The Problem Before Us

David C. Korten writes: “The following thought experiment frames the problem before us and the essential needs a planetary system of living economies must address.

“Six billion people live together on a crowded planet. A hundred million — less than 2 percent of the whole — enjoy extravagant material affluence and consume as much as half of the planet’s resources. A billion or so more account for an additional 25 to 30 percent of total consumption. The rest are divided between two billion who manage to make ends meet with difficulty, a billion who live in constant hardship, and a billion who suffer extreme and dehumanizing deprivation in a struggle for day-to-day survival. An uneasy and partial peace is maintained by the promises of the 100 million to the rest that with patience and work hard all will one day enjoy lives of extravagant material affluence. 

“One morning all six billion wake up with a new awareness: their planet is actually a living space ship with a biologically based life support system so overstressed that it is on the verge of collapse. The economic system that promised it would eventually bring affluence to all is actually a suicide economy that is destroying the foundations of life. 

“A few decide to arm themselves, kill off as many of their rivals as possible, and attempt to secure what they can for themselves. The vast majority, however, realize that violence is no answer. It will only increase the stress and accelerate the breakdown, with disastrous results for all. 

“There is desperate need for a solution that works for all. What can be done? 

“The essentials come quickly to mind. There must be an immediate reordering of priorities. The use of every resource must be optimized to assure the health and physical security of every person with minimal waste. The life support system must be restored to full function as quickly as possible. Everything must be recycled, with no release of toxics into the environment. There will be no luxuries for the few until the basic needs of all are adequately met.”

Adversaries, Neutralists & Synergists

There are three types of humans to be found in our present world. Which type you are depends on what you believe about how the world works.

ADVERSARIES believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively DEPENDENT on others, and they best understand the language of FORCE.

NEUTRALISTS believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are INdependent and should be self-sufficient unless theyare too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of MONEY.

A new type of human is emerging called SYNERGISTS. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are INTERdependent and only can obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language LOVE.

But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use them.

Synergists must sometimes use the language of FORCE, and sometimes the language of MONEY, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies — when synergists are seeking to build community — they must speak the language of LOVE.

Synergists are trying to heal the wounds inflected by those who don’t understand how the world could work.

This then is the essential challenge to the Synergists. Can we work together and act responsibly in time to save our ourselves on this planet?

Truth, Love & Synergy

Timothy Wilken

What is a Tensegrity ?

Tensegrity is the pattern that results when push and pull have a win-win relationship with each other. The pull is continuous and the push is discontinuous. The continuous pull is balanced by the discontinuous push producing an integrity of tension and compression. This creates a powerful self-stabilizing system. The term tensegrity comes from synergic science.

 

Other of my links related to Tensegrity include my recently revised description of the Organizational Tensegrity: ORTEGRITY and my description of another innovation I call gifting tensegrities which is a replacement for the Fair Market of Capitalism. You can read a brief description of GIFTegrity or a longer scientific discussion of the concept.

 

Tensegrity is well explained by R. Buckminster Fullers in his major opus Synergetics . However reading Fuller requires an investment of time because of his highly original use of language. Those new to Fuller some time think he is writing in a foreign language. One of his students Amy Edmonson has written a “English” translation of Fuller’s works called A Fuller Explanation.

 

The originator of human-made tensegrities was a student of R. Buckminster Fuller as well as an artist. His name is Kenneth Snelson. He created the first human made Tensegrity an artistic sculpure he called the X-piece in 1949. When he showed it to Fuller, it made a powerful impression. Fuller asked to have it as a gift and spend hours looking and thinking about it. Fuller realized that Snelson’s sculpture was an example of a powerful pattern of organization in Nature. Fuller coined the term tension integrity to describe this pattern. Later he would shorten the term to simply tensegrity.

 

Later, Snelson came to believe that Fuller did not give him-Snelson appropriate credit for the invention of the tensegrity. And that was true. Snelson’s invention of the X-piece was the first human made example of a cable and strut tensegrity and Snelson brought the pattern of tensegrity to Fuller’s attention. However, tensegrity is much more than an artistic sculpture. Tensegrity is a pattern of organization. It has many forms other than the cable and strut form found in Snelson’s X-piece.

 

Tensegrities exist throughout nature waiting to be discovered. For instance, the automobile pneumatic tire is a tensegrity. These were invented long before Snelson’s sculpture, but were not recognized as tensegrities. Fuller contribution was in recognizing that Snelson’s sculpure was an example of Nature’s most powerful pattern of organization. 

 

That said, I believe Fuller could have been more careful to acknowledge Snelson’s achievement in inventing the first cable and strut tensegity and for bringing this pattern of organization to his-Fuller’s attention.

 

The solar system is a tensegrity. As Edmonson and Fuller explain: “This is just the way Universe is playing the game.” Gravity is that invisible limitless tension force. “The Earth and the Moon are invisibly cohered…”; the tension cable has reached the limit case in thinness: it’s nonexistent. “You have enormous tension with no section at all.” A splendid design! The solar system is thus a magnificent tensegrity: discontinuous compression spheres (i.e., planets) are intercoordinated—never touching each other—by a sea of Continuous tension. “Every use of gravity is a use of…sectionless tensioning,” Fuller continues, observing that “this is also true within the atoms: true in the macrocosm and true in the microcosm”

We are also finding tensegrity as Nature’s favorite pattern for biological organization. The human body is a tensegrity. In fact, the human body is a tensegrity of tensegrities.

 

Donald E. Ingber, MD writes: Life is the ultimate example of complexity at work. An organism, whether it is a bacterium or a baboon, develops through an incredibly complex series of interactions involving a vast number of different components. …

 

Despite centuries of study, researchers still know relatively little about the forces that guide atoms to self-assemble (synergize) into molecules. They know even less about how groups of molecules join together to create living cells and tissues. Over the past two decades, however, I have discovered and explored an intriguing and seemingly fundamental aspect of self-assembly (synergy). An astoundingly wide variety of natural systems, including carbon atoms, water molecules, proteins, viruses, cells, tissues and even humans and other living creatures, are constructed using a common form of architecture known as tensegrity. The term refers to a system that stabilizes itself mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced within the structure.

 

This fundamental finding could one day have practical applications in many areas. For example, new understanding of tensegrity at the cellular level has allowed us to comprehend better how cellular shape and mechanical forces — such as pressure in blood vessels or compression in bone — influence the activities of genes. At the same time, deeper understanding of natural rules of self-assembly (synergy) will allow us to make better use — in applications ranging from drug design to tissue engineering — of the rapidly accumulating data we have about molecules, cells and other biological components. An explanation of why tensegrity is so ubiquitous in nature may also provide new insight into the very forces that drive biological organization — and perhaps into evolution itself.

 

My interest in tensegrity dates back to my undergraduate years in the mid-1970s at Yale University. There my studies of cell biology and also of sculpture led me to realize that the question of how living things form has less to do with chemical composition than with architecture. The molecules and cells that form our tissues are continually removed and replaced; it is the maintenance of pattern and architecture, I reasoned, that we call life.

 

See: The Architecture of Life by Donald E. Ingber, MD 

 

Stephen M. Levin, MD writes: The structural system of continuous tension, discontinuous compression, hereafter referred to as Tensegrity, and described by Buckminster Fuller, can be used as a model to understand the physiological support systems of the body.

 

The understanding of tensegrity structures has many distinct advantages when applied to biological systems. These structures are omnidirectional and are stable in any direction and independent of gravity. When applied to animated beings the structural system is maintained whether functioning as a biped or quadriped; prone, supine or standing upside down; on the ground, under water or in a spaceship. The laws of leverage act differently when applied within the tensegrity system so that forces generated are dissipated and may actually strengthen the structure much as prestressed concrete or a wire under tension. External forces applied to the system are dissipated throughout it so that the “weak link” is protected. The forces generated at heelstrike as a 200 pound linebacker runs down the field, for example, could not be absorbed solely by the os calcis but have to be distributed—shock absorber-like—throughout the body.

 

Does the tensegrity system function in nature? The methane molecule, one of the most basic organic substances, has in itself the physical shape and properties of a tensegrity structure. Examination of radiolaria clearly demonstrates the basic structural model. In higher forms of life, we can examine the scapulothoracic articulation. The entire support system of the upper extremity is a tension system being supported by the musculature interweaving the spine, thorax and upper extremity into a tension support system. The scapula does not press on the thorax. The clavicle has been traditionally recognized as acting more as a compression strut, as it would in a tensegrity model. In fact, in the cat family it is no more than a floating tensegrity strut. Although in humans the upper extremity is not weight-bearing, if we recognize that the same mechanism is used in bearing weight in all quadripeds, then we can readily see that the tension support system is utilized in vertebrates.

 

See the Biotensegrity website of Stephen M. Levin, MD

Elsewhere, I have challenged the concept of ownership of the Earth. The land and natural resources are wealth provided to us by God and Nature. The sunshine, air, water, land, minerals, and the earth itself all come to us freely. The Earth’s land and natural resources are not products of the human mind or body. They existed long before life and humankind even emerged on our planet. There exists no moral or rational basis for any individual to claim them as Property. Contributing editor John Champagne has come to a similar opinion independently of me.

Who Owns the Earth ?

“Earth3″

John Champagne 

Population increases and industrialization are continually increasing the human impact on the earth. We are depleting the natural resources that support our civilization. We are degrading or destroying ecosystems that make up the diverse communities of life on earth. We cannot continue on our present path. We must find ways to counteract the economic forces that drive people to tax natural systems beyond their carrying capacity.

When a living system made up of many interacting, interdependent parts experiences unsustainable stress, that stress is perceived and an adaptive response is produced that tends to reduce the stress and preserve the health of the organism. An overheated animal will sweat, pant or seek shade, and its body temperature will fall. A system that responds to a stressful stimuli in a way that tends to reduce the stress constitutes a system of negative feedback. Rising temperature causes a change in a physiological process or behavior which in turn causes a decrease in the stress. The earth, as a complex system made up of many interacting, interdependent parts, resembles an organism in many ways, but at present it lacks a system of negative feedback that would lead to an adjustment in the system when human economic activity starts to exert unsustainable pressures on the larger ecosystem.

Attaching appropriate fees to the taking of resources and putting of pollution would bring information about ecological impacts into the economy, and it would keep economic activity within sustainable limits. A monetary representation of ecological pressures and degradation, an ‘ecological impact cost’, would be factored into the price of goods and services in the marketplace. People would have incentive to reduce or refrain from pursuing habits that are harmful to the environment because they would feel the adverse impact of those habits in their pocketbook. Resource user-fees and pollution fees would correct the defect that causes our economy to injure or deplete the larger systems of which it is part.

No one person or small group of people knows for certain what level of human impacts the earth can sustain. The question is a highly subjective one which implies qualifiers such as, “At what level of risk, to present and future generations?”, and “Do we want to slow and stop present trends of degradation, or do we want to go further and reverse these trends and actively work to expand the portion of the earths surface covered by forests, other diverse ecosystems, etc.?” “Do we want to bring carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels, or do we want to institute a policy of ‘No net increase of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere?’” These are questions of long-lasting import. The answers we give will affect ourselves in the short and long term. They will affect our offspring and generations not yet born.

Management of natural resources through a fee on release of pollution and taking of resources would produce a monetary representation of the value of the earths air and water, biota and minerals. As these resources can be thought of as public property, as belonging to all, we can rightly share the proceeds of the pollution fees and resource fees among all people equally. Such a sharing of the wealth of the commons would secure each and every one of us against the threat of abject poverty. A system that combines equal ownership of the commons with free markets and private ownership of man-made capital would include essential elements of both capitalism and communism.

The magnitude of the challenge we face, the stakes involved, and our democratic principles all point to the need to secure the participation of the largest portion of our society in deciding what human impacts on earth we will allow. We should not allow rates of resource extraction or levels of pollution to exceed what most people say is acceptable. Neither should we expect to hold emissions or taking of resources to levels below what the people will accept. A democratic society would set limits on environmental impacts such that about half considered the levels about right or somewhat too strict while the other half considered the limits about right or somewhat too lenient. If some of us believe that we know better than others what human impacts should be judged sustainable and acceptable, we will have the instruments of change in a free society to bring our fellow citizens around to our view: Reason and sustained pressure, education and the free flow of information.

This new paradigm, built on the principle of democratic ownership and management of natural resources, will have as its most basic political act the citizen expressing a preference about what kind of world we should make, what human impacts on the environment we ought to allow. But this act, this expression, must be in a form that users of natural resources can read, so that it can inform their actions. We will need to develop easy to create, easy to read documents that we can use as our palate for painting a picture of the kind of world we want to live in. This is a question that any democratic society asks its citizens, implicitly or explicitly: “What kind of society do we want to create”?

How can we translate the expressed will of the people into industry action and permit prices without a central authority interpreting what the people said and decreeing what the permit price will be? Can we create a decentralized system that reflects the character of the new tools that make this direct democracy possible?

