Attending Brian Swimme's recent evening talk at the Schumacher College was an inspiring and uplifting and unusual experience. The man is so passionate about the evolution of the cosmos, tracking its deep time origins, tracing lightly over the mathematics, physics and the utterly immense scale of the whole process. Simultaneously his joy in the discovery of the Universe as self, transmits a degree of grounded positivity that you rarely encounter in the public sphere.
Swimme's enthusiasm for the evolutionary process opens the mind up to the miraculous formation of stars, the majesty of collapsing and spiralling galaxies, the might of gravitational waves plus the stupendous distances involved at every level. His ecstatic delivery shames conventional science and scientists for their desiccated approach to their subjects.
One particularly evocative moment occurred when he distinguished between the planetary bodies in our solar system. He characterised the mass of Jupiter as a planet of gases a planet body, that you could literally travel right through the centre of the vapours and emerge intact on the other side. Contrasting this with Mars which he said was dead inert rock, totally lifeless solid and impermeable.
The earth lies between the two and is in a state of balanced turbulence, it is fluid with a flaky crust. The centre fluctuates between a gaseous and solid state the movement of the core magma drives the plates ultimately generating life, it is swimming in a constant state of disequilibrium. That life evolved out of these elements in Swimmes view was more miraculous than anything narrated or described in any of the Holy Scriptures.
He described the Sun as igniting 600 million tonnes of Hydrogen gas every minute turning 596m into helium, the missing 4m tons is emitted as light energy which is what nourishes the earth. He portrayed this as an act of cosmic generosity.
He vividly described that pivotal and poignant moment when the first unicellular organisms having run out of food sources, had to invent a completely novel way of extracting energy from the environment. They evolved to capture and convert the energy of a photon inventing the process of photosynthesis, indicating that even at this basic level of life some form of consciousness must have been operational.
Outlining the evolutionary developments from amoeba to mammal and then to human life, Swimme swiftly switched focus to the quantum, the quark and most elementary levels of material reality. He described the appearance and disappearance of trillions quantum particles as generated out of the all nourishing abyss and at its root a ‘space time foam’.
After this part of the talk had finished I put a question to Brian on why so many interpreters of Thomas Berry’s work seemed to over emphasise the community of the earth at the expense of the importance of human self reflective consciousness and consequently generate an antipathy toward human presence on the planet.
He gave me a very cute response and asked me what proportion of people on the planet were awake to the dangers I guessed at about to 2% and then as I started to change my mind but he stopped me! He then said the alarmist messages about the state of planet had a place and needed to be communicated, as not enough people were awake to the real dangers.
However the flip side was everybody needed to be awake the fact that we were at a time of great opportunity and possibility and this was also a crucial part of the picture. Funnily enough he said that Thomas Berry used to get very depressed about the state of the planet and it was left to Brian to have to cheer him up!!
Monday 6 July 2009
Saturday 4 July 2009
LSE talk by Susan Neiman titled What Makes Heroes?
Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher and a distinguished scholar, she is director of the Einstein Forum and is used to asking big questions and making the tools of her academic discipline relevant to the average, thinking citizen.
She has authored a new book titled Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown Up Idealists and the topic of heroism is central to the book. I became enthused about her having read an interview with her in EnlightenNext magazine written by Elizabeth Debold.
In her talk at the LSE one of her central themes was to reconstruct our idea of heroism. For her Odysseus represents bears true hallmarks of heroism in contrast with the invulnerable Achilles who has been become our prevalent heroic archetype, modelling in her view, an infantilised hollow version of heroism. Odysseus is heroic because he uses his wits and guile and endlessly struggles to overcome he challenges and trials he faces. Unusually for a Greek myth he utilises no super powers or assistance of the Gods. It is these momentous efforts that make Odysseus heroic, this process moulds and shapes his humanity and character into one to which we should all aspire.
Another theme that emerged from her talk was that our most common heroes are usually ones that die, sometimes martyrs and almost always tragic and have generally tended to die for a noble cause. Nieman was emphatic that a dead hero was next to worthless because they let humans off the hook, if a hero dies their example is almost impossible to follow and therefore we consequently let go of our own aspirations to heroism.
She illustrated her argument with little known vignettes of what she regarded as true heroism what follows is one example. We all know about the man that lay in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square who was crushed, yet there was a more potent story in the background that got far less media exposure. A bus driver noting what was happening drove his bus forward to block the route of some the tanks and realising that the bus would be removed threw the keys of the bus away where they would not be found and remained by his bus.
Most of us worship Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama because they are distant and therefore safe and they personally, can have extremely little direct impact on our lives. Therefore there is very little impetus to desire for change. Philosophically she is deeply influenced by Kant and thus wants to reinvigorate ‘Enlightenment Heroism’. This includes having an awareness of ‘the difference between things as they are and things as they should be’.
This was a dense rigorously argued talk packed full of cultural philosophical and political references many of which were lost on me. However in addition to the authoritative call for a new type of heroism Susan thoroughly punctured many of the revered and jealously guarded tenets of postmodern culture. Heroes she argued inspire us to struggle to become more fully human. She is arguing for a re-evaluation of the terms good and evil honour and nobility because social theory has relegated the hero to the sterile term role model.
She has authored a new book titled Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown Up Idealists and the topic of heroism is central to the book. I became enthused about her having read an interview with her in EnlightenNext magazine written by Elizabeth Debold.
