing Co, 1975, 1979

Synergy is the associated behavior of ‘wholes’, not predicted by examination of the ‘parts’.

So as Universe becomes more complex, reductionism fails to be as effective a strategy for understanding. In the past scientists have referred to the sciences of Physics and Chemistry as the hard sciences and those of Biology, Psychology and Sociology as the soft sciences. By this they implied that the scientists in the soft sciences were not as precise and rigorous as those in the hard sciences. The physicist with his hard science is not necessarily more precise and rigorous than the psychologist with his soft science, the physicist has been focusing on the so called simpler ‘parts’ of Universe, while the psychologist has been focusing on the more complex ‘parts’ of process.

But something deeper is going on here. Science is making an even more fundamental error. The labeling of stages of process as ‘parts’ of Universe represents an even larger error. The stages of process are not ‘parts’ they are ‘wholes’. And the study of ‘wholes’ requires an inclusive approach. This approach is diametrically opposed to reductionism.

Innovation and invention occurs when the scientist sees the ‘whole’ first. This fact is almost unknown. Our reductionist science teaches us that the discoverer simply assembles the ‘parts’ he finds in Universe into ‘wholes’—whether these parts be postulates of a theory or pieces of a new invention. But this belief is wrong as Arthur Young the inventor the Bell helicopter explains: 

There are no helicopter “parts”, until after you first create the concept of the “whole” helicopter, then you make the “parts” to make the “whole”. The “whole” is invented first. The “whole”comes before the “parts”. The something extra in the “whole” contains the “purpose” and “function”. This cannot be determined by examining the parts alone.

Since purpose is in the “whole” and not in the “parts”, the “whole” must be greater than the “parts”. How can we account for this? Because the “whole” cannot function when divided. It follows that function is that aspect or “cause” which is not in the “parts” and which reductionist science cannot deal with, because science deals with mass, length, and time, which are all “parts”. This leads to a basic cosmological postulate: The “parts” are derived from the “whole”, and not the “whole” from the “parts.” ”

Fuller comments on this as well, 

It is manifest that Universe is the maximum synergy-of-synergies, being utterly unpredicted by any of its parts. It is readily understandable why humans, born utterly helpless, utterly ignorant, have been prone to cope in an elementary way with successive experiences or “parts”. They are so overwhelmed by the synergetic mystery of the whole as to have eschewed educational strategies commencing with Universe and the identification of the separate experiences within the cosmic totality. Universe apparently is omnisynergetic. No single part of experience will ever be able to explain the behavior of the whole.”

Remember, the main strategy of classical science has been to use reductionism—the breaking of phenomena into ‘parts’ for examination and experimentation. Reductionism is the method that produced most of the discoveries of the physical sciences including that of energy. Reductionism focuses on the part to the exclusion of the whole. Because reductionism reduces the data being examined, it must by definition be incomplete. Reductionism is blind to the ‘whole’. Reductionism cannot see synergy. This is not to say that all reductionistic science is wrong or that the tool of reductionism has no value. But we must use it cautiously.

As our understanding of complex science grows we will discover how (1+1>>2). It will not be magic. When they detoninated the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert it much have appeared to the observers to be the result of MAGIC. As science writer Arthur C. Clarke said, ”Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

 

My argument is even simpler then that. I think we can be more working together than we can be working separately. And, much more working together than we can be working against each other. This is just common sense.

Human synergy is working together by explicit intent. (1+1)>>2

 

Human neutrality is working separately and ignoring each other. (1+1)=2

 

Human adversity is working against each other. (1+1)<2

 

A CommUnity of Minds Thinks About GAIA

Timothy wrote, “The more intelligent GAIA is, the more likely she will survive.”

 

So, Gaia “needs” us as neurons, does she ?

 

Seems to me Gaia was doing OK without us neurons for some extended prior time. Only argument along these lines that makes much sense might be the comet defense thing. So – we poisoned the biosphere with nuke waste in order to have the capability to possibly fend off a comet at some future time. Great, we cool neurons should pat ourselves on the back for being so cool.

We haven’t poisoned the biosphere beyond hope with nuclear waste yet. I think humans have potential to do a lot better than we have with managing things so far, both with regard to each other and to nature. People with a cautious frame of mind have not been running the show to date. But evolution can select more cautious, forward looking types to be far more common than they are at present.

Arthur said: “I think humans have potential to do a lot better than we have with managing
things so far, both with regard to each other and to nature.”

 

I just think the whole idea of “managing” nature is ridiculous on its face. At best we might learn to get what we minimally need from it with it killing us of vice versa.

 

As for Gaia “needing” us “neurons” to ward off comets, the probability that we could really serve that function is the multiplication product of:

( The probability that our technology would be good enough ) X ( The  probability that the comet threat is really a threat to Gaia overall )

This is likely a very small number, and it must be – estimated only over the span of human life on earth (a small fraction of earth’s time) and balanced against all the damage and extinctions we have caused to get to the point that we can crank out rockets and warheads.

 

Not a great bargain for “gaia” if you ask me.

Scott, in response to my statement: I think humans have potential to do a lot better than we have with managing things so far, both with regard to each other and to nature. You wrote:

“I just think the whole idea of “managing” nature is ridiculous on its face. At best we might learn to get what we minimally need from it with it killing us of vice versa.”

Ridiculous for the current level of intelligence, yes. I don’t see that a serious attempt has been made. Most people are far too highly self centered to make a real attempt to interact with nature with the idea that both should benefit.

 

Concerning your comment on the probability and value of our protecting GAIA from comets, I think we will have no choice but to do the best we can when the time comes.Things are the way they are.

 

I don’t see “gaia”, as a conscious entity, not in the same sense as we are. In a different sense, nature is far more aware than we are. Does a rock need to do calculations to figure out how to fall? There is a kind of instant awareness of a perfect kind in nature. If nature destroys me, then so it is. If not, I do the best I can according to how it has programmed me, as does everyone. And right now, my programming says to protect my life, to do this I need to protect the life of the natural systems that support me. And that would mean protecting the planet from such collisions. And it means dealing with the people who are now on a collision course with those systems.

Arthur, I agree with your point entirely. However, we need, I think, to begin by demystifying Gaia, so that we neither entertain self- aggrandizing notions about our exalted role as “global brain” nor fall into the reductionist skepticism of putting the word in quotes.

 

Briefly, then, Gaia is not a sentient or conscious organism, nor is she merely a rock that happens to be suitable for life. She is, as ’twere, halfway between these two extremes.

 

She is a solar-powered, self-organizing, self-regulating complex adaptive system. Nothing more, nothing less. Other examples of complex adaptive systems include tightly coupled systems such as cells, organisms, and organizations, and loosely coupled systems such as bacterial mats, ecosystems, and communities. What they all have in common, tightly or loosely coupled, is that they all have a vested interest in maintaining internal order by exporting entropy; all are “purposeful” to the limited extent that they seek to manage their immediate environment so that they may keep on keepin’ on. (In this respect they differ from, say, rocks or waterfalls, that couldn’t give a shit whether they disappear tomorrow, and therefore do nothing to prevent, control, or adapt to change in their environment. Gaia is manifestly adaptive.

 

“Then why do you use the feminine pronoun?” I hear people ask.

 

The same reason sailors did, for their ship. And like the ship which sailors feminized, only more so, Gaia is our support system, our mother, our matrix–and if anything visible deserves to be called “sacred” it is Gaia.

 

But as a complex adaptive system, Gaia does not care whether we live or die. In fact, if she could “prefer” anything, she would probably prefer our speedy demise, simply because our behavior collectively has reduced her resilience and adaptive flexibility–the sole criteria that matter to complex adaptive systems.

 

As to the original piece that prompted this thread–Can we change the world? Buckminster Fuller was indeed a profound visionary in systems design, but he was always politically naive as well–he actually believed that people would abandon their short-term self-interest and do things more intelligently, once they were shown how.

 

If only it were so. Instead, a global corporate oligarchy has emerged, dominated by the oil industry, with an overwhelming vested interest in a plainly nonsustainable status quo–and now they have subverted democracy worldwide, even at the local level (as Bill Moyers’ excellent PBS documentary, “Trading Democracy” so chillingly demonstrated).

 

They have done, and will continue to do, everything possible to prevent truly innovative ideas for alternative energy, alternative design, or alternative lifestyles from ever gaining wide popular exposure. They know that environmental consciousness is bad for business; therefore they have successfully marginalized the environmental movement. So in this light, the likelihood of visionary energy-saving ideas from Bucky Fuller or anyone else ever catching on and spreading rapidly is vanishingly thin.

