The way I put it to people is to say; Is it more likely for a better world be shaped by a small group that does the thinking for everybody, or one shaped by the broad base of the population, encouraged by a more sensible narrative that provides a better base for learning to think.
(Actually I said; are we going to have a better world by having a few do the thinking for everyone, or one where thinking is distributed?)
And yes, the megalomaniacs plans will fail, at a cost that could be reduced if it was widely recognized that ego does not run this world, despite appearances, our collective heart connection to Source runs the world.
I am no intellect, preferring to live an experiential life, but I really appreciate true intellectuals in the same way I respect entrepreneurs, if the right ones are picked, they can fill in so many of the blanks that I don't have inclination to examine on my own.
The next narrative will be simple and broadly appealing if it is to overcome the gaslighting that will be directed toward it by the old guard. One suggestion for a new level of thinking is an assertion that the spiritual and the physical are basically the same thing. That may have a useful effect on how we apply our consciousness, versus the current split model where everything becomes about objects and their manipulation.
Please visit the Future Fun Forum for details on this style of thinking. Comments welcome.
"are we going to have a better world by having a few do the thinking for everyone, or one where thinking is distributed" - that's a great way to put the message over really simply! Absolutely clear.
Sure - we need good intellectuals, and good entrepenuers. In fact we already have quite a few of both. What we need now is as you say a better model, simple and transmissible, on which new social structures can be based, and in which those good intellectuals and entrepenuers can really give their best to the world.
We also need lots of people committed 'living the experiential life' instead of the theoretical one - that way more would come to the understanding of spirit, and understand intuitively the limitations with current social models.
For me a good basis for a 'simple, transmissible model' is that first (as you again say), a spiritual foundation, but then a three part society, with the insitutions of government and the corporate world properly balanced by new institutions of the 'cultural' (of the people). The key to that being the principles operating in each - 'freedom in the cultural sphere, equality in the law sphere, and collaboration in the commercial sphere'. There is actually a huge spiritual archetype sitting behind that vision, which I will endeavor to unfold more and more in this newsletter.
Hello there Michael...I love your way with words...you have with references to other thinkers, beautifully encapsulated what I also see as both already occurring and in great need of promoting...that positive change will inevitably occur. As to how soon, depends, I believe in how soon the hundredth monkey effect comes into being...maybe it already has?
I find it sad that there is as much obvious fear, if not more, because they have more to lose, in the fear mongers themselves than there is in some of the populations on earth.
I think fear is most easily created in a persons mind when a person has experienced great loss or great fear of loss, control, and well being as a child. If one examines some of the basic norms in our society, of punishments, that have no relation to the misbehaviour perpetrated (at school and at home), resulting in loss of privileges or toys, so it is safer to 'toe the line'...experienced parental fears resulting in draconian parental behaviour in order to keep one 'safe' (captivity); been told 'don't say things like that', which undermines ones self confidence in many instances, especially if often reiterated, one creates a personality to put it simplistically with fear of criticisms, fear of loss of the goodness in life, and low self confidence. If one adds to those kinds of childhood experiences, the kind of thinking that may be prevalent in wealthy households, of superiority to the 'masses', and an attitude coming from the parents of 'we are the ones who know best, because we're better educated/wealthy', then I think one has a description of the mentalities of some members of the powers that be, and of many of the 'wannebes'.
I know I'm generalising, I realise there are also other circumstances in life that create damaged psyches determined to be 'on top' because they are terrified of loss.
Part of the new directions we can take will, besides needing smaller consensus groups, be to ensure children are allowed to fully express themselves, whilst at the same time imbuing them with the knowledge that everything has a knock on effect, which hopefully will result in adults who know how to take responsibility for their actions, whilst at the same time being truly themselves, which in general is not something we have at present in the Western world.
I've been waiting for what is happening, expecting the decay, expecting the rebirth since the sixties...didn't have anywhere near a 'vision' of how all that would transpire, just a feeling that radical change was needed...the 'evolution' of our species in a non Darwinian fashion, then again maybe those bucking the status quo because of it's obvious malfunction ARE the 'fittest'?
Thanks Suzy! I like the way you put that: “both already occurring and in great need of promoting”. That's kind of the essence of the situation for me. The solid certainty that the paradigm shift is already done, but the big qualifier that until more people are able to comprehend it, the disintegrating 'old paradigm' is still going to be calling most of the shots. I think I see both moving forward in parallel, and in competition, for quite some time, and as a result probably stormy weather for quite some time.
