Humanity is in crisis. Can “modern” science help us solve our problems in 2010?

The answer to this question is unfortunately NO.

Historians tell us that “modern” science began in ~1543, when Nicolaus Copernicus presented a Sun centered model of our solar system that was in strong variance to Claudius Ptolemaeus’ Earth centered model that had stood since ~130 CE. Copernicus’ discovery would produce a paradigm shift and revolutionize science. For lots of reasons that are better discussed elsewhere, this new “modern” science limited itself to modeling the objective, material world. Only that which could be measured, weighed and quantified was considered to be relevant to scientific inquiry. This approach forms the basis for what is called scientific reductionism.

This reductionistic approach works well enough for modeling the simpler processes in Universe like Light, Particles, Atoms and the simple Molecules, but it breaks down when we attempt to model the more complex processes of Life like the complex Molecules, the Plants, the Animals and we Humans.

For instance, if my goal is to model human behavior, how do I measure, weigh and quantify human feelings? Human thoughts? Human beliefs? Human opinions? Or, human attitudes? Aren’t feelings, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and attitudes relevant to the understanding human behavior?  … Yes, in fact they are not only relevant to understanding human behavior, they are the very determinants of human behavior.

“Modern” science is not interested in that which cannot be measured, weighed and quantified. It is not interested in the subjective. It is not interested in the metaphysical. Therefore, “modern” science cannot model human behavior.

Fortunately, about 90 years ago, things began to change. Beginning in 1919, a new approach to science emerged that was much more inclusive and whole-istic. This new “trans-modern” approach to science was based in part on the realization that the “whole” cannot be deeply understood except as an intact functioning “whole.” This new inclusive whole-istic approach to science transcends and includes the older reductionistic “modern” science. This means the new approach really is inclusive. It includes both the “physical” and the “metaphysical”—both the “objective” and the “subjective.” When you transcend and include, you avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water. The phrase synergic science serves as a metaphoric container for all those works of science created using this new inclusive whole-istic approach.

Synergic science is based in part on the important discoveries by scientists using the new inclusive-whole-istic approach in their modeling of reality include: Paul Kammerer’s Theory of Serialty (1919), Alfred Korzybski’s Theory of Time-binding (1921) and his General Semantics (1933), Edward Haskell’s Unified Science (1945), Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory (1962), Arthur Koestler’s Theory of Holons and Holography (1967), George Land’s Theory of Transformation (1973), Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics (1975), N. Arthur Coulter’s Human Synergetics (1976), Arthur Young’s Theory of Process (1976), and James G. Miller’s General Theory of Living Systems (1978).

Today, I present the transcript of the 1996 International Society of System Science Keynote Address in which the speaker discusses the emergence of the “trans-modern” worldview. —TKW

Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in.

A Changing Worldview

Willis W. Harman

One of the most important aspects of these forces for change is the apparent emergence of a new worldview. Since people operate from their individual pictures of reality which are so strongly affected by collective beliefs, we need to consider signs of change in the worldview that dominates modern society. On the one hand, a radical change in worldview has happened only rarely in history; in the Western world the two times we can identify are the end of the Roman Empire and the end of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, there are many indications of the possible emergence of a trans-modern picture of reality differing both from the scientific worldview and the traditional religious worldview.

This emerging trans-modern worldview, involves a shift in the locus of authority from external to “inner knowing.” It has basically turned away from the older scientific view that ultimate reality is “fundamental particles,” and trusts perceptions of the wholeness and spiritual aspect of organisms, ecosystems, Gaia and Cosmos. This implies a spiritual reality, and ultimate trust in the authority of the whole. It amounts to a reconciliation of scientific inquiry with the “perennial wisdom” at the core of the world’s spiritual traditions. It continues to involve a confidence in scientific inquiry, but an inquiry whose metaphysical base has shifted from the reductionist, objectivist, positivist base of 19th- and 20th-century science to a more holistic and transcendental metaphysical foundation.

The modern worldview is based on Western science which, in terms of its goals of prediction, control, and generation of manipulative technologies, is amazingly successful. Nevertheless, it is an artifact of Western culture and it does have its limitations. The core of the current challenge to the scientific worldview can be taken to be “consciousness,” which has come to be a code word for a wide range of human experience, including conscious awareness or subjectivity, intentionality, selective attention, intuition, creativity, relationship of mind to healing, spiritual sensibility, and a range of anomalous experience and phenomena. Efforts toward incorporating within the scientific purview any or all of this territory has proven to be an extremely difficult task.

The fundamental reason for this difficulty appears to be that Western science has been caught in a basic dualistic trap-that of considering the subject doing the mapping as separate from the map. Getting a more accurate map (more based on modern physics, more “holistic”, more “systems”) will not solve this problem. Rather, we must realize that thoughts are not merely a reflection on reality, but are also a movement of that reality itself. The mapmaker, the self, the thinking and knowing subject, is actually a product and a performance of that which it seeks to know and represent.

Modern Western science fundamentally entails three important metaphysical assumptions: a. Realism (ontological-leads to epistemological conclusion). There is a real world which is, in essence, physically measurable (positivism). We are embedded in that world, follow its laws, and have evolved from an ancient origin. Mind or consciousness evolved within that world; the world pre-existed before its appearance, and continues to exist and persist independent of consciousness. b. Objectivism (epistemological and ontological) That real world exists independently of mind, and can be studied as object. That is, it is accessible to sense perception and can be intersubjectively observed and validated. c. Reductionism (epistemological). That real world is described by the laws of physics, which apply everywhere. The essence of the scientific endeavor is to provide explanations for complex phenomena in terms of the characteristics of, and interactions among, their component parts.

These underlying assumptions are directly challenged by a wide range of data regarding “anomalous” phenomena, and by a wide range of human experience. The critical epistemological issue is whether we humans have basically one way of contacting Reality (namely, through the physical senses) or two (the second being the deep intuition). The importance of the issue shows up in a central ontological question namely whether consciousness is caused (by physiological processes in the brain, which in turn are consequences of the long evolutionary process) or causal (in the sense that consciousness is not only a causal factor in present phenomena, but also a causal factor throughout the entire evolutionary process). Western scientific method urges toward the former choice in both cases, whereas the phenomena of consciousness suggest the latter choice in both cases.

A step toward resolving this long-standing impasse may be the recognition that it is, in a sense, a historical accident that physics was taken to be the root science. That led naturally enough to such ideas as seeking objectivity through separating observer and observed; taking reality to be essentially that which can be physically measured; and seeking explanations of the whole in terms of understanding the parts.

But what if the study of living systems had been taken to be the root science, rather than physics? Had this been the case, science would undoubtedly have taken a more holistic turn. It would have recognized that wholes are self-evidently more than the sum of their parts, and would have adopted an epistemology more congenial to living organisms. It might well have adopted a different ontological stance in viewing reality.

Such an alternative ontological stance is proposed by American philosopher Ken Wilber (1996; based on earlier work by Arthur Koestler), that of considering reality as composed of “holons,” each of which is a whole and simultaneously a part of some other whole-”holons within holons.” (For example, atom-molecule-organelle-cell-tissue-organ-organism-society-biosphere.) Holons at the same time display agency, the capacity to maintain their own wholeness, even as they are also parts of other wholes. A holon can break up into other holons. But every holon also has the tendency to come together with others in the emergence of creative and novel holons. Evolution is a profoundly self-transcending process: It has an utterly amazing capacity to go beyond what went before. The drive to self-transcendence is built into the very fabric of the universe. The self-transcending drive produces life out of matter, and consciousness out of life.

Holons relate “holarchically.” (This term seems advisable because “hierarchy” has a bad name, mainly because people confuse natural hierarchy [inescapable] with dominator hierarchy [pathological].) Thus cell-holons are parts of organ-holons, which in turn are parts of organism-holons, which are parts of community-holons. For any particular holon, functions and purposes come from the next level up in the holarchy; capabilities depend upon the next level down. Within such a representation of the global system, let us now explore how goals are achieved and problems get resolved.

In the holarchic of picture of reality, the scientist-holon seeking to understand consciousness is in an intermediate position. Looking downward in the holarchy (or to the same level, in the social sciences), and exploring in a scientific spirit of inquiry, it is immediately obvious that the appropriate epistemology is a participative one. That is, it recognizes that understanding comes, not alone from being detached, objective, analytical, coldly clinical, but also from cooperating with or identifying with the observed, and experiencing it subjectively. This implies a real partnership between the researcher and the phenomenon, individual or culture being researched; an attitude of “exploring together” and sharing understandings.

Looking upward in the holarchy, it is apparent that the appropriate epistemology involves a holistic view in which the parts are understood through the whole. This epistemology will recognize the importance of subjective and cultural meanings in all human experience, including experiences-such as some religious or interpersonal experiences-that seem particularly rich in meaning even though they may be ineffable. In a holistic view, such meaningful experiences will not be explained away by reducing them to combinations of simpler experiences or to physiological or biochemical events. Rather, in a holistic approach, the meanings of experiences may be understood by discovering their interconnections with other meaningful experiences.