One possibility: Let each polluter survey a random sample of the people to determine what is acceptable behavior overall. They can then declare how many permits they expect to buy and what price they expect to pay, and survey others’ projected demands and prices. Businesses would be guessing what the permit price would be, given the observed mix of supply and demand. This is an inexact science. When all business, on average, estimates a too-low fee for use of natural resources or putting pollution, the low estimate will be reflected by levels of projected use or pollution that exceed what the people say is permissible. More iterations of public statements of projected prices, estimated demand, and surveys of other buyers estimates, informed by the results of the previous iteration, would bring the community of resource-users closer to the ideal market-clearing price.

In the past, the supply of natural resources exceeded any demands that humans placed on them. There was no need for markets to manage the demands placed on the commons. Natural resources were treated as a free good, with good reason. The abundant supply meant that there were no shortages. People could take what they wanted, when they wanted, because the supply always exceeded the demand. But conditions have changed. Now, demands on resources are outstripping supply.

Whatever level of human impacts on the environment we decide to allow, we will gain the greatest benefit from limited resources if we allow the free market to manage their allocation. Free markets are the most efficient means of allocating resources because, at a given cost of production, they accurately balance supply and demand. In the case where the supply of natural resources is set by vote of the people, we can say the free market offers the most efficient and fair means of reconciling an elastic demand to a limited supply, through a public auction. The resources will go to those for whom they have the greatest value or utility.

One potential problem with a popular vote on acceptable levels of pollution and use of resources is that some people may want to vote very far beyond what they would honestly consider as acceptable, as a ploy to skew the average in their direction, knowing full well that their vote is but one among many, and voting an extreme position would move the average farther in their preferred direction than a vote that reflected their true, more moderate position. How could we address this problem?

One possibility: We could agree that most of our votes for next year’s environmental impacts will be within, say, ten percent of this year’s levels, with perhaps only 10% of the total natural resource wealth of the planet being subject to a yearly change of as much as 25%. Each citizen would then be forced to consider carefully which human impacts were most harmful and deserving of extraordinary efforts at control. But would the fraction of total resource wealth subject to more abrupt adjustment be measured in dollar terms? How can we compare CO2 impacts with asphalt or coral reef destruction, other than in economic terms, i.e.: as a fraction of the overall economy?

Another strategy for discouraging the practice of voting an extreme position in order to skew the average would be to decrease the weight of votes that fall far from the mean. We might apply a formula to votes, W = 1/(1+sd), so that a vote that fell four standard deviations from the mean would have only one-fifth the weight of a vote at the mean. All votes would be counted, but some would be given less weight, according to how much most people, by their votes, indicated the more extreme votes were simply not responsible. Voters away from the mean could include comments with their votes, in an attempt to educate others as to the reasons behind their less conventional views. These comments, if well presented and backed with credible evidence, could be the basis of a change of opinion of a larger segment of the population.

This system will mean that capital investments will turn a profit to the extent that they successfully meet human needs with relatively little environmental impact. Everyone who has any money to invest will want to put it into clean industries and enterprises. The economic situation changes to one that has money flowing toward people engaged in cleaner industry rather than primarily toward those who control capital engaged in the most advantageous exploitation of their free ride on the commons. Polluters are now subsidized by everyone: we all, most especially the poor, must pay the price of dirtier air and water and soil: more disease, lower quality of life. Appropriate fees on use of natural resources and on adverse impacts on the community, with proceeds shared among all equally, would end this injustice.

Industry, investors, will only make money to the extent that they can conduct themselves in ways that are not offensive to workers, since people who receive their equal share of the earths natural resource wealth would be more free to seek better working conditions, more rewarding work, if they find themselves in an unappealing situation. They would not be paralyzed by the prospect of abject poverty if they find themselves temporarily without work. And is this not also something that we want? Psychological rewards of work–meaning and purpose–would become more prominent as an issue of concern. Ecological sustainability would become an integral component of the corporate bottom line. Employers and employees both would be more free to follow their bliss.

Human beings come in many personality and character types. Some people are more inclined by their nature to say, “We will do it this way because we make more money this way… and it is better for the community”. Others will be more inclined to say, “We will do it this way because it is best for the community… and we make more money”. Our current system tends to exclude from business participation and success those who would be more inclined to the second type. And it often forces those who are of the first type to say, “We will do it this way because we make more money, even though it is not really the best thing for the community or environment”. When we shift our paradigm to internalize external costs into the price of products, every economic decision accurately reflects the whole mix of costs and benefits of an action. By pursuing profit or low prices, we will be following the path that is best for ourselves and the larger community.

Many people believe that the only reason for government to exist is to protect the individual and community against those individuals and groups who would violate the rights and interests of others. A government dedicated to take action against those who initiate the use of force, and committed to never initiate the use of force itself, is the best guarantee of individual and minority rights. If putting out pollution and taking more than your share of natural resources is recognized as forcing others to live with your pollution and live without, with less of, what you are taking, then this principle of no first use of force by government provides the political and moral basis for a paradigm of democratic ownership and control of the commons. This paradigm is an integration of libertarian and green politics. We may need further shifts in our perception of the boundaries between what we consider public and private acts before many people who call themselves libertarian will embrace this paradigm wholeheartedly. Consider: is it a public act or a private act when a private land-owner destroys wildlife habitat and diminishes biodiversity? Is preservation of biodiversity an issue of public concern?

With significant green fees, conventional taxes may be difficult to support financially. They may also be seen as lacking any philosophical foundation. We may see a system requiring payment to the people in return for the privilege of taking publicly owned resources for profit as fair and just, while the requirement that we make payment to the government in proportion to how much income we earn or goods and services we sell may not seem on the face to be eminently fair. Fees on actions that are detrimental to the community can be thought of as an alternative to conventional taxes, rather than as an addition to them.

We could determine that a portion of the proceeds of the fees on use of the commons will be public funds, dedicated to the support of public and community programs. With each person receiving a substantial stipend as their share of earths natural resource wealth, many of the functions of government that are intended to aid the poor and otherwise distribute income would be unnecessary. For those government programs that continue to be seen as necessary or desirable, citizens could each decide what programs are most deserving of support. We could vote on priorities for spending our share of public funds in the same way that we vote on priorities for moderating ecological impacts.

The people would set the agenda. Money would flow to those who work for some aspect of the agenda that is set by the community. Money would flow away from those who are working counter to some aspect of the agenda set by the community. If the people say they want less CO2; less asphalt; less light pollution interfering with our view of the stars, then the people whose decisions run counter to these community-agreed goals will be made to pay a fee. When the levels of the fees are such that the economic ‘bads’ are sufficiently reduced, the people will no longer say that they want to see less of these things. Similarly, public programs will receive funding support from the people to the extent that the people see a value in the programs. When programs are funded at levels that most people feel is appropriate, then they can say so. That level of funding will continue, until there is a change of opinion among the people.

Many people will not feel qualified to make taxing and spending decisions, at least on some issues. They may choose to delegate their vote to other, more qualified persons. We could have a direct / representative democracy, with the option of calling back our proxy if ever we feel it is being applied in an irresponsible way. This need not be a formal arrangement. If our votes on how to manage community resources and how to spend public funds are public statements, then we could examine others’ votes to find people with whom we agree. We could copy their votes if we are convinced that they are well-informed and responsible. Some people may gain a reputation of being more informed than others.

Anyone who is entrusted by their fellow citizens with the responsibility to decide appropriate levels of emissions and resource extraction would likely enter into that position because they have a reputation for doing quality work. Because there may be some social prestige and status, (perhaps even a small stipend from the public funds), for holding such a position, there would likely be some incentive for a person to maintain this reputation, so as to preserve this favored status position. The persons or organizations entrusted with this responsibility for assessment would have every incentive to make their work widely available, both the data-gathering and the analysis, to possibly further increase their constituency. This could only help to improve the quality and relevance of information and materials available to schools, libraries and the public at large.

This paradigm gives each of us an equal voice in sculpting our society. When we ask questions about the quality of environment that we want to create, and translate the answers into reality, we transform our understanding of the role of the citizen in society. We change our consciousness about our responsibility and our power. We are invited to consider carefully what we mean by progress and a good life.

A system of fees for use of resources, with control of overall levels of use vested in the people at large, would provide the feedback mechanisms that would allow economic activities to adjust to the ecological conditions which sustain them. Control of the proceeds of these fees vested in all people equally would go a long way toward redressing problems of disparity of wealth, and it ensures that the proceeds would be invested in ways consistent with the interests of the people at large.

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More by John Champagne

N. Arthur Coulter, MD writes: There is available to every human mind a state of advanced consciousness and well being that is exciting, vigorous and incredibly beautiful. It is characterized by an expansion of awareness, by an enhancement of rationality and by a remarkable phenomenon called think-feel synergy. This state is called the synergic mode of function.

When the synergic mode turns on, the mind lights up. Perceptions grow more vivid and acute, with “flash-grasp” of complex situations a not infrequent occurrence. Thinking becomes faster, more accurate and remarkably clear. Often thought-trains race along several tracks at once.

THE HUMAN POTENTIAL

N. Arthur Coulter, MD

Every human being is unique. We are not mass-produced according to some blueprint or master plan, each identical with the other. Each of us emerges from a different design, a different set of genes. But more than this, each of us has a unique history—a unique sequence of events that happened to us, together with our responses to those events and our reflections on the experience. Even identical twins, having duplicate genes, are distinguished from each other by their unique histories. In short, you are one of a kind. There is no other person in the world quite like you, there never has been, and there never will be.

In addition to being unique, every human being is precious. It took a billion or more years of evolution to make you what you are—an evolutionary process that is itself unique. Moreover, you are a being of incredible complexity—the design of the human ear or the human eye, for example, is simply magnificent. As for the human brain, it is a supercomputer whose intricacies and powers are far, far in advance of any of the artificial computers, which simply imitate and expand the simplest of those powers. The fact that a computer can do arithmetic much faster than a human brain may be of interest, but the really remarkable fact is that human brains invented arithmetic and designed computers to do it.

All this implies that each human being has a unique potential and that it is simply outrageous that everything possible is not done to permit that potential to develop. Yet every society on this planet not only does not do this, but is full of barriers and pressures to prevent it!

There are, for example, the twig-benders. These are groups that consider children to be a form of plant life and seek to capture them at an early age, hoping to bend the twigs in a direction that will force them to grow the way the twig-benders want them to. And so they indoctrinate them with their TRUTHS and inculcate them with their VALUES and above all instill in them habits and attitudes to ensure their obedience and conformity.

Of course, it doesn’t work. Children aren’t twigs. They are self-determined beings with a sense of their own individuality and worth, and they naturally rebel. But they are also small and dependent and, to the degree necessary, they submit to the twig-benders. The result is not only a messed-up world with a lot of messed-up people; far worse than that, it is a tragic waste of human potential. To paraphrase the poet, we all end up strangers and afraid, in a world we never made. And the tremendous potentials of our unique minds remain undeveloped. Comparatively speaking, we are mental dwarfs when we could have been giants.

Individual Synergetics starts with the heurism that we are unique, self-determined beings. Unlike some schools, its goal is not to eliminate “aberrations” or “neuroses” that cause people to deviate from “normality” (whatever that is), but to provide ideas and tools to enable the individual to eliminate the impedances blocking his unique development and to activate the unique synergies of his own mind. That is why we insist that the individual is always in charge of his own case. That is why we insist that coaching is not a form of psychotherapy, which implies that the coach is an Authority who Knows Best. No other person, no matter how wise or clever he may be, no matter how many books he has written or degrees he has earned or patients he has treated, can possibly know your mind as well as you do. True, he may see things that you have blocked from your awareness; but his vision is always partial and incomplete and superficial, from the outside. You are the only one who can see your mind from the inside; you are the only one who has access to all the data; you are the only one who can fit all the pieces together into a synergic whole.

It is this uniqueness that we respectfully and lovingly address; and all the ideas and tools of synergetics—no matter how pedantically they may be expressed—are designed from this perspective. Try them out if you wish; use them if they work; but never hesitate to adapt the tool to your needs or to change it to fit your own knowledge and experience.

The first step in Individual Synergetics—and the foundation of all that follows—is to focus on your uniqueness and to take charge of your own development. From this perspective, let us now examine the human potential, bearing in mind that everything that is said needs to be modified and tailored to fit that wonderful uniqueness.

The idea that the human mind is “an instrument of fantastic power and subtlety” whose “powers are barely tapped” has occurred to many human minds at various times and places. It is an appealing idea. Everyone would like to be supersmart, have total recall, and be irresistible to the opposite sex. The very appeal of the idea leads us to be defensive about it. At the same time, charlatans constantly exploit this appeal for their own enrichment, making matters more difficult for serious workers in this field. Despite these handicaps, there has been growing interest recently in the development of the human potential.

No attempt will be made, in this chapter to present a detailed chart of the potential abilities of the human mind. Instead, I will simply outline some domains of experience and action that are available to humans but do not appear to be fully used. These domains are used extensively in synergetics.

The average person appears to function largely on what we call the mind band of experience—he identifies with his ordinary consciousness and will. There is, however, potentially available an expanded consciousness, which we will call the broad band. Just as the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum made possible a host of new inventions such as radio, television, x-rays, infrared lamps and cameras, so may the exploration and use of the broad band make available new abilities to the individual.

