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Evolution
of Consciousness
Existence
- Consciousness - Vision - Modification - Existence of
Different Quality
by
Wolfgang Fischer
(
pdf.file
) (spanish)(
french
)( german
version
)
A
- philosophical, political contemplation
Human
existence generally is determined by mental concepts and
culture. Culture and ideology keep consciousness imprisoned
and struck blind, if they become dogmatic and solidified in
order to perpetuate themselves. Seeking to avoid their own
modification by all means available, they spread fear and
disheartenment. A scared consciousness is afraid from any
change, also from the saving better one.
Modification
presupposes a consciousness, which takes variability of a
condition for granted. Such a consciousness is alive and
flexible and always able to imagine alternative conditions.
An open consciousness is capable of learning and of
intention to find ways for further modification.
Vision
of an existence which is different and of higher quality
compared to the present determines the motivation towards
its modification.
Transformation
always happens against resistance of those, who profit from
a present condition and therefore seek to hold to it.
Those
visions which focus on implementation of a world-wide being
together of people in solidarity as well as on their
respectfully handling of nature, are mental-cultural goals
which ensure motivations of action towards a global society
without terror, war and ecological degeneration.
Such
visions are being feared by "mmafiacs" (media, military,
administrative financial, fundamentalist, industrial and
academic complexes), the offspring of those
"military-industrial complexes" which Ike Eisenhower warned
against in his farewell speech as US President.
That
is why they try to make such visions ridiculous. Joint
action for such visions is being obstructed by
power-political means of producing fear by terror scenarios.
Restrictions of civil rights like the right of demonstration
create false authorization for employment of government
authority against citizens, even if they want nothing but
peace. Persons, who support publicly their vision of
justice, solidarity and ecological compatibility, are
finally criminalized. If they become too successful in
spreading their visions and thus become threatening to those
in power, the global corporate trust does not flinch from
murder and war.
Peace
founders are accused by powerful slave drivers, traders and
confusion founders of inciting of the people or even of
threatening world peace.
Truth
stands upside down.
B
- everyday consequences
A
society, which makes substantial parts of its existence a
taboo subject, is doomed to failure. As long as eye patches
are carried which are forced upon by power-politics
everybody involved inevitably crack their heads: terror/war
inwards and outside, financial scarcity, painful
consequences of welfare cuts, general disorientation.
Only
by talking off the eye patches because of emancipatory
intention we can focus the fact that for example just as
enormous fortunes face the enormous debts and that our
economics and juridical systems guarantee a durable shift of
net assets from the poor to the rich, and that those who
have the threads in their hands to secure future destroy it
instead. As the area for global players who consider
themselves to be independent also is continuously
devastated, each individual concerned human being is needed
to take the threads into their own hands. Only this way an
end can be put to the dirty tricks of irresponsibility and
greed.
However,
this is not as simply done as written down. Concerning
parliaments there is no hope, democracy has disempowered
itself. Parliaments go astray, in their homes copulate
uninhibitedly illusion and greed for power with the
mindlessness of selfishness. The transnational companies are
self-interested matchmakers who let the superficial society
of experts and advisors disappear into psychiatrically
relevant dimensions by help of the profit drug, beyond any
control by the supposed to be sovereign, the people - to
whom the bill later on is presented ever and again.
Where
people are not kept powerless in chains, they seem to sleep,
seem to be blind in relation to the fact that they are led
behind the bright light of existence into the darkness of
poverty and scarcity. In many places people seem lulled by
'liberty to consume', diverted to the insignificant,
elsewhere people seem scared, passive, still on not enough
places they are self-confident. The majority lacks knowledge
and awareness of being cheated, deceived and misused, all
the same where on this earth.
Only
relentless intellectual and emotional evaluation of the
dominant system of greed and lie which glorifies of
destruction and death, which again and again would lead us
into an increasing misery, will entail awareness of our true
conditions. And only this way commitment and forces for a
change to the better can be set free on all levels of social
acting, also in the hearts and heads of politicians and
company executive committees.
Perception
of urgency and overwhelming dimension of the global state of
distress confronts all people without any exception
automatically with a moral imperative to legitimately break
any laws and customs which are hostile to life. If all
those, who feel similarly concerned and therefore are
similarly motivated, unanimously want to initiate practical
shifting as for example to implement the polluter pays
principle - and if this happens at the same time everywhere
on the globe, then a simultaneous
policy (SP)
can develop, by which decisions of social-ecological
relevance are made at the same time everywhere in the world.