If this ontological stance is accepted, a good many seemingly opposing views in Western thought become reconciled. From the level of the human-holon, the scientist looks mainly downward in the holarchy; the mystic looks mainly upward. Science and religion are potentially two complementary but entirely congenial views; each needs the other for more completeness. In Western philosophy there have been three main ontological positions: the materialist-realist, the dualist, and the idealist. Again, the materialist looks downward, the idealist upward, and the dualist tries to reconcile fragments of the two-but all represent but partial glimpses of the holarchic whole.

This new ontological stance takes some living with to fully appreciate how successfully it resolves many of the time-honored puzzles of Western philosophy-the mind-body problem, for example, and free will versus determinism. Since everything is part of the one holarchy, if consciousness or purpose is found anywhere (such as at the level of the scientist-holon), it is by that fact characteristic of the whole. It can neither be ruled out at the level of the microorganism, nor the level of the Earth, or Gaia. Nor need we be nonplussed by evidence of anomalous phenomena and experiences that don’t fit with a materialist, reductionist ontology.

As within the presently dominant concept of science, the epistemology implied by this ontological stance will insist on open inquiry and public (intersubjective) validation of knowledge; at the same time, it will recognize that these goals may, at any given time, be met only incompletely. Taking into account how both individual and collective perceptions are affected by unconsciously held beliefs and expectations, the limitations of intersubjective agreement are apparent.

This epistemology will be “radically empirical” (in the sense urged by William James, 1912) in that it will be phenomenological or experiential in a broad sense (that is, it will include subjective experience as primary data, rather than being essentially limited to physical-sense data) and it will address the totality of human experience (in other words, no reported phenomena will be written off because they “violate known scientific laws”). Thus, consciousness is not a “thing” to be studied by an observer who is somehow apart from it; research on consciousness involves the interaction of the observer and the observed, or more accurately, the experience of observing.

This adequate epistemology will be, above all else, humble. It will recognize that science deals with models and metaphors representing certain aspects of experienced reality, and that any model or metaphor may be permissible if it is useful in helping to order knowledge, even though it may seem to conflict with another model which is also useful. (The classic example is the history of wave and particle models in physics.) This includes, specifically, the metaphor of consciousness. That may sound strange.

It is a peculiarity of modern science that it allows some kinds of metaphors and disallows others. It is perfectly acceptable to use metaphors which derive directly from our experience of the physical world (such as “fundamental particles,” acoustic waves), as well as metaphors representing what can be measured only in terms of its effects (such as gravitational, electromagnetic, or quantum fields). It has further become acceptable to use more holistic and non-quantifiable metaphors such as organism, personality, ecological community, Gaia, universe. It is, however, taboo to use non-sensory “metaphors of mind”-metaphors that tap into images and experiences familiar from our own inner awareness. I am not allowed to say (scientifically) that some aspects of my experience of reality are reminiscent of my experience of my own mind-to observe, for example, that some aspects of animal behavior appear as though they were tapping into some supra-individual nonphysical mind, or as though there were in instinctual behavior and in evolution something like my experience in my own mind of purpose.

The epistemology we seek will recognize the partial nature of all scientific concepts of causality. (For example, the “upward causation” of physiomotor action resulting from a brain state does not necessarily invalidate the “downward causation” implied in the subjective feeling of volition.) In other words, it will implicitly question the assumption that a nomothetic science-one characterized by inviolable “scientific laws”-can in the end adequately deal with causality. In some ultimate sense, there really is no causality-only a Whole evolving.

It will also recognize that prediction and control are not the only criteria by which to judge knowledge scientific. As the French poet Antoine Saint Exupéry put it, “Truth is not that which is demonstrable. Truth is that which is ineluctable.” In other words, the unquestioned authority of the double-blind controlled experiment is thrown deeply into question.

This epistemology will involve recognition of the inescapable role of the personal characteristics of the observer, including the processes and contents of the unconscious mind. The corollary follows, that to be a competent investigator, the researcher must be willing to risk being profoundly changed through the process of exploration. Because of this potential transformation of observers, an epistemology which is acceptable now to the scientific community, may in time have to be replaced by another, more satisfactory by new criteria, for which it has laid the intellectual and experiential foundations.

We need to comment briefly on the dialogue between society and science. Science and society exist in a dialectical relationship. The findings of science have a profound effect on society; none of us have any doubts about that. But science is also a product of society, very much shaped by the cultural milieu within which it developed. Western science has the form it does because it developed within a culture placing unusual value on the ability to predict and control.

Research on perception, hypnosis, repression, selective attention, mental imagery, sleep and dreams, memory and memory retrieval, acculturation, etc. all suggests that the influence of the unconscious on how we experience ourselves and our environment may be far greater than is typically taken into account. Science itself has never been thoroughly re-assessed in the light of this recently discovered pervasive influence of the unconscious mind of the scientist. The contents and processes of the unconscious influence (individually and collectively) perceptions, “rational thinking,” openness to challenging evidence, ability to contemplate alternative conceptual frameworks and metaphors, scientific interests and disinterests, scientific judgment-all to an indeterminate extent. What is implied is that we must accept the presence of unconscious processes and contents, not as a minor perturbation, but as a potentially major factor in the construction of any society’s particular form of science.

The implications of research on consciousness go even further. They suggest interconnection at a level that has yet to be fully recognized by Western science, and throw into doubt the pervasive conception of a world dominated by competition. The ontological stance of the universe as holarchy appears to have great promise as the basis for an extended science in which consciousness-related phenomena are no longer anomalies, but keys to a deeper understanding; a science that transcends and includes the science we have. But the most important thing is not to accept a particular answer, but to open the dialogue about the metaphysical foundations of Western science.

In his Introduction to Metaphysics the eminent French philosopher Henri Bergson said of the “much-desired union of science and metaphysics” that it would “lead the positive sciences, properly so-called, to become conscious of their true scope, often far greater than they imagine.” The time may have arrived for realization of that dream.

Google Willis Harman

I would like to recommend a very interesting telecourse on  what is called Evolutionary Enlightenment by Craig Hamilton. Craig was/is a long time associate of Andrew Cohen. He is currently teaching independently of Andrew, but they shared a “thinking  space” for a number of years.

I finished the class that started in October this morning. Craig will re-present the class again this January with some evolutionary improvements. The only time Craig isn’t thinking, he is meditating.

The class was both inspiring and highly meaningful. Craig would like us humans to show up in the world as our best selves. This means we should strive to walk our talk. If we say people should be kind to other people, then we should strive to relate to all others we meet during our day with kindness. If we say others should think, before they speak, then we strive to remain in mindfulness throughout our day, and from that perspective, speak with compassion and thoughtfulness. But more than just being thoughtful, kind and compassionate people, Craig wants us to do something. Craig says being is not enough. We also need becoming.

As a student of human intelligence and human knowing, I would describe first enlightenment as the “Understanding of Being.” This is classical enlightenment or “Buddha Enlightenment.” Human intelligence emerges from the integration of Spacial and Temporal Intelligence. Classical enlightenment is Spacial Enlightenment.

Those seekers on the leading edge, are now discussing a second stage enlightenment that transcends and includes the Understanding of Being, this new enlightenment is what I call the “Understanding of Becoming” or Temporal Enlightenment.

Craig uses the word Evolution to represent temporal enlightenment—Evolutionary Enlightenment. Craig asks his students, “How are they going to make the world a better place?”

The following quotation is credited to Andrew Cohen, but I think Craig would agree with it.

Why Are We Here?

When we awaken to the evolutionary impulse, we realize a completely new relationship to what it means to be alive and what it means to be ourselves here and now.

Not only do we discover a freedom to be ourselves that we’ve never known before, but even more importantly we find a reason for living with intense commitment and liberated passion that gives us an incomparable sense of personal, philosophical, and spiritual self-confidence.

We suddenly begin to understand, in ways that both include and transcend our intellect, that the reason we are here on Earth (once all of our basic survival needs have been met) is not merely to experience security, comfort, pleasure, or even peace of mind but to develop.

We realize that we are here to consciously evolve, to intentionally do anything and everything we can to unleash all of the extraordinary creative potential within so that the human race’s next step can, in some small but not insignificant way, emerge through us.

—A. Cohen

Update!!!  2009 Winter, On July 4th, 2006, a prototype of a help exchange system utilizing the GIFTegrity mechanism was put online here: Give Get Nation. It may go down soon. A Stream Downed No Nonsense Version GiveGetShare is being prepared We are close to the release of GIFTegrity 2010. Stay tuned!

GIFTegrity—a gifting tensegrity

How it might work

Timothy Wilken, MD

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.

The gifting tensegrity is a newly invented mechanism for the exchange of human help. Let us begin by describing how a GIFTegrity might be structured and how it could work. Every member of a synergic help tensegrity would participate in two roles. That as a giftor and that as a giftee.