It is convenient to describe the broad band in terms of the following domains:

1. The tempos
2. The tracks
3. The holistic level
4. Synergic team functions

The Tempos

Whatever the ego is aware of, at any given moment, we call the contents of consciousness. A content may be a sensation—the sight of a tree, the sound of a passing car, the smell of a rose, the taste of orange juice. Or it may be an idea—the idea of justice or conformity or happiness. It may be a mental image—the face of a loved one or a barber pole or a prune. It may be an emotional feeling of sadness or excitement or fear. It may be the recollection of a past incident or the anticipation of a future event. At any given moment, a large number of contents present themselves to awareness. The ego can selectively focus attention on some contents while ignoring others; but the focus is ordinarily on contents.

These contents are usually not fixed or static, however. As time goes on, they may change—in location, in intensity, in the features they present, in their relations to other contents. They may disappear from awareness while new contents appear. The continuous shifting, changing, emergence and disappearance of contents was described by William James in a famous metaphor as the stream of consciousness.

The stream of consciousness may be regarded as composed of a number of processes involving the various contents. Now, just as physical objects in motion have different velocities, so do the processes of the stream of consciousness have different tempos. Some occur very rapidly, others slowly, some so slowly they appear to be stationary. It is convenient to select one process whose characteristic tempo is familiar to all as a basis for comparison—the process of ordinary speech. We refer to processes having the tempo of speech as  orthoprocesses. Those that occur much more rapidly, we call microprocesses, those that occur much more slowly, macroprocesses.

We could, of course, devise a spectrum of process tempos, analogous to the electromagnetic spectrum. But it is unnecessary to be so precise for our purposes. Just as visible light is used as a reference band in the electromagnetic spectrum, with infrared on one side and ultraviolet on the other, so can we roughly identify whether a process is an ortho, micro, or macroprocess.

It is at once evident that in ordinary consciousness, attention is focused almost entirely on orthoprocesses. Yet we can, if we choose, examine micro and macroprocesses. Indeed, this is one way consciousness may be expanded. We are not here referring, it should be noted, to the alteration of time sense that occurs under the influence of certain drugs, or in the state of hypnosis. What we refer to is a different kind of consciousness—expansion, one which opens the way to the development of a number of “new” abilities.

The microprocesses are particularly interesting. Usually we are unaware of their existence, but under special conditions we realize that an extraordinary number of very fast processes go on in company with the slower orthoprocesses.

A man driving a car with casual control suddenly observes the cars ahead abruptly stopping. In a flash he (a) evaluates his own speed, (b) predicts he cannot brake in time to avoid a collision, (c) evaluates the left lane to be unsafe, (d) decides to swerve to the right onto the shoulder, and (e) does so. All these processes occur in a fraction of a second. The driver may not be fully aware of them at the time, but they are recorded in memory and he can readily recall them. They occur in a rapid-fire sequence of flashes. In this case, they are simply processes that ordinarily occur at ortho tempo, but have been speeded up under stress. (They are not “instinctive” because another person might panic under the same circumstances, and each process is one previously learned by the driver.) Not all microprocesses are of this type, however (i.e., speeding up of orthoprocesses).

Microprocesses occur frequently when the synergic mode is turned on, and indeed are one of the delights of the synergic mode. The experience of thoughts racing along several tracks simultaneously can be highly exhilarating. The expansion of consciousness to include microprocesses in addition to orthoprocesses is well worth the effort, in our opinion.

On the other side of the orthoprocesses are the macroprocesses—processes that go on so slowly that they usually escape notice, except for the vague realization that things have somehow changed. But they are there, and they are every bit as interesting as the microprocesses.

The mind-dweller characteristically is occupied with the present. He bases his judgments on the perspective of the moment and shifts with the tide as it turns without being aware that the tide is there. He interprets the past purely in terms of the values of “now,” and anticipates the future in the same terms. 

Yet macroprocesses do occur; and most of us use them and are aware of them, to a degree. The flexible, patient pursuit of a long range goal; the consistent application of a policy; the follow-through on a decision—these are examples of processes that occur at slow tempo that are familiar. However, there are others that go on that escape our notice, for which we have no names. We may look at a problem today and feel there is no way to solve it; the next day, looking at the same problem, we suddenly see how easy it is. The problem did not change, we did; yet we are unaware of the process by which this change occurred. This is another example of a macroprocess. We can expand our consciousness so as to become aware of these processes and to develop new abilities that use them.

To see each present moment in itself, in all the boundless variety and richness there to be found is, of course, important. But one can, do this without being stuck in present time. The domain of macroprocesses can also be lived in; it enables one, so to speak, to function as a four-dimensional being, to whom each “now” is but a phase of a process flowing on, and in terms of a perspective from which all “nows” are “present.”

It is in this domain that an individual evolves. These are the processes by which we may effect lasting changes in our being. They provide the means for achieving temporal organization of our experience. It is a domain well worth knowing better and using more.

The Tracks

As mind-dwellers, we not only confine ourselves to the tempo of orthoprocesses; we also limit our orientation to the contents of consciousness—the sights, the sounds, the images, the feelings, the desires, the memories, and so on.

But these contents do not just happen; they are produced by an activity that we refer to as operations. Thus, we associate one idea  with another; we compare these ideas, noting similarities and differences; we recall a memory of a previous incident; we search for a felt idea; we express or sublimate or repress an emotion. Each of these acts is an operation, and, of course, we have always known of their existence. But our characteristic orientation is toward contents, not operations.

We may make the distinction between content and operation clearer by comparing what goes on in our minds with what goes on in a movie. The contents of awareness are like the moving picture on the screen; our attention is focused on the screen. The operations of awareness are like the processes going on in the movie projector. We rarely pay any attention to the projector.
Yet there is a simple act by which we can shift our orientation from content to operation. Curiously, this act apparently has no name. Borrowing a term from electrical engineering, we refer to this act as phase shift, because it is a shift in the phase of orientation. Phase shift goes counter to the “natural tendency of the mind”; but it is a simple act and one that is readily learned. With practice, it is possible not only to perform phase shift easily and habitually, but also to maintain it as an orientation without losing contact with contents. When this is done, another new domain of experience becomes available.

It is convenient to give this new domain a name. We therefore introduce the term main track to denote the domain of experience occurring as a result of the orientation to contents that we ordinarily use, and hypertrack to denote the domain of experience occurring as a result of sustained orientation to operations.

As with any new skill, learning to orient to hypertrack is awkward at first. (Remember your first effort to ride a bicycle?) But gradually we learn to use it and soon become fascinated with the new perspective it gives us and the potentialities for development it affords. An immediate advantage is a greatly heightened ability to understand other human beings. Operations produce contents. Hypertrack orients us to the causal level of human thought, feeling and action.

There are other advantages that will become apparent as we proceed. One point soon emerges, however, Our language is adapted for use on the “mind band” — main track and orthoprocesses. It does not lend itself readily to communication about the domain of hypertrack (or the other domains of the broad band). There are many operations and processes of the broad band for which words do not yet exist. Hence, it has been necessary to introduce a number of new technical terms to describe these operations and processes. “Hypertrack” is an example of such a term. We refer to the evolving collection of such terms, affectionately, as “synergese.” When syngeneers speak in synergese, it can be rather annoying to someone who is unfamiliar with the language. But every field has its technical jargon, including sports like baseball or football.

There is another sense in which language is inadequate. As noted, language is designed for the mind band of main track and orthoprocesses. It is not well-suited for managing the events of hypertrack or other domains of the broad band. Here, an analogy with computer science is helpful. The “language” that computers use is the language of numbers, actually a special kind of number composed of binary digits (zero and one). This is called machine language. It is very tedious and difficult to program a computer in machine language. Consequently, a number of special languages, called programming languages, have been invented. These are close enough to ordinary language (like English) that they are relatively easy to learn and to use. Programs to control computers are written in one of these programming languages (such as FORTRAN, which stands for FORmula TRANslator). The computer then translates these programs into machine language automatically.

In the case of the broad band available to the human mind, we are confronted with a more difficult problem, the opposite of that which computer programmers had to solve. Computers were designed by humans, and the language they use, machine language, is known. We still know very little, however, about the broad band. Nevertheless, by trial and error, we are gradually developing a special language for controlling the broad band more effectively. It is called SYNTALK. It is still not very well-defined, and a definitive version has not yet been presented. We won’t do so here. However, portions of SYNTALK will be included in later sections of this book. This is a promising area for research by creative workers in synergetics especially computer programmers.

One further remark about hypertrack: the ability to use hypertrack is basic to tracking, a powerful technique for controlling thought processes. This will be described later.

Phase shift, as we have noted, is the mental operation of focusing attention upon operations rather than contents. The inverse operation, moving from operations back to contents, is relatively easy to use. But there is another operation that is possible, a shift from main track to a more elemental and primordial domain. We refer to this operation as prime shift, and the domain “below” main track as prime track.

Prime track is the march of events as sensed before their organization into contents of the mind. It is the series of black marks on a white background from which you are now forming words with meaning. It is the set of processes actually going on when you are SICK and have MEASLES or a COLD. It is the “real world” out there and not the SIGHT or SOUND that gives you knowledge of it. It is your friend as he actually is, not the GOOD OLD PAL you think of him as. It is yourself in a strange place without your bearings, not the “I” that is somehow LOST.

In dealing with prime track, we sometimes adopt the convention of capitalizing all words describing what is perceived on main track. This permits the individual to perform a prime shift if he so desires.

Prime shift evokes the realization that, in ordinary consciousness, our attention is focused, not on the actual present, but on the immediate past. By the time the raw data of sense have organized themselves into contents, time has already moved on. We are always one step behind in our perception of events. It is a very short step—a fraction of a second—but during that brief moment a variety of processes go on. This is another part of the domain of the fabulous microprocesses. In this fleeting moment many exciting and important things happen, of which we are ordinarily oblivious. Prime shift enables us to develop an awareness of these processes. We also learn that, once a content has been created, it tends to persist even when it no longer adequately represents what is currently happening. This is a major source of illusion.

One of the subtle fallacies to which the human mind is subject is the tendency to regard the sum total of its perceptions at any given moment as a complete representation of the world at that moment, When we reflect on this, we realize that this is not so; but the tendency persists anyhow. Several workers such as Arbib  and Fischer, have pointed out that perception is not just a passive process of high fidelity mapping of the environment, but an active process of continuously constructing and reconstructing a map on the basis of sensory input cues, with selective emphasis on those referents that are relevant to the goals and interests of the individual. Furthermore, the perceptual systems on which the human mind depend for information endow its maps of reality with a particular quality that is by no means necessarily universal. An animal with a well-developed sense of smell, such as a dog, probably has a different quality for its maps; and one can conceive of organisms sensitive to ultraviolet or infrared radiation, or to ultrasonic sounds, or to magnetic fields or other forms of energy, also having a quality for their maps that might be quite different from those of human beings.

Prime shift enables the individual, to some extent at least, to free himself from exclusive linkage to main track contents. It brings to attention events and processes at the subgestalt level, processes that are filtered out by exclusive focus on main track. It also brings to awareness cognizance of what is left out—the realization, not just at an intellectual level, but at a concrete, action-influencing level, that far more is going on at a given moment than a person can possibly be conscious of.

Korzybski was fond of insisting “whatever you say a thing is, it is not.” This paradoxical statement could be irritating, but its intent was to focus cognizance upon what is left out of any verbal representation no matter how precisely and thoroughly it is expressed. He also adopted the convention of frequent use of “etc.” to remind the reader or listener of the necessarily partial and incomplete character of his statements. It is a wise convention.

Prime shift is also useful in breaking up identifications—the unconscious linkages (and blockages) of the Identic Mode. When combined with phase shift, it provides a powerful tool for clearing impedances, those “irrational” patterns of perception, thought, emotion, body control, and action that slow down and interfere with the effectiveness of mental function. This is discussed in more detail later.

Prime track, main track, and hypertrack thus comprise three levels of the broad band, just as microprocesses, orthoprocesses, and macroprocesses comprise three different characteristic tempos of events. It should be noted that hypertrack or prime track processes can also move at any of the three tempos. There are thus three times three, or nine, different “narrow bands” of the broad band as thus far described.

But this is not all. Effective function in the broad band requires the development of synergies among the various tracks and tempos. Thus, there is main track-hypertrack synergy, consisting of interactions that promote processes at both levels. Similarly, there is macroprocess-orthoprocess synergy. And so on. Etc.

As these synergies occur (as well as other synergies discussed later), there emerges a synergic whole that is greater than the mere sum of its parts. For lack of a better term, we sometimes refer to it as the “holistic” or whole being level. This emphasizes one of its aspects. But in another aspect, it is an old friend—the synergic mode.

A characteristic of the whole being level is that the individual no longer identifies with his consciousness and will. These become merely particular functions associated with main track and orthoprocesses the “mind band” of experience. They are the command functions of the ordinary ego.

As a working hypothesis, we propose the view that the human mind is still evolving, and that the ordinary ego is a “transitional control center” which, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, will some day expand into a new control center, the Director, competent to the management of the broad band.