 

–but not impossible. When a complex system like our global market economy goes into fibrillation and collapse, as now seems immanent, the principle from Chaos theory called “sensitivity to local conditions” kicks in, big time. As things become desperate, a window of opportunity will arise in which vast numbers of people will be suddenly far more receptive to utterly new ways of thinking about everything. Here is our “cubic centimeter of chance.”

 

This is a golden opportunity to launch a self-sustaining, self- replicating, worldwide Gaia movement–calling for a new, inclusive mode of identification with Gaia, our precious web of life, and organizing and empowering people to help each other learn Gaia, teach Gaia, heal Gaia, and create Gaia, building or restoring locally sustainable communities worldwide.

 

This is not a “new religion”–Gaia theory says nothing one way or the other about religious questions such as the existence of God, human sinfulness, salvation, or our ultimate destiny–and it is fully compatible with all existing religions. There are already Gaian Christians, Gaian Jews, Gaian Buddhists, even Gaian Muslims.

 

It is simply an enlightened basis of identification to which everyone can relate, regardless of nationality or religion. Unlike us, Gaia has no knowable “conscious purpose”–but like us, Gaia can get sick and die. And therefore, like us, she can, in theory, be healed. A worldwide Gaia movement can still, in theory, bring about a spontaneous remission of the cancer of the Earth…if only we seize the moment when it arises. And that will be soon.

In response to Tom’s statement:

“She is a solar-powered,. Nothing more, nothing less. Other examples of complex adaptive systems include tightly coupled systems such as cells, organisms, and organizations, and loosely coupled systems such as bacterial mats, ecosystems, and communities. What they all have in common, tightly or loosely coupled, is that they all have a vested interest in maintaining internal order by exporting entropy; all are “purposeful” to the limited extent that they seek to manage their immediate environment so that they may keep on keepin’ on. (In this respect they differ from, say, rocks or waterfalls, that couldn’t give a shit whether they disappear tomorrow, and therefore do nothing to prevent, control, or adapt to change in their environment. Gaia is manifestly adaptive.)”

Here are some words that I use to more accurately describe my understanding of this mystery of reality.

 

The term I use for Gaia is “The Ecodiversity Lifeform”.

 

A word similar to the concept of self-organizing, self-regulating complex adaptive systems is the one I call “organismic integrity”.

 

———————

 

RNA and DNA are discreet units of information that introduce a drive for purpose into the World. When these units of purpose connect and feedback to each other and to rest of the World they form systems of organismic integrity that futher elaborate living integrities. In this view, shortly after viruses elaborated into bacteria and became a world-wide phenomena, the Ecodiversity Lifeform came into being (circa 3.9 bya).

Tom wrote: “As to the original piece that prompted this thread–Can we change the world? Buckminster Fuller was indeed a profound visionary in systems design, but he was always politically naive as well–he actually believed that people would abandon their short-term self-interest and do things more intelligently, once they were shown how.”

Fuller was ecologically naÔve (and perhaps ecologically dangerous) as well. His proposal for the Amazon rainforest was to tear it down and make it into a city.

Tom wrote: “They have done, and will continue to do, everything possible to prevent truly innovative ideas for alternative energy, alternative design, or alternative lifestyles from ever gaining wide popular exposure. They know that environmental consciousness is bad for business; therefore they have successfully marginalized the environmental movement. So in this light, the likelihood of visionary energy-saving ideas from Bucky Fuller or anyone else ever catching on and spreading rapidly is vanishingly thin.”

People are supporting systems and unconsciously and consciously acting together (con-spiring) in pursuit of narrow short-term goals that degrade and destroy the system of life they live inside of (The Trance). We have come to depend upon the rewards and cultural momentum of an extremely dysfunctional incentive system in order to thrive. More ever, fewer and fewer people have any decision-making input in the system that increasingly is primarily rewarding fewer and fewer people. While doing so our way of living systematically externalizes responsibility from the eco and social catastrophe it is driving.

Tom wrote: “This is a golden opportunity to launch a self-sustaining, self- replicating, worldwide Gaia movement–calling for a new, inclusive mode of identification with Gaia, our precious web of life, and organizing and empowering people to help each other learn Gaia, teach Gaia, heal Gaia, and create Gaia, building or restoring locally sustainable communities worldwide.”

Some years ago I formulated a set of seven principles* – called the EarthSelf Responder that nest human understanding within the web of life.

 

*(3 on the mystery of reality of the Ecodiversity Lifeform, 1 on the dysfunctionality of the human trance and three on how to break the trance.

Tom wrote: “This is not a “new religion”–Gaia theory says nothing one way or the other about religious questions such as the existence of God, human sinfulness, salvation, or our ultimate destiny–and it is fully compatible with all existing religions. There are already Gaian Christians, Gaian Jews, Gaian Buddhists, even Gaian Muslims.”

I see the word religion in terms of its roots which relate to “re” and “ligio”. The “ligio” comes from word roots that imply a cord, or tie or binding and suggests that which you are connected to and bonded to. The “re” refers to once again which suggests a refocusing on what we are bonded to. Our ways of identifying the experience of existence come through a sense of the body, emotion, story mind and the integrated deeper connection of all three of these (spirit). This sense of bonding (religio) and spirit need not be a formalized religion in order to function as such. Many of us are bonded to other worldviews, family, nation-state, careers, ideologies, sports and so on, and these can function as prime values and ways of bonding to the World – religions.

Tom wrote: “It is simply an enlightened basis of identification to which everyone can relate, regardless of nationality or religion.”

If an enlightened basis of identification is to become real and effective (Earth as Self) it may have to function as a primal bonding to existence – religion.

Tom wrote: “Unlike us, Gaia has no knowable “conscious purpose”–but like us, Gaia can get sick and die.”

Our knowable conscious purposes are stories that we tell ourselves. The basis for these stories comes from our ability to tell them, combined with our evolutionary background and our social conditioning.

 

Humans are symbolically oriented to languages that articulate concepts. When we see ourselves (reflect) internally on the workings of this symbolic articulation we call it consciousness.

 

The actuality is that that so-called consciousness is but the tip of a vast iceberg of unconscious awareness.

 

Given that assumption, it is therefore reasonable to assume that the human sense of purpose is primarily an unconscious vehicle. Realizing this we can give a most certain respect to whatever we can discern of the unconscious purpose of the living system we are inside of.

Tom, I enjoyed your post in response to Arthur’s comments. I imagine we would find ourselves in agreement on many subjects. However, I think you and some of my other readers may be missing a fundamental truth in your analysis. You wrote:

Briefly, then, Gaia is not a sentient or conscious organism, nor is she merely a rock that happens to be suitable for life. She is, as ’twere, halfway between these two extremes.

Without life, Gaia IS merely a rock. It is only LIFE, that makes Gaia “a solar-powered, self-organizing, self-regulating complex adaptive system”.

 

We humans are a form of LIFE! This is a fact of reality paramount to understanding ourselves. And, yet this fact is so pervasive and constant that it rarely enters our consciousness. Our clear and distant superiority to all other forms of life have made it easy for us to neglect our biological basis. As we have seen ourselves different and superior to all other forms of life, we have missed the point . While we differ from plants and animals, we share their aliveness – we are still forms of life – we are still living organisms –we are still living systems .

 

When we examine ourselves scientifically, we discover that humans are living systems, and it follows therefore that our powers and our problems will be those of life. If we are to create a safe and comfortable future for ourselves and our children, we must understand our connection to life. Our life connection is not only relevant, it is the crucial factor in determining a safe passage through the current human crisis.

 

We are clearly the most powerful form of LIFE. We were created by GAIA. We are cells in body of GAIA. She has a purpose for us. The problem is we humans are unAWARE of our identity as LIFE. Tom, when your wrote:

But as a complex adaptive system, Gaia does not care whether we live or die. In fact, if she could “prefer” anything, she would probably prefer our speedy demise, simply because our behavior collectively has reduced her resilience and adaptive flexibility–the sole criteria that matter to complex adaptive systems.

You are demonstrating my point. GAIA created humanity. She absolutely needs humanity to accomplish her purpose. What is her purpose? I don’t know. I am only a cell in her body. But, I absolutely believe she has a purpose and I imagine that purpose involves action beyond our solar system.

 

In the present stage of GAIA’s evolution humanity is acting like a CANCER. We are destroying the body of GAIA as certainly as any CANCER destroys the body of a human or animal patient. In medicine today, we know that cancer cells are just cells that have lost their identity with the body — lost the awareness of their connection with the body. Today the humans cells of GAIA are mostly cancer cells. Tom, later you wrote:

As things become desperate, a window of opportunity will arise in which vast numbers of people will be suddenly far more receptive to utterly new ways of thinking about everything. Here is our “cubic centimeter of chance.”