The continuous pull of the giftees’ needs are balanced by the discontinuous push from the giftors’ offers  of help. Again we see as an INTERdependent life form, there will be times when we will help others and times when others will help us.

The GIFTegrity works on trust. I give help to those in need and trust that when I am in need there will be those who will give me help. Synergic Trust was discovered long ago, and was once known as:

The Spiritual Principle Of Giving And Receiving

“When we give to one another, freely and without conditions, sharing our blessings with others and bearing each other’s burdens, the giving multiplies and we receive far more than what was given. Even when there is no immediate prospect of return, Heaven keeps accounts of giving, and in the end blessing will return to the giver, multiplied manyfold. We must give first; to expect to receive without having given is to violate the universal law. On the other hand, giving in order to receive — with strings attached, with the intention of currying favor, or in order to make a name for oneself — is condemned.”

And while, The Spiritual Principle of Giving and Receiving relies on “Heaven to keep account of giving,” the Gift Tensegrity relies on a public database to keep account of giving and receiving. This database of the synergic help exchange is a public space where the exchanging of help is made visible to all members who are participants in good standing.When you join a Gift Tensegrity you sign in and register as a Giftor-Giftee. You will fill out two profiles. The first profile is for your role as a giftor. Your giftor profile is the list of the types of help you would like to give to other members of the synergic help tensegrity.

The second profile is for your role as a giftee. Your giftee profile is the list of the types of help you would like to receive as gifts from other members of the synergic help tensegrity. A third profile will develop as Giftor-Giftee members use the synergic help exchange. This is the personal history of each member’s giving and receiving. This profile is transparent. It can be seen by all members who are participants in good standing. It shows all the gifts you have given, all the gifts you have received, and any comments made by other members of the synergic exchange tensegrity that you have interacted with in relation to the exchanging of help. Every exchange generates a Giftor’s comment rating the Giftee, and a Giftee’s comment rating the Giftor.

Now once a new member has completed their Giftor and Giftee registration and entered all their data into the data base, the computer sorts and matches gifts of help with needs for help.

Now initially within the Gift Tensegrity, the role of Giftor is active. The role of Giftee is passive. This means that once the computer has completed sorting and matching registered gifts of help with registered needs of help, the lists of matches are presented to the Giftor. These matches are not available for viewing by the Giftee.

The list of matchs are sorted with those who have the highest ratio of giving/receiving and most positive comments being sorted higher on the list than those who have lower ratio of giving/receiving and negative comments.

Freedom of Choice in the Synergic Help Exchange

However, the Giftor is free to offer his gift to anyone on the list regardless of the order presented. The Giftor is in control of his giving. Once the Giftor has made his choice and selected a Giftee to receive his offer of help, then the Giftee is notified that an offer of help has been made.

The Giftee is then presented with a list of offers of help from those Giftors that have selected them for offers. With these offers of help comes access to the profiles of the offering Giftors. The giftee is then free to examine the offer carefully, read the profile of the Giftor and decide whether to accept the offer or not.

Freedom of choice is an absolute tenant of the GIFTegrity. The Giftor decides when and to whom to offer a gift of help. The Giftee decides when and from whom to accept a gift offer of help. Giftors are unknown to Giftees unless the Giftor offers help. The Giftee is under no obligation to accept an offered gift. At this point the Giftee may contact the Giftor with questions or clarifications about the offer. If the Giftee accepts the offer, than that action is recorded as a synergic help exchange and both profiles are updated. Both Giftor and Giftee can make comments about the interaction then or at a later time if more appropriate. If the Giftee declines the offer of help, the Giftor is notified so they can offer their help to some other member.

What you might give or receive

How do you registering the types of help you might choose to give or like to receive? It would seem that almost any good or service could be exchanged in a synergic help tensegrity. I would suggest three general classes of Gifts as a way of organizing the data base. Also considerations of Local, Regional and Global come into play.

1) Human Knowing – KNOWLEDGE: Expertise, Consultations, Counseling, and Advise.

Those humans with expertise in almost any field can make that expertise available to others as a gift. Physicians, Attorneys, Accountants, Engineers, Scientists, Teachers, etc., etc., etc.. Location may be less important with telephone and internet communication.

This can also be available in the form or books, art, courses, online files, etc., etc., etc..

2) Human Action – WORK: Sevices, Projects, Labor (skilled and unskilled), Jobs and Tasks.

This could be as simple as baby sitting, or giving someone a ride to as complex as building a room on someone’s house or writing a custom software program, etc., etc., etc.. It could be a million and one different forms of helping provided by humans in action. Location is very important. Many services would only available locally.

For the third category, I have borrowed the term lever from synergic science. It means any device that provides the user with leverage.

3) Human Levers – THINGS: Tools, Appliances, Equipment, Automobiles, Trucks, Tractors, Lawnmowers, House Furniture, Household Goods, Furnishings, Materials, Supplies, etc., etc., etc..

And, you can give these things away fully or only gift the use of them for a specified time. Location is very important for the gift of using a tool or appliance, perhaps less important if the item is given away fully. Shipping costs might make a difference, but you can Gift an item with the provision that the Giftee pay shipping.

In fact you can gift anything with conditions. A gift is an offer of help. The giftee is under no obligation to accept the offer. Synergic exchange is fully voluntary. The giftor makes offers of help when and to whom he chooses. The giftee accepts offers of help when and from whom they choose.

Conditional Gifting

If I gift the use of a tool for a weekend, I may do so with the condition that it be returned in clean and in good condition. Conditions of gifting is both intelligent and synergic.

Things that are gifted can be new or used. Working or not working. The important thing is to describe the offered gift accurately. A television repairman might like the gift of an old TV, that he will repair and use or gift to someone else.

Since your giving-receiving profile is based not on the number of gifts offered, but rather on the number of gift offers accepted, it is of great importance to have a good relationship with the giftee. That means your descriptions of an offered gift needs to be very accurate. No one will be criticized for gifting junk as long as they describe it accurately as junk. Those seeking junk will be happy. Remember one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Status in the GIFTegrity

Your ranking on the help offer lists is determined in part by your ratio of giving-receiving. Every time your offers of help are accepted your ratio goes up. Those who give the most to others will be the most honored members in the community of the GIFTegrity. So you will want to give as much as you can. Likewise every time you accept a gift offering from others your ratio goes down. So you will want to accept others gifts carefully and only when you truly value them.

The other factor in determining your ranking on the help offer lists is your comment mean. This the average score for comments made about you during help exchanges. Every encounter will be rated. +10 for it couldn’t have been any better to -10 if couldn’t have been any worse. To be successful in the gift tensegity you need to give and interact in a positive way with other members. This means you want to accurately describe your offered gifts and make sure those accepting your gifts get what they expect from your descriptions. You also want to be courteous and friendly in your encounters. If you have an encounter that earns you a low comment from an exchange partner, you will want to repair that encounter as quickly as possible so that that exchange partner will modify or withdraw their low comment.

For instance, if I gift a used computer to someone and it doesn’t work as described, I need to be willing to take it back at my expense if the giftee paid for shipping. Or pay for disposal and give up my credit for the gift. Remember, every exchange effects ratio of giving-receiving for both the giftor and giftee.

Gifting – Local, Regional & Global

Knowing is one of the most global of gifts. With the internet and modern communication devices, I can help people all over the world.

Human action will usually need to be local, occasionally regional, and rarely global.

Levers and especially use of levers will usually be local. However, it may make sense to gift a major appliance or automobile regionally. And rarely, smaller lighter items might be shipped globally especially if they are unusual one of a kind.

Bringing Dead Wealth to Life

One major advantage of the GIFTegrity is that it resurrects Dead Wealth. Dead Wealth is that wealth within the human community that is not being used to help self or others. Dead Wealth is found in all three forms – Knowing, Action and Levers.

Knowing – Almost all of us have significant expertise in some areas. Some knowledge of how to solve problems that we have encountered in our lives. However, in our present world we trade the hours of our lives to others for just enough money to earn our livings. Our employers don’t want our expertise and knowledge unless it applies to the limited task they hired us to perform. Yet in the larger context of community our unwanted expertise and knowledge could help others. The GIFTegrity gives us an outlet for sharing that expertise and knowledge.

Again, this might be in the form of knowing and action joined together such as consultations, couseling, analysis and real time problem solving, or it may be available in the form of knowing and levers such as reports, books, video or audio tapes, artwork, photos, computer files, etc., etc., etc..

Action – We all have some hours in our lives that could be available to help others. The Gift Tensegrity gives me an outlet for all of those other skills and abilities that I am not currently trading to some employer for money. Some of us can do home and automobile repair, handyman work, cleaning, cooking, sewing, child and elder care, teaching, etc., etc., etc..

Or, it might be that if we knew what help others needed, we could combine their errands with our own when we are out running around anyway. The Gift Tensegrity allows you to quickly find out how you can turn those wasted hours into help for others.