Be this as it may, there is another aspect of the whole being level that needs to be described, an aspect that is actually another domain of experience of the broad band. If, from the orientation of hypertrack, the individual performs another phase shift, an operation that concomitantly embraces all tracks and tempos, this new domain emerges into awareness. We refer to this domain as ultratrack.

It is extremely difficult, at first, to sustain an ultratrack orientation. What seems to be necessary is for a relatively high degree of synergy among the various tracks and tempos to be first established.

It is very difficult to describe in words the view from ultratrack or the processes that occur at this level. At this point, it seems wiser merely to define it as we have, as the level from which all tracks and tempos are viewed and managed, and to rely on the experience of the reader to fill in details.

Synergic Team Functions

A relatively stable orientation to the broad band is difficult to achieve at present. The operations of prime shift and phase shift are relatively easy to learn, however, as are the operations of selective focus upon microprocesses and macroprocesses. With practice and the use of exercises and techniques described later, one finds the broad band becoming increasingly accessible. Even here, however, this is best achieved in an environment in which the individual is relatively free from pressures and distractions. In ordinary social discourse and interactions, there are very strong constraints that force the individual to function almost entirely on the mind band. It is possible to resist these constraints to a certain degree, but the effort and struggle involved are considerable. It seems wiser, at first, simply to accept these constraints as “forces of nature” like the force of gravity, and to reserve efforts to expand into the broad band for synergetic sessions.

One of these constraints is the simple act of verbal communication, which plays so dominant a role in social discourse and interaction. This act, almost by definition, constrains the individual to orthoprocesses and main track. And it is curiously difficult to be silent in the presence of another without feeling uncomfortable about it. The maxim that “silence is golden” seems to apply to another era.

Nevertheless, there are a few simple techniques that promote function on the broad band in the presence of another, which we have found useful. This is especially so when the other person knows something about synergetics and is interested in applying it. Indeed, use of these techniques while interacting with another syngeneer may quickly lead to a synergic relationship in which each helps the other to operate on the broad band. For this reason, these techniques are described here, although they properly belong in the field of Group Synergetics.

These techniques are not new—they have always been available to you, and no doubt you have used them on occasion. They do, however, promote synergy. And their habitual use, as part of a life-style, helps the individual function regularly in the synergic mode, using the broad band.

1. Affinity make. In the course of relations with another human being, aspects of his action or being periodically emerge for which one feels affinity. This is true of most of the people one encounters. Each of us has so many facets that some are bound to be “likeable.”

When such affinity is felt, express it. This action is an affinity make. When it is done, both parties feel better and a surge of synergy occurs.

Two important qualifications should be noted:

a. An affinity make is primarily expressed by action, not words. It can be by a look or a gesture. Of course, a verbal statement is a form of action and is often the simplest way to do it, but it is more the way it is said than the explicit content that makes the flow of affinity. An example: “I hate you,” said in an affectionately jocular manner.

b. It must be genuine. Most people are aware of the power of flattery and are pretty good at detecting it. Whether detected or not, flattery does not promote synergy. This is not stated as an ethical judgment, but as an observation of human beings in action.

Opportunities for affinity makes are constantly occurring. But there is so much dysergy in the world that these opportunities are often overlooked. Yet an affinity make is a powerful synergy generator.

2. Empathy make. This consists essentially of the operation: “Put yourself in the other fellow’s shoes.” This does not mean doing so from your viewpoint and values, but from his viewpoint and values. It is not necessary to accept his viewpoint and values, merely to understand them and to see how events and situations look from his perspective.

An empathy make has several values:

a. Each human being is like a walking, talking library, with years of experience, data, and know-how different from yours. It is always possible to learn from another human being, no matter how humble, no matter how great. An empathy make enables one to take advantage of this opportunity.

b. An empathy make promotes affinity, mutual understanding, and effectiveness of communication.

c. An empathy make develops the ability to see things from a variety of perspectives simultaneously. It turns on the multiordinal mode. From this, it is a small additional step to the synergic mode.

3. Semantic telepathy. Affinity and empathy makes help one to communicate with others in a synergic team with remarkable effectiveness. We refer to such communications as “semantic telepathy.” (The word “telepathy” is used here not in the usual sense of “direct thought transference” but in the sense of nonverbal communication of meaning.)

Consider two individuals, Mr. A and Ms. B. Mr. A has an idea that he wishes to communicate. He first of all encodes the idea into words and speaks the words. Ms. B hears the words and decodes the message. If all goes well, the idea she gets will be the same as Mr. A’s. When this happens, we say that semantic communion has been achieved. Semantic communion does not necessarily mean agreement, merely understanding.

Semantic communion is the primary goal of communication, and one can use a variety of means other than the verbal message to achieve it. The set of these other means constitutes semantic telepathy. The receiver, for example, may make a deliberate effort to predict the message. One way to do this is to follow the rule: “Focus on what he means, not what he says.” As soon as she gets the message, she calls out “clear,” and Mr. A immediately ends the verbal message.

The sender, in framing the verbal message, uses empathy makes in order to state the idea in terms that fit the perspective of the receiver. He is continuously aware that the same word may have different meanings to different people or even to the same person at different times. Since semantic communion is the goal he does not insist on the “correctness” of his meaning, but accepts hers.

If the idea is abstract, such differences of word meaning may be considerable. So he follows the natural movement of the mind, in which a concrete perceptual experience usually precedes an abstraction from that experience, and begins with a concrete presentation that readily evokes semantic communion, and then moves to the abstraction, rather than first stating the abstraction.

One very useful technique is called bridging The sender evaluates areas of agreement he has with the receiver, and separates these from areas of difference of outlook, disagreement, or conflict. He then uses the area of agreement as a bridge through which to transmit his message, A good rule here is: “Pick an agreement with her.”

A frequent obstacle to semantic communion is the existence of a distinction made by the sender but not by the receiver (or vice versa). This is a source of confusion. The idea of empathy, for example, may imply or include the concept of sympathy to the receiver, whereas for the sender these are two somewhat similar but distinct ideas. Whoever makes the distinction is best able to communicate it.

Another obstacle is an apparent agreement that obscures the fact that semantic communion has not really been achieved. The receiver may nod agreement because the verbal message evokes a clear picture in her mind, not realizing that the picture is not the same as that of the sender. This can be minimized by a policy of not taking semantic communion for granted, a policy adopted by both sender and receiver. Semantic communion can be checked by the sender using a concrete illustration of the message he has sent, or by the receiver repeating the message in her own words. The mere cognizance of the possibility of this source of confusion minimizes the probability of its occurring.

There are other purposes of communication besides semantic communion such as achieving agreement, persuading the receiver to accept an idea or to do something, or simply to convey affinity (or rejection or some other state of relationship). But, for most of these, semantic communion is prerequisite. It is indeed remarkable that despite the tremendous expansion of the physical means for communication—telephone, mimeograph or other forms of replication, radio and TV, etc. —semantic communion is so often not achieved. Misunderstanding piles upon misunderstanding, and affinity and empathy go down, with a concomitant rise in mistrust, hostility, and conflict. While such failure to achieve semantic communion is by no means the only cause of human problems, it is a major cause of many and a contributing cause of most.

4. Synapse. Affinity makes and empathy makes can be used with anyone. So can semantic telepathy, but it is much more effective when done by two syngeneers. When each party knowingly focuses on semantic communion as the goal of communication, the interchange of information and the degree of trust and rapport can reach remarkable heights. And as this occurs, a step beyond semantic telepathy becomes feasible.

Any message tells far more than it says. Surrounding the explicit statement—what the message says—there is a network of plausible inferences and connotations, the implicative residue. When semantic communion is rapidly and easily achieved, communication can be expanded by focusing on the implicative residue.

The basic rule of semantic telepathy is: “Focus on what he means, not what he says.”

The basic rule of synapse is: “Focus on the implications of what he means. ” It is a step beyond and much fun.

5. Franktalk refers to presentation without rancor of ideas or evaluations critical of the actions or viewpoints of another. An implicit convention governs franktalk. If this convention is broken, franktalk is ineffective and often counterproductive. It is therefore recommended that franktalk not be used unless one is sure that the convention holds. The convention is usually easy to establish by use of affinity makes or bridging (or both) beforehand.

The convention is simply neither to take offense nor to give it. If the sender “talks down” to the receiver, displays or feels hostility, shows an unwillingness to receive franktalk in return, etc., the convention is broken. If the receiver feels hurt, imputes unfriendly motives, or feels called upon to defend or justify, the convention is broken. The sender does not try to persuade; he simply presents for consideration. Similarly, the receiver accepts for consideration. That is all.

Franktalk gets behind the veneer of politeness we so often use to hide from one another. Among syngeneers, it can be highly effective and useful.

6. Totaltalk. This is an advanced mode of communication that emerges when the previously described synergic team functions are used so regularly that they form a synergic whole and when a broad band orientation has become characteristic.

We can distinguish four channels:

a. Mind-to-mind.
b. Mind-to-whole.
c. Whole-to-mind.
d. Whole-to-whole.

In totaltalk, all four channels are used concomitantly. For example, one reads the mind band and uses it. Simultaneously, one reads implicative residue, as much as one wishes. This can be done as a mind, consciously. It can also be done as a whole being, “knowingly.” By “knowingly” is meant the whole being analog of consciousness. But one should not be bound by this analogy. To “know” in this sense is “to-be-able-to-be-conscious-of-if-the-need-arises.” It is this, and more, but words fail. Get the feel?

It is possible to describe in greater detail the enormous variety of processes that go on in totaltalk. But a verbal description would take a whole book in itself and would still be inadequate. Instead, let us merely regard the four available channels, focus on the implicative residue, and let out minds go where they will.

One final word: ETC.

 

SYNERGETICS: An Adventure in Human Development

Also see previous articles:  Human Synergetics, The Mode Ladder, The Heurisms of Synergetics and Overview—The Synergetic Program

Yesterday, Ralph Metzner explained that we humans have lost our connection with Mother Earth. We have seen ourselves as separate from Life and from the Planet that is our home. This separateness and loss of connection now threatens everything. Today, contributing editor Jivan Vatayan has prepared Metzner’s call to action for posting on the web. The following selection is from Chapter 11 of Ralph Metzner’s book “Green Psychology”.

Also see: The Machine and Breaking the Trance!

Transition to an Ecological Worldview

Ralph Metzner

In the late twentieth century we are living in a time of tumultuous cultural upheaval in which the dominant worldview of our time, variously called the scientific or modern or industrial, is undergoing a profound reappraisal. In this essay, I try to summarize as succinctly as possible the dimensions of the transition to an ecological worldview, whose emergence I both perceive and advocate.

The global environmental crisis is serving as a catalyst for far-reaching reexaminations of basic values and assumptions in every area of human knowledge and inquiry. This offers both a challenge and an opportunity for all the disciplines to reformulate the fundamental questions and issues in each field. The theologian and ecophilosopher Thomas Berry has often said that the time has come to “re-invent the human at the species level.” I take this to mean that the existing cultural paradigms cannot deal adequately with the issues we are now facing and that we need to draw on the evolutionary wisdom of the human species in its interrelationships with all other species and ecosystems. The viability of the human species and its mode of adaptation to the natural world is now called into question. Indeed, we have brought conditions on the entire biospheric life system to a dangerous impasse.

It is not necessary to belabor the well-known parameters of the ecological catastrophe we are facing, since these are well documented in such publications as the annual State of the World reports issued by the Worldwatch Institute. The issues and problems of environmental pollution and degradation have passed from the literature of the scientific communities into the mainstream media. Because pollution does not respect national boundaries, its proliferation lends momentum to efforts at international, even global, cooperation. Since ecosystem destruction likewise does not respect sociopolitical boundaries, we are witnessing new calls for social and environmental accountability from all levels of government and the professions, including law, business, medicine, and education.

The analysis of environmental degradation and of the need for restoration cuts across the paradigm boundaries of the traditional knowledge disciplines. Whereas older definitions of ecology spoke of the relationship of organisms to their environment, a systems approach goes beyond this dualistic conception, defining it as the study of the complex webs of interdependent relationships in ecosystems. For this reason, ecology, owing to its necessarily interdisciplinary character, has been called the “subversive science.” The transition to an ecological way of thinking, systemic relationship thinking, truly involves revolutionary change.

A growing chorus of voices is acknowledging that the fundamental roots of the environmental disaster lie in the attitudes, values, perceptions, and basic worldview that we humans of the industrial-technological global society have come to hold. Many now understand that the worldview and associated attitudes and values of the industrial age have permitted and driven us to pursue exploitative, destructive, and wasteful applications of technology. The modern, industrial worldview was shaped by the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The outlines of an ecological worldview are being articulated in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and philosophy and religious thought. The main features of the emerging worldview are summarized and contrasted with those of the currently dominant industrial worldview in the tables included in this chapter.

I would like to briefly mention some alternative analyses of the transformation that Western society is presently undergoing. Many social thinkers state that the crucial transition taking place now is from the industrial era to the information or electronic era. While it is true that the advent of personal computers and electronics represents a qualitative shift in technology, with far-reaching effects on the economy, culture, and human relationships, it is, in my view, only a continuation of the mechanistic, technological mind-set. Cyberculture and “virtual reality” do not represent a real shift in values, such as is demanded by the environmental crisis.

