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Sustainocracy, the evolution of democracy
This has become a long blog again. It places “the secretes of life” blog-series in context with human society. The development of our democracies of freedom can be seen as a natural process. But freedom alone is not enough and maybe even counterproductive for sustainable progress. We become aware that the old democracy is obsolete and we need a new commitment to living life. The “next step”, the acceptance of a new democracy (Sustainocracy) is in a pioneering phase and creating precedents. It is not an institutional process but one of intense human choice and leadership.
The elders
This week I received an email signed by Kofi Annan. He wrote in the name of “The Elders”, a group of well known old world leaders who use their name, fame and personal authority to influence on important issues of human rights around the world. He wrote to announce the transfer of group leadership to him as successor of the initiator of the Elders, Desmond Tutu. I am simply in the loop of their newsletters but could never get these personalities involved in the evolutionary steps that I am working on myself for and with humankind with Sustainocracy, the new democracy. The “Elders” remain in their role as critical influencers of policies and policy makers around the world to get the old democracy still properly off the ground. At the end of the newsletter this particular wording out of a speech of Mr. Annan on “plurality” shows their commitment:
“Just as no country is born a democracy, no one is born a good citizen. Mutual respect and tolerance have to be fostered and taught.”
This statement shows the need for “proper” education and our commitment to democratic social structures through awareness and consciousness. How else can we step up our evolutionary respect for and progressive harmony with our natural universal environment if we cannot even bring up respect our own human selves and fellow people?
Human rights of freedom and equality are of course an important issue when we consider the lack of individual freedom still of many people across the world. Our natural spiritual freedom, as I described in my series of lectures about “the secretes of life“, is conditioned by the way we organize our communities through our own historic interpretation of consciousness, harmonic relationships and the four areas of awareness (growth, competition, adaptiveness and symbiosis) of life. We have built societies around human suppression, control, aggression, greed, debt, bureaucracy, laws, rules and any other single and multiple expression of power and control.
Our “fear for the other”, that sees in every human being a potential competitor rather than a co-creative equal or partner, has led to this type of systematic distrust and manipulation. The quest of the Elders is hence a noble one, in which humankind is challenged to see itself from the beauty and strength of “being” rather than our weakness of “fighting for having” or “fear for loosing”.
Self centered blindness
The idea of “freedom” is often conditioned to the allowance by our human surroundings and the necessary fulfillment of our living needs. We are never ever truly “free” as we always have a commitment “to living life”. We have learned that life originated from harmonic bonding resulting in a first living species in hunger for more harmonic relationships through growth. Life is related to a commitment and hence cannot be see as “free”. This commitment represents a purpose that gives us the inner drive that keeps our living molecules together in harmony. Our inherent thrive for growth is individual as well as collective and continues when we face competition. Our own species started to develop speech when complex strategies of attack and defense were to be agreed upon. This goes beyond the standard biological hunting scenario of predators when teamwork improves the outcome of the chase. In a war against self aware equals more is needed than just teamwork. Complex planning ahead and influencing the outcome through ingenuity is then key for success. Our “fear for the other” generated all the evolutionary effects of innovations by creating tools, systems and structures to improve the competitive outcome between human beings.
Our own aggression for growth is also the cause of further elimination of freedom, making people instrumental to a system of competition. The purpose of growth through nutrition and procreation, defending one’s interests and attacking for expansion, requires strength or teamwork, discipline, sacrifice and hard work. Morality and ethics are relative to the circumstances of life, subject to the reflective discussion around the purpose of actions and structures. Also in nature “only winning is right and there is no wrong other than the lack of trying”. This has made humankind an extremely self centered species that has just been blindly focused on its own self interest, expressed individuality through levels of control and hierarchy and collectively through militarized communities of self protection and the power of aggression.