Levers – And finally, we all have lots of perfectly good things we have in boxes in our garages, attics, and closets. Used tools, appliances, furniture, clothing, furnishings– things we never use but are too good to throw away. Now they can be easily liberated by simply describing them accurately and gifting them away. Or how about just gifting away the use of some those great tools you only use one day a week or one day a month.

GIFTegrity Servers – Local, Regional & Global

Because so much of our need for help is a need for local help. I see the need to establish Neighborhood GIFTegrities. This is where you will get help with household repair, automotive service, child and elder care, transportation, etc., etc., etc..

I envision this being started when someone with the time and interest decides to gift the use of their home computer and DSL line to run a neighborhood GIFTegrity Database. Then anyone in the neighborhood could use a computer with dialup connection to the internet to connect to the local GIFTegrity and enter into synergic help exchange.

These Local GIFTegrities servers would then be linked to Regional Gift Tensegrity servers which in turn would like to Global Servers. This would lead to a disseminated system with high level of redundancy.

This system will work easily with today’s home computers and off the shelf database software.

Need Help – Look First to the GIFTegrity

The GIFTegrity is a synergic help exchange. And as INTERdependent form or life, we all need help. As a synergic help exchange that means that the relations between the members of that exchange will be synergic. Remember synergic relationships are those that make me more productive, more effective, and more happy. When I need help, this is where I will look first.

In the beginning the gifting tensegrities will not instantly replace the fair market. It will begin as simple an alternative to the fair market. I will begin to meet some of my needs at the GIFTegrities. As I begin gifting and finding that some of my needs are met this way. I will have less need to sell the hours of my life for money to use in the fair market.

Once I am gifting 10 hours a week.I will then be able to reduce my working week from 40 to 30 hours. This is how the transition will occur.

Out of Work – Look to the the GIFTegrity

The gifting tensegrities can be enormously important to those individuals finding themselves out of work. When there is no market for the hours of your life. There is still no shortage of people who need your help. The gifting tensegrities acts as an immediate outlet for those with help to Gift, but no market for their help to Sell.

In fact the GIFTensegrity becomes a new type of insurance for all humans who are at risk for losing their jobs. In this society, that is all of us.

GIFTegrity – Not Just for Individuals

Synergic TeamNets are groups of individual humans that form themselves into Synergic Teams for the purpose of performing a larger and more complex task than they can perform as individuals. These individuals co-Operate through a network based on synergic relationships and synergic compensation mechanisms to accomplish those larger and more complex tasks. Barry Carter has written extensively about this concept in his book Infinite Wealth. And, I have developed a mechanism for organizing Synergic Production Teams called the Ortegrity which is available elsewhere.

TeamNets can register with a gifting tensegrity and list the Needs of their TeamNet Project. They may be able to attract the help they need thought the free synergic gift exchange, or they can attract help, by inviting others to join their team for Synergic Revenue Shares if the project produces revenue.

Read the Scientific Basis for the GIFTegrity

Specifications for a GIFTegrity

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Synergic Economist Wayne F. Perg, Ph. D writes:

“My concept and understanding of the GIFTegrity is one of a radical move away from trade-oriented or materialistic sort of exchange.

“In the GIFTegrity there is no accounting, there are no prices, there is no barter (no tit for tat), and there is no medium of exchange! For me, it is the road to a post-monetary, post-barter economy.

“Barter and monetary economies both tie together giving and receiving. One cannot be done in the absence of the other. It is this “tying together” that is the ultimate source of “dead resources” and unemployment.

“The GIFTegrity frees giving from receiving and receiving from giving and will, as it is implemented, bring all resources to life and eliminate unemployment.

“The GIFTegrity does this by creating transparency, i.e., by creating good information on the SEPARATE giving and receiving actions of all members of the gifting tensegrity. Because there is no trading, only gifts given with no requirment of payment, there are no market prices and no accounting of trades. What there is is an open exchange of information on needs and resources available to fill those needs and ongoing individual negotiations around actions that will meet those needs.

“I see the GIFTegrity bringing the exchange relationships of a living organism to human society. As Elizabet Sahtouris has pointed out, the heart does not hold an auction for the supply of oxygenated blood and it does not withhold blood from those organs who are currently unable to pay.

“I see the GIFTegrity as a powerful new vehicle for first supplementing and then eventually replacing our present exchange economy that relies on money and barter to facilitate exchange.

“I see the GIFTegrity as a powerful step forward from money systems and barter because it separates the acts of giving and receiving whereas both money systems and barter tie giving and receiving together into formal exchange transactions. It is this tying together of giving and receiving that creates “landlocked” resources and unemployment.

“I do not see the GIFTegrity replacing informal, undocumented and recorded giving and receiving within families, groups and communities within which all participants are known to each other and within which trust is well established. In fact, I see the operation of the Gift Tensegrity increasing the number and size of the groups within which informal, undocumented giving and receiving is the norm.

“It is my understanding that, in the GIFTegrity, I do not make any commitment to giving in advance. As a giver, I have access to information on the needs of those who are seeking what I have to give, but potential receivers of my gifts have no access to me as a giver until I offer my gift to that person, organization, or community to which I decide that I would like to give.

“Also, given my big picture vision for the GIFTegrity, I see givers and receivers including organizations (including for-profit businesses) and communities as well as individuals.”

Read the Scientific Basis for the GIFTegrity

Specifications for a GIFTegrity

It was my privilege to attend a September Retreat with today’s author. I found his ideas both enlightening and inspiring. The following is his most recent essay. Reposted from Reality Sandwich. Enjoy!

Rituals for Lover Earth

Charles Eisenstein

The medicine man enters the outer vestibule of the sacred healing chamber. He dons the ceremonial vestments and performs the ritual ablutions, purifying himself for the healing ritual that is about to commence. Putting on identical masks, he and his acolytes enter the chamber, to which all others are forbidden entrance. The man they are healing is ready, having been ushered into a deep trance by another shaman using a magical elixir. Within the chamber are the ritual implements, which have themselves been purified, and which none but the initiated are allowed to touch. The medicine man calls for each implement in turn, handed to him by an acolyte. He uses these in a ritual scarification procedure that removes a small part of the ill man’s body. When he awakens from the trance, the man is magically healed, though some further ceremonies are required before he is able to leave the grounds of the temple of healing.

To even be allowed to perform this complex healing ritual, the medicine man must go through many years of training that include numerous tests, initiation ordeals, and the mastery of a special esoteric language. Upon completing his training, he is welcomed into the brotherhood of adepts, and his name is altered with a symbolic suffix. He swears a sacred oath and is given a piece of paper inscribed with mystical symbols in an archaic script. Thenceforth, he is treated with honor by his people and accorded all the perquisites of status.

I have just described surgery, as performed by licensed physicians in a modern hospital. All of the elements of ritual are present, yet we do not typically see what goes on as a ritual. “That’s not a ritual,” we say, “because each of those actions — the hand washing, the surgical masks, the professional training — all have a very good, rational reason.” Rituals, we think, must tap into something irrational, something magical; if they have any real effects, they are purely psychological in origin. We see rituals as a separate category of action that has been largely eliminated in today’s rational, science-based society. Asked for an example of a ritual, we might point to Communion in a Catholic church, or to a sweat lodge ceremony, or to something indigenous people do on the Discovery Channel.

I would like to offer a different conception of ritual that illuminates its continuing ubiquity in today’s world, and that suggests a means to deploy ritual as an agent of transformation. Let’s play with this definition: a ritual is a prescribed sequence of symbolic actions that draws meaning and power from a “story of the world”. In turn, it reinforces and affirms that story.

What, then, is a “story of the world”? By a story I mean a system of meanings and explanations that focuses human intention, assigns roles, coordinates activity, and says what is real. One example is the Story of Money, which assigns meaning to the slips of paper and information bits that comprise our money system. When that story falls apart, such as in Weimar Germany or 1993 Yugoslavia, money becomes nothing more than its physical substrate.

If you can enroll people in a story, then you can create something much bigger than you could build with your own hands. Even something so mundane as building a house requires telling a story that people believe in. The story, “A house will be built here,” includes such elements as workers’ paychecks, agreements to deliver materials, disbursement schedules, and so on. All of these are symbols. On the physical level, the workers’ paychecks are but slips of paper with blobs of ink on them. They have power only because of the story that embeds them, a story that all participants believe in. An alien anthropologist, though, might laugh patronizingly at our concern over these magical talismans with their sacred inscriptions. The same goes for the construction contract, inscribed with the mysterious personal mark of each signatory, and the delivery contract, which we inscribe with row after row of symbols in the superstitious belief that the desired materials they symbolize will actually show up in a truck on the appointed day.