Other social critics argue that we are moving out of the modern age of rationalism and positivism, which began in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment period, into a postmodern age of deconstructionist relativism. In the deconstructionist view, all theories and models of reality are socially and historically determined “texts” and as such are accorded equal validity. None, including the theories of science, can claim “privileged access” to truth or validity. In contrast to this view, I concur with those who believe it is possible to do more than just critique the modern view. A constructive ecological or systems postmodernism is possible, in which we can recognize consistent features of the newly emerging worldview. These features can be recognized as those that contribute to sustainability, preservation, and restoration of all life-forms and habitats on Earth, not just those of humans or of one group of humans.

In the natural sciences, several new paradigm transitions can be discerned. The “mechanical philosophy” of Newton, Galileo, and Descartes, which began by devising quantitative, mechanical models of physical processes, developed in the course of three centuries into a mechanomorphic worldview, in which the universe is erroneously identified with the analogical models originally designed to explain it. This mechanistic worldview is giving way in many circles to an organismic view, which sees the universe as an evolving process, a “story” in Thomas Berry’s terms. Instead of seeing life as biochemical machinery somehow derived from random molecular combinations, the new biology defines life as a self-generating (autopoietic), genetically coded process adaptively coupled with the environment.

Earth, instead of an inert body of dead matter, is seen in the Gaia theory of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis as a kind of superorganism, evolving in homeostatic reciprocal interaction between living organisms and the physicochemical environment. Some critics intially found fault with the Gaia theory for not offering any “new mechanism” and instead just changing the metaphor. This statement ignores the fact that “mechanism” is itself a metaphor. The currently accepted mechanomorphic worldview is usually not recognized as a metaphor. The psychic fixation of scientific thinking on the machine metaphor is demonstrated in even so eminent an ecologist as Paul Ehrlich, who can write a textbook with the title The Machinery of Nature.
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Quantum physics, with its uncertainty principle, has challenged the old deterministic model of a predictable clockwork universe. Traditional concepts of linear causality and mechanical forces acting on material objects are being superseded by chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, and dissipative structures. The notion of chaos as the epitome of unpredictable disorder has been transformed by new mathematical approaches that yield unexpected orderliness in complex dynamical systems. The atomistic, or “billiard ball” conception of ultimate reality is giving way to a holistic view, in which reality is analyzed as a holarchy (nested hierarchy) of systems with complex, multilevel interactions of phenomena, from subatomic wave/particles and atoms to galactic clusters and the universe itself.

In epistemology, the older, conventional view was that of logical positivism, according to which only sense observations could be meaningful statements. Along with that view was the doctrine of operationalism, according to which the meaning of variables lies in the experimental operations. These views have given way to more open-ended approaches that recognize the possible validity of different perspectives (critical realism) and that take into account the fact that theories and models are mental constructions (constructivism). The reductive-analytic strategy of conducting scientific research, which looks for explanations “from below,” has led in the conventional paradigm to a reductionist ontology, in which all the sciences are supposedly ultimately reducible to the physics of elementary particles. In the postmodern philosophy of science, the reductionist orientation is complemented by integrative, systemic perspectives, including the possibility of causation “from above.”
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The emerging ecological worldview calls for a very different perception of the role of the human being in the scheme of things. For thousands of years, since the beginnings of the Neolithic domestication, the human being has tended to assume a dominating and exploitative attitude toward nature. Judaeo-Christian theology has taught that humans were created in God’s image and put on Earth to “subdue” and “have dominion” over the plants and animals. Heroic individualism and patrilineal property control have been our dominant value systems, and our self-appointed task has been the “conquest of nature.” This anthropocentric attitude assumes that nature is an unlimited repository of resources, to be exploited for our benefit. Even the conservation movement is largely based on an ethic that assumes that natural resources should be conserved or managed for our own future uses.

In contrast, the influence of ecological concepts of co-evolution and symbiosis has led to an awareness of the evolutionary importance of protecting ecosystem integrity and preserving the diversity of species. The philosophy of deep ecology teaches biocentric or ecocentric values, in which humans are seen as part of nature, not set over or against it. The philosopher Arne Naess suggests that we have the potential for extending our sense of identity (identification) to include animals, plants, biotic communities, ecosystems, the entire Earth. The destiny of humankind is seen not in the domination and control of nature, but in the special quality of human consciousness, its unique reflectivity and toolmaking creativity. Living systems of all kinds are valued intrinsically, in and for themselves—not instrumentally, as resources to be exploited, managed, or conserved.
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In relation to the land, the Western industrial-technological worldview is fundamentally based on the notion of property and ownership. Land exists to be used and developed, for farming, herding, building, and so on. Since the beginning of the Kurgan invasions of Europe and the Mediterranean by nomadic pastoralist warrior tribes from Central Asia about six thousand years ago, the competing tribes have been fighting for territories and for the herds and slaves that went with them. Indigenous cultures, such as the Native Americans, have had a very different relationship to the land—more akin to stewardship, with a profound respect for place and the sacredness of particular sites of power. Similarly, the American ecologist Aldo Leopold spoke of a “land ethic” that would require us to learn to “think like a mountain.” Today, the bioregional movement advocates a return to an appreciation of the natural (for example, watershed) boundaries of a given region, optimally with decentralized self-sufficiency. The task of the human is then to “reinhabit” the place, to really know it and dwell in it.
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The value systems governing human social relationships are also changing under the impact of the global transition to an ecological worldview. Feminists and eco-feminists have cogently argued that the domination of nature is inseparable from the domination of women. Under patriarchy, which has come to be the accepted social norm almost the world over, women were regarded as possessions, along with the children, the herds, and the slaves of conquered peoples. Partnership, or “gylany,” is the term used by Riane Eisler to indicate the balanced male-female relationship pattern that needs to be reintroduced. Value divisions based on racial or ethnic differences will increasingly give way to a new planetary culture that respects and celebrates qualitative differences. Its beginnings can already be seen in the worldwide “fusion” of diverse styles in fashion, music, cuisine, and lifestyle, facilitated by the global media networks. The position of the social ecologist Murray Bookchin argues that class domination patterns must be corrected simultaneously with the patterns of our relationship with nature.
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Several religious and theological scholars have pointed out that in the three great monotheistic religions, God (always masculine) is a transcendent creator and lawgiver deity. In such religions there is an inseparable gulf between God and humans, whose only recourse is to obey the law and support the priesthood or Church. In the animistic religious view of primordial peoples, all of nature—animals, plants, mountains, forests, streams, landscapes—is animated by living intelligences (called “spirits”), with which both shamans and ordinary people could be in communication. The monotheistic religions altered this relationship entirely: nature, the world, was the creation of a remote and transcendent deity and was inherently corrupt, tainted by original sin, dark, nonsacred, and, finally, demonic and frightening (which fit in well with the command to dominate and conquer). By destroying pagan animism and the shamanic traditions preserved in witchcraft, Christianity drastically severed itself from the roots of a regenerative spirituality grounded in the natural world. Protestantism, which, as Max Weber pointed out, furthered the development of exploitative capitalism by focusing on the value of work in the material world, completed the profanation of the natural world. In the modern atheistic, materialist worldview, there is no spiritual being anywhere, either in this life or after death, either in nature or above it—but control, use, and exploitation are still the norms.

Although their environmental record is not above reproach, the polytheistic, animistic religions that preceded Judaism and Christianity still had at least a conception of spirituality as immanent within nature. Pantheism (“everything is divine”) or panentheism (“the divine is in everything”) was the theology of the original Europeans and of the Jewish and Christian mystics (such as Francis of Assisi and Hildegard von Bingen) as well. The “creation spirituality” concepts of the theologian Matthew Fox as well as the work of Teilhard de Chardin and Alfred North Whitehead are modern examples of theology that incorporates the insights of ecology.

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In education and research we have come to see, in the modern era, the ever narrower specialization of disciplines and an unbridgeable gap between the “two cultures” of science and the humanities. The mechanistic paradigm of classical physics, which has been adopted by the life sciences and the social sciences, assumes that its method attains to “objective” knowledge, to “facts” free of values. Beginning with the work of Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s, historians and philosophers of science have long since established that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is anything but free of values or metaphysical assumptions. In actuality, the underlying value systems presupposed by science are congruent with the domination and exploitation agenda of the patriarchal mind-set. Prediction and control are the stated objectives of research, and the results of research are fed into technology for “man’s benefit” (read: profit and capital accumulation) and security” (read: militarism). In the emerging ecological worldview, with ecology instead of physics as the model discipline, education and the pursuit of knowledge would of necessity be multidisciplinary and integrative. Unconscious values and hidden agendas will need to be brought into the light of critical review. Global citizens of a unified world in catastrophic transition cannot afford to hang on to the fragmented paradigms of European industrial culture.

In the political arena, the industrial-technological culture has crystallized around the nation-state. During the modern era, the concept of nation-state sovereignty and centralized authority emerged out of the monarchic, feudal, and ecclesiastical forms of the medieval period. Patriarchal power groups, organized to protect patrilineal property and ownership “rights,” imposed a gradually increasing stranglehold of industrial and militaristic cultural uniformity on their subject populations. The propagandistic use of mass-psychological processes of scapegoating and enemy-making culminated in the fascist, genocidal, totalitarian holocausts that European “civilization” inflicted upon the world in the twentieth century. In departing from these suicidal and ecocidal patterns, the kinds of political forms that are emerging are various forms of federations and confederations, a decentralization of the nation-state into pluralistic societies of ethnic and national groupings, increased reliance on self-sufficient and self-maintaining bioregions, and a shift of values and priorities away from military to human and environmental concerns.

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The prevailing economic systems, both capitalist and socialist, are based on the illusion that unlimited material progress can be achieved by further industrialization. Natural capital is relegated to “externalities” in current accounting, and pollution, toxic waste, and adverse health impacts are counted as contributing to “growth” if money is spent on them. Under the impact of an avalanche of feedback that humans are exceeding the carrying capacity (the “limits to growth”) of the biosphere, while destroying habitats and causing the extinction of countless species of plants and animals whose existence is vital to the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. These assumptions and policies will need to be revised in favor of cooperative, community-based, steady-state, sustainable economies that recognize the prime and ultimate dependence of all human economic activity as well as all nonhuman life-forms on the integrity of the biosphere and the local ecosystems.

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Profit-driven technologies that pollute the global elemental energy cycles and generate catastrophic amounts of toxic and non-recyclable wastes will have to be replaced by appropriate technologies, also called “soft energy paths” by Amory Lovins, and a massive conversion of the entire industrial infrastructure to reusable and recyclable materials and products.’∞ Technology, instead of being used to feed a runaway cycle of exploitation and consumerism (“more and more goods for more and more people”), will need to be redirected toward the protection and restoration of damaged ecosystems. In agriculture in the industrialized nations, excessive reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, combined with monoculture using artificially produced hybrids has led to disastrous loss of topsoil, genetic erosion, and decreasing yields for increasing populations. The way out of this dilemma, as propounded by the organic farming movement and such thinkers as Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, is to return to traditional, small- and medium-scale farming methods that use crop rotation and biological methods of pest control and achieve thereby a truly sustainable agriculture.”

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In reflecting on the ecological worldview outlined here, it would appear that there is actually a remarkable degree of congruence and agreement, if not consensus, even among people working in quite different areas. The disastrous features of our present policies and practices seem to flow from a few widely shared basic assumptions and value systems. These assumptions and values have no inherent staying power: they are cultural, not biological givens. The alternate attitudes and values now being advocated in many circles are unconventional but not unnatural. Indeed, they seem to resonate to the most ancient human longings for exuberant life, freedom to grow, the recognition of spirit, the appreciation of differences, the delight in creativity. The pathways into the ecological age have been and are being convincingly articulated by many pioneers. It remains for us to muster the personal and political will to walk these paths.

If a cultural transition to an ecological worldview does take place somewhat as outlined, it may be that the long-range vision of the theologian Thomas Berry is also on target. Looking at an evolutionary timescale, Berry has proposed that we are coming to the end of the Cenozoic (the age of mammals and flowering plants), which began sixty-five million years ago, and moving into an Ecozoic era. According to Berry, we will then realize that we live in a world that is a “communion of subjects,” not just a “collection of objects.” In such a world, humans will be able to find their rightful place not as rulers, but as participants in the integral and interdependent community of all life.

More about Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner’s “Green Psychology” at Amazon.com

Today, we continue our inquiry into trance psychology. The following selection is from Chapter 6 of Ralph Metzner’s book “Green Psychology”.  —Jivan Vatayan

Also see: The Machine and Breaking the Trance!

The Psychopathology of the Human-Nature Relationship

Ralph Metzner

It is widely agreed that the global ecological crisis (which confronts the world today) is one of the most critical turning points that human civilization has ever faced. Furthermore, the realization is spreading that the root causes of environmental destruction lie in human psychology—in certain distorted perceptions, attitudes, and values that modern humans have come to hold. In this essay I discuss some of the diagnostic analogies that have been proposed to account for the destructive imbalance in the human-nature relationship.