Diplomacy
But when attack does not lead to winning anymore common sense demands new awareness and strategies. Adaptiveness makes one unique and inventive. So when the status quo of equality in strength arrives then the art of being different gives new opportunities. In case of non conflicting equality the art of working together gives maybe safety, harmony and stability. Diplomacy is yet another competitive instrument that demands the development of the power of reasoning and negotiation rather than the destructive brutal force. Equality is the acceptance of brotherhood instead of confrontation. From the series “secretes of life” we learn that equality appears when we become aware that “I cannot eat you or destroy you for my own growth”. That does not sound too romantic but life is about harmonics in a multiple complexity, not just romance. Equality then expresses itself in two ways:
* Respect
* Tolerance
Which is exactly what Mr. Annan wants us to learn and indeed seems the best solution for safety, harmony and peace. But is it also the best solution for sustainable progress?
When aggression makes way for diplomacy a new social structure appears. Aggressors needed soldiers and weapons, diplomats need supporters and arguments. Both need commitment to progress, one through brutal force, the other through harmonic development and negotiation.
The threat of competition through aggression gradually disappears and makes way for new ways of competing. The relationship then evolves around the status quo on “remaining equal” and the harmonics of avoiding aggression “by being attractively or repellingly different”. In modern society “differences” may be expressed through technological innovations, economic relationships, educational power, capacity of work forces, the impression of power, or anything else that gives diplomacy the power of negotiation.
Some risky inequality still remains through the speculation around shortages and aggression for fulfillment of material needs.
When aggression disappears the population is challenged to contribute in a different way than through fighting as soldiers for their system to achieve safety through violence. Now people need to become intellectual contributors to uniqueness and adaptiveness. Equality between powerful communities leads to levels of equality within the members of the populations themselves in order to free creativity for the development of new uniqueness. This may lead to new eras and means of growth of the species. Territorial confrontations transform into diplomacy, business negotiations and a powerful diversity of trade appears.
Democracy
Democracy is a modern human system where freedom of speech and equality have become instruments of adaptiveness of a society in a human world of evolving realities. Democracy gives freedom to the development of awareness simply because we break loose from the ancient system confinement of aggression and control. That is why democracy is a greater common good, similar to the spiritual freedom that any living being enjoys by natural birth, and hence worth defending at any expense. The community gains in flexibility, functional awareness and adaptiveness, which helps to adjust rapidly to harmonic and disharmonious impulses. We contribute to our evolutionary progress by becoming aware of our own individual existence, capable of voting for our representatives and hence influencing the further adaptiveness of our community. Our internet generation for example is already showing a much looser attitude of freedom and awareness than the still more disciplined older generations.
But democratic freedom brings another important issue to the surface: responsibility. It demand also totally new form of leadership that the rigidity of past systems. Democracy is a great instrument of individual freedom and collective development of expressive awareness through innovative impulses. Yet not at any expense.
The wrong democracy
Democracy did not come alone. After a turbulent history of trial and error social securities were introduced to give democracy a solid basis of safety for the public. But harmonic social stability has the counter effect of public reluctance, greed and apathy. Since the 70’s of the 20th century the individualized system of organized consumption was connected to the financial system of managing shortages for economic growth. Instead of using democracy for the individual commitment to collective sustainable progress it became an individual voting system to sustain greed. This type of democracy is causing again a huge problem of human dependencies in the interest of bureaucrats and a new class of dictators, bankers, the managers of debt.
People get addicted to consumption at the expense of their own sustainable stability and adaptiveness. They are captured by a financial imposition that gains control over the community through systems of debt. Respect and tolerance make way again for inequality, differences and hierarchies. This system of abuse misuses the human natural affection for growth through food, and competition through status, causing psychological and behavioral disorder at the expense of economies in crisis. The collective greed is seen as normal and stimulated by the financial systems that have their own objectives of growth. Still, also these financial systems find out that growth in a finite environment is limited resulting in crisis when in reality change is required.
A democracy based on self interest
More over, the size of the world wide population and the development of such consumption based economies around democratic self interest is causing a huge environmental problem as well.