Our lives today are rife with little rituals that sustain the Story of the World in which we have been living. There is nothing unusual about this; it is as it has always been. However, we are entering one of those special moments in history when an old story is coming to an end, to be replaced by a new one. We are emerging from two stories, in fact, two stories that are deeply interlocked. The first is the story of Self and World: we are discrete beings, fundamental separate from each other and from the objective universe that contains us. The second is the Story of the People: it is the Ascent of Humanity, in which science and technology lift us from a state of dependency on nature to become nature’s master, separate and superior. The consummation of this story would be a destiny of space colonization and immortality, in which computers, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering complete our domination of nature and free us from natural limitations. These stories embed other, smaller stories, stories within stories within stories, that include everything in our world that depends on agreements, meanings, and symbols. So money, as I’ve said, is a story. The government is a story. The American Medical Association is a story. The law is a story. Dates and times are a story. An educational degree is a story. Professional licensure, your credit rating, ownership of any property, the air traffic control system, all are stories.

The rituals that sustain these stories include such things as writing a check, signing a contract, affixing a stamp, waiting in line, voting, filling out a form, writing a report, issuing a grade, affixing a label, signing off on a proposal, asking permission, showing a passport at immigration, friending someone on Facebook, registering a vehicle, making a schedule, using a theater ticket, filing a lawsuit, or issuing a receipt. I think it is quite easy to see how these actions maintain the web of stories that underlies our society. It is perhaps more difficult to see the ritual nature of such activities as using hand disinfectant, getting a vaccination, dialing a telephone, taking a pill, using a condom, studying for an exam, performing a safety check on an airplane, performing surgery, or planting a garden. These tap into a much deeper level of story, that which underlies what we call physical reality. I won’t discuss this level much right now: the metaphysics of symbols, the ontological status of the storyteller, and so on. The laws of physics, that we think are so objective, reflect on a deep level our sense-of-self and the story of What Is that defines self and world. But my purpose right now is not to undo these deep metaphysical stories. For now I will speak mostly of the stories and rituals that create social reality. They will be enough to create a world far more beautiful than we dare imagine today.

As the overarching stories of our civilization draw to their conclusion, the rituals that draw from them and sustain them begin to grow stale. They lose their seamless integration into the logic of our lives, and begin to look, well, like “rituals.” Their meaning drains away from them. In previous essays I described how this is happening to our language, provoking a crisis of meaning where words are losing their magic. This is obvious to me every time I download some software or make a purchase on line, and have to click an “I agree” button located underneath a voluminous scrolling window filled with legal text entitled “Terms and Conditions.” When I do this, I am supposedly entering into a contract, a concept that draws on ancient sacred ceremonies that involved the swearing of oaths, the letting of blood, and so on. In political and legal philosophy, one often comes across the term “the sanctity of contract.” But today we recognize the numerous on-line contracts that we enter into as meaningless formalities, and we do not really feel like we are lying when we affirm, “I have read and agree to all these terms and conditions.”

In a similar vein, many of the more important ritual underpinnings of our society are dissolving as well. The ritual incantations of our financial officials, for example, are no longer having the intended effect on the economy. Our medical rituals are becoming less effective as well, a fact we, in a desperate effort to preserve the familiar story, attribute to “superbugs” or “patient noncompliance” or mysterious “genetic factors,” when in fact, it is the deep story of the War on Germs and the Conquest of Nature that underlies our medicine that is coming to an end. Something similar is happening in the educational system, where the multitudinous rituals based on the factory paradigm of standardization, “class”-ification, “grading” (as of industrial materials), and the subsumption of the individual to authority, are becoming increasingly ineffectual. Finally, the rituals of politics have become a transparent charade, where elected officials cynically invoke once-sacred principles neither they nor their listeners actually believe in. When they fail to keep their promises, when they enact policies that few of their supporters agree with, we increasingly don’t even bother to be disappointed, because the ritual of the campaign promise has become, transparently, nothing but that, a “ritual.”

Rituals are seamlessly woven into a story of the world and are, therefore, not even recognized as rituals (e.g., writing a check). When they start turning into “rituals,” we know that that story of the world is falling apart. What is happening to the rituals that sustain our civilization today has happened before, leaving impotent relics that we call rituals, but that are actually “rituals” in quotation marks. We might perform them out of nostalgia, a reverence for tradition, or in an attempt to restore the lost sacredness of modern life by borrowing it from another culture, but they will have little effect if we do not believe in a story that embeds them.

Let me offer a few examples of fake rituals, these “rituals in quotation marks.” Nearly all of the sweat lodge ceremonies I have been to were replete with fake rituals. Even if they scrupulously followed the prescribed procedures of the native tradition from which they originated, what was once authentic had become fake. That is because we did not truly believe the Story of the World in which the rituals were once embedded. In former times, when a Native American firekeeper invoked the ancestors, he was speaking from a world view in which the ancestors were a present, perhaps a palpable, reality. When he invoked the Four Directions, again he was speaking from a system in which the Four Directions, interconnected with many other stories, were an unquestioned, basic pillar of his understanding of the world, as undoubtedly real and objective to him as protons, neutrons, and electrons are to us. But today we are steeped in a different story, a story in which the ancestors do not participate in the events of our lives, and in which the four directions are merely points on a map. Science defines our basic understanding of what is real, and this reality picture has no room for ancestors, spirits, or Grandmother Spider creating the world. Even if we strive to believe in them, we cannot. A feeling lurks in the background, “This isn’t real.” Wanting to believe something based on sentiments about respecting traditions or restoring connection to earth or spirit is not the same as actually believing something. Beliefs are not mere vapors in the head, but reveal themselves as actions.

Some months ago, I attended a sweat lodge conducted by a full-blooded Native American. The ceremony was held at the top of a hill, with a station to be purified with sage smoke, another station to hear of the rules for the lodge, and so on. Each ritual was contained inside a larger ritual. But guess what the largest ritual was, the one that contained the whole experience? At the very bottom of the hill, before we could participate, we had to sign a waiver. The entire experience took place within a legal container, and that initial ritual gave primacy to the Story of the Law. I don’t think anyone experienced the sweat lodge as transformational; certainly I did not. The only real ritual was the signing of the waiver. Everything else was a “ritual.”

To be sure, it is possible for a very very powerful person to hold a group of people in his or her own Story of the World; in other words, to believe it so completely that he can hold that belief on behalf of those who do not believe. I have experienced rituals of that sort as well, but in my life they have been very rare indeed. In the case I just described, I could sense an inauthenticity, a breach in the integrity of the ceremony caused by surrendering its primacy to a story that was alien and hostile to it.

I hope that the reader someday has an opportunity to be in the presence of someone who can invoke the ancestors for real. Such a person will never say, “I would like to invoke the ancestors…,” which is two steps removed from a true invocation, or even “I invoke the ancestors, ” which is one step removed. He will address them directly, and in his invocation you will hear truth. You will feel the ancestors’ presence, and while your mind may doubt your heart will not. That feeling is unmistakable. Today it is only available to us in special moments, but as the old stories collapse and we reenter a world story that has room once again for the ancestors, we will have this experience more and more often. Life is so much richer for it!

Humanity today is transitioning into a new Story of the People, a new Story of Self, and a new Story of the World. I sometimes articulate it as “The connected self living in joyous cocreative partnership with Lover Earth.” I explained the paradigm of Lover Earth a little bit in “Money and the Turning of the Age”; no longer do we treat earth as a mother from whom we are entitled to take and take without thought for how much she is capable of giving. Such a relationship is proper for a child. I want my own children to feel free to receive — it is up to me to determine how much I am able to give. But the relationship to a lover is different: to a lover we desire to give as well as to receive, and we desire to create together, each offering our gifts toward a purpose transcending each of us, so that our union becomes greater than the sum of our individuality. And so, humanity-plus-earth is becoming a new thing; out of our sacred union, a third thing will be born. At the peak of our separation from nature, we fell in love with the earth, a moment marked perhaps by the first satellite photographs of our gorgeous planet.

As for the connected self, this is the self of inter-beingness, the self that realizes, not only as an intellectual concept but as a felt experience, that its very being includes the being of all other creatures. Contrary to the self of Descartes, of Adam Smith, of Darwinian biology, it is untrue that more for me is less for you. It is the self of the Gift, the self that knows that as we do unto others, so we do unto ourselves. And, that as we do unto ourselves, so we are in fact doing unto others. Such as self no longer lives in an objective universe of impersonal forces and generic masses. Its every choice shifts the cosmos, and everything that happens in the cosmos in some way happens within the self too.

Just as the rituals of the old world create and sustain it, so also can we use rituals to create and sustain the new world-generating stories. Rituals occupy a special status among all the actions and beliefs that form a story-matrix. Rituals connect us to what is real within that story. They are among our most powerful tools of reality creation. Therefore, if you would like to participate in the creation of the world of the connected self living in cocreative partnership with Lover Earth, I suggest you enact rituals that empower and create this new story. You can easily recognize them, because from within the new story they are natural and true. They are not “rituals,” but an integral part of the new reality. From within it, they make sense. From the perspective of separation they are irrational, but from the perspective of reunion they are not irrational or magical at all. They will, however, feel sacred.