 

This is a golden opportunity to launch a self-sustaining, self- replicating, worldwide Gaia movement–calling for a new, inclusive mode of identification with Gaia, our precious web of life, and organizing and empowering people to help each other learn Gaia, teach Gaia, heal Gaia, and create Gaia, building or restoring locally sustainable communities worldwide.

To take advantage of this “window of opportunity”, we will have to be prepared. We will have needed to increase our AWARENESS. This is the moment when we will need to think and act as synergans.  We must stretch our skin around the entire earth.  The body of GAIA is all of LIFE. We must extend our senses to monitor all our fellow cells — all humanity, all animal life, all plant life, all mineral life. We must develop empathy for all of LIFE.

 

In response to Timothy’s statement:

“You are demonstrating my point. GAIA created humanity.”

In my opinion, Gaia or The Ecodiversity Lifeform does not create life. On the contrary, life creates The Ecodiversity Lifeform.

Timothy wrote: “She absolutely needs humanity to accomplish her purpose.

It is the basic units of the web of life that are needed to create a planetary organismic integrity and its resultant drive and elaboration. For the Ecodiversity Lifeform to maintain integrity she fundamentally needs the Astro-geophysical engines that drive the processes of life. Then she needs the “Bacterial Super-organism” (includes all prokaryotes) that is the foundation of Life. To sustain the elaboration of diversity and resilience that maintains Her Ecodiversity she plainly does not need “humanity (which) is acting like a CANCER”.

 Jivan Vatayan wrote:

Gaia or The Ecodiversity Lifeform does not create life. On the contrary, life creates The Ecodiversity Lifeform.

 Yes, I can agree that LIFE is primal to GAIA. I mis-spoke. I should have said: NATURE created humanity.

 

I could have stated my point more carefully. GAIA is a new organism that is currently self-organizing. In that self-organization she is using all of Nature’s products — the Earth itself, bacteria–single celled plants, single celled animals, plants, animals, and humans to create herself.

 

GAIA is the next evolutionary stabilizing endpoint. Just as plants were an earlier evolutionary endpoint, and animals were an earlier evolutionary endpoint, and yes even we humans were an earlier evolutionary endpoint. 

 

Within our human bodies are organs which are primal to our body as a whole. Within those organs are tissues which are primal to the organs. Within those tissues are cells which are primal to the tissues. Within those cells are molecules which are primal to cells. Now as a biologist and physician, I know that life begins at the molecular level of organization of Nature.

 

(Living Systems Theory by James Grier Miller)

 

But there are stages of process that are primal to LIFE. LIFE is not primordial. Within the molecules that form the cells of our bodies are atoms which are primal to molecules. Within those atoms there are particles which are primal to atoms. Within those particles are gravitationally trapped light which is primal to particles.

(Theory of Process by Arthur Young)

 

Jivan next wrote:

GAIA  plainly does not need “humanity (which) is acting like a CANCER”.

I would agree that if humanity continues to act as a cancer then GAIA will die. Humans (the potiential neurons of GAIA) are so intelligent that they are dangerous. They remain dangerous as long as they fail to develop the awareness for their role as the brain and mind of GAIA.  They are presently killing the body of GAIA, and will continue to do so if our awareness does not expand.

 

GAIA is still a fetus. She had not yet been born. This is my fundamental point. The Earth and all LIFE presently on the Earth represent the tissues and organs of GAIA. But GAIA as a thinking, self-conscious, automonous, reproductive capable organism is not yet born. She is still self-organizing.

 

GAIA will be stillborn without a Time-binding class of life. It does not have to be human as we know it, but it does have to be intelligent. Without this intelligent form of life there will be no GAIA.

 

Now we humans may seem flawed, but I don’t think that is really the case. I think we are just ignorant of our proper role in Nature, and thinking we are the end product. So we live on the surface of Nature but not in Nature. I don’t think humanity was a mistake. Nature invented us. We are the current end product of 3.5 billion years of synergic evolution. The next end product is GAIA.

 

The neurons are no more important than any other cell in the body. But they are a critical component.

 

The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

 

We humans would not be more important than any of the other components GAIA, but as the current Earth evolved intelligent Time-binding Class of Life, we are the only candidate for the role of neurons in GAIA’s brain.

— — — 

 

The conclusion of most if not all on the AlasBabylon Yahoo Group is that humanity cannot solve our impending Fossil Fuel crisis. I agree. However, I am sure that GAIA could. 

How did humans get so intelligent? Why do we have such a big brain? Well, it didn’t happen overnight. The Earth is believed to have formed four and one-half billion years ago. Over the next one billion years, the Earth’s surface cooled forming the crust. Life stirred quickly on planet Earth. With an abundance of ultraviolet light, methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen, the Earth’s seas soon had an abundance of amino acids. Life was soon to follow. Today we have found fossils from early living systems that are over 3 billion years old. What advantage emerging humanity had over the animals was not physical. The animals were bigger, stronger, and faster. The human advantage was intelligence. Time-binding is not a new physical form. Time-binding is a new way of “thinking”. And, understanding human intelligence — understanding Time-binding will require us to understand the evolution of ourselves and of our human brain. To understand the evolution of our human intelligence­ which is to understand the roots of Time-binding, we need not go back three billion years. as A.T.W. Simenons writing in 1961 explained.

How Humans Got Big Brains

A.T.W. Simenons

 A good starting point is about two hundred million years ago. By then life had emerged from the sea. Some amphibians, having learned how to spend their whole life on the land, had already developed into reptiles. The reptiles were the first backboned animals that were able to breed on dry land. They had developed real lungs out of the simpler sacs with which amphibian’s breathe, their skin had become dry and scaly and their eggs had grown a tough protective shell. At that time the reptiles were already a great biological success. They had increased in size and were branching out into a large number of different species.

The Ruling reptiles produced the biggest animal that has every walked the Earth, Brachiosaurus, which could have looked over the roof of a three storied house and may have weighed fifty tons. There were huge flying dragons that conquered the air for the first time in the history of backboned animals. There were other forms that ran on two legs and had a long neck, somewhat resembling an enormous ostrich. Yet others looked like a rhinoceros, while some developed into ferocious, rampaging, flesh eaters that preyed on sluggishly browsing herbivora all of them often of gigantic size. Some of these early reptiles returned to an aquatic life, for instance, the marine turtles. However, turtles must still come ashore to lay their eggs. This single fact shows that they were originally landliving reptiles and not amphibians, because amphibians lay their eggs in water though much of their life is spent on the land. Thus the variety among these reptiles was as great as that of the present day mammals and their dominance over all other creatures of the Earth was undisputed. Among them lived the ancestors of our tortoises, snakes, lizards, crocodiles and alligators. These few forms have survived, but the whole crown of the repetilian famliy tree, the so called Ruling Reptiles vanished.

The beginning of the evolution of four-legged land living animals lies in the Carboniferous Age. Luxurious forests of gigantic ferns and towering trees, often reaching a height of one hundred feet, were piling up the vegetable matter that was later to become coal and oil. Just as the Ruling Reptiles were about to burst into their Garguntuan evolution, one small and still primitive retilian species broke away from the main stem. This aberrant species took to the trees of the Carboniferous Forest and became the first reptile to adopt an entirely tree-living mode of life. For a long time these animals continued to be reptiles, but life in the trees gradually brought about some remarkable bodily changes which were the rudimenary beginnings of typically mammalian features.

(Recall that the process of synergic evolution is continuously adapting every organism to its environment. Therefore changes in the environment must of course result in adaptive changes in the organism. –TKW) 

These small reptiles, destined to develop into mammals, found themselves faced with enumerable new problems. They  had to learn how to maintain a precarious balance in the branches and for this they needed quick muscular reactions in their limbs. Being defenseless, their survival depended on their ability to scutter away and hide when giant reptiles reared their heads into the trees or marauding winged dragons swooped down upon them from the skies. To detect these sudden dangers they needed good eyes and an acute sense of hearing, all attributes for which there was less need in the ponderous world of the earthbound creatures.

The working of a reptile’s brain is sluggish, and sight and hearing are poor. Only the sense of smell is highly developed. This arrangement of the senses and the working of the reptilian brain were not at all suitable for an agile and timid creature living in the trees. The speed with which the brain could translate messages from the senses into action was far too slow, and the high development of the sense of smell was almost useless to an animal living on insects, fruits and buds. Then as now, the reptilian brain was a highly organized central nervous system, in spite of its sluggishness. It was perfectly suited to control movement on the ground­feeding, mating, breeding and the internal functioning of the reptile’s body. It perfomed these many functions by the interaction of a large number of nerve centers finely tuned to each other and arranged in the brain with amazing compactness. Each of thse nerve centers had a very definite function to fulfill in the control of the body. For example, there was a center which controlled breathing, another that adjusted the blood circulation to momentary requirements and one which regulated sleep and waking. Such centers can by natural selection from suitable mutations increase or decrease their specific activity to meet evolutionary needs, but none of them can take over the function of any other center, nor can it change into a center governing a completely new bodily function.