Several different diagnostic metaphors have been proposed to explain the ecologically disastrous split, the pathological alienation, between human beings and the rest of the biosphere. None of these psychological diagnoses, incidentally, have been made by psychologists, who seem to have taken absolutely no interest in this question thus far. We can view these concepts as metaphors or analogies, transferred from the realm of individual psychopathology to the level of society and to the level of the human species in its relation to the nonhuman natural world. There are historical precedents for applying diagnostic concepts from individual psychology to the realm of collective or mass psychology. Wilhelm Reich’s work on the mass psychology of fascism and, more recently, Lloyd deMause’s psychoanalytic interpretations of historical and political trends are examples of this approach. To those who would question the relevance of such diagnostic speculation, the answer is simply that we are trying to discern the nature of the psychological disturbance that appears to have Homo sapiens in its grip, to be able to apply the appropriate treatments to the amelioration of the present ecocatastrophe.

THE AILING BIOSPHERE: METAPHORS OF ORGANIC PATHOLOGY

A number of people have proposed that in view of the excessive population growth of human beings in many parts of the biosphere, the best analogy to describe the situation is in terms of a malignant tumor. Tumors are made up of cells multiplying uncontrollably and destroying the surrounding tissue. The anthropologist Warren Hern has said, “A schematic view of the growth of London from 1800 to 1955 looks like nothing so much as an expanding, invasive, metastatic, malignant tumor.” He proposes the term Homo ecophagus (“ecosystem-devourer”) as the appropriate name for this pathological species. In pointing to the obvious malignancy of large megacities, Theodore Roszak has written about “Gaia’s city pox,” the spread of large urban conglomerations associated with the Industrial Revolution. The disease metaphor for our planetary condition depends on the following underlying analogy: Earth (Gaia) is a living organism, and humans and other individual organisms are the cells in this superorganism. The phenomenal expansions of human populations that we are now seeing, particularly the sprawling urban aggregates, can then be seen as clusters of cancer cells, spreading to more and more areas of Earth’s land surface.

The most completely articulated formulation of the disease analogy is by James Lovelock, in his last book, Healing Gaia. Trained in medicine, Lovelock has long been suggesting that geophysiology should be the name of the science of the structures and functions of Earth’s ecosystems and energy cycles (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc.). Planetary medicine then concerns the disturbed functioning of this great organism. Lovelock’s preferred diagnosis is that Gaia is suffering from a parasitical infestation by the species Homo sapiens, a disease he calls disseminated primatemia. He points out that parasite-host relationships can have four possible outcomes: first, the invading microorganisms are destroyed by the host’s immune system; second, host and parasite settle down to a long war of attrition—the condition known as chronic infection; third, the parasite destroys the host and thereby eliminates its own life support; and, fourth, the parasitical relationship is transformed into one of mutualism or symbiosis. “The last [scenario], symbiosis, is obviously desirable. As intelligent microbes, we have the advantage of knowing the risks of failure and the lasting benefits of symbiosis. But will we achieve it?” Lovelock states that there are several strong precedents in nature for this kind of symbiosis between life-forms of very different scale, but he adds that there are inherent properties of humans that make it difficult for us to act sensibly and achieve symbiosis within Gaia. With this statement we enter the realm of human behavior and attitudes as the crucial levers of global change.

ANTHROPOCENTRISM AND THE HUMAN SUPERIORITY COMPLEX

Environmental thinkers, or ecophilosophers, were the first to point to the crucial role of distorted human attitudes, beliefs, and values in the generation of the ecological crisis. The concept of anthropocentrism, or homocentrism, was offered as a philosophical diagnosis of the human species’ ecological maladjustment and biocentrism or ecocentrism as the healthier corrective. This idea has been put forward by a number of twentieth-century philosophers, ecologists, and writers, including Aldo Leopold, Paul Sears, Aldous Huxley, Loren Eiseley, Rachel Carson, Lynn White Jr., Robinson Jeffers, Paul Shepard, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, and others; forebear of this kind of thinking can be traced to such nineteenth-century thinkers as John Muir, Henry Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as to the ethical cosmology of Baruch Spinoza. The anthropocentric critique has been articulated most cogently by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (himself strongly influenced by Spinoza) and by those identified with the philosophical orientation known as deep ecology, founded by Naess. To use the term anthropocentrism as a critique of the human attitude to nature in the modernist worldview parallels the use of “ethnocentrism” to critique racial discrimination and the use of “Eurocentrism” to critique the colonialist exploitation ideology of Western culture.

Although the role of anthropocentric attitudes in creating or aggravating the ecological imbalance of industrial civilization is unquestionable, there are reasons to question the use of that term, since it actually covers two distinct meanings. Anthropocentric literally just means “human-centered,” and some critics have pointed out that the human, like every other species, necessarily looks at the world from its own point of view, seeking to maximize its own survival advantages. A non-anthropocentric viewpoint, in this criticism, is both impossible and unnatural. But whether our human-centered perspective can be transcended is surely an empirical question—a question about the possibility of psychological change. Even if we assume that a homocentric attitude is a basic fact of human nature, this still leaves open the possibility that humans can learn to transcend their inborn homocentrism. This is, in fact, what Arne Naess, Warwick Fox, and others propose with their notion of extending identification to the natural world. Perhaps this is something humans can do and animals cannot. Or perhaps animals, or some animals, can also empathically escape their species-centered points of view and look at the world through human eyes. Certainly this seems to be the view of shamanistic cultures, which have much lore and mythology about how the human, the failure or disappearance of culturally provided developmental supports would have particularly devastating consequences. In his use of paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies as models of ecologically balanced lifestyles, including child-rearing, Shepard seems to be saying that with the advent of domestication, circa twelve thousand years ago, civilized humanity began to lose or pervert the developmental practices that had functioned healthily for hundreds of thousands of years.

He sees two stages where ancient patterns of development may have become chronically incomplete: infant-caregiver relationships and adolescent transition rites. Shepard argues that agriculture increased the distance between the growing child and the nonhuman, or “wild,” world of nature: “By aggravating the tensions of separation from the mother and at the same time spatially isolating the individual from the non-humanized world, agriculture made it difficult for the developing person to approach the issues around which the crucial passages into fully mature adult life had been structured in the course of human existence.”

In Erikson’s developmental model, adolescence is the time when the child is enmeshed in a conflict between “identity and identity diffusion.” The notion of a collective fixation at the stage of early adolescence fits with the kind of boisterous, arrogant pursuit of individual self-assertion that characterizes the consumerist, exploitative model of economic growth, where the short-term profits of entrepreneurs and corporate shareholders seem to be not only the dominant value but the only value under consideration. It also fits with the aggressive and predatory militarism and the emphasis on the values and ideals of male warrior cults that have characterized Western civilization since the Bronze Age. Adolescents who have difficulty negotiating the turmoil of this stage often become, as Erikson writes, “remarkably clannish, intolerant and cruel in their exclusion of others who are ‘different,’ in skin color or cultural background.”

To provide guiding structures for negotiating the transition from the family matrix to the larger society was the function of rites of passage in traditional societies. The progressive deterioration and loss of adolescent rites of passage in the modern age are well known. As Robert Bly has pointed out, even the minimal father-to-son apprenticeship bonding that existed before the Industrial Revolution has since been lost. The only transition rites of manhood we still have involving elders, such as they are, are the boot-camp and combat initiations afforded by the military. Beyond that, there is only the stunted futility of attempted peer group initiation, whether in the pathetic form of college fraternity hazing or in the casual violence of juvenile street gangs, where twelve-year olds may carry handguns to school to avenge imagined insults to their “home” band.

Besides the loss of adolescent initiation rites, Shepard points to the “unity pathology” that develops if the earliest stage of infant-caregiver bonding is disrupted or disturbed. This is the stage Erikson identifies as the stage where the child’s developing sense of self is dealing with issues of “basic trust vs. mistrust.” If this stage is not negotiated successfully, we may have at best an attitude of chronic insecurity and at worst the suspiciousness and proneness to violence of the paranoid psychotic. Jean Liedloff’s studies of mother-infant bonding among Amazonian Indians and her “continuum concept” support Shepard’s assertion that in hunter/gatherer societies, the intense early attachment leads not to prolonged dependency but to a better functioning nervous system.’

Shepard summarizes his theory of ontogenetic crippling by stating, “Men [presumably he means "Western industrialized humans"] may now be the possessors of the world’s flimsiest identity structure—by Paleolithic standards, childish adults.” One of the worst consequences of this collective madness is “a readiness to strike back at a natural world that we dimly perceive as having failed us.” On the other hand, adults who in infancy developed a basic trust that the world of nature and society can provide for their needs are not likely to be attracted to a worldview that demands a relentless struggle for competitive advantage. Government leaders and opinion makers in the United States are now in the habit of promoting “competitiveness” as the value or goal that the educational system should develop in the nation’s children. We are suffering, Shepard says, from “an epidemic of the psychopathic mutilation of ontogeny.”

Shepard does not say much about the possible treatment for such a case of collective arrested development. Presumably the reinstitution of initiation rituals for adolescents, carried out by respected elders, and a much greater sensitivity to the fragility of early infant bonding should be two key ingredients in any attempt to reverse this pathology. Similar proposals have been made by many people. “An ecologically harmonious sense of self and world is . . . the inherent possession of everyone; it is latent in the organism, in the interaction of the genome and early experience. The phases of such early experiences, or epigenesis, are the legacy of an evolutionary past in which human and nonhuman achieved a healthy rapport.”‘

ADDICTION

Another analogy from the field of psychopathology that offers considerable insight, in my view, is the model of addiction (or compulsion, more generally). We are a society whose scientists and experts have been describing for forty years, in horrifying and mind-numbing detail, the dimensions of global ecocatastrophe. Just think of some of the book titles: Silent Spring, The Population Bomb, The Limits to Growth, The Death of Nature, The End of Nature. Our inability to stop our suicidal and ecocidal behavior fits the clinical definition of addiction or compulsion: behavior that continues in spite of the fact that the individual knows that it is destructive to family, work, and social relationships. This metaphor of addiction or compulsion, on a vast scale, also parallels in many ways the teachings of the Asian spiritual traditions, especially Buddhism. These traditions teach that suffering or dissatisfaction is an inevitable feature of all human existence and that craving or desire is at the root of suffering.

One of the first to develop the addiction diagnosis was the deep ecologist and mountaineer Dolores LaChapelle, in her book Sacred Land, Sacred Sex. In a chapter entitled “Addiction, Capitalism and the New World Ripoff,” she analyzes the interrelationships between the pursuit of addictive substances, including gold, silver, sugar, and narcotics, and the phenomenal growth of the capital-accumulating industrial society from the sixteenth century to the present. “The entire development of capitalism consists in making a group of people addicted to some ‘substance’ and selling it to them. Capitalism ‘worked’ as long as we had an enormous source of cheap natural resources (primarily in the New World) . . . . Continuing its history of ‘addiction,’ capitalism is now relying more and more on addictive drugs to fuel its growth.”

Several other authors have also pointed to the addictive nature of our relationship to fossil fuels, another major engine of unrestrained industrial growth and ecological destruction. More generally, one can see the spread of consumerism and the obsession with industrial-economic growth as signs of an addictive society. Chellis Glendinning, drawing on ideas from Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul, has analyzed the “technoaddiction” that characterizes industrial civilization—with its compulsive craving for faster and more powerful machines, its pervasive denial, and its blatant attraction to retraumatization. The addiction model is quite useful. In the past forty years, we have learned something about addiction, how to treat it and how to prevent it. The twelve-step recovery movement does attract individuals who want to break the cycle of addiction, and it also appeals to people with spiritual values and interests.

NARCISSISM

Environmentalists have long argued that one of the key dynamics of the global runaway system of ecological destruction is overconsumption, particularly in the heavily industrialized, modernized societies. Consumerism—more and more people wanting and buying more and more goods—represents a fairly precise collective analogy to compulsion addiction on the individual level. Although consumption is massively and artificially pumped to extreme levels by advertising, there is much evidence to suggest that an underlying narcissism may play a major role. Narcissism is a personality disorder characterized by an inflated and grandiose self-image as well as feelings of entitlement that mask deep-seated feelings of unworthiness and emptiness.

The psychologist Philip Cushman has drawn explicit parallels between narcissism and the consumer culture. The relentless pursuit of ever more expensive and technologically advanced consumer goods feeds the entitled “false self,” while the insecure and empty inner self remains anxious and wounded—driven then to buy even more goods to cover up the inner emptiness. As Cushman writes, “the empty self seeks the experience of being continually filled up by consuming goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners and empathic therapists in an attempt to combat the growing alientation.”

Ecopsychologists Allen Kanner and Mary Gomes have expanded on this line of work to argue that if the diagnosis of mass narcissism in American culture is correct, it represents a difficult challenge for environmentalists. Since the average consumer feels inwardly inadequate and is constantly bombarded with a torrent of advertising designed to induce him or her to spend more and more to cure this unworthiness, the environmentalist’s plea for less material consumption may fall on ears made deaf by entitlement and fear. “When they [consumers] are criticized for excessive materialism, there is a danger that these admonishments will primarily increase their overall sense of failure rather than significantly alter their environmental habits.”