Let’s consider a small example: sorting out your garbage for recycling, composting, etc. In the old story, unless you are doing it to avoid a fine, this is quite irrational. What benefit is there to you if the landfill is a few inches lower? In the objective world of force and mass, it simply does not matter if you, one person, recycle or not. It doesn’t matter either if you buy lots of plastic packaging, or eat beef from a deforested Brazilian jungle, or save a few gallons of water every day by conserving toilet flushes. In any event, the juggernaut of destruction rolls on. These actions only matter if everyone else does them too, and if they do, then it doesn’t even matter if you do them or not. Therefore, it is irrational to do them if they involve any expense or inconvenience, as often they do.

Because they do not make sense from within the old story, we find all kinds of ways to make ourselves do these things anyway. The favorite means is to connect them to our self-image, so that we get to think of ourselves as worthy and good because we recycle, care about the environment, and so on. We can understand them as rituals — which is what comes to mind naturally as I watch people sort different kinds of cans into different bins — whose symbolic meaning is “I am doing my part,” “I am good,” “I am right,” or “I am worthy of love.” Unfortunately, they actually feed a deeper story, which is something like, “I am not really good, so I must recycle, I must try hard, I must be a good boy or girl.” In the case of many environmental activists, these efforts usually accompany a sanctimonious attitude: a conditional approval of the self and a resentment toward those who are less enlightened, less ethical, less conscious. There is little joy to be found in sanctimony.

These same rituals become much more powerful within the new story. Instead of thinking about them in terms of ethics, doing your part, or being good, think of all the irrational things you do as gifts to Lover Earth. When you pay triple for a fair-trade shirt, or do without one; when you plant a tree or help stop a new road; when you make any contribution, no matter how small, to the well-being of the planet and its animals, plants, waters, air, soil, and people, source that act in the spirit of gratitude and offer it in the spirit of a gift. Even if your offering is like the shy, small gift of a teenage boy to his sweetheart, the earth will be touched and grateful. This gratitude is something we can feel. In the old story, the story of impersonal laws and generic masses, the only explanation for this feeling is that we are imagining it, projecting it, anthropomorphizing the earth. From the story of the separate self, how could you feel what another is feeling, and why would you even care? It is irrational. But in the world of the connected self, it is quite to be expected that we can feel what others are feeling, for they are us. Each of us is the sum total of our relationships, and not separate beings having relationships, discrete subjects possessing something separate from our core being called a “relationship.”

What is irrational and difficult in the old story becomes easy and natural in the new. The struggle to be good is over. That struggle, that war against the self, is based on a conception of a self that is bad: the Economic Man seeking to maximize rational self-interest, the selfish gene seeking to maximize reproductive self-interest. Our civilization is built upon that self; hence a penal system, a religious system, an educational system designed to overcome our natural selfishness through fear, guilt, and shame. Do you, my friend, feel guilty for not living more sustainably? For your complicity in a culture that is destroying the earth? Do you wield that guilt over yourself and others in order to compel better behavior? If you do, then the rituals of recycling and reducing will actually strengthen the old story of which that guilt is part.

Instead, I invite you to embed these rituals in the new story, and in turn to draw upon the new story in creating new rituals. From the old story, it is stupid for me to wash used pieces of plastic wrap and stick them to the refrigerator to reuse. How much oil or landfill space am I going to save that way? Not very much! But I don’t think of it that way at all. I am not doing this to be good or to do my part. I am having a personal relationship with that piece of plastic wrap, and with all the beings that created it, and with all of its relations. When I bury my compost instead of putting it in the trash can, I feel the happiness of those apple cores at returning to the ground, and the happiness of the earthworms who will turn them into soil, and of the soil that will receive the worm castings. Entering the new world means shedding any pretense that you or I are better, more ethical, more moral, or more spiritual than anyone else, and allowing our true selfishness — the selfishness of the connected self — to blossom. It is an opening to more pleasure, a bigger trusting of desire, not a conquest of pleasure and desire. And if the joy I share with the apple core is my projection, if the story of the connected self is my own comforting illusion to assuage the loneliness of living in a cold hard universe of force and mass, then so be it!

Many of the rituals of the old world can be embedded in the new. In addition to the above, such things as writing a check can be done in a new spirit of gratitude and gifting rather than payment. Other of the old world rituals are fast becoming obsolete, however, and we want no part of them. I, for example, cannot bear to write a resume when one is requested for a conference I’ve been invited to speak at. Nor do I participate in many of the rituals of the medical system or school system. Other rituals that feel wrong to me I still participate in, because I am afraid or not ready to exit that part of the old world. I still file an income tax return, for instance. Each of us, as we pioneer in our own way our unique part in the story of the connected self on Lover Earth, is moved to leave behind different of the old rituals.

Rituals bridge the distinction between symbol and reality: they don’t just mean something, they are something. They are actions in themselves. When tribal peoples conducted a ritual reenactment of the creation of the universe, they weren’t just narrating or representing that creation, they were actually participating in it. For them, cosmogenesis wasn’t a discrete event at the beginning of linear time, but an ongoing event taking place outside of time and diffracted onto it. The ritual didn’t represent the creation of the world; it was the creation of the world. So also, the world-creating rituals we enact today must be real to us. Do not invoke the Four Directions or the ancestors unless they are a living reality to you. Otherwise you will just be “playing Injun’” and reinforcing the story behind the phenomenon of cultural appropriation. Rituals must not be less real than any other action; they must be more real. Rituals are actions that are infused with sacredness, connecting us to what is real, true, and important. Perhaps one day, a fully healed humanity will no longer distinguish something called a ritual, because all actions will be sacred. Until then, rituals serve to remind us of the sacred world-creating power of all we do, just as prayers can remind us of the sacredness of all speech, and holy sites can remind us of the sacredness of all the earth.

Make your rituals real. Your gifts to Lover Earth and to other parts of your connected self are not just symbols of love, they are love. I am not saying to be content with reusing your plastic wrap. Momentous and heroic actions, that save a forest or free a nation, come from our enactment of the roles of a new story too. They are always irrational from within the story of separation. No one ever did anything great by fighting herself and trying hard to be good. No will is strong enough. But when we give ourselves to a great story, it carries us towards acts which, from outside it, look brave and magnanimous. As we release ourselves into the story of the connected self and Lover Earth, as that story becomes real to us and we believe it in every cell, we become capable of miracles: things which were impossible from the old story, but possible from the new.

The institutions built upon the stories of the Ascent of Humanity and the separate self are falling apart around us. I believe that everyone knows in his or her heart that we are indeed connected, interdependent for our very being, and that we are coming into cocreative partnership with a planet we are falling madly in love with. You may know it and not quite believe it yet. My job is to help you believe what you already know. But even if you don’t fully believe it now, no matter. The old stories cannot hold much longer. Like it or not, we are being thrust into the new. But why wait? The rituals that connect us to the reality of Reunion are already coalescing, forming new systems of meaning, institutions, forms of social interaction, conceptual vocabularies, exchange infrastructure, and the myriad human roles of the new stories. Paradigms as diverse as permaculture, energy healing, nonviolent communication, P2P economics, alternative currency, and thousands more all draw from and contribute to the new Story of the People, Story of the World, and Story of Self. As we work, each according to our gifts, to create them, we make it all the easier for the heart’s knowing of a more beautiful world to blossom into belief and then into reality for all of us. That new world is a place we can only enter together. The reality of the connected self requires it.

Visit Charles Eisenstein’s Blog

If you think working together is a powerful form or co-Operation, what until you try thinking together. The following essay is reposted from Integral Enlightenment.

Thinking Together

Craig Hamilton and Claire Zammit, Ph.D.

We’ve all heard by now about the “wisdom of crowds”—the notion that the aggregated intelligence of any group is nearly always superior to the intelligence of any individual in that group. We know, for instance, that if a group of us average our guesses at the number of jelly beans in a jar, our “collective guess” will usually come closer to the mark than the best individual guess in the room. We know that this principle accounts for the wisdom that regulates markets, and that consistently returns good search results on Google.

Why, then, is it so often the case that when it comes to critical decision-making, thinking together as a small group tends to make us stupid rather than smart? Why do even our best attempts at collaboration often leave us secretly wishing for the simplicity and sharpness of outmoded “command and control” decision-making? With “groupthink” phenomena now well-studied, we know that primitive social drives for control, belonging and status can imperceptibly sabotage our collective pursuit of clarity. But, what prevents this knowledge from being integrated to the point that our collective intelligence is not only an aggregate phenomenon but a lived experience?

For those of us in positions of leadership whose success depends on our ability to tap the wisdom of our organizations and communities, the need to find a way out of this collective constipation is paramount. The following pages will explore an emerging paradigm which suggests some tangible methodologies for overcoming the social barriers to group intelligence, and ushering in a new era of collaborative thinking and collective creativity.