I agree too that there could be more fear in the fear-mongers even than in those they are scaring. That's very consistent with the 'mass psychosis' perspective. (Don't know if you already saw it, but I attempted to outline that in michaelwarden.substack.com/p/the-witch-the-war-and-the-virus-part).
I love that the conceptual tools exist for understanding what is going on in the collective psyche of humanity. It may not mean we can avoid calamity and pain, but it does mean we'll come through it!
Children... tragically, I think many were massively damaged by years of mask-wearing and 'schooling by zoom' on top of a horribly indoctrinal school system anyway. Gonna take some time. Good thing kids are resilient...
Re Darwin, many scientists are now effectively saying that he the his models on which so much social thinking were modelled were flawed even in regard to the natural world (you may already know?) One of many example (three in fact) can be found in this video interview https://youtu.be/rXexaVsvhCM?si=1aT3JxeSWsOMQuKj
Hi Michael, lovely communicating with you...yes I've come across the criticisms of Darwins theories.. There does 'appear' to be competition in the world between certain plants and animals, but Darwin missed much of what transpires, he didn't know of the symbiosis between plants of all kinds, something that 'scientifically' was discovered long after Darwin was gone, or how both plants and animals help each other along, also discovered more recently, even though many, more ancient, still tribal peoples, seem to have such knowledge. Since the 'Age of Reason' came into being, intuition went out the window and in most instances, the pretty ancient, human testosterone and ego driven, predominantly male concept, that one has to 'fight' for everything, which was bolstered by Darwinism more recently, has had predominance in the manner in which we've approached life...Time for a rebalancing; an end to the kind of education that has led us all up the garden path towards disaster.
I hope you don't mind if I comment on your Witch/War/Virus post which I've just read... The mass psychosis we saw was very cleverly planned and put into being....'Event 201' a practice run in 2019 made sure they had all their ducks in a row. In 2020 the 'Flu figures on .gov. in UK disappeared. Where on earth did 'Flu suddenly go? Covid was described as having 'Flu like symptoms. Blah, blah, blah...the media lied and the panic stricken 30 odd percent of public fell for it.
One need only to look back to the Inquisition when so many were cruelly tortured and murdered for not believing the then current ideology, as was desired; people informed on 'unbelievers'. We saw quite a lot of that kind of behaviour, as you describe, just recently, although not quite as physically painful for most.
Yes, Nazi Germany too, went that authoritarian, fascistic way. These days the fear mongers have more powerful tools, the internet, an even greater number of paid fools and many willing stooges wishing to virtue signal.
Divide society (into tiny pieces...individuals immersed in the coming Meta-verse? ) and you'll have no trouble ruling...the same old trick used over and again, but become far more dangerous.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave millions to the BBC, Oxford Uni, the Guardian N/Paper, to name only three out of hundreds of organisations that wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Pity. I saw the figures on the B&M Gates website in 2020...That page is no longer available to the best of my knowledge...at least I couldn't find it when I wanted to verify something.
Have you read J.F. Kennedy's book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci'? A real eye opener if one wants well researched details of the Pharma Ind...When those dealing in war and 'security' are involved in vaccine manufacturing one needs to pay attention. Another really good researcher to help one connect the dots is Whitney Webb. From these two and I'll throw in James Corbett, one begins to get a very clear picture of all that's been happening.
I can also add this link which you might find interesting.
They have been my educators for the last three and a half years, filling in the spaces and answering the question I've had in my head for decades...'Why don't governments (if we are in democracies) want peace, because most of the public desire that? To cut a much longer story short, I knew profit was involved, I now realise there's such a lot more than the profit motive at work and we have all blindly colluded.
Hopefully many are beginning to realise that expecting governments to find and implement solutions is passe (accent on the e).
My poor brother, retired now, was a psycho-therapist, an intelligent man, far better educated than myself, BUT he is so scared of 'Germs' (thanks to our Mom), he fell for the narrative, has had several jabs and even though he now suffers rashes and other new problems, finds no connection with those problems and the jab, despite the ever increasing information on the MSM that there have been severe reactions to said jab. Fear and ego, two detrimental emotions, both too easy to succumb to.
I've spent the last three years passing on as much info, that sounds well researched, as possible. That has been the only way I've had (besides going out into the street and yelling my head off!) to try to direct people towards realising that what they see/read from the MSM were, and still are lies about so many issues, be they health issues, pandemics, politics, climate, green issues or wars...is Israel/Palestine/Hamas another false flag so the west can go to war on Iran?