DISSOCIATION

In contrast to the Freudian and post-Freudian view of the centrality of repression in the creation of the “unconscious,” there has been in recent years a revival of interest in the concept of dissociation. Dissociative disorders, such as “post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD) and “multiple personality disorder” (MPD), are being diagnosed much more frequently, though it is not known whether this rate of diagnosis is due to an increase in the actual occurrence of such disorders or to improved recognition of conditions previously misunderstood. Dissociation is actually a normal and natural cognitive function, the opposite of association. Dissociation plays a role in hypnotic and other forms of trance, when we progressively disconnect perception of the external world, to attend to interior images, memories, and impressions. Even the simple act of focusing or concentrating attention clearly involves some degree of dissociation, a screening out of awareness of anything that is not in focus.

In the Freudian view, psychic material (thoughts, images, feelings, etc.) that is in the repressed unconscious (also called id) is disorganized, primitive, and childish, functioning according to the “pleasure principle”. The conscious mind (ego), on the other hand, functions according to the “reality principle” and is capable of adjusting or adapting to the demands of reality in a rational, organized manner. The dissociationist view, as originally put forward by Freud’s contemporary Pierre Janet and in the neo-dissociationism of Ernest Hilgard and others, is that dissociation involves a “vertical” separation of strands of consciousness that may be equally well organized, rational, and in touch with reality. For example, the mental and emotional components of a painful experience may be dissociated, so that we remember what we saw and thought but not what we (appropriately) felt; vice versa, a certain stimulus may trigger a feeling of panic, but the cognitive memory of what happened remains dissociated. In MPD, the most extreme form of dissociative disorder, which has been shown in 99 percent of cases to have developed in response to repeated abuse in early childhood, two or more fragments of identity, sometimes called “ego states” or “alters,” are created. They maintain a continuity of their own, often with different names and different personality characteristics. As Hilgard says, “the concealed [or dissociated] personality is sometimes more normal or mentally healthy than the openly displayed one. This accords better with the idea of a split in the normal consciousness rather than with the idea of a primitive unconscious regulated largely by primary process thinking.”

The notion of the “splitting” of two or more equally rational and organized psychic fragments or identities was also used by Robert J. Lifton in his analysis of the Nazi doctors, who were able to enjoy listening to Beethoven in the garden and playing with their children after a day of torturing and killing people. I believe that this concept of dissociation, or splitting, provides a more accurate and more useful understanding of the collective human pathology vis-‡-vis the environment than the notion of a repressed and primitive “ecological unconscious.” The entire culture of Western industrial society is dissociated from its ecological substratum. It’s not that our knowledge and understanding of Earth’s complex and delicate web of interdependence is vaguely and inchoately lodged in some forgotten basement of our psyche. We have the knowledge of our impact on the environment; we can perceive the pollution and degradation of the land, the waters, the air—but we do not attend to it, and we do not connect that knowledge with other aspects of our total experience. Perhaps it would be more accurate, and fair, to say that individuals feel unable to respond to the natural world appropriately, because the political, economic, and educational institutions in which we are involved all have this dissociation built into them. This dissociative alienation has been a feature of Western culture for centuries or, in some respects, even for millennia, if Paul Shepard is right.

In the Western psyche, the dissociative split between humans and nature is entangled with a split between the spiritual and the natural. In a subsequent chapter, we shall consider the complex historical roots of this dissociation. Basically, it’s as if we had two selves. One is spiritual, which we think of as rising upward into higher realms. The second, the natural self, which includes bodily sensations and feelings, sinks or draws us downward. As a result of this dualistic, value-laden conception, the spiritual (and human) is then always regarded as superior to the natural (and animal). With this notion, we find ourselves back with the humanist superiority complex described earlier.

In some versions of this core image, the contrast between the two realms, or tendencies, is even sharper; not only is there a separation of the two tendencies, but there is also opposition between them. Then we are taught that to be spiritual, to attain salvation or enlightenment, we have to overcome our “lower” animal instincts and passions and conquer the bodily ego. In the alchemical tradition, which mostly was based on following and imitating nature, this special kind of spiritual work was called the opus contra naturam, “the work against nature.”

This dissociative split between human spiritual values and the realities of nature, the flesh, and the senses, survived the demise of the religious worldview and appears again as a purely psychological pattern in Freudian psychoanalysis. In this version of the ancient split, the conflict is between the ego, which is basically human consciousness, and the id, which is the body-based animal instincts and impulses. The ego has to struggle against the id to attain consciousness and become truly human. At the collective level of culture, Freud held that this conflicted relationship with the natural brought about the discontents of civilization (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)—this was the inevitable price we had to pay for the possibility of civilization.

The ecologically disastrous consequences of this dissociative split in Western human beings’ self-concept becomes clear when we reflect upon the fact that if we feel ourselves mentally and spiritually separate from our own nature—our body, instincts, sensations, and so on – this separation will also be projected outward. We see and experience ourselves as separate then from the great realm of nature and Earth all around us. If we believe that to advance spiritually, or to be true human beings, we have to go against, to inhibit, and control the natural feelings and impulses of our own body, this same kind of antagonism and agenda of control will also be projected outward, supporting the well-known Western “conquest of nature” ideology. For most people in the West, their highest values, their noblest ideals, their image of themselves as spiritual beings striving to be good and come closer to God have been deeply associated with a sense of having to overcome and separate from nature.

It does not take much imagination to see how the consequences of this distorted perception have been played out in the spread of European civilization around the globe. And it is a distorted, counterfactual image: we human beings are not, in fact, separate from or superior to nature, nor do we have the right to dominate and exploit nature beyond what is necessary for our immediate needs. We are part of nature—we are in Earth, not on it. We are the cells in the body of the vast living organism that is planet Earth. An organism cannot continue to function healthily if one group of cells decides to dominate and cannibalize the other energy systems of the body.

Furthermore, the idea that the spiritual and the natural are opposed or that spirituality must always transcend nature is a culturally relative concept not shared by polytheistic religions or traditional animistic societies. In indigenous cultures around the world, the natural world is regarded as the realm of spirit and the sacred; the natural is the spiritual. From this belief follows an attitude of respect, a desire to maintain a balanced relationship, and an instinctive understanding of the need for considering future generations and the future health of the ecosystem—in short, sustainable. Recognizing and respecting worldviews and spiritual practices different from our own is probably the best antidote to the West’s fixation in the life-destroying dissociation between spirit and nature.

 

Ralph Metzner’s “Green Psychology” at Amazon.com

Earlier this week, I  posted the first six chapters of synergic science pioneer N. Arthur Coulter’s Human Synergetics on the Web. Dr. Coulter gives us an overview of that work here.

There will come a time, I know, when people will take delight in one another, when each will he a star to the other, and when each will listen to his fellow man as to music. The free men will walk upon the earth, men great in their freedom. They  will walk with open hearts, and the heart of each will he pure of envy and greed, and therefore all mankind will be without malice and there will he nothing to divorce the heart from reason. Then life will be one great service to man! His figure will he raised to lofty heights for to free men all heights are attainable. Then we shall live in truth and freedom and in beauty, and those will be accounted the best who will the more widely embrace the world with their hearts, and whose love of it will he the profoundest, for in them is the greatest beauty. Then will life be great, and the people will be great who live that life.

—Maxim Gorky 
 

OVERVIEW—THE SYNERGETIC PROGRAM

N.Arthur Coulter, MD

In previous chapters, the Mode Ladder was described, and the basic goal of synergetics was presented: to evoke traverse up the Mode Ladder to the synergic mode of function. The heurisms of synergetics were then described-basic principles that have guided the formulation, development, testing, and evaluation of synergetic ideas and tools. In this chapter, we complete the presentation of Basic Synergetics as it has evolved to date, with a description of another basic concept-the Status Cross-and an overview of the rest of this book.

It is pretty obvious that men are not created equal. The idea of equality, taken from a literal interpretation of the words of the American Declaration of Independence, can lead to some rather difficult ideological positions.

But Thomas Jefferson did not mean that men and women were identically equal. He meant that, in a just social order, all persons should be treated equally, that none should have special privilege by virtue of accident of birth, wealth, or social position. Each person is a unique individual; but each is entitled by inalienable right to equal protection of the law, to equal treatment by the law, and to equality of economic and social opportunity. Only when all men and women have social equality can the unique potential of each be realized, for the ultimate benefit of all.

In synergetics, we formulate this idea as the Principle of Equivalence of Status. This may be stated as follows: the flow of synergy, empathy, and communication between two individuals is optimum when they have equivalent status with respect to each other. Referring to the figure below, equivalent status is indicated by the center of the cross.

“statuscross” 

When one regards the other as Super, the flow of synergy, empathy,  and communication (SEC) tends to go down.

When one regards the other as Sub, SEC goes down.

When one regards the other as Pro, as someone to be dependent upon, SEC goes down.

When one regards the other as Anti, SEC goes down.

The Status Cross is of basic importance in Group Synergetics. It is useful in analyzing dysergic group processes. For example, if communication is poor between two members or cliques in a group, it may be found that they do not occupy the Equivalence of Status point on the Status Cross. Corrective action to establish Equivalence of Status will then often lead to improved two-way communication. From a positive viewpoint, group synergy can achieve remarkable heights when a group is so organized that Equivalence of Status is maintained.

Two special applications deserve mention. In writing this book, I have collected into an organized whole a set of ideas and tools which, in my studies and experience, demonstrably promote synergy and/or reduce dysergy. But please don’t make me a guru. These ideas and tools should be independently tested and evaluated by each readersome may be in error, others are no doubt poorly stated. Furthermore, the experience of the reader doubtless includes data not available to me, about ideas and tools that promote synergy and reduce dysergy. Synergetics is not what the artcoulter says it is; it consists of ideas and tools which, in the collective experience of syngeneers, have been effective in promoting synergy and reducing dysergy.

The second application is in the domain of work methods, especially in the roles of the coach and the group monitor (discussed in more detail in later chapters). It is natural for a coach or a group monitor to be accorded a Super or a Pro status. (He also not infrequently acquires a Sub or an Anti status!) It is important that steps be taken to prevent this or to correct it whenever it occurs. Synergetics works far better when Equivalence of Status is maintained.

It is, of course, true that an experienced, well-trained, knowledgeable coach or group monitor can achieve more than an inexperienced or inadequately trained one. But this is all the more reason for him to operate from an Equivalence of Status position. If he’s really good, he doesn’t need a Super status; and if he can’t operate from a position of Equivalence of Status, he’s really not as good as he may think he is.

Basic Synergetics, then, as it has thus far evolved, consists of the Mode Ladder, the synergetic heurisms, and the Status Cross. Many more ideas and tools could be included, but I have deliberately kept this as simple as possible. Starting with Basic Synergetics, a creative syngeneer can readily formulate, develop, test, and apply other ideas and tools appropriate to other fields not covered in this book. And the ideas and tools of Basic Synergetics are used, directly and indirectly, in all the branches of Synergetics covered in this book.

Let us now consider the synergetic program. The basic goal of synergetics is to promote synergy and/or reduce dysergy in functioning systems. In this book, we apply this goal to individuals, to groups, and to communities. Part Two deals with Individual Synergetics, Part Three with Group Synergetics, and Part Four with Social Synergetics.

It should be emphasized that these three parts are not isolated from one another, but form an interrelated whole. Desirably, they should constitute a synergic whole. However, it is necessary to take them one at a time. This inevitably means that, on the first time through, the reader will get only a partial and inadequate picture. The reader who wishes to acquire a synergic grasp of synergetics, therefore, is advised to read the rest of the book twice. The first reading will gradually give him a picture of the whole. The second reading will enable him to place each detail in synergic relationship to other details and to the whole.

Even this will not provide full synergic grasp. In addition, experience with the concrete phenomena that are evoked when these tools are used is necessary.

Individual Synergetics consists of two main parts: ideas and tools for promoting synergy, and ideas and tools for reducing or eliminating dysergy. The two are not isolated, although considered separately. The production of synergy makes it easier to eliminate dysergy. The elimination of dysergy makes it easier to achieve the synergic mode. The two efforts thus reinforce each other.

Basic to Individual Synergetics is the synergetic session. This is analogous to, but distinct from, the production of special states of consciousness in yoga, in psychoanalysis, in hypnosis, etc. In psychoanalysis, for example, the patient lies on a couch and free associates, letting whatever comes to mind emerge without censorship and reporting verbally to the analyst. In a synergetic session, a technique called tracking is used. This induces a state of enhanced rationality in the tracker, occasionally punctuated by periods in which the synergic mode turns on. Many other techniques may also be used, but tracking is the basic technique.

A synergetic session may be carried out by an individual working alone or with the help of a friend who acts as a coach. In Part Two, it is assumed that the tracker is working alone. Tracking, however, is a skill that is not acquired without effort; it takes practice and an investment of time, energy, and thought. A coach who knows how to track can be very helpful to a person who is learning to track. Paradoxically, a competent tracker can also use a coach to assist him and often achieve more than he can working alone.

Coaching is also a skill that requires an investment of time, energy, and thought. It is defined and governed by a set of principles and policies called the Coach’s Guide. Although superficially similar to some forms of psychotherapy, it is not psychotherapy. This point needs to be, emphasized. The basic goal of coaching is different and the staging is different from that of psychotherapy.

