Your expectations to foresee the future is questionable. Enlightenment can
only show you the present. And that is dependent on the past. The future
composed on a infinite number of choices to be made each instant by each
person. We can make those choices on scientific knowledge. So each of us has
to consider what role s/he will play.
For some 2000 years or more civilization has been ruled by a social
paradigm on which all aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are been based --
the “dominator paradigm.” In the past 2 two decades a new social paradigm has
been emerging that could have the most, deep, fundamental impact on human
civilization since huminids first came down from the trees. The old paradigm
placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some super normal power for
the domination and use by man. The new paradigm we’ll call “A Gaian Paradigm,”
suggests a spontaneously self-organizing universe in which humanity is but one
of the created interdependent webs of being.
THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM
The “dominator paradigm,” has had a long evolution. It grew from the Jewish
creation myth that held that the earth was created for the use of and
domination by man. It was strengthened by Greek philosophy with its postulate
that "Man is the measure of all things.” The early Church held that a "chain
of being" put man at the top of a hierarchy with only a few celestial being
above. Below were women, children, other races, animals, plants and the Earth.
Each there to serve and be dominated by the rungs above. The “dominator
paradigm” was stamped in the minds of Europe by the thousand year Inquisition
that burned some one million people, mostly women, at the stake for believing
in Earth as our creator. It was spread to the East by the crusades that
destroyed “infidel” humans, cities and nations. During the Age of Colonization
and Discover it was perpetuated and made worldwide by the sword (technology),
the cross (Christianity), and the flag (nationalism). Newton’s clock work
concept of that cosmos, and Darwin’s development of evolution of humans were
interpreted to “prove” the validity of the dominator paradigm. It was fixed
in our moral secular system by the acceptance of Adam Smith's economy that
claims that human "self-interest" competition and materialism should, and does,
dictate all human actions. This abomination as the essence of humanity now
rules the world.
THE GAIAN PARADIGM
The new paradigm, which I’ll call “A Gaian paradigm,” not only has many
roots but, can be, and is becoming, the underpinning of a new global network of
cultures replacing the now dominant and domineering man-centered Industrial
cultures. The new cultures will, like all cultures, be holistic unified
coherence of interdependent components == religion, economics. social and
others. The emergence of the Gaian paradigm is resulting in a deep fundamental
transition of our world-view, our social institutions and our lifestyles. The
need for this transition is being made obvious by the growing numbers of
dangers inherent in industrialism. And the transition is happening, and
being made real, in the introduction of many positive and creative social
innovations.
This millennium is being looked upon as a time of radical and
fundamental change. Minds are opening to new ideas. People are looking for
new actions. It is in this spirit of a hopeful deep fundamental social
transformation that this book is addressed. These are the concepts we’ll
explore in the next few chapters.
FOUNDATIONS FOR A GAIAN PARADIGM
Many basic scientific observations led to this new scientific/social
paradigm. The advancement of the Gaia theory; the establishment of Chaos and
Complexity theories and new concepts of evolution were among them.
The observation that biological evolution did not progress as Darwin
predicted by a series or minute changes which led over time to the emergence of
new species. Rather, biological evolution happened in quantum leaps. Major
biological changes and new species are created in relatively short periods of
time after long periods of stability. This observation was designated by
Stephen Jay Gold as "punctured equilibrium".
James Lovelock, a scientist working for NASA, observed that the
biosphere of the Earth was radically different from all other planets. It
stayed amazingly constant, and within ranges which supported life. Lynn
Margulis, a microbiologist, at the same time, was studying the evolution of
micro organisms over the billions of years before animals appeared on the face
of the earth. She found that life forms were interdependent. Life was able
exist on Earth because of a symbiosis among all life forms. Everything was
interdependent with everything else. Life created its own biome. Lovelock and
Margulis proposed that the whole earth was a self-organized, self-supporting
ecological system At the suggestion of a neighbor of Lovelace, William
Golding, author of Lord of the flies, they termed this living Earth system
Gaia, after the Greek Earth goddess.1
A theoretical understanding of how Gaia, or in fact any system, might
spontaneously self-organize came from other fields of science including
mathematics, physics and particularly computer science. Chaos and Complexity
theories made possible by computer modeling have moved science beyond the
limits imposed by linear mathematics, algebra and calculus. Study of the
transition of order into chaos, or chaos into order, and the formation of
complex systems from simpler ones has opened a whole new area for science. Two
particular breakthroughs in the field are relevant to the Gaia concepts.