The problems of quick muscular reaction, of feeding and breeding in the trees and the many other difficulties that confronted the reptile could never have been solved by the mere enlargement of its existing brain structure. Either the tree living reptile was doomed to die out for want of a suitable brain, or an entirely new trend in brain structure was needed to ensure the survival of the species. Man and all mammals owe their existence only to the fact that evolution adopted the latter alternative. This was one of the extremely rare instances in which evolution entered into a new phase to save an ill-adjusted species from extinction instead of sacrificing it.

In a reptile, the perception of smell is localized in two large bulbous outgrowths of the brain which we call the olfactory lobes. The olfactory lobes lie outside the rest of the brain, to which they are connected by a slender stalk. They are so far removed from all the the other centers of the brain that a new nervous function could originate in them­and in them alone­without structural alterations in the rest of the brain becoming necessary.

The reptilian brain is so organized that it must respond to all incoming messages from the senses. On the ground these messages lead to purposeful actions, for instance, burrowing for food or safety; but in the trees many of these actions become pointless. A reptiles’ behavior is governed entirely by automatic reflexes. It’s actions are not subject to reason. It does not have to make a choice between different ways of reacting. All its actions are due to sensory messages putting an ingrained reflex into operation, and over this process the reptile has no control.

A reptile, taking to the trees, carried with it all the ancient reflexes which it had acquired in the millions of years on the ground. These reflexes which the change of habitat rendered useless must have been a terrible harassment to an already overworked reptilian brain. In the slow course of evolution these reflexes would have gradually changed into more suitable ones, but so desperate was the situation of the tree-living reptile that it would have become extinct long before normal evolutionary trends could have brought about a better adjustment to the new environment. Some sort of evolutionary short cut was needed if the species was to survive.

The shortcut was biologically evolved out of just the right mutations occurring at this dramatic moment. It consisted of a mechanism which blocked useless messages from the nose and thus prevented them from reaching those centers of the brain which would have been obliged to react to them. In the olfactory lobes a few cells took over the function of a screening device, a sort of censorship or filter by which incoming olfactory messages were either suppressed or allowed to pass, according to their vital importance. This sorting or classifying of smells relieved the reptilian brain of the exhausting need to react to every message from the nose, and thus, in the trees, proved to be an efficient labor saving device.

The change in the olfactory lobe must have come about in the following way. Among the millions of individuals that lived through all of those ages, there occurred a mutation­a freakish change in the olfactory cells­which rendered such individuals able to withhold useless olfactory information. The freakish trait was inherited, and as the descendants of the mutated forms had a better chance of survival, those that had not inherited this new mechanism gradually died out, until only the forms that had the ability to censor smells survived.

An olfactory censorship that was able to prevent useless messages from reaching a nervous apparatus that would otherwise have been obliged to turn them into action gave the tree-living reptiles’ brain a new freedom from the tyranny of the sense of smell. It’s brain used this freedom to proceed rapidly with many other problems of adjustment. It was not forced to wait for a slow evolutionary weakening of the sense of smell.

Among the most pressing problems of adaptation was the improvement of sight and hearing. But as these senses widened their scope and came to furnish more finely detailed information, a point was reached at which they too began to harass the brain with messages that had no bearing on vital needs. And so once again the brain needed protection from the senses. The innovation in the olfactory lobes had proved to be outstandingly successful in achieving this end, but evidently the eyes and the ears were unable to evolve a screening mechanism of their own. They were in a upsurge of evolutionary progress and probably had no idle nerve cells which could be diverted to a new function. Moreover, the centers of seeing and hearing were structurally much closer to the central part of the brain than the olfactory lobes. Instead of evolving a censorship of their own, they made use of the one which was already in operation for the sense of smell. This evolved what may be called a complicated process of nervous rewiring and led to an enormous enlargement of those parts of the olfactory lobe that were performing the screening function.

Gradually the automatic reflexes which made the muscles contract or relax in movement came to be similarly supervised, calling for a further enlargement of censoring brain tissue. In higher mammals, finally, even the instincts themselves became subject to a process of censorship.

Out of such humble beginnings in the olfactory lobes of these first tree-living reptiles grew the cerebral hemispheres, the large domes which carry the cortex. These cerebral hemispheres have, in modern humans, reached so great a size that they now almost smother the original brain. In higher animals the original reptilian brain is called a brainstem in order to distinguish it from the much more recent cerebral hemispheres. In the human brain, the brainstem has come to look like a mere appendage hidden under and between the two hemispheres.

Had not this remarkable change in a tree-living reptiles’ sense of smell taken place it is doubtful whether mammals and their ultimate achievement, humans, could have evolved.

A. T. W.  Simeons, Man’s Presumptious Brain, E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1961, ( Dr. Simeons thanks and acknowledges Dr. Kenneth Oakley, D.S.C., F.B.A., of the British Museum of Natural History for his anthropological advice in writing this passage from the book.)

A major division of synergic science is the study of human intelligence. Many are familar with R. Buckminster Fuller who studied synergy in physical universe. Today, I featured an article by N. Arthur Coulter who studied synergy in human intelligence. This morning I will continue to disclose more of my work in understanding human intelligence.

The Vectors of Human Intelligence

Timothy Wilken, MD

In my search to understand human intelligence, I have discovered seven states of mind that when accomplished increase human intelligence, they are:  calmness, awareness, synergy, validation, motivation, adaptability & responsibility.

CALMNESS —def—> The ability to process information without physiological response.  

An individual who has mastered calmness knows that all internal thinking is symbolic. If my body responds to every thought of danger let alone every real danger, then I will truly come to know the meaning of the sentence: “The coward dies a thousand deaths the brave man only once.”

Today most of us die a thousand deaths. When we imagine our problems and stresses, our bodies tense and strain. When we think of danger, we feel afraid. When we think of hurt, we feel anger. The feelings of anger and fear are just our internal sensings of our bodies as they prepare to fight or flee. But when our bodies prepare to fight and flee, they shut down vital systems.

If these systems are shut down for more than a few moments, we shorten our lives and become sick. In a world of chronically frighted and chronically angered individuals, all our lives are shortened, and all of us are sick.

In our modern world, calmness is a survival skill. Calmness is the ability to think of danger and hurt without feeling fear or anger. Calmness is ability to process information without physiological response.

AWARENESS —def—>  What I know of the whole / Total known about the whole

Awareness is a variable of knowing. It applies to the all phenomena in universe. Some examples of increasing awareness are: A newborn baby has minimal awareness, not even responding to his own hands and feet. A child is usually only aware of self. A good mother carries an awareness that includes her children and husband. A good manager will carry an awareness of his entire department. A scientist seeking peace may carry an awareness of six billion other humans.

Awareness —def—>         Who I know 
                                            All living on earth 

Awareness means that when I decide, I have considered all I am aware of. So another way of thinking about awareness is: The child’s decisions concern only himself. The mother’s decisions considers not only her needs, but the needs  of her children and husband as well. The manager’s decisions considers the needs of everyone in his department. And the scientist’s decisions considers the needs of four and one-half billion other humans.

SYNERGY—def—> The WIN-WIN relationship.

It is when a relationship is good for me and good for you— it is when we both benefit from the relationship.

The Primary retardent to efficiency, productivity, and quality of life is CONFLICT. Synergy is the elimination of conflict. Synergy is the win-win relationship.  

VALIDATION—def—> The human state of feeling approved of. 

It involves both self-approval and other-approval. An ideal state is when an individual has both self-respect and other-respect.

Approval is frequently hard to come by in our present world. All humans experience numerous and frequent episodes of disapproval. This produces what I call validation damage. This damage  produces humans who are highly polarized in terms of validation.

Some individuals seek only other-approval getting nearly all their validation by pleasing others. Within their relationships they are most concerned about  other’s needs. Their posture may help other win, but often self is ignored and loses—lose/win.

These strongly other-validating individuals tend to be oversensitive and underconfident. These individuals tend to fail when they need self.

Another large group of individuals seek only self-approval getting nearly all of their validation by pleasing self. They are most concerned about self’s needs. Their posture may help self win, but often other is ignored and loses—win/lose.