When dealing with human complexities, the first life’s principle “growth” is behavioral synonym for greed. We feel safe when surrounded by permanent abundance yet feel horrified if we have no access to it. This is the psychological entrapment of the consumer based economy. People are willing to mortgage their entire lives to sustain a certain life style. Greed and competition are driving forces to develop consumer symbolism of status. A virtual reality has been created that takes material resources away from our natural surroundings to present them in enormous abundance to the consumption machinery as a constant teaser. In reality we both show a huge debt to ourselves and our environment. But this people cannot see due to lack of awareness. Public blindness is the instruments of people who manipulate this out of self interest of positions of power and control.
Research tells us that people show solidarity with the problems of climate change, global warming, pollution, poverty, etc yet neglect their commitment to it when facing personal choices. Self interest is of course lured to the virtual abundance that surrounds us even when we know that is destroys our habitat and eventually our own selves. 99.99% of people are followers and reluctant to be the first to make a difference, especially when this means that one has to let go of a certain lifestyle.
When we then consider a democracy based on purchase power and personal wealth and ask people for responsibility for the greater good they will strongly agree but still vote for their self interest rather than change. It is a sad paradox but very logical from an evolutionary point of view. As a species we tend to be optimistic about the future. Despite all the evidence of looming chaos and disaster people will think that it will only happen to someone else, not them, if it will happen at all. This reassuring thinking pattern of permanent opportunity and faith makes this type of materialistic democracy a disaster for change and potential cause of chaos and war.
When a democracy is based on the right to be selfish and greedy for the benefit of bankers and bureaucrats we find it to develop in an individualistic, fearful, anti-social, materialistic, selfish, discriminatory and dangerous society which is cold and impersonal in its social interaction.
This is not the right type of democracy.
The right democracy
A democracy should consist of freedom within the context of a common purpose of living life in a sustainable way. We see that also the mere concept of “democracy” needs to evolve as we find out the hard way that freedom itself is not giving the right type of progression. Our current parliamentary democracies are based on old hierarchies of self interests, grouped around political expressions. This has not accounted for the need to address “sustainable progress”. In the 19th century, when the democracies started to get a common ground in the constitutions of countries, the idea of sustainability as we know it today was not at all alive. Conflicts due to inequality between industrialized employers and people with or without work were much more important to deal with. With a global population of one billion and the rise of industrialized processes there was still plenty of room for growth and competition.
Only in the 70’s of the 20th century we were becoming aware of the finite situation of our surroundings and consequences of our behavior. But our democratic systems around greed were so organized that common sense could not prevail to introduce drastic changes. The wrong democracies were booming and spreading around the world. Awareness grew through and slowly all kinds of crises started affecting communities. Diplomacy grew and so did the acceptance that changes were needed. But these changes were still introduced as minorities in a political system that was governed by the majority around greed. The wrong democracy will not vote itself to change.
How can a minority create progress in an environment that blocks it our of self interest? The idea of the right democracy was born on paper. It is not a political democracy but a purpose driven one. It understands the human complexity and secretes of life with its 4 awareness areas (growth, competition, adaptation and symbiosis). It understands that Sustainable Progress is not achieved through competing human being but by providing wellness to oneself and share abundance with others. The new democracy is not about choosing direction for greed but to create valuable abundance in a sustainable way. We now see the evolving need for societies to turn around and evolve based on techniques of self sufficiency, circular economies and harmonic local relationship between the people themselves and their environment. Competition is avoided through self supporting initiatives and when regional interaction is done it is for the purpose of education, exchange of values and recreation. Health, safety, food, clean water, wellness, etc is being recognized as common wealth that cannot be left to someone else. Sustainable progression that involves many people that take responsibility themselves.
The biggest problems that arise are related to the transformation between the right and wrong democracy. 55% of the world’s population lives in cities and is totally dependent on economic systems as natural self sufficiency has been expelled and subcontracted. They are surrounded by land that is being used for massive, standardize productivity of food or other economic initiatives. The transformation to local for local values is intense and extremely complex. If it is not done properly the transformation can cause the chaos even before the “wrong” democracy collapses.
