29. June 2010 by admin.

Whether we’re looking for someone to date or sizing up a potential rival, our eyes irresistibly lock on to good-looking people.

In a recent study participants, all heterosexual men and women, fixated on highly attractive people within the first half-second of seeing them. Single folks ogled the opposite sex, of course. But those in committed relationships more often eyed beautiful people of the same sex.

So if we’re interested in finding a mate, our attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive members of the opposite sex, and if we’re jealous and worried about our partner cheating on us, attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive people of our own sex because they are our competitors.

But this evolutionary trick is not without potential romantic peril. Even some people in committed relationships had trouble tearing their eyes away from attractive members of the opposite sex. On the other hand, fixating on attractive people of the same sex as rivals could contribute to feelings of insecurity.

Men prone to jealousy keep a close eye on attractive potential rivals, because when it came to concerns about infidelity, men are very attentive to highly attractive guys because presumably their wives or girlfriends may be too.

The Florida State researchers flashed pictures of attractive men and women and average-looking men and women in front of participants and measured the time it took to shift their attention away from the image. Surprisingly there was little difference between the sexes, and women paid just as much attention to men as men did to women.

It seems that evolution has primed our brains to subconsciously latch on to signs of physical attractiveness in others, both to find a mate and to guard him or her from potential competitors.

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19. June 2010 by admin.

“We’re all strands in the great web.”

But we are exactly not strands in the web. We are a nature-mystic experience, not a strand in the web. We are the entire web. We are doing something no mere strand ever does — we are the entire display. To be aware of the whole system shows precisely that we are not merely a strand, which is supposed to be our official stance.

“Explaining” this experience in systems or “web-of-life” terms is a very poor way to interpret it. Ecomasculinists often prefer systems theory terms; ecofeminists generally believe that systems theory is too masculine and abstract, and prefer instead eco-sentimentalism and relationship terms: both are equally grounded in the monochrome world of simple location, the empirical or external world.

But once we’ve committed that flatland reductionism, we start to think that the way to transform the world is to simply get everybody to agree with our monological map, forgetting the six or seven interior stages the mapmaker actually had to go through in order to get to this point where we can agree in the first place.

And like the multicults, we forget all the stages of transcendence that got us to this noble point, and so not only do we bizarrely condemn transcendence itself (the actual path!), we simply collapse all those stages into an incredibly simplistic “one-step” transformation: agree with my holistic Gaia map, and I will be saved. And so, like many of the multicults, some of us folks often become rather belligerent and intolerant, claiming that all the strands in the web are equally important, but despising the strands that disagree with them.

So instead, we need to take into account the interior dimensions — we have to take into account linguistic and cultural backgrounds, methods of interpretation, the many stages of consciousness evolution, the intricate stages of moral development and decentering, the validity claims of truthfulness and sincerity and justness, monarchical degrees of depth, the hierarchy of expanding self-identity and methods of transcendence — all of those are interior dimensions, and none of those items are found on the monological and external World map!

And sadly, for just that reason, we won’t find a decent discussion of the interior stages of development in any books on deep ecology, ecofeminism, or ecophilosophy. But without those factors we’ll never make it to the new World, because we wont know how to get people into the boat and on their way. What we’ll have is a fine goal with no real path.

It’s our choice isn’t it? But without the necessary interior stages of development, and thus sufficient consciousness, a choice never exists, does it?

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11. June 2010 by admin.

So it’s true that some people today eulogize the primal tribal societies because of their “ecological wisdom” or their reverence for nature” or their “no aggressive ways.” But the evidence does not support any of those views in a sweeping and general fashion. Myself, I eulogize the primal tribal societies for entirely different reasons: We are all sons and daughters of tribes. The primal tribes are literally our roots, our foundations, the basis of all that was to follow, the structure upon which all subsequent human evolution would be built, the crucial ground floor upon which so much history would have to rest.