These strongly self-validating individuals tend to be undersensitive and overconfident. These individuals tend to fail when they need other.

Optimization occurs when an individual becomes balanced. Seeking his validation needs by seeking both self-approval and other-approval. He seeks a relationship with other that is good for both self and other. This posture may help both self and other to win—win-win. These balanced validating individuals tend to be both sensitive and confident. These individuals tend to succeed.  Validation is the human state of feeling approved of.  

 MOTIVATION —def—>The strength of the urge seeking action.

The strength of ones motivation is a primary determinant of success. Dual Mind Theory sees Motivation resulting from both the Space-mind’s desires and the Time-mind’s goals. Space-mind is motivated by an attraction to fun and pleasure, and a repulsion from pain. Time-mind is motivated by  attraction to meaning and a repulsion from boredom.

The human mind is most interested on those tasks that it finds both entertaining and meaningful. Applied to education, the most powerful forms of instruction are entertaining and educating. This is producing a new approach to instruction called “EDUTAINMENT”.
 
Motivation is best when my life is enjoyable and meaningful—fun and interesting. One lesson we can learn from motivation is that when what we are doing isn’t fun and interesting, then we should make changes until it is fun and interesting. Motivation is the strength of the urge seeking action.

 ADAPTABILITY—def—>Ready, able, and willing to change.   

An individual with 100% adaptability lives what he knows. The highly adaptive individual is always seeking to adjust himself to optimize his relationship with reality. He lives what he knows, if he knows cigarette smoking is unhealthy, he chooses not to smoke.

In a universe that is always changing adaptability is of great value. It involves a sensitivity to change. Adaptability is being ready, able and willing to change.  

 RESPONSIBILITY—def—> The ability to respond—Response Able. 

 This requires an individual to accept the consequences of his actions or non-actions—to accept the risks and benefits and consequences of those actions not for himself, but on all others as well. Responsibility is the ability to respond.

The greatest productivity occurs in an environment that is highly supportive of these vectors of human intelligence — calmness, awareness, synergy, validation, motivation,  adaptability & responsibility.

_

In the last two parts of this article, I have talked about learning to “could” on each other. Now I would like to “could” on my readers. I will start by revealing an important secret.

My World of  ”Ought to Be”

Timothy Wilken, MD

In the last two days I have talked about learning to “could” on each other. Now I would like to “could” on my readers. I will start by revealing an important secret.

If you want to help make a world that works for all humanity, you must know this secret. It is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness.  You must live from the point of view of the whole.  You must identify with the whole. If you take care of the whole, the whole will take care of you.

The following analogy may help you understand.  Think a moment of how our brain functions — the neurons of our human brain focus entirely on the needs of the whole body, and in turn discover the whole body takes care of them.  They have no concerns and give no attention to maintaining their own temperature, to acquiring their own nutrition, to oxygenating themselves, or even in protecting themselves from bacteria or virus.

The neurons place their trust in survival of the whole.  By making decisions which keep the body healthy and safe, they  insure the body is capable of meeting all the needs of the neurons.  By serving the whole the neurons find themselves served.

I have taught that humanity is evolving. We evolved from the animals. Animals are space-binders. Their lives are dominated by adversity. Early humans lives were dominated by adversity. Humans who commit to adversity could be called Adversans. I explained to escape the Adversary world, humans invented Captitalism and the Great Market. This is a Neutral mechanism. Humans who commit to Capitalism and the Market could be called Neutrans. I have explained that if humanity is to have a future that we must give up the hurting of Adversity — give up the ignoring of Neutrality, and embrace the helping of Synergy. Humans who commit to Synergy could be called Synergans.

Now imagine that the Earth including all of life is a single organism — GAIA.  Further imagine the entire humans species  —  all of humanity — organized in a single organizational tensegrity. This evolved form of humanity could be called Synerganity.  Synerganity then could be the brain of GAIA.  Each human being functioning as a neuron within GAIA’s brain.

Synerganity will care for GAIA — care for all of Earth.  We humans could function as neurons.  We could care for the whole and discover ourselves to be cared for as a part of  Gaia.  Synergan will meet all the needs of the individual humans within it.  Just as our brain meets the needs of all the forty trillion cells contained in our bodies.

Synerganity structured as a organizational tensegrity could create an optimum environment to maximze individual meaning for all humans on earth. If we serve synerganity, synerganity will serve us. I believe this is what Jesus meant when he taught us to serve God and all  our needs would be met. Fuller knew this intuitively — he discovered the more humans he served the more important was his life. The only time he could’t meet his individual needs was when he focused on trying to meet them.

When a human begins to think as a synergan, then GAIA’s brain grows.  The more intelligent GAIA is, the more likely she will survive.

Thinking as a synergan is a state of mind — to begin we stop thinking about meeting our needs separately.  We stop adapting from our own individual point of view. Instead, we think wholistically — how can I help synerganity meet my needs. My needs are a subset of synerganity’s needs.  We stop thinking about accomplishing our individual goals separately, instead how can synerganity accomplish its goals which include the subset of my goals.

When I am a synergan, I think about meeting all Synerganity’s needs — which include my own individual needs, and my own individual survival. When I am a synergan, I think about meeting Synerganity’s goals — which include my individual goals.

Then the first and most important step on the critical path for human survival is for all of us to increase our awareness. 
 

AWARENESS   =   Who I Know on Earth 
                               All Living on Earth

As a synergan, I decide with an awareness of the needs and goals of all of humanity.  There is no place for neutral in a synergic Earth.  To be unaware is to conflict by accident and redundancy.

Only by examing all points of view can I choose the action that promotes the most and hinders none — only by stabilizing our whole species can I hope to protect my family.  As Arthur Coulter teaches I must choose SYNERGY.

This then is FIRST TASK — I must learn to think as a synergan.  I must stretch my skin around the entire earth.  I must extend my senses to monitor all my fellow cells.  I must develop empathy for all of humanity.

With increasing awareness we will be able to self-organize much more effectively — to synergize much more powerfully.

We all have  our own individual awareness — each awareness is unique and different from any other awareness on the planet.  From whatever point of awareness we begin each of us can transcend ourselves and choose to become even more aware of the whole … the whole species.

As a synergan, I view life from the point of view of all.  My awareness is ONE.  I make my decisions with an awarenss of the goals and needs of all humans.  I need not know the detail’s of every human’s life to know every human’s needs.  I need not know everyone’s story to know what environments have potential for everyone’s meaning.  An awareness of ONE is more a qualitative change than a quanitative one.  It is a new point of view.

Choose to think as a synergan.  Think of yourself inside synerganity.  Meet your needs as a subset of synerganity’s needs.  Serve the whole and the whole will take care of you.

This is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness.  If you take care of the whole, the whole will take care of you.   If we serve synerganity well, we will find ourselves alive and well safe inside of synerganity. The world’s problems today are much larger than any single one of us.  But to synerganity, these problems will seem like nothing. No more than a few months work.  Then our future will truely be unlimited.  The stars will indeed be ours.

We now have a solution — the Organizational Tensegrity is a pattern we could use to become synerganity.  The binding is the win-win relationship.  Decision is made in Heterarchy with synergic consensus as first principle.  No one is coerced.  All losses are synergically vetoed.  Action occurs in Hierarchy  negotiated by all, here again we all win.

We could make the world better. We could work together. We could love each other. Are you ready to join the Synergic Evolution? All you have to do is change your mind. 

---

Read the ORTEGRITY paper

 

In part one of this article, I introduced the concept of the Dual Mind. All humans have two minds — the space-mind and the time-mind. These two minds create two worlds  —  the world of “is” and the world of “ought to be” — a picture of the real world and an opinion of the ideal world.

It is our ability to create these two worlds that makes us human.

The Dual Mind and Progress

Timothy Wilken, MD

Remember, Korzybski defined Time-binding as that unique human ability to pass that ‘knowing’ from one generation to the next generation. 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.

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. Animals have only the space-mind. They are confined to living in the world of “is”.

Only humans have access to the dual-world. We can and do pass our knowing from one generation to the next.

Progress —defined—> The progression from the world of “is” to the world of “ought to be” —  the progression from the real world to the ideal world.

We humans need our space-mind to survive in space. To be safe in the world of “is”, but we need our time-mind if we want to create a better world  —  a world that “ought to be”.

Albert Schweitzer, the great humanitarian who worked with the poor and ill in Africa, said he wanted to see a world where there was no disease. Well, I think most of us would probably agree that represents a good “ought to be”.

Now, its important to remember that not all “ought to be”s are good.