"Self-organizing criticality" is an idea proposed by Brookhaven
National Laboratory physicist, Per Bak. His first computer model representing
self-organizing criticality was of a pile of sand. As you pour grains of sand
on a spot it slowly builds into a stable inverted cone. As you continue
pouring the cone becomes unstable until sand slides and avalanches restore a
new larger stable cone. He showed that biological evolution occurred in such
bursts. Simple entities formed more complex systems, which remained stable
until internal pressures built up and caused a rapid reorganization. There
seems to be a law of nature, self-organizing criticality, by which new forms
come into being
'Autocatalysis,' developed by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe
Institute is another concept which provides a theoretical base for the
evolution of Gaia. Autocatalysis holds that systems of biological entities may
promote their own rapid transition into different forms. Kauffman uses the
simple example of the slippery footed fly and sticky tongued frog. The
mutation of slippery footedness gave no environmental advantage to the fly
until the mutation of the sticky tongued frog. Only then did Darwin's
survival-of-the-fittest come into play. Networks of potential mutations may
develop and remain dormant until triggered by an environmental change or other
phenomena that brings on the avalanche of transition. Autocatalysis, linked
with survival of the fittest explains how complex organs like the eye, or new
species emerge. 3
'Self-organizing criticality" and "autocatalysis" are among the
scientific concepts that show how biological entities self-organize in quantum
like leaps from simple cells to linked complex networks of cells, organs,
plants and animals. More than that, physicists like Lee Smolin and Nobel
Laureate Murray Gellmann have extended self-organizing back to the beginning of
time at the Big Bang, suggesting that the same principle may apply to the
self-organizing of fundamental particles into atoms, atoms into molecules and
molecules into galaxies, solar systems, planets, and life. At the same time
economists like Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Brian Arthur, and Jon Holland
have extended the new paradigm in the other direction, to include economics,
social organization, and human consciousness. 4
This new scientific/social paradigm suggests that people have no
superior divine mandate within a universe created for them. They are not
independent of, above or beyond the natural world in which they are imbedded.
They do have the unique ability to understand, through science, the laws that
govern them, to envision future worlds, and to co-create those future worlds
within the laws of science. The coming millennium will evolve radically
differently from anthropocentric paradigm which has dominated the past 2000
years.
Cyberspace and the Networked Universe
“Everything is connected to everything else” is one way of stating the
Gaian Paradigm. It is a fact of science, and is a social mindset. But it is
more than those, it is a fact of technology. “Networking” was identified by
John Naisbit in Megatrends, as one of the major new trends of the century. As
he saw it, it was a social and political trend. It was made possible by the
railroad, the automobile, the telegraph, and the telephone, each of these
technologies made the Earth smaller and put people in more rapid and reliable
touch with one another. The real quantum jump in networking is only now before
us. Computers and the Internet are providing a challenge that has hardly been
explored. Cyberspace is a global phenomenon providing humanity the opportunity
to work globally in real time. This takes networking well beyond the concept
about which Naisbitt wrote only a few years ago, or the concept of
transnational networking which was the root of the formation of TRANET, the
organization with which I’ve been working since, 1996.
The Gaia Hypothesis, the theories of chaos and complexity, the Gaian
concepts, and the computer technologies which now face us grew independently of
one another. But they form a unity. They in themselves, are an example of
the self-organizing principle which shapes all of cosmic evolution. Together
make up the Gaian Paradigm. They challenge us to prepare ourselves for an
avalanche of social, political and economic change in the years ahead. The
coming millennium will evolve radically differently from man-centered paradigm
which has dominated the past 2000 years.
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