The need for Sustainocracy
A common mistake is the thought that all institutional leaders (government and business) are just focused on material challenges, personal status and selfish bonuses. Many are, but certainly not all. We encounter people in powerful positions that feel very much prisoner in their current job description. They are relieved to come across Sustainocracy as a totally new worldview based on the “right democracy”. It substitutes the old complexity with a totally new one by mere CHOICE. Being able to choose between worldviews to allows them to value where they can score best. Key in Sustainocracy is that exactly the same powerful puzzle pieces of a democracy are being used only connected in a different way. Interesting for them is that they can use the same network of professional relationships to make a difference. Rather than managing institutional interaction for greed they develop human leadership interaction for progress.
Sustainocracy isn developping precedents now in areas such as Eindhoven, the 5th city of the Netherlands with 220.000 people. The G4 (the 4 largest cities of the country) are very dominant in the “wrong” democracy with. Eindhoven has a tradition of having to uphold itself among these dinosaurs by being especially adaptive and unique. It is hence not at all strange to find a positive vibe in this city to make things happen that are unique in the world but of a complexity that requires the co-creative commitment of many different parties.
A democracy based on a common purpose (Sustainocracy)
Being able to deploy the very first signs of a new democracy with a sustainability purpose in a city is of course a challenge, especially when populated still by institutions that are being run with directives of growth and competition. Still we find people in executive positions that are willing to participate in something new. Sustainocracy is presented as an experiment so that it feels safe for them. For me it is a time to prove to everyone around the world that this works and provides perspectives that are worth everyone’s while with only winning scenarios and no other losers than those who do not participate.
Sustainocracy is hence implemented as a “right” democracy within a “wrong” democracy. It is introduced by a minority of people, true human beings who happen to be in charge of a city, multinationals, university departments, etc too. Their personal commitment is key and after that they try to get the backing from their professional structures. The latter can, if involved properly, become the rapid carrier of this type of social and practical innovation around the world. They participate out of self interest and see that their overall authority and competitiveness can grow if they set aside their responsibilities within the old “wrong” world. Understanding this is awareness, a first step in taking the lead in change.
It is a beginning in the evolution of our democracies. When the results become visible I am sure that many current social leaders that now see their communities fall apart, affecting their leadership, take their chances and cross the line to try out Sustainocracy themselves with their own local network of people. The new democracy exists, it is good, sound and safe, sustainable and progressive but needs to find its way into the world through the hands of people who are willing to do this.
Conclusion
We get back to the words of Kofi Annan about respect and tolerance and the two questions that I posed:
1. Is a democracy the basis for respect and tolerance?
No! Just the freedom of speech and choice is NOT enough. It lacks the common purpose of sustainable progress and hence evolves around self centered individualism. This eventually ends up in the “wrong democracy” that lacks respect and tolerance.
2. Is respect and tolerance the best basis for sustainable human progress?
Yes! Respect and tolerance needs to based on the development of awareness as guided by sustainable human progress. It does not eliminate growth, competition nor adaptation through just symbiosis. It introduces new rules of conduct provided by a higher purpose that makes respect and tolerance, in a setting of true democratic freedom, a true living instrument of peaceful innovation.
With Sustainocracy we can practice the right democracy by personal choice. If we don’t we need to justify to ourselves why not? If we do, we already know why.
Secrets of life 10
The art of living together
Evolutionary paths of life have gone through the first harmonic connection that created life (Co create), then growth (greed), competition (chaos) and adaptiveness (awareness) to reach the highest point evolutionary harmony: the art of living together.
Symbiosis
In nature we see that many species developed in a sustainable way by avoiding competition and finding harmony by being different. A further step is to also help each other. Symbiosis is a manner of living interaction where two or more parties benefit, each in a totally different way. Nature is in fact a huge network of symbiotic relationships. Let us have a look at a few through this short German educational film (you do not have to understand German to get the message).
The film shows in a simplified way how symbiosis works among two parties only (man/woman, rhinoceros/bird, fish/sea anemone, fish/lobster). When we observe nature we see relationships that are much more divers and complex.