I think your words and mine, and those of so many others who have seen behind the curtain, are having affect; each resonating with different mindsets. Let's keep going.
Hello again Michael. I finally found time to read some of your work and it's impressive to say the least. It’s a lot to take in all at once though, and one can get lost in the complexity, which is why I like to break things down into manageable chunks, hopefully without losing the essence - not always easy to do, but necessary in order to communicate effectively in a fast moving world. File that under time management.
The first thing I do when entering a new domain is to show my colours in the medieval sense, where knights displayed their arms to state their heredity and allegiances. The modern equivalent is a list of major influences - ideas I’ve adopted as representative of my evolving world view, which usually means authors I’ve read that have had a lasting impact.
So here they are in chronological order, but not the order in which I’ve read them.
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (400 BC)
Here’s the R.L. Wing translation which I feel is the most accurate in terms of meaning, though not alway the most linguistically precise. I have the print version with commentary and illustrations. Well worth owning.
As context, I first encountered these authors, and complexity theory in general, as part of a software project I was involved with in the early 80’s. Basically we were designing educational products for PCs that would introduce young minds to the concepts represented by the above and other authors. Unfortunately the project never made it to market for a variety of reasons, but the years from 81 to 85 were probably the most productive of my life, certainly in terms of redefining my outlook on the world.
In our previous exchange I tossed out the idea of information as a third category, distinct from goods (production) and services. Information can be a service obviously, and it can’t “inform” us without the technology (goods) that supports it, but it’s also an integral feature of nature, as for example the exchange of photons connecting nuclear particles, light itself which accounts for vision, and also signalling molecules in biological processes. These are fuzzy categories which tend to overlap and are best represented as a Venn Diagram.
As you can no doubt tell, my education is in the hard sciences and I usually try to ground my more esoteric thoughts in one or another aspect thereof, at least metaphorically. I do believe there are foundational elements in nature that don’t change, or that for our purposes can be considered as constant in the same sense as Newton’s Laws.
I’ll end with a couple of concepts that came out of that 80s era which I’m still developing. The MU system. I stole the term from Hofstadter which he uses in a different way. For me, MU is just Managed Uncertainty - a set of heuristics we can apply for, well… managing uncertainty! It’s not a new theory, just a different way of describing Game Theory I guess, but hopefully more explicit in its meaning. The other is “the superficial and the profound” an idea I stole from Émile Durkheim’s “sacred and profane.” From this we get 'superficially profound' and 'profoundly superficial' but I think of it more like a Ying-Yang construct where the one contains the essence of the other. A good example would be Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, where seemingly disjointed superficial nonsense has profound underlying meaning.
OK, so there are my ‘colours’ and I have you on my radar. Let’s see what happens next.
Wow, Michael. Such a skillful weaving of so many important theories and historical examples -- so impressive and comprehensive! Thank you for this high-level assessment of where we've been and where we are. I'd never heard of complexity theory before, yet your explanation -- "Tiny inputs to complex systems can have huge and entirely unpredictable effects. Attempts to impose control on such systems invariably destabilise them" -- make SO MUCH SENSE. Intuitively I've known this, but naming and describing it, as always, helps to put it in context. I know where to file it in my brain, now. And I agree that it should be a part of every curriculum, because does it not touch everything?
It will come as no surprise that my favorite line is this: "we are assured that the new world is already growing behind it, and we have the option to accelerate that." It, and we do. All our actions are either in service to its acceleration or its deceleration. This essay puts fuel in all our tanks. :-)
The more I understand the role of the third rail of culture, the more I believe its underpinnings have to be built in childhood. (Of course Steiner created Waldorf; he figured that out long, long ago.) There has to be a moral element to the cultural realm; otherwise, how can it balance corporations and government? And morality is harder to come by later in life -- though not impossible.
Perhaps this is why a return to the spiritual seems to be afoot. Like dandelions, an awareness of the divine is seeding itself in order to re-balance human soil.
The way I put it to people is to say; Is it more likely for a better world be shaped by a small group that does the thinking for everybody, or one shaped by the broad base of the population, encouraged by a more sensible narrative that provides a better base for learning to think.
(Actually I said; are we going to have a better world by having a few do the thinking for everyone, or one where thinking is distributed?)
And yes, the megalomaniacs plans will fail, at a cost that could be reduced if it was widely recognized that ego does not run this world, despite appearances, our collective heart connection to Source runs the world.