The Possibility

Imagine a group of people gathered for a creative strategy session with an unusual mandate. The entry fee for this conversation is that everyone has made a sincere and educated effort to check their “ego” at the door. With personal agendas temporarily set aside, there is a noticeable absence of self-consciousness, or self-concern of any kind. The familiar jockeying for position has vanished, and along with it, all approval seeking. No one seems invested in being right, appearing smart, or appearing any particular way at all. In the absence of these familiar negative social behaviors, there is simply an authentic, innocent, undefended interest in creatively engaging the task at hand. Without the familiar, primitive “mental noise” blocking the system, listening is deep and there is plenty of space for considered reflection. Unified by a heartfelt and soulful commitment to a greater good, the group flows easily from one idea to the next. Diverging points of view are engaged organically, effortlessly, in the recognition that a diversity of perspectives represents a rich field of data to mine for insights. All questions and concerns are welcomed into the inquiry. Aware of the ever-looming specter of paralyzing group dynamics, an atmosphere of humility pervades, and an embodied knowledge that confronting the questions that challenge our deepest assumptions is our only safeguard against collective error.

Seeing Beyond the Self

The above scenario may sound like science fiction at worst, or wishful thinking at best. After all, most of us would be hard-pressed to point to a single example of a group we’ve participated in that bore any resemblance to this one. It is thus all the more significant to realize that the scenario described above was not derived from imagination, but from the lived experience of groups working to pioneer a new model for collective engagement.

As the above example suggests, at the heart of this new model is the conviction that the singular impediment to optimal group functioning is what has traditionally been known as “ego.” Whether in the form of self-concern, self-aggrandizement, self-doubt, self-consciousness, self-infatuation, or self-absorption, this knot in the center of the psyche has long been recognized to be the lone obstacle to higher moral, spiritual and psychological development in individuals. But the recognition that this same unhealthy self-focus is the prime saboteur of higher collective functioning is a relatively new idea.

In part, this is a natural and expected progression. As organizations have begun to push the outer envelope of collaborative skill-building and collective functioning in general, it seemed only a matter of time before they would come up against the same challenge as those who have been working on individual development for centuries. But there is an element to this newfound discovery that is unique to the life conditions of our historical moment.

Confronted by an ever-growing array of global challenges, those at the leading edges of collective inquiry are recognizing the urgent need to pioneer new, more effective ways of thinking together about the big questions. In the midst of this urgency, there is a growing willingness to experiment with unorthodox approaches, including those arising from the time-tested spiritual psychologies of the East. As goal-oriented teams begin to apply the insights of meditation and inner cultivation to their collaborative pursuits, some surprising new possibilities are revealing themselves. Foremost among these is a collection of revolutionary social technologies that leverage positive group dynamics to catalyze trans-egoic creative collaboration among participants.

Understanding Ego: the Foundation

To begin to get a sense of how a group might be able to function beyond the grip of ego, it is first necessary to get clear what exactly we are trying to move beyond. Although the word “ego” is used in a variety of ways in contemporary culture, in this context we are using it to refer to something very specific. Within all of us, there is a primitive psychological and emotional drive for security and certainty. During our early evolution, it no doubt served countless important functions, but here in the 21st century, as we attempt to evolve our capacities for creativity and consciousness, this drive has developed into a pathology—a pathology of self-concern.

There is not sufficient space in this brief overview to elaborate in detail on the ego’s many faces, but if we look at a typical group interaction, we can easily see its effect: If I am concerned about how I’m going to be perceived in the group, will I be willing to take a risk to challenge the group’s assumptions? If I am driven by a need to establish my dominance over others, how interested will I be in hearing their points of view? If I am worried about how the group’s decision is going to affect my own department, will I be available to explore all possibilities with an open mind? If I have an unrealistic sense of intellectual superiority, will I be willing to listen to ideas that challenge my own? If I am overly attached to a positive image of myself, will I be able to hear corrective feedback about my negative impact on others?

The list of the ego’s undermining effects on group functioning is a long one, and those who have spent any time in collaborative environments could no doubt add many more to the few we have mentioned here. In the face of this seemingly ubiquitous obstacle to optimal collaboration, what then are we to do?

Drawing from our two decades of group facilitation and observation, we have put together a short list of core principles that begin to illuminate the contours of a new approach to high-level collaborative thinking. It is by no means comprehensive, but should give a snapshot of our best thinking on this to date.

Principles of Evolutionary Culture

1. A Commitment to the Greater Good: All of the individuals in the group must be genuinely committed to discovering and/or achieving the best possible outcome for the whole. Individual or departmental agendas must be set aside. Bringing the group to this high level of commitment may take considerable preparation, but is most easily achieved when all of those involved are on board with the organization’s greater mission, and when there is a trust already established in the leadership’s commitment to fairness.

2. A Commitment to Wholehearted Engagement: Each group member must be committed to fully participate in all group meetings. This means bringing one’s full attention to the matter at hand, leaving all personal concerns at the door. By listening carefully to the contributions of others and putting their own best thinking into the mix, each member contributes to the building of a larger vessel which can carry the group to unforeseen heights of insight.

3. A Culture of Self-Responsibility: All group members must feel personally responsible for the success of the group. Each must feel on a visceral level that the success of the group in achieving its outcomes rests on her shoulders alone. Given our natural tendency to defer responsibility, cultivating this level of ultimate personal responsibility among members of any group is a formidable task. One-on-one work with group members outside the group setting is usually necessary.

4. A Suspension of Assumptions: For the duration of the gathering, group members suspend everything they think they know in order to make room for new insights and understandings to emerge. Practicing what is known in Zen as a “beginner’s mind,” they cultivate an inner and outer environment of profound receptivity and openness, which turns out to be fertile soil for leaps in creativity.

5. A Culture of Deep Listening: Group members aspire to listen to one another from a place deeper than intellect. They tune their ears to listen for the deepest threads and the emerging glimmers of novelty in each other’s contributions, and, through their responses, they highlight and draw out those elements to make them transparent to the group.

6. A Commitment to Authenticity: Everyone in the group must be committed to speaking their mind and heart. This is built on the recognition that in order to make the best decision, the group needs everyone’s data. To support this commitment, there must be an explicit agreement within the group that no point of view—no matter how challenging to either the leadership or to the group’s assumptions—will be ridiculed or dismissed without genuine, respectful consideration.

7. A Culture of Risk-Taking: Nothing takes us to the edge of evolution faster than taking meaningful risks. This means speaking on an intuition when we’re not sure we have the words to give voice to it. Or, responding to a gut feeling that something isn’t right, but doing so vulnerably, realizing that it might be oneself that’s not right. It also means being willing to step into new ways of being, even if they feel frightening and unfamiliar. The more risk we are each willing to take, the more profound will be the group outcome.

8. A Culture of Empowered Vulnerability: Leading by example, the leadership demonstrates that it is okay to be vulnerable, to take the risk to expose one’s ignorance and uncertainty. The group sees that such vulnerability is actually a position of strength and power because it shows a courageous willingness to step into the most insecure places. This leads to a healthy culture of non-avoidance that is the best inoculation against “groupthink.”

9. A Culture of Constant Resolution: The group strives to maintain a clear and harmonious field of interaction between all participants. This means always striving to clear up any interpersonal tension as soon as possible, so as to build a container of deep harmony and trust among everyone. It is about leaving each interaction “without a trace.” This can sometimes require additional processing outside the group meetings in order to keep group time most efficient.

10. A Commitment to Grow and Evolve: In order for the group to consistently function at an optimal level, all individuals must be committed to staying on their own “evolving edge,” by seeking healthy feedback and taking on new challenges outside their comfort zone. When all of the individuals in a group are actively and enthusiastically engaged in their own evolution, their collective spirit of boundary-breaking infuses the group with vitality and organically keeps the group on its own evolving edge.

Conclusion

The possibility of a group thinking together beyond the grip of ego may seem like an unattainable goal to those with extensive experience of the pathologies of group life. But there is a growing body of action research demonstrating that, through the dedicated application of the principles described above, this higher collective possibility can be made a reality. Those pioneers who are willing to experiment in this arena will find many challenges along the way, but it is our conviction that the bounty of inspired collaboration and rich human engagement that awaits is well worth the effort. Indeed, if human beings are going to rise to the challenge of our moment—that of coming together beyond our differences and giving birth to a cooperative and sustainable global village—finding a truly generative way to think together is a task that calls for the best from all of us.

© 2009 Integral Enlightenment – All Rights Reserved

Read articles by Craig Hamilton on other related topics.

Change is coming. The old system is failing. A new system is emerging. Market will disappear soon. It will be replaced by GIFTegrity. Imagine a world without Buyers and Sellers — a world without money.

Why Market Is Obsolete

Timothy Wilken, MD

The American political economic system is is classified by synergic science as a neutral system. Neutral systems require unlimited resources to grow and thrive.

Neutrality means you don’t need help from others. You are so rich that you can survive all by yourself. And, we Americans have been very rich for the last 100 years. Now I know some of you will scream, RICH! I am not rich. But really you are. You see we Americans have so much cheap energy we don’t even notice it. We modern humans have been sucking petroleum out of the ground as hard as we can for those 100 years. We don’t pay for it. We do pay for the straw, but not for the oil.