Thus synergistically two crucial errors of the present
politsystems are overcome: the destroying competition and
the counter-productive protection of advantages for a few at
the expense of the public and the environment. No nation, no
company, no people and no individual must fall short.
Simultaneous policy is a quantum transition regarding the
quality of social action, which orientates itself at global
responsibility. Problems could be actually solved, hunger be
driven out from the earth together with all destructive
aspects of the present dominant social system.
We
already experience growing of participatory networks of
autonomous administration and organization, of togetherness
instead of being against each other, of multicoloured
liveliness instead of formally shining monotony. Horizontal
interlacing of these hope carriers succeeds beyond local
ranges on different ways. Beyond regional and continental
social fora up to the world social also a vertical exchange
of experiences contributes to a common learning process.
Human Community together with cultural variety creates new
undreamt-of possibilities and encourages to set
qualitatively new emphasis.
Task
of emancipatory and progressive movements world-wide is to
optimise in constant cooperative struggle for
cultural-mental clarity the conception of the world and
mankind in such way that virtues are promoted in the long
term. Vices and evils then have no more chance.
Only
a ready to learn openness for new realizations and
experiences makes modification possible, which prepares the
fat fertile soil for each future generation by continued
enriching of the welfare of general public. The spiral of
evolution can constantly unfold existence - consciousness -
vision and transformation to a more complex form and
qualitatively improved level of existence and
being.
Simultaneous
policy:
http://www.simpol.org
-
Making Our Evolutionary Future
Evolution Biology
and the Simultaneous Policy:
Vision-Logic for
the Next Stage in our Evolutionary Future
(
pdf.file
) (spanish) ( german
version
)
by John
Bunzl - Founder, International Simultaneous Policy
Organisation
Evolution
biologists are increasingly questioning the Darwinist view
of evolution which describes it largely in terms of
competition and natural selection in favour of a
"post-Darwinist" stance that more properly recognises the
crucial role of co-operation. But since major transitions
from competition to co-operation occur only at certain
critical and short-lived points of evolutionary crisis, it
is perhaps unsurprising that co-operation's significant role
has hitherto been under-valued and under-explored. Today, as
humanity increasingly faces a critical point of crisis in
terms of our survival on planet Earth, it is essential that
light now be shed on how co-operation has worked in
evolution, and how it can be made to work now if we are to
have a sustainable future.
Holonic
progression to ever-larger scales of cooperation
An
important theory underlying the view that cooperation plays
just as important a role as competition is Koestler's
concept of holons and holarchies; the idea that reality is
composed of holons or "whole/parts": wholes that are
simultaneously composed of smaller parts and are themselves
also parts of larger wholes. For example, molecules are
holons and yet they are made up of smaller atom holons while
also being part of larger cell holons. The entire system is
a "holarchy": a heirarchy of holons or 'whole/parts' which
is endless in either direction and in which each new
higher-level holon emerges out of its predecessor,
transcending and yet including it. The importance of
Koestler's thinking is that it allows us to move beyond
two-dimensional, systems-thinking approaches to a three
dimensional view of evolution which recognises not just that
it has span, but also depth, and that it is directional
towards ever-larger scales of co-operation.
Between each holon on the same level there exists an
inherent tension between its 'wholeness' on one side, and
its 'partness' on the other; i.e. between a desire for
individuality, and a need for conformity to the society - or
holarchy - to which it belongs. This tension drives
evolution towards ever-larger scales of cooperation as
evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris explains: "There
is a cycle of evolution that occurs all over, across time
and space, at the tiniest levels of biology, and in the
largest cosmic processes. It always begins with unity that
then individuates - as in the ancient Vedic creation story
in which a little wavelet forms in a smooth sea, and forever
after is torn between loving its own individuality and
wanting to merge back into the One. This universal tension
between part and whole, and among parts, drives evolution.
Individuation always leads to a kind of tension and conflict
[i.e. to competition]. And if the parts don't kill
each other, they start negotiating. Negotiations can lead to
resolutions of some of the tensions, moving from conflict to
cooperation, and then to some new level of unity" [i.e.
to a new, higher-level, larger-scale holon].
Of course recent human evolution is occuring primarily
through cultural, rather than through genetic processes.