The Ecomasculinists (deep ecologists) are particularly fond of the period of the foraging tribes, the pre-agriculture hunting and gathering societies, because they were ecologically sound. Some primal societies were ecologically sound , and some definitely were not. Some tribes practiced cut and slash and burn, and some were responsible for the extinction of numerous species, so a “sacred” outlook toward nature did not in any way guarantee an ecologically sound culture. Men and women, everywhere and at all times, have despoiled the environment, mostly out of simple ignorance. Even the highly revered Mayan culture disappeared largely through depleting the surrounding rain forests. Modernity’s ignorance about the environment is much more serious, simply because modernity has many more powerful means to destroy the environment. Tribal ignorance, on the other hand, was usually milder; but ignorance is ignorance, and is certainly nothing to emulate. The lack of means in foraging societies does not simply equate with the presence of wisdom.

Today’s existent tribes, and today’s nations, and today’s cultures, and today’s accomplishments — all would trace their lineage in an unbroken fashion to the primal tribal whole/parts upon which a human family tree was about to be built. And looking back on our ancestors in that light, I am struck with awe and admiration for the astonishing creativity — the original breakthrough creativity — that allowed humans to rise above a given nature and begin building a psyche, the very process of which would bring Heaven down to earth and exalt the Earth to Heaven, the very process of which would eventually bind all peoples of the world together in, if you will, one global tribe.

But in order for that to occur, the original, primal tribes had to find a way to transcend their isolated tribal kinship lineages: they had to find a way to go trans-tribal, and agriculture, not hunting, provided the means for this new transcendence.

I don’t eulogize either foraging or horticultural because, well, evolution keeps moving, yes? Who are we to point out to one period and say everything past that period was a colossal error, a heinous crime? According to whom, exactly? If we really are in the hands of the Great Spirit or the Great Mother, do we really think She doesn’t know what She’s doing? Tell you the truth, that seems like arrogance to me, especially when we’re three or four major technological epochs down the line, and it’s doubtful evolution will run backward for us.

The dialectic of progress, that every stage of evolution eventually runs into its own inherent limitations, acts as triggers for the self-transcending drive. These inherent limitations create chaos, and the system either breaks down (self-dissolution) or escapes this chaos by evolving to a higher degree of order (self-transcendence) — so called order out of chaos. This new and higher order escapes the limitations of its predecessor, but then introduces its own limitations and problems that cannot be solved on its own level.

There is a price to be paid for every evolutionary step forward, and our epoch will pass too. No epoch is finally privileged. We are all tomorrow’s food. The process continues. And Spirit is found in the process itself, not in any particular epoch or time or place.

It is modern science, and modern science alone — the ecological sciences and systems sciences, for example — that can directly show us how and why our actions are corroding life itself. If the primal tribes knew that by cut and burn they would ruin their habitat and endanger their own lives — if they actually knew that with a scientific certainty — then they would at least have thought about it a little more carefully before they began their bio-destruction. If the Mayans knew that in killing the rain forests they were killing themselves, they would have stopped immediately, or at least paused considerably. Bur ignorance is ignorance; whether innocent or greedy, sacred or profane, ignorance destroys the biosphere.

However, now the means have changed. Ignorance backed by primal or tribal technology is capable of inflicting limited damage. You can only do so much damage to life with a bow and arrow. An atomic bomb is something else. The same ignorance backed by industry is capable of killing the entire world. So we have to separate those two issues — the ignorance and the means of inflicting that ignorance — because with modernity and science we have for the first time in history, a way to overcome our ignorance, at precisely the same time that we have created the means to make this ignorance absolutely genocidal on a global scale.

And so if the entire internal dimension is ignored and devalued — if we ignore interiors and just rivet our eyes on an exterior “global” map of the world or systems nature — we will ignore the actual path of getting people to that global or world centric stance. We will have a goal with no path. And we will have a map that denies and condemns internal transcendence, which is the actual path itself!

It’s good news, bad news. The predicament of modernity. Finally we know better. At the same time, if we don’t act on this knowledge, then finally, we all die.

Interesting times we’re living in.

To be continued……

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4. June 2010 by admin.

Earth’s main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, over-population, or resource depletion. Earth’s main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the anthrosphere about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot rein in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a world centric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach that world centric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence. In short, global problems demand global consciousness, and global consciousness is the product of five or six major interior stages of development. Simply processing a global map won’t do it. A system’s map will not do it. An ecologic map will not do it. Interior growth and transcendence, on the other hand, will do it.