I am no intellect, preferring to live an experiential life, but I really appreciate true intellectuals in the same way I respect entrepreneurs, if the right ones are picked, they can fill in so many of the blanks that I don't have inclination to examine on my own.
The next narrative will be simple and broadly appealing if it is to overcome the gaslighting that will be directed toward it by the old guard. One suggestion for a new level of thinking is an assertion that the spiritual and the physical are basically the same thing. That may have a useful effect on how we apply our consciousness, versus the current split model where everything becomes about objects and their manipulation.
Please visit the Future Fun Forum for details on this style of thinking. Comments welcome.
Many thanks for your comment.
"are we going to have a better world by having a few do the thinking for everyone, or one where thinking is distributed" - that's a great way to put the message over really simply! Absolutely clear.
Sure - we need good intellectuals, and good entrepenuers. In fact we already have quite a few of both. What we need now is as you say a better model, simple and transmissible, on which new social structures can be based, and in which those good intellectuals and entrepenuers can really give their best to the world.
We also need lots of people committed 'living the experiential life' instead of the theoretical one - that way more would come to the understanding of spirit, and understand intuitively the limitations with current social models.
For me a good basis for a 'simple, transmissible model' is that first (as you again say), a spiritual foundation, but then a three part society, with the insitutions of government and the corporate world properly balanced by new institutions of the 'cultural' (of the people). The key to that being the principles operating in each - 'freedom in the cultural sphere, equality in the law sphere, and collaboration in the commercial sphere'. There is actually a huge spiritual archetype sitting behind that vision, which I will endeavor to unfold more and more in this newsletter.
Hello there Michael...I love your way with words...you have with references to other thinkers, beautifully encapsulated what I also see as both already occurring and in great need of promoting...that positive change will inevitably occur. As to how soon, depends, I believe in how soon the hundredth monkey effect comes into being...maybe it already has?
I find it sad that there is as much obvious fear, if not more, because they have more to lose, in the fear mongers themselves than there is in some of the populations on earth.
I think fear is most easily created in a persons mind when a person has experienced great loss or great fear of loss, control, and well being as a child. If one examines some of the basic norms in our society, of punishments, that have no relation to the misbehaviour perpetrated (at school and at home), resulting in loss of privileges or toys, so it is safer to 'toe the line'...experienced parental fears resulting in draconian parental behaviour in order to keep one 'safe' (captivity); been told 'don't say things like that', which undermines ones self confidence in many instances, especially if often reiterated, one creates a personality to put it simplistically with fear of criticisms, fear of loss of the goodness in life, and low self confidence. If one adds to those kinds of childhood experiences, the kind of thinking that may be prevalent in wealthy households, of superiority to the 'masses', and an attitude coming from the parents of 'we are the ones who know best, because we're better educated/wealthy', then I think one has a description of the mentalities of some members of the powers that be, and of many of the 'wannebes'.
I know I'm generalising, I realise there are also other circumstances in life that create damaged psyches determined to be 'on top' because they are terrified of loss.
Part of the new directions we can take will, besides needing smaller consensus groups, be to ensure children are allowed to fully express themselves, whilst at the same time imbuing them with the knowledge that everything has a knock on effect, which hopefully will result in adults who know how to take responsibility for their actions, whilst at the same time being truly themselves, which in general is not something we have at present in the Western world.
I've been waiting for what is happening, expecting the decay, expecting the rebirth since the sixties...didn't have anywhere near a 'vision' of how all that would transpire, just a feeling that radical change was needed...the 'evolution' of our species in a non Darwinian fashion, then again maybe those bucking the status quo because of it's obvious malfunction ARE the 'fittest'?
Thanks Suzy! I like the way you put that: “both already occurring and in great need of promoting”. That's kind of the essence of the situation for me. The solid certainty that the paradigm shift is already done, but the big qualifier that until more people are able to comprehend it, the disintegrating 'old paradigm' is still going to be calling most of the shots. I think I see both moving forward in parallel, and in competition, for quite some time, and as a result probably stormy weather for quite some time.
I agree too that there could be more fear in the fear-mongers even than in those they are scaring. That's very consistent with the 'mass psychosis' perspective. (Don't know if you already saw it, but I attempted to outline that in michaelwarden.substack.com/p/the-witch-the-war-and-the-virus-part).
I love that the conceptual tools exist for understanding what is going on in the collective psyche of humanity. It may not mean we can avoid calamity and pain, but it does mean we'll come through it!