“Ought to be”s are just opinions. Adolf Hitler wanted a world where there were no Jews. Not such a good “ought to be”. An “ought to be” is just an opinion. At its very best, it becomes an ideal. At its very worst it can become nightmare of crime and tragedy. Animals kill for food or to eliminate competing genetic lines, but only humans murder each other because their time-mind has decided that someone “ought not to be”.

The space-mind and the time-mind are partners. Universe is space-time.

When we use our dual minds intelligently, our space-mind tells us what is and our time-mind tells us what could be. What could be. Our world of “ought to be” is an opinion of how realty could be. The term should is best left to describe the picture of how reality is. This is also the scientific definition of the term should.

The dual-world model is also very helpful in determining whether your relationship with someone should continue. I have used this model in couple counseling. Not uncommonly, when a husband and wife come in to see me, they are at war with each other. After I have got to know them and learned how they perceive their problems, I teach them about the dual-world. Then it becomes a simple matter to ask each of them to define their “ought to be” mates. Then the next step is find out if they are willing to “could” on each other and work together to move in the desired direction.

The human space-mind often gets injured by its experiences in life because it thinks in pictures and images and feelings. These three always go together. So if a lot of pictures in your memory are attached to negative feelings, then you will carry a lot of beliefs and associations that are hurtful. All of us carry some of these painful pictures around. Most of us have seen somebody, that we care very much about, when they were very angry, screaming, or crying. And further, because no one is the way they “ought to be”, nearly all of us have felt some time felt rejected by our parents even though they may loved us. And, if you are not the way you “ought to be” then there must be something wrong with you. This makes us feel second rate and inferior. These old injuries often occur in our childhood and are carried throughout our lives unless they are repaired.

Let me use an example from my own life. My wife carries an injury from her childhood that Rational Psychologists call catastrophizing. Her mother was a catastrophizer and my wife is one as well. Do you know what a catastrophizer is? Let me give you an example of catastrophizing. Imagine you are sitting at the kitchen table and one of your kids knocks over a glass of water. Now a non-catastrophizer might say, “Oh,here, let me get a towel. You could be more careful son.

Now lets look at the same situation with a catastrophizer. One of your kids knocks over a glass of water. The castastrophizer responds, “OH NO!. MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENED? OH CHRIST, MY TABLE IS RUINED. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL.”

Catastrophizing. Do you know anybody who acts like this? Unfortunately, catastrophizing behavior which is never intentional still injures little kids. Why? Because children’s space-minds create pictures with strong negative feelings when events like this happen. They believe they are bad. They think, “What did I do? Something terrible. I ruined mother’s table. I must be a horrible person to have created so much havoc for my mother. Maybe she won’t love me.” And so children who have catastrophizing parents duck. They get gun shy. And by the way if you are a catastrophizer it’s almost always because you know a catastrophizer who was usually your parent. And your parent knew a catastrophizer who was probably her parent, and so on.

We always get two things from our parents. We get their ‘knowing’ and their ‘not knowing’. So, if mom was really good with a checkbook, always had the budget balanced, knows where every penny is, then probably I’ll also be good with a checkbook. But if mom was a catastrophizer, then I may be a catastrophizer too.

So in my world of “ought to be”, my wife would learn not to catastrophize. Now one of the injuries I carry from my childhood is called by Psychologists a touch disorder. What’s a touch disorder? Being uncomfortable when you are physically touched by another human. Many Americans have this injury. Where does it come from? Not getting touched very much. So, if one or both of your parents were uncomfortable being touched or touching others, you may not have gotten touched much as a child. I can remember whenever my father would try to give my mother a hug or a kiss, she would withdraw or pull away saying, “Oh no, not in front of the children.” So I grew up uncomfortable with being touched and with a tendency not to reach out and touch others.

And, in my wife’s world of “ought to be”, I would learn to be more comfortable with being touched and in touching others.

After learning about the dual-world, we were both able to could on each other. I was able to tell my wife Judy that my “ought to be” Judy would be less catastrophizing. And she told me that her “ought to be” Tim would be warm, affectionate and more comfortable with touch.

So, after thinking about it for a while and I said, “Well, my “ought to be” Tim would also be warmer, affectionate and more comfortable with touch. And she said, “You know, my “ought to be” Judy would be less catastrophizing.” So we helped each other move towards our mutual “ought to be”s.

If you can’t agree on “ought to be”s with the important people in your life then you don’t have sound basis for a successful relationship, and you will be better off terminating that relationship. But before you decide to end a relationship, you need to make sure both of you understand the dual-world.

When I worked with couples in stressed and troubled relationships, I would teach them about the dual-world. This was often the very first lesson, because it  explains so much about human relationships. And when we reached the point in counseling were I felt they understood the dual-world, I would say, “Now let’s talk about what’s wrong.”

The wife would say, “Well he’s doing this, and it really annoys me.”

“All right, so your “ought to be” husband wouldn’t do that. He would do something different.”

And then the husband would say, “Well, she is doing this, and it really annoys me”

“All right, so your “ought to be” wife wouldn’t do that. She would do something different.”

Are the two of you willing to could on each other, remember no shoulding, but inviting each other to change, pulling each other a little bit with an invitations, can you pull each other a little bit in the right direction?

And you would be amazed at how often individuals using this model can decide that they really would like to move in the directions that the other individual really does want. And that it hasn’t been that they didn’t like the idea, often they agreed. It’s they didn’t like being pushed. They didn’t like being shoulded on. They didn’t like feeling NOT OK, bad, defective, not all right. They didn’t like being treated as inferior and without respect.

Imagine you are occasionally late getting home because you work overtime to help pay the bills, sometimes you forget to call your wife and she always gets upset. One day she gives you an ultimatum, “You never call me when you’re going to be late. If you don’t start calling me, I’m going to leave you.”

Now you start thinking, “Why should I have to call her? I am working hard for her and the kids. She knows I’m not goofing off. She should trust me. How dare she threaten to leave me for working so hard for the family. I shouldn’t have to call her.”

So my wife is shoulding on me, and I am shoulding on myself. Maybe one of my friends is shoulding on me as well, perhaps telling me that I shouldn’t let my wife tell me what to do. And I become reactive and say, “No. I’m not going to let anybody tell me what to do.” Remember the space-mind is in charge of survival. Survival is an individual experience. When you are angry, when you are hostile, when you are in a rage, you are fighting against the world.

So if we can get rid of the shoulds, and the badness, and the NOT OK’s, then very often human beings can say, “You’re right. I could call you when I am going to be late. If you’ll stop telling me that I should call you,then I could call you.”

Now the time-mind doesn’t think there is much difference between saying, “You could call me,” rather than, “You should call me.” But the space-mind feels an enormous difference.

Remember, its not what you say its how you say it. The time-mind focuses on content, while the space-mind focuses on the process.

And, your could has to be genuine. If the tone of your voice is demanding when you say “YOU COULD CALL ME!” then your words will not be heard as a request. The space-mind is an expert at reading tone of voice and body language. We cannot hide our true feelings from the space-mind of others.

So if we want to make progress in our personal lives or as a community, we must learn to could on each other — to pull our fellow humans from the world of is toward the world of ought to be — to pull our fellow humans from the real world toward the ideal world.

We humans could solve our problems. We humans could work together. We humans could love each other.

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 Read Dual World Part III

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” —George Santayana

The World of “is” & the World of “ought to be”

Timothy Wilken, MD   

Did you watch the opening ceremony for 2002 Winter Olympics? It was beautiful. We sure put on a good show for the rest of the world. We honor and cherish the first humans to inhabit North America — the Native Americans.  We respect and protect the native animals of America — the Buffalo, Coyote, and Eagle. And, did you see the beautiful paper puppets? Wasn’t the one of the giant American Bison cool with all the little buffalos running inside of it?

Of course, our show for the rest of the world wasn’t really the truth. It was only a picture of the world as it ”ought to be”. An “ideal” picture of early America. This is the way our Amercian history “ought to have been”.

In the “real” world — in the world of “is”, those arriving from Europe would kill or imprison most of the Native Americans, use the Chinese and African immigrants as slave labor, and kill all but 800 of the millions of mighty Buffalo that ran on the American plains. This was the number of living Buffalo at the end of the 19th century. Our American history “could have been different”. But it wasn’t.

I am suggesting that the opening ceremony “could” also have been different. It could have presented the settlement of the American west with a little more respect for the truth. It could have still been beautiful, perhaps even more beautiful. I think it would have been much more valuable to show the rest of the world that we know that real adversity is a part of our history. That we know we made mistakes in the past, and have committed to learn from those mistakes. That we now have respect for Native Americans, Chinese Americans and African Americans. That we wish we had not made so many native animal species extinct, and that today we cherish all live on planet Earth.