Nevertheless, the processes of cultural evolution - just
like biological/genetic processes before them - still tend
to produce cooperative organisations (or holons) of
increasing scale. In large-scale human societies cooperation
is essentially made possible by their forms of
governance; by their political systems. An ideal
system of governance is one in which all entities in the
system capture both the harmful and positive effects of
their individual behaviour, with harmful acts being punished
and positive acts rewarded within a framework which aligns
individual self-interest with the common good. As
evolutionist John Stewart points out, "cooperative
organisations were formed through the emergence of
constraints that limit the independence of the independent
entities. These constraints (e.g. governance, management,
etc) restrain destructive competition and enable cooperation
to emerge." In terms of the evolving governance of human
societies, we could thus identify the following holarchy:
individual - family - local/regional government - national
government.
Cooperative
global governance: the next level in the holarchy
The
highly developed nature of global communications and the
interconnectedness of economies we see today (i.e.
globalisation), as well as threats humanity now faces such
as global warming, global poverty and ecological destruction
etc, now presage a further move in this evolutionary
development; the emergence of a holon of democratic
planetary governance that transcends and includes the lower
holons in the holarchy. This, as post-Darwinist
evolutionists contend, is but the next natural - but by no
means assured - stage in humanity's evolution towards
ever-larger scales of cooperation.
The problem is that the present highest holons of governance
- nation-states - are configured to govern only in the
national space. But under globalisation, the holons
of global capital, trade and transnational corporations (and
international crime and terrorism) already operate in the
global space. Furthermore, we live in a world of
competing nations who are unwilling to relinquish their
sovereignty to any institution of global governance and the
UN, not possessing any binding authority over them, is not
configured to provide it.
Indeed, far from co-operating to implement
appropriate global laws and taxes to balance the needs of
society and the global environment against the needs of
transnational business, governments are far more preoccupied
with competing with one another for inward investment
and jobs. They are thus easy prey for free-riding global
investors and transnational corporations who happily play
one government off against another for tax breaks and a
loose regulatory environment. Governments, by the same
token, destructively compete with one another to boost
employment and inward investment by down-leveling social and
environmental protection laws and by reducing corporate
taxes. Or, as with the USA, it free-rides on other
governments by not participating in the Kyoto Protocol, the
International Criminal Court, etc. The nations of the world,
like the wavelets in the smooth sea of the ancient Vedic
creation story, now love too much their own individuality;
their own "national interest"!
But this governmental imperative to maintain "international
competitiveness" also has an important consequence for
democracy. Since the threat of capital and employment flight
forces governments, regardless of the party in power, to
conform to a very narrow span of market and
business-friendly policies it necessarily reduces democracy
to an electoral charade in which voting no longer has any
significant meaning. Little wonder we have growing social
unrest in deprived areas with a noticeable swing towards
Far-right political parties and, at the same time,
widespread protests against globalisation; and all this
characterised by chronic "voter apathy". All unmistakable
signs that democracy - the system by which negative feedback
should be provided - is no longer functioning properly.
Hitting
the age-old barrier......
But in
evolutionary terms, is this destructive competition and
free-riding with its attendant dysfunctions and feed-back
shortfalls anything new? Indeed, Stewart identifies
precisely this same barrier to co-operation as preceding
all major evolutionary shifts, such as the formation
of the modern eurykaryote cell from associations of simpler
cells, the formation of multicellular organisms from
aggregations of cells, and the formation of societies of
organisms from aggregations of organisms. This barrier to
cooperation, Stewart explains, applies "to all living
processes. The circumstances that cause it are universal.
Individuals [i.e. individuals, corporations or
nations] who use resources to help others without
benefit to themselves will be out-competed. They will be
disadvantaged compared to those who use the resources for
their own benefit. And the barrier applies no matter what
the evolutionary mechanisms are that adapt and evolve
individuals. The barrier has applied whether the
evolutionary mechanisms are those that adapt corporations,
individual humans, other multicellular organisms, single
cells, or autocatalytic sets."
Sahtouris further points out that destructive competition
and free-riding are especially characteristic of immature
species: "Young species are found to have highly competitive
characteristics: They take all the resources they can, they
hog territory, they multiply wildly. Sound familiar? But a
lot of species have managed to grow up, to share things and
territory, to cooperate. It's what keeps them alive." To
survive, therefore, humanity will - like all other organisms
- have to grow up: we will have to abandon the
present immature, competitive paradigm of
international economic relations and evolve it into a mature
and cooperative one. The human species, like all
others, is following the same cycle of competitive
individuation leading (hopefully) to negotiation, leading in
turn to a new higher level of cooperative unity. So, if we
thought we were separate from other species or somehow
"above" them, the joke is on us!