Children... tragically, I think many were massively damaged by years of mask-wearing and 'schooling by zoom' on top of a horribly indoctrinal school system anyway. Gonna take some time. Good thing kids are resilient...
Re Darwin, many scientists are now effectively saying that he the his models on which so much social thinking were modelled were flawed even in regard to the natural world (you may already know?) One of many example (three in fact) can be found in this video interview https://youtu.be/rXexaVsvhCM?si=1aT3JxeSWsOMQuKj
Thanks again for taking the time!
Hi Michael, lovely communicating with you...yes I've come across the criticisms of Darwins theories.. There does 'appear' to be competition in the world between certain plants and animals, but Darwin missed much of what transpires, he didn't know of the symbiosis between plants of all kinds, something that 'scientifically' was discovered long after Darwin was gone, or how both plants and animals help each other along, also discovered more recently, even though many, more ancient, still tribal peoples, seem to have such knowledge. Since the 'Age of Reason' came into being, intuition went out the window and in most instances, the pretty ancient, human testosterone and ego driven, predominantly male concept, that one has to 'fight' for everything, which was bolstered by Darwinism more recently, has had predominance in the manner in which we've approached life...Time for a rebalancing; an end to the kind of education that has led us all up the garden path towards disaster.
I hope you don't mind if I comment on your Witch/War/Virus post which I've just read... The mass psychosis we saw was very cleverly planned and put into being....'Event 201' a practice run in 2019 made sure they had all their ducks in a row. In 2020 the 'Flu figures on .gov. in UK disappeared. Where on earth did 'Flu suddenly go? Covid was described as having 'Flu like symptoms. Blah, blah, blah...the media lied and the panic stricken 30 odd percent of public fell for it.
One need only to look back to the Inquisition when so many were cruelly tortured and murdered for not believing the then current ideology, as was desired; people informed on 'unbelievers'. We saw quite a lot of that kind of behaviour, as you describe, just recently, although not quite as physically painful for most.
Yes, Nazi Germany too, went that authoritarian, fascistic way. These days the fear mongers have more powerful tools, the internet, an even greater number of paid fools and many willing stooges wishing to virtue signal.
Divide society (into tiny pieces...individuals immersed in the coming Meta-verse? ) and you'll have no trouble ruling...the same old trick used over and again, but become far more dangerous.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave millions to the BBC, Oxford Uni, the Guardian N/Paper, to name only three out of hundreds of organisations that wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Pity. I saw the figures on the B&M Gates website in 2020...That page is no longer available to the best of my knowledge...at least I couldn't find it when I wanted to verify something.
Have you read J.F. Kennedy's book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci'? A real eye opener if one wants well researched details of the Pharma Ind...When those dealing in war and 'security' are involved in vaccine manufacturing one needs to pay attention. Another really good researcher to help one connect the dots is Whitney Webb. From these two and I'll throw in James Corbett, one begins to get a very clear picture of all that's been happening.
I can also add this link which you might find interesting.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/WAwRxzisAQlS/
They have been my educators for the last three and a half years, filling in the spaces and answering the question I've had in my head for decades...'Why don't governments (if we are in democracies) want peace, because most of the public desire that? To cut a much longer story short, I knew profit was involved, I now realise there's such a lot more than the profit motive at work and we have all blindly colluded.
Hopefully many are beginning to realise that expecting governments to find and implement solutions is passe (accent on the e).
My poor brother, retired now, was a psycho-therapist, an intelligent man, far better educated than myself, BUT he is so scared of 'Germs' (thanks to our Mom), he fell for the narrative, has had several jabs and even though he now suffers rashes and other new problems, finds no connection with those problems and the jab, despite the ever increasing information on the MSM that there have been severe reactions to said jab. Fear and ego, two detrimental emotions, both too easy to succumb to.
I've spent the last three years passing on as much info, that sounds well researched, as possible. That has been the only way I've had (besides going out into the street and yelling my head off!) to try to direct people towards realising that what they see/read from the MSM were, and still are lies about so many issues, be they health issues, pandemics, politics, climate, green issues or wars...is Israel/Palestine/Hamas another false flag so the west can go to war on Iran?
I think your words and mine, and those of so many others who have seen behind the curtain, are having affect; each resonating with different mindsets. Let's keep going.
Hello again Michael. I finally found time to read some of your work and it's impressive to say the least. It’s a lot to take in all at once though, and one can get lost in the complexity, which is why I like to break things down into manageable chunks, hopefully without losing the essence - not always easy to do, but necessary in order to communicate effectively in a fast moving world. File that under time management.