This would have shown the world that we did remember the past.

Human intelligence science has revealed that our enormous intelligence is the result of possessing dual minds. These dual minds create pictures of a dual world in which we live. Most of us don’t know we have dual minds and almost all of us don’t know we live in a dual world. We live in two worlds all of the time.

Let us begin by examining the world created by the space-mind. It creates a picture of reality. Space-mind is in charge of survival. So it needs to know what the world is really like. Boy if you are in your space-mind, you better live in the real world. Right? Ever play dodge ball? When I was a kid, dodge ball was a big game. I don’t know whether they even play it any more. You go into the gym and line up against the wall and somebody throws a volleyball at you at high speed. Right? You dodge it Right? You better know where the ball really is or you are going to get hit. Ever play snow ball fights? Same thing right? You better know where those snowballs really are or you’re going to get hit. The space-mind has to know where things are in space. Where they really are. When I’m teaching this lesson to a group of students I’ll suddenly toss a pencil to someone sitting in the first row, and it’s amazing, they almost always catch it. One hand will fly up and catch the unexpected object. Their space-mind reflex puts their hand up. The space-mind has to know what’s real and what’s really going on or you don’t survive. If there is a tiger in this room I had better know it’s here. So the space mind makes a picture of reality from its sense images and feelings. That’s picture of reality is what I call the world of “is”.

The world of “is” is the way things really are. And, at its very best this picture of reality approaches the “real” world. Now we don’t have a perfect picture of the universe the way it really is. But our space-mind is pretty good. It keeps me from running into the walls and safe in high speed motor traffic. My student in the front row demonstrated his ability to catch the pencil perfectly when it came flying through the air unexpectedly.

Now we humans also have a time-mind which is into becoming, it’s interested in cause and effect, it is always predicting the future based on its understanding of the past. So the time-mind forms an opinion of reality from words and thoughts. This opinion of reality is what I call the world of “ought to be”.

Every human has two worlds created by their two minds. Everyone of us has a world of “is” and a world of “ought to be”. I’ve got mother “is” and mother “ought to be”. Teacher “is” and teacher “ought to be”. Son “is” and son “ought to be”. Dad “is” and dad “ought to be”. Husband “is” and husband“ought to be”.

By the way, our husband “is”and wife “is” are always comes up short. Aren’t they? They are never the way they ought to be. Also, our son “is” and daughter “is” are also coming up short. They are also never the way they ought to be.

Why are they coming up short? Why are they never the way they ought to be?

Our time-mind uses all of its cause and effect knowledge to predict the way things “ought to be”. And we are always carrying our opinions of how it “out to be” with us at all times. Seven o’clock in the evening, and I run out of milk. So I get in my car and go down to Seven-Eleven only to discover they’re closed. “Damn it! That’s not the way it ought to be!” My space-mind shows me a picture of a closed store  —  the world the way it is. My time-mind tells me in words,“That’s not the way it ought to be.”And, so my space-mind prepares my body to fight.

All of us are rejected to some extent because we are never the way our parents think we ought to be. Because you see an ought to be at its very best is an ideal. The world of “ought to be” at its very best is an ideal. Well in the ideal world, the Seven-Eleven Store would be open, right? I’d go in and get my milk. Right? My son, in the world of ought to be, would get straight A’s. Right? That’s an ideal. Ideally my son would get straight A’s. Ideally my husband would remember my  birthday. Ideally the people on the road would be more courteous. Ideally the government would lower our taxes, right? In the world of “ought to be” the government would operate economically, and give the taxpayers a large refund. But in the world of “is” we just keep paying more taxes.

Now knowledge of the dual-world can be of great help to you. Whenever you find yourself angry at the world of “is”, it probably is because you are mistaking your world of “ought to be” for the real world. Imagine, I am reading my newspaper when I come across a story I don’t like. I exclaim: “I can’t believe this! This can’t be happening.” In other words, in my world of “ought to be”, this doesn’t happen.

There are none so blind as those that will not see.

Not believing reality can be very dangerous. The Jewish people during WWII were very much victimized by the world of “ought to be”. The American government played into that tragedy in a very large way. There was a group of Jewish people who suffered even more than those who were gassed in the concentration camp gas chambers. These were extraordinarily brave individuals who risked their lives to smuggle out pictures of the death camps. These photographs eventually reached the American government providing proof of Hitler’s atrocities. The American government said they were fake. Why? In the American government’s world of “ought to be”, atrocities like those shown in the photos just didn’t happen. In their world of ought to be those kinds of things simply don’t happen. The photographs had to have been faked. Sadly, the whole world learned four years later that the photographs were not faked.

If I’m angry about the world of “is”, it’s often because I am convinced that my ideal world of “ought to be” is the real world.

This is the most powerful lesson that I teach in stress medicine. It’s the single one tool that can help you make a major change in your life. I can teach you how to  desensitize yourself to hostility. I can teach you how to do all kinds of relaxation, biofeedback. But if you understand about the world of “is” and the world of “ought to be”, and you understand that the world of “is” is the real world, and that the world of “ought to be” is only an ideal world, you can unstress yourself  greatly.

When my daughter was only four years old I taught her about the dual-world. I remember when something wouldn’t work out for her, she would say, “Well, that’s not the way it ought to be, but that’s the way it is.” If adults could learn to say those words they could help themselves a lot. “That’s not the way it ought to be, but that’s the way it is.”

But because we don’t understand the dual-world, we “should” all over each other? You see the world “should” comes from our world of “ought to be”. This ought to be “should” is an ideal. When I say,“You shouldn’t have said that.” I mean in my world of “ought to be”, you wouldn’t have said that. Ideally, you wouldn’t have said that.

The real “should” is from the world of “is”. If I drop this pencil it should hit the floor. I drop the pencil and it does hit the floor.

The ideal “should” is from the world of “ought to be”. I should weigh twenty pounds less, but nothing happens. What’s wrong here. Why didn’t I magically lose twenty pounds. This must be a different kind of should. This is an ought to be “should”, not an is “should”. Ignorance of our dual-world can make life very confusing.

To take advantage of our new knowledge of the dual-world, we must learn to “could” on each other. Let us learn how to “could” on each other rather than “should” on each other. This becomes very important. Why? Because see when I “could” on you it’s an invitation. But when I “should” on you it’s a push and your space-mind fights all pushes. Remember the space-mind fights all pushes.

To demonstrate this point in the classroom, I approach one of my students and ask the other students to turn to each other and do what I’m doing. Then I take the hand and wrist of my student, and move the arm around without the student’s control. I push the student around a little. Not causing any real pain.Then I ask, “How does that feel? How does your space-mind like it? Here, feel it. Don’t think it. What does space-mind say? Now you know I’m doing an experiment. But what does space mind-feel?”

Of course the space-mind doesn’t talk but if it did it would say, “Leave me alone. Get off me. Don’t touch me. Don’t push me.”

When we “should” on each other we are pushing,“You should have done a lot better on that test.”

“Damn it. I’m all right. I’m ok. You can’t tell me I should have done better.”

My space mind defends against all pushes. And a “should” is a push. Anytime you “should” on somebody you invoke their space-mind and they shut down. They rebel. They push back and they won’t do anything you tell them.

If you want to win friends and influence others, you need to learn how to “could” on people — a “could” is a pull — a “could” is an invitation.

“You could study a little more and maybe your grades would come up.” The student says, “Yes, I could study a little more and maybe my grades would come up.” That’s not a push. That’s an invitation. That’s a pull. That’s a possibility.

“You could make a note in your schedule about my birthday because it’s real important to me.” And I reply,“You know I could do that. Maybe I will do that. This is a better alternative to: “You shouldn’t have forgotten my birthday. You never have time for me.” To that I may reply, “Damn it. I’ll forget your birthday every year from now on.”

Our space-mind does not like to be pushed around. And so, what do we do? We humans push each other all day long.

We also push ourselves don’t we? Ever hear your little time-mind “shoulding” on yourself? “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have said this.” “I should have done this. I should have told my boss off. I should have told him what I really thought of him. With knowledge of the dual-world, it is much more effective to could on yourself. I could have communicated my point of view more effectively to my boss.

In summary then, all humans have two minds — the space-mind and the time-mind. These two minds create two worlds  —  the world of “is” and the world of “ought to be” — a picture of the real world and an opinion of the ideal world.

It is our ability to create these two worlds that makes us human.

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Read Dual World Part II

Many humans are waking up to the truth. They are beginning to understand that if humanity is to have a future, we must change. They realize that we must reduce our population, end violence, crime and war, and perhaps most importantly make peace with the Earth. But questions remain, ”How do I get started? What could I do?”