....and
overcoming the barrier?
However,
the barrier to cooperation is not insurmountable, as Stewart
points out: "If the barrier completely prevented the
evolution of cooperation, evolution could not progress", and
yet it has progressed and has done so, says Stewart,
"by building cooperative organisations out of
self-interested components"; by finding ways to make it
in the interests of individual entities to cooperate.
But how can cooperation possibly be made in the interests of
individual nations when first-movers will suffer competitive
disadvantage?
This impasse may potentially be overcome by citizens around
the world who are increasingly joining the International
Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO), initiated in 2000.
ISPO provides a process for moving to a cooperative global
society which requires neither nations nor politicians, nor
individuals to act against their interests.
The Simultaneous Policy (SP) is a range of legislative
measures designed by ISPO's members and their chosen experts
to bring economic justice, environmental sustainability and
peace to the world. SP is to consist only of those desirable
measures which cannot be implemented unilaterally by any
nation due to the fear of first-mover competitive
disadvantage and it is therefore to be implemented by
all, or virtually all, nations simultaneously, so
removing the crucial barrier to cooperation. With SP, no
nation, corporation or citizen loses out to any other.
Citizens all over the world are presently being invited to
"adopt" SP and are doing so in increasing numbers. Adopting
SP means they pledge to vote in future elections not
for a specific politician or party, but for ANY
politician or party - within reason - that pledges to
implement SP. Or, if they have a party-political preference,
adopting SP indicates their desire for their preferred
politician/party to pledge to implement it. For politicians,
pledging to implement SP signifies their intent to implement
it simultaneously only when all or virtually all nations do
likewise. As such, there's no political risk for them since
they can make the 'SP Pledge' while continuing to implement
their competition-based policies until such time as all or
sufficient nations have made the SP Pledge and
implementation can proceed.
But ISPO's power to actually catalyse cooperation
becomes effective because, as citizens increasingly adopt
SP, politicians world-wide will increasingly be presented
with an attractive yet compelling "carrot and stick"
proposition:- Making the SP Pledge is a strong incentive to
politicians because it involves no political risk and can
deliver the additional votes of SP's citizen adopters. But
with more and more elections around the world being won or
lost on very small margins (eg. by just a few thousand votes
in Florida at the last US Presidential election), failing
to make the SP Pledge could cost politicians dearly, for
they'll likely lose to rivals who have made it to
attract the SP voting bloc. Those extra votes - even if few
- could make the vital difference between winning or losing
a seat, or even an entire election. By adopting SP in
sufficient numbers, therefore, citizens and previously
apathetic voters thus have a powerful technology for making
it in politicians self-interest to pledge to
implement SP and, by the same token, to make it potentially
disastrous for them if they fail to do so.
An
invitation to conscious evolution
By
aligning individual self-interest with the global common
interest at every level, SP thus fulfills the age-old
requirement for evolution to progress, providing a practical
political technology for humanity to drive politicians and
governments to cooperate for the global common good. As
Sahtouris recognises, "Simultaneous Policy is an imperative
if we are to evolve humanity from its juvenile competitive
stage to its cooperative species maturity. A wonderful 'no
risk' strategy for finding agreement on important issues in
building global community!"
The paradox of all previous major evolutionary transitions
is, of course, that if left to reach a critical stage,
competition ultimately ceases to be a strategy for
individual survival but instead becomes a strategy for
collective suicide. At that point - a point humanity is now
fast approaching - co-operation becomes in everyone's
self-interest. But for wipe-out to be avoided and for
cooperation to emerge, not only is simultaneous action
required to overcome the barrier to cooperation; an
appropriate catalysing process is also needed. This
is what SP potentially offers: a technology for global
citizens to consciously co-create the now-vital holon of
global governance; a world-centric governance born of an
aperspectival vision-logic that transcends and includes
political parties and nation-states and "through which runs
the blood of a common humanity and beats the single heart of
a very small planet struggling for its own survival, and
yearning for its own release into a deeper and a truer
tomorrow."
Adopt
SP now at
http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/html-UK/how_do_i_adopt_sp-UK.html
It's
free
International Simultaneous Policy Organisation
(ISPO)
http://www.simpol.org
Support other
NGOs to achieve what's POSSIBLE today. And adopt
Simultaneous Policy (SP) to achieve what's NECESSARY for
tomorrow!
Emanzipation
Humanum,
version May 2004, Criticism, suggestions as to form and
content, dialogue, translation into other languages are all
desired
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/being.html
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