All of this about long waves and grand sweeps puts me in mind of a really great book I read recently called "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas. I'm not sure who recommended it to me; it may well have been someone on this list; but no matter: from the hunter/gatherers to today in philosophy, psychology, science, spirituality, it is a wonderful and instructive read... ending with the author's version of the cusp or brink or discontinuity we seem to be approaching. If any of you knows the book and is aware of an equivalent work covering the Eastern Mind, I would sure like to know about it. Winston
----- Original Message ----- From: J. Paul Everett To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 10:39 PM Subject: Re: Self-Organization...More... In a message dated 11/16/01 11:54:47 AM, cor...@interchange.ubc.ca writes: << My preferred metaphor is that of the hunter/gatherer. For a hunter/gatherer, the landscape is rich to begin with and requires no further intervention to make it that way. Hunters and wildcrafters protect systems by using them sparingly, thus preserving and sustaining their yield without threatening the context in which they operate. And if the system collapses, hunters can move on to another piece of land. They are adaptable, resourceful and flexible. Gardeners (and by extension, farmers) fence off their land, battle against the elements and try to preserve what they have. If the system collapses they are hooped. >> Chris, Well, this prompted a thought on your thought. When we look at the long wave history of humankind, we see only two eras of truly fundamental change. Not that change didn't occur in the other epochs, but it wasn't a truly paradigmatic shift. The first was when mankind stopped being hunter/gatherers and became farmers and herds- keepers. This was an enormous change that gave rise to civilization and more importantly, a small, very small, slice of the population that could then be supported by the rest and who then had time to think---and all elements in this world of human origin are first a thought. The invention of mathematics by an Indian genius, the invention of cities, record keeping, writing, etc., mostly in Sumer, were monstrous leaps up off the veldt 6000+ years ago. And, they enabled many more people to live, and therefore, many more thoughts to appear/be had, and therefore, human-created newness to happen. To illustrate my thesis that then no further fundamental change happened for a very long time, take King Solomon and George Washington, living about 3,000 years apart. Yet, they had, essentially, the same heating, the same lighting, the same transportation (nobody went faster than a horse on land or a sail boat would go on water), same mode of communication (written or verbal, delivered by a person), slave power and very similar medicine. In fact, it was not until 1939-40 that medical science had something that would reliably, knowledgeably (on the part of the prescriber) fight a disease inside the human body---that was sulfanilamide, followed in short order by penicillin, etc. (Saved my brother's life, btw). The next big change in human consciousness about man's relationship to reality came someplace in 1740-1785/90 when the Enlightenment fundamentally altered ideas about the source of change and what humans might do about it. From that incredible shift we have the modern civilization that we exist in, filled with ever-increasing rates of change on multiple fronts. Is it any wonder that the Modernists and Post-Modernists are much hated by the Medievalists? We are destroying what existed for millennia. And, that we have multiple troubles adjusting to that pace of change on so many fronts. But, in the process mankind is becoming even more free, at least those able to avail themselves of technologies and new thoughts that generate newness, world wide. Therefore, I challenge whether the hunter/gatherer is a viable metaphor for any organization in this epoch of man. It certainly can't support the aggregation of brains necessary to create what we now have. It would seem rather that Prigogine's model, or George Land's model, or some other model might better describe what works best at this point in humankind's history. Perhaps the cybernetic model, or Open Space as a model, together with it's self-organizing characteristics is what's really required in these times. Chaos, complexity and emergence seem to be expanding our understanding of the Universe, at least it appears so to me. Just a thought or two. Paul Everett * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