Daniel Quinn uses the mechanism of a dialogue to answer our question. It may be much easier than we think.

A Dialogue About “What To Do”

Daniel Quinn

Q. I’ve read Ishmael and The Story of B, and I like what I see in these books, but I’m left wondering what to DO.

A. Do you think of yourself as an activist?

Q. Not exactly. I guess I’d like to know what I’d do if I WERE an activist.

A. All right. Let me outline a problem of the sort that activists know how to attack. Here’s an ordinary sort of industry that needs to be turned around so as to be less detrimental to life on earth. It’s the carpet tile industry, which supplies the floor-covering of choice for most modern commercial buildings — hotels, office buildings, hospitals, airports, convention centers, shopping malls, and so on. Do you know anything about this business?

Q. Not a thing.

A. Well, to begin with, this kind of carpet isn’t made from wool or cotton or silk, for obvious reasons. It’s all manmade — and it’s heavily petroleum-based. Right off the bat, this is fundamentally unhealthy — pollutive and reliant on a nonrenewable resource.

Q. Right.

A. The process is more than ordinarily wasteful of resources, if only because carpet has such a short life span. Do you see why this is so?

Q. I think so. Wood floor covering is obviously less wasteful, because it lasts much longer.

A. Exactly. Now, to make matters worse, worn out carpet can’t be compressed to take up less room, so it makes an enormous contribution to landfill.

Q. I understand.

A. Now, thinking like an activist, what would you DO to turn this industry around? What would you do to put an end to its dependence on petroleum, its wastefulness, its contribution to landfill?

Q. I take it that there are things like industry standards and regulations that apply to all of this stuff.

A. Yes. Regulations are in place, but they’re written by people who understand the realities of the situation. Manmade carpet is what it is. It’s heavily dependent on petroleum, is more than usually wasteful of resources, and contributes heavily to landfill. The regulations regulate these things, they don’t end them.

Q. Okay. But you seem to be saying that the problem is unsolvable.

A. No. Look, the automakers had to be FORCED to solve safety problems that they said were unsolvable. They ultimately DID solve them, but they had to be forced to do it. How was the forcing done? That’s what we’re looking for here. How are we going to force these carpet makers to do what’s right?

Q. I see what you mean. We have to pass new laws.

A. Now we’ve got something for people to DO, don’t we?

Q. How do you mean?

A. Look, just the way the automakers had to be forced into line, congress had to be forced to pass the laws that brought them into line.

Q. True.

A. So how do we force congress to pass the laws that will force the carpet makers into line?

Q. That’s a big job.

A. You bet it is. Plenty of work for folks who want to DO something. But what is that work?

Q. Well, I suppose first you’ve got to get people stirred up about it.

A. That would certainly help, yes. Get some exposÈs out there in print and on television.

Q. I suppose we’d need to get some consumer advocate groups interested.

A. What would their job be?

Q. They’d agitate to get some legislation going in congress. Maybe start with public hearings or something.

A. What are the carpet makers going to be doing while this is going on?

Q. Oh, right. They’re going to be mounting a big public campaign telling their side of the story. And of course they’d activate their own lobbying group.

A. How long has all this taken up to this point?

Q. I suppose about five years.

A. Go on. You’ve got the two lobbying giants butting heads in the halls of congress. How do we get ordinary citizens involved in this? That’s what we’re looking for here. People are saying, “Yes, we know it’s important to change minds, but what should we DO?”

Q. Well, the consumer advocates are going to want to organize public support for their position. They’re going to put out the word: “Write to congress and the President and demand action on this bill.”

A. Right. And then what happens?

Q. Well, the lobbyists are going to fight it out and finally a bill is going to get written.

A. And what’s it going to say?

Q. All the things you talked about eliminate petroleum, cut down on waste, figure out a way to cut down on contribution to landfill.

A. And what are the carpet makers going to say about this bill?

Q. Impossible, can’t be done.

A. And how will the lawmakers respond? They can’t make people do the impossible.

Q. I don’t know. Part of my problem is that I don’t know whether these things are possible or not.

A. What did congress do when automakers said, “Oh, you can’t make a bumper that will withstand a 15-mile-an-hour collision”? How did they respond to that?

Q. I see what you mean. They gave them a deadline. Do it in five years or else.

A. So they’ll give the carpet makers a deadline. Let’s say five years. Then what? What happens at the end of five years?

Q. They get an extension. Three years.

A. So this whole process ends up taking what, fifteen or twenty years? And after that you have the whole policing problem to solve, and the law may be put in abeyance while it’s tested in the courts a few times. And you know that, realistically speaking, congress would never actually pass a law as extreme as this.

Q. Yes, that’s true.

A. But what do you think of this as an example of “what to do”? Is this what people are thinking of when they say, “Yes, changing minds is all well and good, but what should we DO?”?

Q. I guess so.

A. Is this what YOU meant?

Q. Yeah, I guess so.

A. Is it or isn’t it? We mobilized hundreds of thousands of people, gave them something to do, spent millions of dollars, and after fifteen or twenty years passed a law that will transform the carpet-tile industry. If that isn’t the sort of thing you had in mind, please let me know.

Q. No, that’s what I had in mind.

A. Okay. Now I’ll tell you something you couldn’t know. This industry is already being transformed-and it didn’t take fifteen or twenty years or millions of dollars. Not a single consumer advocate group was involved, nobody had to lobby congress, and not a single law got passed. Would you like to know how it happened?

Q. Sure.

A. Two years ago the CEO of the Interface Corporation — the industry leader in the carpet-tile business — read two books. One was Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce and the other was Ishmael. Up to that time, this CEO, a man named Ray Anderson, had made it his business to be in full compliance with all relevant regulations. But when he read these two books, he saw that being merely in compliance is not nearly enough. He made up his mind to do three things: first, to eliminate petroleum from his carpeting, second, to develop carpeting that can be 100% recycled — into materials from which all his new carpeting could be made, and third, to encourage his customers to think differently about their floor covering needs. Instead of buying carpet and discarding it when it’s no longer serviceable, he will lease them carpet. When it’s no longer serviceable, he’ll take it back to be recycled totally and replace it with carpeting made from totally recycled materials. These are goals he intends to reach before the end of the century. What they add up to is creating a truly sustainable business, offering recyclable products made entirely from recycled materials — zero waste and zero contribution to landfill. So successful has Ray Anderson been in pursuing these goals that he has — in two years flat — become recognized as a world leader in the development of sustainable industry. Not only has he set new goals for himself, he has inspired others to set new goals — and, incidentally, forced his competitors to set new goals in order to remain competitive. Thus he’s well on his way to transforming an entire industry — all because two books changed his mind.

Q. Very impressive.

A. It’s important to see that Ray Anderson has totally left the regulations behind. Regulations would NEVER have mandated the changes he’s making — and they never will. It will NEVER be an article of law to run your business the way Ray Anderson is running his. And no law could ever force his competitors to follow his lead. Only their need to remain competitive could accomplish that.

Q. Yes, I see that.

A. What’s most important to see is that changing minds is definitely not a sort of feeble alternative to “doing something.” It’s not just something you do when you can’t manage to actually “do” something. There is, in fact, nothing you can do that is more effective than changing minds.

Q. Yes . . . but changing Ray Anderson’s mind was something YOU did. You and Paul Hawken. What are WE supposed to do?

A. You’re missing the point. Neither I nor Paul Hawken was within a thousand miles of Ray Anderson when he changed his mind. Someone ELSE got to him — a friend, a colleague, a reviewer. Maybe it was an old classmate. Maybe it was one of his children. I have no idea who it was, but it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Paul Hawken. Someone handed him a book and said, “Ray, you’ve got to read this.” This person accomplished more in one minute than a troop of consumer advocates, ten thousand of their supporters, and the U.S. congress could have accomplished in a decade.

Q. But now you’re saying that there’s nothing for us to do but give away copies of your books.

A. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that the world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If it’s saved, it will be saved by new minds with no programs at all. I don’t care what tools you use to change minds. The Ecology of Commerce is a good tool. Ishmael is a good tool. The Story of B is a good tool. Jean Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept is a good tool. Use any of them or all of them — or none of them. The tools themselves aren’t important and neither are the tool makers. Uru the Awakener can’t save the world, because he can only awaken a few hundred. But those hundreds can awaken thousands, and those thousands can awaken millions, and those millions can awaken billions.

And that’s how the world is going to be saved. Each of us must become an agent of change within the range of our own influence, and it doesn’t matter how great that range is. If you can’t reach a hundred (Ishmael’s suggested number), then reach ten, and if you can’t reach ten, then reach one, because you never know — that one may reach a million!

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