Think of a tree for instance. One of the handicaps of a tree is that it cannot move, hide, run, jump, fly….The tree needs to interact with its environment through advanced measures and relationships to be able to survive as individual and as a species. The oldest still living trees on Earth are over 5000 years old! They have lived throughout the entire human written history and development of civilisation. They could do that because of symbiosis, the art of living together. The tree has learned for instance to react to seasonal environmental conditions s.a. temperature to drop its leaves. By reducing its wealth is can allow the winter storms to blow through its branches without the dangerous opposition of a crown. The leaves that fall are food for bacteria and fungi, building bricks for ants and shelter for beetles. These use up the dead leaves, helping the decomposition to nurture the soil beneath the tree with the same minerals again that are needed to fulfil a new cycle of growth of leaves on the branches in spring. The tree shows that it is willing to live in scarcity and trusts that new times of abundance arrive in a cyclic. It does this through an extraordinary high level of symbiotic balance with its surroundings already for thousands of years.
Birds find shelter and protection on the branches of the tree, and among the leaves, where they poop, adding new nutritious values to the soil. The birds and small animals use the tree’s fruit for food which is why they are also attracted to the tree. The seeds are carried away from the tree in flight by the bird, giving better chances for a new tree to grow elsewhere. Seeds need to be deposited far away from the tree to avoid the lack of sunshine under the summer crown of the parent tree. Trees have hence developed all kinds of solutions for the transportation of their seeds. It is interesting to study the related ingenuity of the mechanics and types of inter relationship with the winds or other species as well as the design of the seeds.
The above are just a few examples of symbiosis of a tree and there are many more to be found in nature. When we see bees fly, hovering over flowers and collecting nectar, they also carry the pollen of these flowers around for fertilisation. If this did not happen then fruit would not grow on the bushes, animals nor people would have food and we would all die. So even we as human species are included in the symbiosis and depend entirely on its functioning for our own sustainable survival and living life. The recent years have show a large mortality rate and downsize of the population of bees in Europe causing serious concerns among scientists, economists and environmentalists.
A living universe
We tend to think of our modern human selves as a single individual with a high degree of autonomous powers of reflection and educated decision making. In reality we are a small living universe that consists of a harmonic symbiotic composition of an estimated 3 billion different species that populate just one single human body and help it function and stay alive. Without it we would die. There is no evidence of any symbiotic purpose that our species (humankind) itself has in nature other then the protective domestication of certain animals for food and recreation in exchange for safety for the species. For most other life the human being is a threat. We have seen in the arguments of this series of blog lectures that this causes a reaction in nature of confrontation, adaptation and new symbiosis. When we look around us we have seen that different species are adjusting remarkably well to the dominance of humankind. But we also see threats against humankind with the appearance of new diseases that can wipe us out with the ease of a sigh. Our polluting nature is helping certain aggressive species while we reduce our own competitive and adaptive edge due to the lowering of our defences.
Our human body is living a life in universe which is much further evolved than our wits, rational and understanding. The symbiosis that composes a human body is of an evolutionary complexity and result of billions of years of development. We have not been adequately aware and hence have not yet behaved accordingly. Now that we are becoming aware we find that we have done a lot of damage already to our own species.
Extremely complex human beings, extremely simple in awareness
The human complexity is extreme in its physical composition and sustainability through symbiosis. Inside us we have the adaptive means that can be enhanced with our adaptiveness and inventiveness. But our conscious awareness is not yet up to the same level to make effective evolutionary choices. Our rational mentality is often still limited to the basic level of life: growth and competition. Our rationality and way of organizing human societies has been undergoing cyclic experiences between growth, competition, adaptation and symbiosis only with our own selves as a species. We have been acting as if we were a universe of our own, simplifying our systems to our level of understanding and creating simple formats of dependence (eg. standardization of money), virtual symbiosis (s.a. civilizations, city life) or competition (war) for our own processes of understanding life, not living life.
We have been surprised by the aggression of the natural surroundings and universe because of lack of harmonic relations with it. In the process we have not (yet) cared at all for our relationship with our surroundings. We were too busy learning about ourselves, the “I am” experiences of self awareness, individually and as an organized society.