Just as Individual Synergetics promotes synergy and red es dysergy in individuals, so does Group Synergetics promote synergy and reduce dysergy in groups. Group Tracking is the basic technique. Desirably, each member of a group should have learned how to track, or at least be learning how, in order for Group Tracking to be effective. Conversely, an individual can usually make better progress in Individual Synergetics if he concomitantly is a member of a synergetic group.

One remarkable and exhilarating feature of Group Synergetics is a special type of group called the Synergic Team. A Synergic Team is a group functioning in the synergic mode as a group. A wonderful spirit of mutual trust, love, and admiration emerges, combined with a synergy of interaction in thought and deed that has to be experienced to be understood. Some athletic teams develop a similar relationship, but perhaps not with the same degree of mental synergy. Being part of a Synergic Team is one of the most rewarding aspects of synergetics.

Part Four deals with Social Synergetics, a field pioneered by Lester Ward and Ruth Benedict and developed considerably in recent years by James and Marguerite Craig, Abraham Maslow, Walter and Nancy Strode, Wes Thomas, Donald Benson, Sadah Loomis, and the Committee for the Future, originators of the SYNCON type of conference, to mention only a few. Potentially, this is the most important single branch of synergetics. Most would agree, I think, that our strife-wracked planet could use a little more synergy.

The basic program of synergetics has these goals: to develop synergic individuals, synergic teams, synergic communities, and ultimately a synergic world order. Any objective, realistic appraisal of the condition of humankind quickly leads one to conclude that we have a very, very long way to go before these goals can be achieved. But humanity is young, as species go; in a short few thousand years humans have progressed at an amazing rate and have transformed the face of the earth. True, not all progress has been beneficial, and we now face a number of crises any one of which could lead to catastrophe if not resolved. But a species that has achieved so much in so short a time span should not be underestimated. We believe in humanity. We believe in the essential goodness of human beings. And we believe in the electrifying power of synergy — a new force in human affairs.

More from Human Synergetics

Finally, I have posted the first six chapters of synergic science pioneer N. Arthur Coulter’s Human Synergetics on the Web. I should have the rest of the book up in the next few weeks. This morning Jivan Vatayan continues yesterday’s discussion of the trance.

Breaking the Trance! (2)

Jivan Vatayan

The assumption that we easily and simply change our minds and rationally respond to the oncoming die-off also fails to take into account the most recent findings about  human awareness as posited by neuroscientists.

In a February 19, 2002 article in the New York Times Sandra Blakeslee summarizes some of their conclusions. 

She says that much of our “behavior rel(ies) on brain circuits that evolved to help animals assess rewards important to their survival, like food and sex.”

“And, in a finding that astonishes many people, (scientists) found that the brain systems that detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness.” “In navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to zombies than sentient beings much of the time.” “The findings, which are gaining wide adherence among neuroscientists, challenge the notion that people always make conscious choices about what they want and how to obtain it. In fact, the neuroscientists say, much of what happens in the brain goes on outside of conscious awareness.” “Dr. Montague estimates that 90 percent of what people do every day is carried out by this kind of automatic, unconscious system that evolved to help creatures survive.”

More ever, the routines that appear to be running in the human subconscious are mediated by releases of a neuro-chemical reward “dopamine”. It appears to be “a dopamine rush” that motivates us to subconsciously evaluate information and our possible actions.

“Scientists believe that this midbrain dopamine system is constantly making predictions about what to expect in terms of rewards.”

It is beginning to look as if “normal” awareness resembles a state more and more like that which we once labeled with the word trance! And this trance tends to also engage in socially sanctioned “rackets” to further reduce awareness.

Dennis R. Wier Director of The Trance Institute in Bruetten, Switzerland describes the various trances of normality. 

“A person has the potential to be in a normal trance as soon as their attention is limited. Ordinary concentration, when the mind is focused on a specific problem or thought, sets one of the conditions for a normal trance to occur. Intense pleasure, when the mind is engaged in joyful or exciting repetitive activity, sets a condition for trance and may, for many people, become a trance. When one is daydreaming, with no specific direction of the thoughts, with a certain repetition of thoughts, one is in a normal trance. The general characteristic of these normal trance states seems to be that thoughts repeat and there is a limiting of attention.”

“It may seem bizarre to advocate the development of more intense trances and limited awareness and more impoverished realities as a global solution to social ills, yet, with drug addiction, religions and television isn’t that precisely what seems to be happening? Let’s understand what it is we are really doing! In America, where more than 95% of the homes have television and the daily average time spent in front of a television is in excess of five hours, people may believe themselves to be informed, but their realities are impoverished.”

It is our schema that set up a world of habitual subconscious routines (which we internally reward with dopamine), which create a barrier to change.

Mr. Weir  hints at the difficulty of breaking the consensual trance.

“Socially or economically reinforced habits such as shaking hands, smoking cigarettes, having sex in the missionary position, wearing clothes when in society, answering the telephone when it rings, flushing the toilet after it is used, coming home after work and turning the TV on, all represent habits that are socially or economically supported in most countries of this world. Often the individual effort needed to break such trances is more than is possible to do. Such social habits or trances represent deep trances with trance force components and secondary order constructive trance generating loops.

To break such trances increases the awareness of individual chaos, uncertainty, and pain. The sense of chaos, or fear, uncertainty and pain is the reaction that is caused by attempting to change or modify the trance force.

One must be quite courageous to attempt to modify a trance force. In addition, the trance analysis needed to break a trance is often a complicated and difficult undertaking. There is also no guarantee that even if the underlying trance generating loops were known it would be possible to break the trance easily.”

Mr. Weir claims that “Addiction can be better understood if we think of it not merely as “substance abuse,” or performance addiction, but as a form of an impoverished reality that is maintained by a trance. Limited awareness, tunnel vision, the special characteristic that identifies a dysfunctional, impoverished reality, also identifies a type of trance state that may be also a characteristic of all addictions.

It is estimated that over 95% of the American population have one or more “addictions.” Such addictions include drug and alcohol addictions (now termed “substance abuse” to include cocaine, psychedelics, caffeine, nicotine, as well as alcohol, sugar, chocolate and junk-food), TV addiction, work-related addictions, sex and love addictions, food related addictions, computer addictions and other behavioral or performance addictions.

While pathological trances are not at all desirable, most people nearly all of the time are either in a pathological trance or are engaged in trying to get others into trance.”

The escape from uncomfortable realities (into a socially-sanctioned trance) is a major theme of human awareness. Our cultures are largely devoted to escaping problems and stress through denial, addictions, and entertainments. Even the foundation of our egos can be seen as doors of compensation wherein we limit awareness to a trance-like theme concerning a reaction to fear, feelings of inadequacy or our yearnings for love.

Richard Slaughter president of the World Futures Studies Federation talks about the neurotic paradox and our escapist culture – in an interview for the New Scientist.

The fact is that people mostly operate on a very short time frame that they are not really aware of. And it seems that there is a dialectical relationship between foresight and experience. People won’t change their modus operandi if they only suspect it might be off. They have to know it from harsh experience.

Our culture is a culture of false solutions. Media, sport, drugs, commercial sex, speed, extreme sports are all sold to people to help them escape, to make things bearable for people who find life really tough and difficult. These false solutions never work. Erich Fromm wrote a book called To Have Or To Be?, where the “having” mode is constantly in need of support and sustenance, whereas the “being” mode, which comes from a more Eastern approach– meditative, connected, calm, centred–can dispense with all that. But the money people see the “being” mode as threatening. And it is–to them. Commercial interest is profoundly implicated in our alienated, chaotic world–and it continues to peddle false solutions.

Interviewer: But that’s the essence of capitalism?

Capitalism is perfectly unsustainable and everyone knows it at some level. But that knowledge is repressed. There are massive interests keeping this system going, despite the cost. I don’t know how long it is going to take for us to learn that but we have to learn it. I don’t believe in revolution, I just believe we are in an extremely dicey situation.

from Adbusters # 30 page 37:

We have swallowed whole a new grand narrative, which is an alternative to a spiritual narrative. It’s the narrative of never-ending-growth and technological progress. David Orr, chair of the Environmental Studies program at Oberlin College, believes that future generations will look back on our obsession with perpetual economic growth and find it pathological. He thinks entire societies can be judges “insane,” and that we need an “ecological enlightenment,” a “worldwide ecological perestroika” to highlight our collective insanity and denial thereof.

Paraphrased from “Culture Jam” by Kelle Lasn:

“Why are we so docile and obedient? Is it because there isn’t anything to fight for? Hardly. There never has been more at stake. The fate of the planet hangs in the balance. Never in human history has so much defiance been needed from so many. Under the (trance induction of modern culture) we deny our anger and sit tight. Powerlessness, disconnection and shame rule.

It is the loneliest kind of rage there is.”

From “Paradise for Sale – A Parable of Nature”  McDaniel  and Gowdy -

Our world civilization and its global economy are based on beliefs incompatible with enduring habitation of the Earth: that everything has been put on Earth for our use, that “resources” not used to meet our needs are wasted and “resources” are unlimited, that rewards must be related to economic production, that people are exclusively selfish and acquisitive, that scarcity and inequality are natural conditions, and that the biosphere is a subset of the economy.

Trance as denial

From “The Problem of Denial” by William R. Catton, Jr.

By thinking of denial as a defense against intolerable anomalous information, we come back to the classic assertion by Paul Sears that ecology “if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind, would … endanger the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies….”

Ecological understanding of nature’s limits and man’s place in nature contradicts deeply entrenched cultural expectations of endless material progress. This fact has been expressed repeatedly by assorted writers who came to it from various directions.

From: “The Psychology of Denial” in the Ecologist 11/2001 By George Marshall

In his book, “States of Denial, Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering”, Stanley Cohen argues that the capacity to deny a level of awareness is the normal state of affairs. He argues that ‘far from being pushed into accepting reality, people have to be dragged out of reality’. According to Cohen’s definition, denial involves a fundamental paradox – that in order to deny something it is necessary at some level to recognize its existence and its moral implications. It is, he says, a state of simultaneous’ knowing and not-knowing’. We can expect widespread denial when the enormity and nature of the problem are so unprecedented that people have no cultural mechanisms for accepting them. In “Beyond Judgment”,  Primo Levi, seeking to explain the refusal of many European Jews to recognize their impending extermination, quotes an old German adage: ‘Things whose existence is not morally possible cannot exist.”

The mind continues to search for a way to somehow handle intolerable information. We end up handling it by moving it aside, repressing and denying it.

There are innumerable rationales that the unconscious mind employs for the great lack of engagement in response the eco-catastrophe.

One rationale (a second order trance-loop) is that it is a fait accompli, and therefore there is no reason to even listen, or take to heart the severity of the problem, or one’s complicity in creating it.

Here George Marshall lists the most common “unconscious” strategies we use to maintain The Trance.

Psychoanalytic theory contains valuable pointers to the ways that people may try to resolve these internal conflicts. These are: angrily denying the problem outright (psychotic denial), seeking scapegoats (acting out), indulging in deliberately wasteful behavior (reaction formation), projecting their anxiety onto some unrelated but containable problem (displacement, or trying to shut out all information (suppression). As the impacts of (the human impact on ecosystems) intensify, we can therefore anticipate that people will willingly collude in creating collective mechanisms of denial along these lines.

One conclusion is that denial cannot simply be countered with information. Indeed, there is plentiful historical evidence that increased information may even intensify the denial. The significance of this cannot be over emphasized.

A second conclusion is that the lack of visible public response is part of the self-justifying loop that creates the passive bystander effect. ‘Surely’, people reason, ‘if it really is that serious, someone would be doing something.’ The Herald article failed to inspire me to activity because I saw no evidence that anyone in wider society was paying any attention. Thirteen years later, we have vastly greater information with scarcely any more public action. The bystander loop has only tightened.

The dysfunctional (dysergy) reward system (“the Machine”) of culture is structured both in the technic of the cultural system and in the schema (Trance) of human awareness. As such it appears as normal. That is why even if people realize that the normality of culture is ecocidal nothing significant can seem to be done.

The cultural momentum of dysergy, with its blanket of conditioning, denial and its dysfunctional reward system is an overwhelming force not only to realize, but even more so to challenge.

This compels one to go to sleep in the trance that “normal is really okay” and try to give a good optimistic spin on how to fit into the cultural reward system. It is realized that to challenge the cultural reward system too deeply antagonizes the sleeping denier in everyone. It is also realized that there is basically little or no solid support system to get off the addictive wagon and experiment with something really different.

The most powerful place for change is in the rules of the game (the schema). Donella Meadows calls this “the mindset of which the goals, rules, feedback structures arise”.

That inner work is not only about changing the goals and values of the system but it is about investigating and changing our dysfunctional perceptions about “reality”.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if our whole being – our spirituality and politics and the energy of meditation focused on just such a potential?

Our prospect for co-operating with the natural world depends upon living a life that responds to the way ecosystems work. To do so it is necessary to break out of the self-limiting prison of the legacy of our culturally and genetically entranced view of the Earth.

We must break the trance!