The first thing I do when entering a new domain is to show my colours in the medieval sense, where knights displayed their arms to state their heredity and allegiances. The modern equivalent is a list of major influences - ideas I’ve adopted as representative of my evolving world view, which usually means authors I’ve read that have had a lasting impact.
So here they are in chronological order, but not the order in which I’ve read them.
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (400 BC)
Here’s the R.L. Wing translation which I feel is the most accurate in terms of meaning, though not alway the most linguistically precise. I have the print version with commentary and illustrations. Well worth owning.
https://terebess.hu/english/tao/Wing.html
Alfred Korzybski - Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. (1933)
“The map is not the territory" was first coined by this guy.
Marshal McLuhan - The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962)
Anything else by McLuhan, but read this one first if you can.
James Grier Miller - Living Systems (1978)
Examining the complexity of life, and the elements common to all living systems. The concepts described can be applied beyond the field of biology.
Marvin Harris - Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (1979)
Douglas Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)
Probably the most influential book I’ve ever read. Foundational stuff.
Richard Feynman. Basically anything he wrote.
http://richardfeynman.com/works/textbooks.html
Robert Anton Wilson - again, anything by him, plus lectures and interviews which can be found on YouTube.
There’s more of course, Kuhn, Popper etc. but I’ve tried to keep the list short according to Miller’s Principle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
As context, I first encountered these authors, and complexity theory in general, as part of a software project I was involved with in the early 80’s. Basically we were designing educational products for PCs that would introduce young minds to the concepts represented by the above and other authors. Unfortunately the project never made it to market for a variety of reasons, but the years from 81 to 85 were probably the most productive of my life, certainly in terms of redefining my outlook on the world.
In our previous exchange I tossed out the idea of information as a third category, distinct from goods (production) and services. Information can be a service obviously, and it can’t “inform” us without the technology (goods) that supports it, but it’s also an integral feature of nature, as for example the exchange of photons connecting nuclear particles, light itself which accounts for vision, and also signalling molecules in biological processes. These are fuzzy categories which tend to overlap and are best represented as a Venn Diagram.
As you can no doubt tell, my education is in the hard sciences and I usually try to ground my more esoteric thoughts in one or another aspect thereof, at least metaphorically. I do believe there are foundational elements in nature that don’t change, or that for our purposes can be considered as constant in the same sense as Newton’s Laws.
I’ll end with a couple of concepts that came out of that 80s era which I’m still developing. The MU system. I stole the term from Hofstadter which he uses in a different way. For me, MU is just Managed Uncertainty - a set of heuristics we can apply for, well… managing uncertainty! It’s not a new theory, just a different way of describing Game Theory I guess, but hopefully more explicit in its meaning. The other is “the superficial and the profound” an idea I stole from Émile Durkheim’s “sacred and profane.” From this we get 'superficially profound' and 'profoundly superficial' but I think of it more like a Ying-Yang construct where the one contains the essence of the other. A good example would be Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, where seemingly disjointed superficial nonsense has profound underlying meaning.
OK, so there are my ‘colours’ and I have you on my radar. Let’s see what happens next.
Wow, Michael. Such a skillful weaving of so many important theories and historical examples -- so impressive and comprehensive! Thank you for this high-level assessment of where we've been and where we are. I'd never heard of complexity theory before, yet your explanation -- "Tiny inputs to complex systems can have huge and entirely unpredictable effects. Attempts to impose control on such systems invariably destabilise them" -- make SO MUCH SENSE. Intuitively I've known this, but naming and describing it, as always, helps to put it in context. I know where to file it in my brain, now. And I agree that it should be a part of every curriculum, because does it not touch everything?
It will come as no surprise that my favorite line is this: "we are assured that the new world is already growing behind it, and we have the option to accelerate that." It, and we do. All our actions are either in service to its acceleration or its deceleration. This essay puts fuel in all our tanks. :-)
The more I understand the role of the third rail of culture, the more I believe its underpinnings have to be built in childhood. (Of course Steiner created Waldorf; he figured that out long, long ago.) There has to be a moral element to the cultural realm; otherwise, how can it balance corporations and government? And morality is harder to come by later in life -- though not impossible.
Perhaps this is why a return to the spiritual seems to be afoot. Like dandelions, an awareness of the divine is seeding itself in order to re-balance human soil.
So much to think about. Wonderful work. xox
I tried to change my sub-stack name but I guess it did not work. (I am not good around computers.)