Our evolutionary process has come to a crossroad
A blind universe of our own
Ever since we became self aware and developed our unique ability to create tools for our own progress we had to come to terms with our inner life forces of growth, competition and awareness building. We discovered how to use fire and started to manipulate our surroundings rather than interacting with it. We learned how to grow crops and how to keep cattle for the sake of food guarantees. We learned how to build houses to be able to live even where we had no caves. We copied from nature everything we needed by trying to create it ourselves in a simplified way.
With our acquired self awareness we felt (and in fact are) unique and in reality entered a new phase of life of unlimited growth, just like the early (A+B) did when it had the entire Earth at its disposal. Without natural competition there is no need for adaptation nor new jumps into evolutionary awareness. So symbiosis with our environment has never even crossed our minds. There was no need. We simply needed our wit for unlimited growth not for competition or adaptation. Entire civilizations have starved and disappeared like that. The only natural competition we had was the human being itself. We would protect our basic values through territorial behavior just like aggressive animals would do. We would keep aggressors out and become aggressor ourselves to expand our inner growth desire.
Today 7 billion people, a desired life style of abundance and a single planet Earth show that we are reaching the limits of our growth. We see in our newest generations a new tendency of growing awareness that goes beyond our systems of education. It is as if our species is also inside, in our harmonic sub-conscience reacting to a new reality. We need to modify our current perception of progress in order to have renewed sustainable expectations as a species.
Following the cycles of life also in our human complexities we see that when growth is blocked life reacts. In order to keep going either we find our equals and compete or, with lack of competition, a new jump in awareness occurs. So growth will than be again triggered by new understandings. This allows us also to organize differently taking also symbiosis into account. Symbiotic thinking is already inherent to our system. We only have long not been aware of it, or used it to our benefit. From an evolutionary perspective we ARE symbiosis. From a perspective of consciousness we are about to find out.
Spirituality
Spirituality is our inner built up of life through harmonic patterns of music. This gives us the potential level of understanding life from a learning perspective of billions of years. It is all within us already as a huge universal symphony that sounds great and resonates with our surroundings with its musicality. Spirituality is our deep inner awareness that has not yet been rationalized by our levels of understanding. It is already present for us to discover. We need to have a challenge of adaptation to use our abilities to understand and modify our behavior and structures for a next level of symbiotic life or further growth of our species. We do this over and over again until we reach again our limitations. Or we encounter other creatures in their own phase of growth in the unique space that they created for themselves. From a universal life’s point of view there is no reason at all for the human being to prevail over time. There are sufficient variables that can make the human species just a temporary issue among the many variants. Our own lack of timely adaptation could be a reason for our species to eventually disappear. Self awareness and our learning process could well be too slow, maybe due to self imposed simplified systems for simulated growth (money, hierarchies, robots, etc) that block our natural evolution and makes us unaware of the need for adaptation. Another variable is the possibility of other species to develop better competitive novelties that eventually overrule the human dominance and breaks our complexity back down into more simplified fractals, allowing the other species to evolve fast through their own phase of unlimited growth.
It now makes sense
Now the musical patterns shown by Pythagoras, Galilei, Kondratieff, Tomes, etc all make sense. They are all patterns of life itself in search for harmony in the complexity of growth, competition, adaptation and symbiosis acting multi-dimensionally together. We humans are all part of this with the great ability to understand yet the great handicap that our awareness is still limited. We urgently need to modify systems that were created by ourselves and that tend to destroy us rather than bring us forward at this point. We have reached a point that we need to choose for sustainable progress ourselves by letting go of some of our old beliefs and accept new ones. Evolution also evolves at the levels of the consciousness, not just material relationships. We have reached an important crossroad of our sustainable continuity and the only one responsible for the future are we ourselves.
What will the future bring?