In 1981, Buckminster Fuller calculated the real cost of that oil, if we were paying for the oil itself and not the cost of sucking it out of the ground. The real cost of one gallon of gasoline was $1000, 000. Correcting for inflation to 2008, that would be $2,340,000 a gallon of gasoline. How many gallons of gas did you use this month? Then consider the fact that most of our electricity is generated by burning petroleum, so how many gallons did you use to heat your home, or cool your home, or run your electric appliances and cook your food, and pump and heat the water for your bathrooms and laundrys? One survey in 2007 estimated that the average American consumes 7.8 gallons of gasoline each week. That would be 405 gallons a year times $2.34 million per gallon. This comes to ~$1 billion per year for every living American. In a lifetime, Americans are consuming non-renewal resources worth billions of dollars.Now we humans can only continue to waste such great wealth, if wealth is unlimited.

Guess what? Santa Clause is dead. We are running out of oil. The earth itself, and certainly the oil reserves of earth are finite. That means they are limited.

Lets take a moment to understand, how we got here.

There are three classes of life on Earth–Plants, Animals and Humans. The plants are an independent form our life. They can directly convert the unlimited sunlight into matter and energy for growth and reproduction. They have a neutral relationship.

The animals are a dependent form of life. They depend on ingesting the bodies of other plants or animals to obtain the matter and energy they need for survival. Good space is limited for the animals. They must compete. They have an adversary relationship with each other.

We humans are an interdependent form of life. We share our body with the animals and like them we depend on plants and animal food for our basic survival. But our human minds can learn and invent without limit and we can discover new tools and new ways to work together to solve our problems. We have the potential to develop a synergic relationship with each other. Synergy means we can work together. Sometimes you depend on me, sometimes I depend on you. The synergic way is the only way that will work for humans.

But along the pathway to synergic relationship, we humans got lost. Jesus of Nazareth told us 2000 years ago we should be synergists. We should love and help each other. But then humantiy got seduced by the the market place and what seemed like an unlimited world.

When America was founded in 1776, the North American continent provided relatively unlimited resources.  The early colonists were in the right place at the right time. The right place was the nearly empty continent of North America. Millions of acres of arable land and forests, filled with abundant water in millions of steams, rivers, and lakes and stocked with uncountable numbers of wildlife. This was further enriched with enormous reserves of iron, coal, copper, aluminum, zinc, lead, gold, silver, oil, and much more – all available for the taking.

The right time was 1776, by then the collective power of humanity’s time-binding had discovered, invented, and developed the tools and knowhow that created the mechanism of the Agricultural, Industrial, and Transportational Revolutions. The level of knowledge and technology available to the American colonists coupled with enormous North American reserves, provided them with cheap food, cheap power, and cheap transportation. And, the greatest gift was oil. It began in 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled America’s first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Thus, conditions were perfect for the success of human Neutrality. America would have the equivalent of unlimited resources for the next 150 years.

However, today things have changed. The North American continent is getting full. In 1776, there were less than a billion humans on the planet, today we are nearing 7 billion. We no longer have a limitless abundance of natural resources available for the taking. Our world of plenty is being reduced to a world of scarcity. In fact, petroleum already peaked in America in 1971. The world peak is estimated to have occurred in 2008.

Recently, the electrical power crisis in California has drawn national and world attention to a shortage of crude oil and natural gas. These fossil fuels are currently the primary source of the cheap energy that powers our modern Industrial Civilization. If we are running out of crude oil and natural gas, as some of the best scientists and engineers in the Energy field are telling us,  we have big problems.

Think back for a moment to the year 1801, only two hundred years ago, that was a time when there was no gasoline, no refined oil, no natural gas, and no electrical power derived from oil and gas. As a thought experiment, try to  imagine what life was like at the beginning of the 19th century. If you were transported back two hundred years, how would the lack of petroleum affect your lifestyle?

While we might accurately imagine the loss of cheap energy from petroleum, most of us would overlook the 70,000 products that are manufactured using petroleum as a raw feedstock. This includes plastics, acrylics, cosmetics, paints, varnishes, asphalts, fertilizers, medications, etc., etc., etc.. Now, in addition to our loss of cheap energy and the 70,000 products that you and I have come to depend on, imagine our sharing that impoverished Earth with over six billion other humans?

When the price of oil reaches $2,000,000 a gallon. How much oil will you use? Listen at the sounds as your automobiles sit in the driveway without gas, listen as all your appliances and electrical pumps all go silent. Not even the sound of running water. Nice and quiet, huh.Now think of the physical work you will have to do to suvive. Think you might need help? Perhaps you really aren’t independent.

As things start to get scarce, the humans lose their option for Neutrality. Soon they have to learn to do without. They go without owning their own homes. They go without higher education for their children. They go without free time for recreation as they are forced to get a second job. Or, they sidestep back into the adversary world – they steal, embezzle, or defraud.

Today, within the United States, the very center of human Neutrality, we see declining quality of life, declining compensation for all workers, deteriorating nuclear families, and declining numbers of humans able to own their own homes. We see increasing mental illness and child abuse; ever escalating health care costs, and more humans without access to medical care. Examining today’s youth, we see declining numbers of college graduates, mixed with increasing drug and alcohol use; increasing suicide; casual sexuality and unwanted pregnancy.

And there are even bigger problems facing Americans and the rest of humanity.

Acid rain, ozone depletion, water and air pollution, toxic buildup, strip mining, deforestation, erosion & topsoil depletion; greenhouse effect, ice age, nuclear winter, el nino, and even asteroids threatening the planet. These big problems are invisible to indifferent governments and ignoring citizens. Whose problems are these anyway? In Neutrality, they belong to no one. They are certainly not mine. Something is wrong in Paradise When we humans institutionalized Neutrality over two hundred years ago, it was a great advance over Adversity, it dramatically reduced the pain and suffering for humanity.

In the 18th century, Neutrality was a major advance for humankind. The neutral system gave individuals opportunities for great economic success. The birth of capitalistic economics greatly enriched the human condition. Neutral organization was more powerful than adversary organization. Neutrality did work well in the free world for many humans who inhabited it two hundred years ago. But that was then. …

Today, it is up to us. You and me. Our governments can’t help us. They don’t understand the problem. Our corporations can’t help us they don’t understand the problem. We can only rely on ourselves. Individuals of integrity will need to join together to build a new model of society that depends on co-Operation and abundance. And, by abundance I am referring to an abundance of integrity, intelligence and responsibility. Then we can begin restructuring our society in ways that will lead to a relative abundance even within the finite world we inhabit.

Wake up Humanity! WE must learn “to hang together,” or as Benjamin Franklin predicted, “we will most assuredly hang separately.”

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This Momentous Day

Timothy Wilken

A character in the Dean Koontz’ novel From the Corner of His Eye, Reverend Harrison White explains:

“Each smallest act of kindness reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each expression of hatred, each act of evil.”

Reverend White telling us that each day is a momentous day since all actions have consequence. Today, I can choose to act kindly or not. But my actions will “reverberate across great distances and spans of time”.

Synergic scientist Edward Haskell called this truth, so beautifully stated by Koontz, the Moral Law of Unified Science. For humans, the earliest formulation of the Moral Law of Unified Science appeared 3500 years ago as the doctrine of karma.

“Hinduism began in India about 1500 BC. The belief in rebirth, or samsara, as a potentially endless series of worldly existences in which every being is caught up was associated with the doctrine of karma (Sanskrit: karman; literally “act,” or “deed”). According to the doctrine of karma, good conduct brings a pleasant and happy result and creates a tendency toward similar good acts, while bad conduct brings an evil result and creates a tendency toward repeated evil actions. This furnishes the basic context for the moral life of the individual.”

The doctrine of karma was accepted by Buddha ~500 BC and is incorporated in modern Buddhism today. It appeared in western thought ~300 BC, in the Old Testament of the Bible as the phrase: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

“The first formulation of the MORAL LAW for a non-human “kingdom” of Universe was Dimitri I. Mendeleev’s discovery of the Periodic Law in 1869. “The properties of the chemical elements are functions of their atomic weights.”

“What Mendeleev’s discovery states for Atoms is that “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” where “reaping” is the properties of the chemical elements and “sowing” is the co-Action between the atom’s two components – its vast, light, electron cloud, and its tiny, massive nucleus.”

Haskell’s analysis of the Atomic elements showed that these two components – the electron cloud and the massive nucleus related in only three ways – positive, neutral, or negative.

Today, we know that the Moral Law of Unified Science applies to humans just as it does to the electron and nucleus. We humans have three choices. We can sow adversary actions and reap adversary resultants. We can sow neutral actions and reap neutral resultants. Or we can sow synergic actions and reap synergic resultants.

We can hurt others. We can ignore others. Or, we can help others. Life is nothing but choices.

What will you choose to do on this momentous day?