In her talk at the LSE one of her central themes was to reconstruct our idea of heroism. For her Odysseus represents bears true hallmarks of heroism in contrast with the invulnerable Achilles who has been become our prevalent heroic archetype, modelling in her view, an infantilised hollow version of heroism. Odysseus is heroic because he uses his wits and guile and endlessly struggles to overcome he challenges and trials he faces. Unusually for a Greek myth he utilises no super powers or assistance of the Gods. It is these momentous efforts that make Odysseus heroic, this process moulds and shapes his humanity and character into one to which we should all aspire.
Another theme that emerged from her talk was that our most common heroes are usually ones that die, sometimes martyrs and almost always tragic and have generally tended to die for a noble cause. Nieman was emphatic that a dead hero was next to worthless because they let humans off the hook, if a hero dies their example is almost impossible to follow and therefore we consequently let go of our own aspirations to heroism.
She illustrated her argument with little known vignettes of what she regarded as true heroism what follows is one example. We all know about the man that lay in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square who was crushed, yet there was a more potent story in the background that got far less media exposure. A bus driver noting what was happening drove his bus forward to block the route of some the tanks and realising that the bus would be removed threw the keys of the bus away where they would not be found and remained by his bus.
Most of us worship Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama because they are distant and therefore safe and they personally, can have extremely little direct impact on our lives. Therefore there is very little impetus to desire for change. Philosophically she is deeply influenced by Kant and thus wants to reinvigorate ‘Enlightenment Heroism’. This includes having an awareness of ‘the difference between things as they are and things as they should be’.
This was a dense rigorously argued talk packed full of cultural philosophical and political references many of which were lost on me. However in addition to the authoritative call for a new type of heroism Susan thoroughly punctured many of the revered and jealously guarded tenets of postmodern culture. Heroes she argued inspire us to struggle to become more fully human. She is arguing for a re-evaluation of the terms good and evil honour and nobility because social theory has relegated the hero to the sterile term role model.
Friday 3 July 2009
Initial Impresssions from SDi UK Summit 26-27 June 2009 with Don Beck
This post was written in response to the summary of the UK Summit event posted by Keith Rice on his blog
Keith as you have done the 'fill in' so well on the facts I shall not blog my own summary!!
This leaves me with the luxury of just adding a few qualitative background comments to your informative structure.
I was struck to begin with how Don adapted his teaching style to be more inclusive of the group and how he initially surfaced everyone’s thoughts on the current LIFE conditions in the UK. Then how he followed this by highlighting the PRIORITY Codes of each meme system and finally focused on the common BELIEFS and Worldviews of each system over the passage of the two days
His use of Chariots of Fire film and particularly the scene in the Scottish Church hit me with a tsunami of overwhelming BLUE. When I first watched this film many years ago I would have enjoyed the propriety and Britishness of the characters but would have been glad not to been present for the stultifying suffocation of that age.
What was shocking was that despite how many conventional ritualistic and bureaucratic structures still being present in our social and other institutions, yet the rigour of these blue values has almost been entirely erased from the social and personal culture sphere(including mine!)
Over the two days I found the feedback from non UK nationals very refreshing and the objectivity of their reflection on the positivity of UK or British culture was both useful and uplifting. Because of the peculiar lack of value, I personally place on these positive characteristics, I found I appreciated the foreign perspective more highly than the Brits!!
On day two I was hugely affected by the statement from the MP read aloud by Lynn Sedgemore. This conveyed so utterly positively, our unique nationalistic qualities and history. The relationship to British identity was resoundingly unequivocal and at the same balanced informed and resolutely as well as pointedly anti extremist. Interestingly the writer’s sense of self was so fused with responsibility and appreciation for British identity that it also contained a clarion call for the need for all Brits to move forward together. I was therefore completely gobsmacked that the piece was written by a British Asian former MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik. The appreciation of British values was so accurate and unambiguous it made me think that this is the direction from where the reconstruction of British identity might arrive!!
More to be posted here on the two day summit.
Keith as you have done the 'fill in' so well on the facts I shall not blog my own summary!!
This leaves me with the luxury of just adding a few qualitative background comments to your informative structure.
I was struck to begin with how Don adapted his teaching style to be more inclusive of the group and how he initially surfaced everyone’s thoughts on the current LIFE conditions in the UK. Then how he followed this by highlighting the PRIORITY Codes of each meme system and finally focused on the common BELIEFS and Worldviews of each system over the passage of the two days
His use of Chariots of Fire film and particularly the scene in the Scottish Church hit me with a tsunami of overwhelming BLUE. When I first watched this film many years ago I would have enjoyed the propriety and Britishness of the characters but would have been glad not to been present for the stultifying suffocation of that age.
What was shocking was that despite how many conventional ritualistic and bureaucratic structures still being present in our social and other institutions, yet the rigour of these blue values has almost been entirely erased from the social and personal culture sphere(including mine!)
Over the two days I found the feedback from non UK nationals very refreshing and the objectivity of their reflection on the positivity of UK or British culture was both useful and uplifting. Because of the peculiar lack of value, I personally place on these positive characteristics, I found I appreciated the foreign perspective more highly than the Brits!!
On day two I was hugely affected by the statement from the MP read aloud by Lynn Sedgemore. This conveyed so utterly positively, our unique nationalistic qualities and history. The relationship to British identity was resoundingly unequivocal and at the same balanced informed and resolutely as well as pointedly anti extremist. Interestingly the writer’s sense of self was so fused with responsibility and appreciation for British identity that it also contained a clarion call for the need for all Brits to move forward together. I was therefore completely gobsmacked that the piece was written by a British Asian former MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik. The appreciation of British values was so accurate and unambiguous it made me think that this is the direction from where the reconstruction of British identity might arrive!!
More to be posted here on the two day summit.
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