From a human perspective the complexity of life is huge and we have reached a point in which we need to face a particular evolutionary reality. If we don’t then we destroy ourselves. If we do we enter a new phase of adaptation of our own selves and the possibility to enter into a new harmonic relationship with our environment. Symbiosis can lead to new periods of growth, not just in size of humankind but also in understanding life and the capability to sustain ourselves better by knowing and acting accordingly.
My own model for society, Sustainocracy, is simply a working evolutionary step in the field of human symbiosis among ourselves and with our local environment. Sustainocracy “understands” the 4 realities of life (growth, competition, adaptiveness and symbiosis) from a spiritual truth of harmonic relationships and essentials of life. Introducing it into our societal structures will step up our life’s expectations and sustainable evolutionary progress. Even the old obsolete systems of power and dominance have their place and can continue, evolving over time instead of collapsing now into crises and chaos. Right now, as said before in the world of self consciousness, it is simply a matter of choice. The correct choice survives to live, the wrong choice no one will ever know or worry about because it disappears into history and is forgotten.
Conclusion
Human beings are a complex evolved species that stepped from the original musicality of growth into competition and through adaptiveness into a high level of living symbiosis. From a perception point of view we are learning about these phases, developing our awareness and consciousness as cycles occur and show us the consequences of our status in life. These reoccur over and over again during our individual life time from birth up to death, through awareness building and consciousness. We are conceived through the harmonic combination of A+B into the living (A+B). This starts to grow through the different phases of our evolution and eventually as a true fractal expelled in birth from our mother. We then continue the phase of growing up, first protected, then in the world of competition and adaptation to grow up into adulthood with the continuous confusion between growth, competition, adaptation and symbioses.
We do not educate our young to live life. We teach them to effectively grow and compete among each other without showing them why (maybe because “society works that way”), nor their relationship with the surroundings or their own growing processes with non conflictive options through adaptation and symbioses.
In our human organisational processes as a community we find that the same four levels occur over and over again. We now face our limitations of growth due to the finite space and resources on our planet. This brings us again as evolutionary species on a natural crossroad to find a new harmony with ourselves and our surroundings. Evolution shows what comes next. In our case the variables are huge. We combine growing levels of awareness with the 4 realities of life that each are applied consciously to our sustainable human progress.
- Symbiosis brings balance, stability and protection
- Growth is a natural drive of any species
- Competition introduces a selection process through crises and confrontation
- Adaptiveness searches for new areas of non-confrontational freedom
And after adaptation a new phase of symbiosis can start. It is up to humankind to make the best of this knowledge for short term wellness and long term sustainability of the species. It is a matter of educated choices for us with an open adaptive relationship with our surroundings.
Humankind started with evolutionary building blocks that just came alive through harmonic relationships. Then we entered a phase of unaware competition which was followed by the phase of aware competition and now we are finalizing an era in which we learn to stop competing and live life consciously. I call this a quantum leap in human evolution and maybe even in universal evolution.
A small, self aware choice for the human being, a giant leap for humankind.
Secrets of life 9
The power of being different
Competition produces a natural chaos in which the outcome is unpredictable. One can always find one’s equal or better. In a competitive environment crisis is a constant where species have to deal with. The duality of attraction and avoidance get species to grow apart and develop themselves around new and differentiated values. A new step is introduced into the evolutionary path and nature of life for survival and growth: the talent of being different.
Being different avoids the confrontation and develops a unique positioning that occupies a very specific spectrum of harmonic relationship with the environment. Instead of conflict the non-conflict is enhanced. In the world of insects this has resulted in a remarkable variety of species that can coincide peacefully in a small place. They are different in everything you can imagine: size, colors, walking, flying, digging, swimming abilities, type of food, sexuality, reproduction, habitat, etc etc. Being different gives better perspectives to survival than the law of the strongest.
Have a look at this short impression about butterflies .