It follows –yes? — that the ecocrisis is in large measure the result of the continued dissociation of the Big Three. We cannot align nature and culture and consciousness; we cannot align nature and morals and mind. We are altogether fragmented in this modernity gone slightly mad. The worship of Earth is a product, and an action, of industrialization, and this worship of Earth perpetuates the empirical-industrial paradigm. It perpetuates the collapse of the cosmos. One of the primary roadblocks to an integral vision that would unite the best of ancient wisdom with the best of modernity is the embrace of the purely Descended world, the world of flatland. And this modern Descended grid is destroying Earth, because it guts the interior dimensions where mutual accord and intersubjective wisdom can actually be found. The religion of Earth is simply one of the ways the modern Descended grid reproduces itself. We might say, the cunning of the Descended grid. The modern Descended grid is destroying Earth, and the religion of Earth is simply one of its basic strategies.The essential point is that the Descended grid actually destroys each of the Big Three — destroys mind and culture and nature — because it perpetuates their dissociation, their lack of integration, so that the torn fragments continue to bleed to death. Not just Earth or nature, but also consciousness and culture are all devastated by their fragmentation and reduction.

Yet it is the integration of the Big Three, and not the privileging of any one domain, that is our salvation, if such indeed exists. It is an integral vision that holds our promise. But as long as we continue to live within the Descended grid of flatland, then this integration is effectively prevented. The back to nature solution, is thus no solution at all, but merely the perpetuation of the Descended grid, the industrial grid, and are definitely anti-transcendence.

Descenders generally believe that transcendence or Ascent of any form is evil, and they think that transcendence destroys Earth. Those who make this claim, I believe, are confusing the mythic form of dissociative “transcendence” (which indeed is earth-denying) with transcendence in general, which is simply the form of interior development and evolution of consciousness — which is the actual path of earth-saving! But once that confusion is made, then these critics do tend to become very vocal about this. Transcendence ruins Earth! Transcendence is the beginning of all evil.

What both the Ascenders and Descenders have in common is this purely industrial ontology as an ultimate reference point, and both are fundamentally oriented to flatland, to the world of empirical, sensory, objective nature, which is the “really real” world. One wants to stand back from nature and map it in a disinterested, rational, calculating, scientific fashion, wheras the other wants to get closer to nature with feelings and sympathetic communion.

Of course, individuals can always adopt an integral view for themselves. But the hope is that one would have some sort of support for this holistic and integral vision from the culture at large, some sort of widespread “post-flatland” rebellion.

To be sure, of course, there is plenty of altruism in nature, but only as an unconscious display of functional fit and genetic inclusion. A consciously worldcentric moral stance is found only in humans, and, as a matter of fact, this worldcentric stance is reached only by a relatively small number of highly developed humans.

To reach this higher and relatively rare stance of universal care, I can see I must rise above my natural biocentric impulses (sex and survival), my egocentric wishes, and my ethnocentric proclivities — and stand instead as a relatively worldcentric locus of moral awareness that insists on universal compassion. And that freedom from shallower engagements will be exhilarating, because it will have plugged me into a higher or deeper or truer self.

It is only by rising above my egocentric impulses, and my natural desires, and my conformist or ethnocentric perspectives — it is only by rising above these shallower stances, only by taking a deeper or higher perspective, a worldcentric perspective, that I will find my own highest aspirations and my own truest self.

It is only then that I become capable of universal care and universal compassion, which is a freedom from the shallowness of these lesser engagements. It is only Ascending, only by transcending these lower orders, that I rise above these baser instincts and find a more universal and tolerant stance. If I reduce reality to the world of mononature, I lose all of that!

But then how do I integrate mind and nature? How do I not only transcend but also include nature? What about this split between mind and nature? The split between Ego and Eco? Not just their differentiation but their dissociation? Because this split is also a split within my own being – my mind and my body are split as well. Mind is split from external nature and from internal nature. And what about that? Is the price of morality dissociation?

The startling fact then becomes clear, ecological wisdom does not consist in understanding how to live in accord with nature; it consists in understanding how to get humans to agree on how to live in accord with nature.

To be continued……

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