The unique combination of growth, competition and differentiation gives rise to an impulse of new levels of awareness. Being different can contain an evolutionary element of chance of course when growth is suddenly enhanced at the time that a species finds no competition for some time. It can also develop through higher levels of awareness around competitive instruments that enlarge the chances of winning. One can become unique in predator abilities. Diversification can then again display many variations of “being different” as we can see around us nature. One can be different by escaping from confrontation (running or flying away, jumping, hiding, etc), avoiding it through divers techniques (camouflage, size, speed, poison, spikes, etc) or winning them (strength, teamwork, etc) through smartness. Our imagination can run freely to invent effective differentials of being unique. We can also look at nature around us to see millions of years of inspirational development and unique levels of innovational excellence. Life itself, with such interactive parameters as growth, competition and unique adaptiveness is the best living lab of inspiration available in the universe.
self awareness
The inevitable next step in evolution is self awareness. This is probably the most complex contribution to life’s consciousness. Self awareness is a logical consequence when competition, fear, multiple sensory experiences, crises, adaptiveness, growth, etc all form part of the complexity of a single living specimen. The step from intuitive reflection and action to waking up into self reflective awareness is then just a matter of time and opportunity.
The possibility to make yes/no choices is key for survival in a complex world of spontaneous and purpose driven interaction. The sum of reflective impulses from many different harmonic senses, that all interact simultaneously with the environment, gives rise to the development of powerful processing powers. The choices become increasingly complex. The diversity of the senses (s.a. smell, taste, vision, touch, sound and basic inner symphonies of harmonic molecular frequencies) each produce reactive impulses that can coincide but also be conflicting. The need to come to terms with multiple inner feelings is the basis for a new kind of decision making. When harmonic frequencies were external at first, coming to life through material interaction and bonding, now the quest for harmony is inside.
This is the key to spirituality, the inner quest for harmonic meaning, connecting us in awareness with the musical reality of the universe, inside with outside.
At certain points in life these decisions are made at a self conscious level. The most advanced species are also the most adaptive in a competitive world. Self awareness is just one more instrument for improved chances. A self aware species does not just react to the environment, it will also analyze its best options and make choices.
Self aware analysis introduce the inner conflict of right and wrong. This is an inner spiritual quest for meaning around the “why”. Food, safety, health, abundance, wellness and knowledge are the self aware essentials of harmonic continuity. Procreation and fear for death is added when death is a factor to be taken into account.
Death
Death gives room to new diversification and evolution and hence becomes an engine to life. Life in itself does not need death as we have seen from the musical appearance of life under the right circumstances. Death did not exist yet. Death still did not exist when growth developed the need for collapse and fractal divisions. It was a mere continuation and re confirmation of life itself. Death appears as a key element of the evolution of self awareness. Growth would not be possible without death as life would come to a hold when growth becomes impossible due to limitations of the environment. The quest for harmonic relationships introduced new conditions into life and one was the appearance of “disappearance” of the obsolete. Death is a kind of cleaning up of the redundant which gives rise to a new cycle of life in a new field of harmonic interaction. Life is always in search for balance by creating new harmonic relationships that upset the old harmonics. Death is a necessary part of that. Life came first and death was introduced to make life’s evolution possible. It was a natural consequence. Life always conquers death, the good always wins from evil because life made death possible and death makes life continue.
As we stated before “life = awareness”. But this equation is alive too. In its simples form at molecular levels it just represents the musical interaction of specific frequencies. Matter becomes aware of matter. In its most complex form at self aware level of multiple sensory interaction “awareness = life”, meaning that the level of interpretation of life induces new life. Awareness is hence a life science that needs to be leveraged to the utmost layers of rational interpretation in order to provide a new living chance of our human species.
We see today that our human population on the globe has expanded to such an extend that we have lost our harmonic relationship with our environment. We have organized our human life only from a growth and competitive perspective after we became self aware of our unique and dominant abilities to make our surroundings instrumental to our abundance. Only in recent decennia we realize that the evolutionary criteria that surround us also apply to us as a species. Our self aware dominance for over 250.000 years is at the same time our vulnerability. Time has come for an evolutionary step in human interaction with ourselves and our environment if we want to survive evolution itself.
This brings us to another evolutionary technique that is abundantly present in our natural environment and that we need to learn to apply too. The next blog lecture will deal with that.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 