1011 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
1011 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
DEEPECOL.OGY
|
||
This is a transcript of a public lecture that was made by
|
||
Fritjof Capra on Thursday, April 3, 1986, 7:30p.m. in Dale Hall, Room
|
||
200, 455 West Lindsey, The University of Oklahoma Norman Campus.
|
||
Theoretical physicist, writer, lecturer; founder and president of The
|
||
Elmwood Institute, a "think and do tank." Current research at
|
||
Lawrence Berkeley Lab, University of California, on bootstrap theory of
|
||
particles. Publications include:
|
||
|
||
The Tao of Physics Write to: Elmwood Institute
|
||
The Turning Point P.O. Box 5805
|
||
Green Politics Berkeley, CA 94705
|
||
|
||
The public lecture was sponsored by the Scholar-Leadership Enrichment
|
||
Program (SLEP) which holds statewide academic programs for Oklahoma
|
||
college and university students. SLEP Office: Monnet Hall, 630
|
||
Parrington Oval, Rm. 559, Norman, OK 73019, Phone (405)325-4309.
|
||
|
||
I have attempted to exactly reproduce this lecture from a recording.
|
||
All errors in this transcript from the original lecture are my own.
|
||
Whitney L. Boutin, Jr. SysOp: Constitutional Pathway Thirteen
|
||
P.O. Box 3186 300/1200/2400bps, 8 bit, no parity
|
||
Norman, OK 73070 (405)329-6464 FOG #13 -- RCP/M
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Before beginning the transcription I want to leave you this
|
||
parting philosophical comment.
|
||
|
||
|
||
To know places limitations on realizations of truth.
|
||
No mind knows all. Is not respect all we seek?
|
||
Freedom springs giving another example to know.
|
||
Respect holds and/or breaks the limitations we hold dear.
|
||
As individuals, reciprocity is essential for growth.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
DEEP ECOLOGY: THE NEW VISION OF REALITY
|
||
|
||
|
||
I am here to speak partly about science and partly about social
|
||
|
||
change, and I have worked on a combination of those two issues and
|
||
|
||
concerns for more than ten years now, and have dedicated a major part
|
||
|
||
of my work to these issues. I must say that I am motivated to do so
|
||
|
||
by two interests and concerns that are equally strong. On the one
|
||
|
||
hand, I am very concerned about our social and political situation
|
||
|
||
now, and I believe that it is very urgent that we do everything we
|
||
|
||
can to further social change. On the other hand, I realize that this
|
||
|
||
change is happening. It is happening theoretically in the sciences,
|
||
|
||
and it is happening in society at large. I am very excited by the
|
||
|
||
new ideas that are emerging, and so the excitment about new ideas and
|
||
|
||
the concern for change, as the desire to help the social change, are
|
||
|
||
equally strong. You will probably get an idea of both these
|
||
|
||
motivations from my lecture.
|
||
|
||
Now when you look at society and at our political situation then
|
||
|
||
you will see that it is becoming increasingly clear that the major
|
||
|
||
problems of our times are not isolated problems, but are part of one
|
||
|
||
and the same crisis. I am now talking about, to just list the three
|
||
|
||
maybe most important and urgent problems:
|
||
|
||
1. The threat of nuclear war.
|
||
2. The destruction of the natural environment.
|
||
3. The persistance of hunger and poverty around the world.
|
||
|
||
These three problems and many others are just different facets of one
|
||
|
||
and the same crisis, which I have come to believe is essentially a
|
||
|
||
crisis of perception, and this is my main thesis that the crisis of
|
||
|
||
today is a crisis of perception. It comes from the fact that our
|
||
|
||
social institutions, and we as individuals, try to solve our problems
|
||
|
||
by applying an out dated world view to this task. The out dated
|
||
|
||
world view is basically the world view of 17th century science and of
|
||
|
||
the 18th and 19th century mentality, and it is inadequate to solve
|
||
|
||
the problems in our globally connected, interdependent, and over
|
||
|
||
populated modern world. What we need then is a new world view. A
|
||
|
||
new vision of reality, or as it is often called today, a new
|
||
|
||
paradigm, and such a new paradigm, such a new vison of reality, is
|
||
|
||
indeed emerging. Researchers at the leading edge of science and
|
||
|
||
various fields, numerious social institutions and various informal
|
||
|
||
networks and groups are now promoting this new vision of reality that
|
||
|
||
will form the basis of our future technologies, economic system, and
|
||
|
||
social institutions. My theme then is the current fundamental change
|
||
|
||
of world view in science and society. A change of paradigms that
|
||
|
||
amounts to a profound cultural transformation.
|
||
|
||
The paradigm that is now receding has dominated our society and
|
||
|
||
culture for several hundred years. During that time it has shaped
|
||
|
||
our modern outlook on the world, and through the exportation of
|
||
|
||
western science and technology around the world it has significantly
|
||
|
||
influenced other parts of the world. The world view that I am
|
||
|
||
talking about consists of a number of ideas and values. Among them,
|
||
|
||
the idea of the physical universe as a mechanical system made of
|
||
|
||
isolated building blocks, isolated objects that in terms consist of
|
||
|
||
basic material building blocks, a mechanistic image of the world.
|
||
|
||
Correspondingly, the idea of the human body as a machine. The idea
|
||
|
||
of life in society and life in general as a competitive struggle for
|
||
|
||
existence. The belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved
|
||
|
||
through technological and economic growth. And last but not least,
|
||
|
||
the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed
|
||
|
||
under the male is one that follows some basic law of nature.
|
||
|
||
Well during recent decades all of these assumptions have been
|
||
|
||
found severly limited and in need of radical revision, and such a
|
||
|
||
revision is now indeed taking place. The new paradigm that is now
|
||
|
||
emerging can be described in various ways. It can be called a
|
||
|
||
wholistic world view emphasizing the whole more than the parts. It
|
||
|
||
may also be called an ecological world view, and thats the term that
|
||
|
||
I prefer, and I use the term ecological in a much broader and deeper
|
||
|
||
sense than commonly used. Ecological awareness in this deep sense
|
||
|
||
recognizes the fundamental interdependence and interconnectedness of
|
||
|
||
all phenomena, and it recognizes the fact that, as individuals and as
|
||
|
||
societies, we are all imbedded in the cyclical processes of nature.
|
||
|
||
This deep ecological awareness is now emerging in various areas in
|
||
|
||
our society both within and outside of science.
|
||
|
||
Ultimatly deep ecology is based on an awareness that is
|
||
|
||
spiritual or religious awareness. You see when you understand the
|
||
|
||
human spirit as the mode of consciousness in which we feel connected
|
||
|
||
with the cosmos as a whole in which we feel in communion with the
|
||
|
||
cosmos as a whole then it becomes apparent that ecological awareness
|
||
|
||
is spiritual awareness in its deepest essence, and it becomes then
|
||
|
||
not suprising that many of the concepts that emerge from modern
|
||
|
||
science and that give rise to this ecological vision are paralleled
|
||
|
||
by concepts in mystical tradditions, wheither we talk about Eastern
|
||
|
||
mystical tradditions or about Christian mystics or mystics in the
|
||
|
||
Judaic traddition or in Islam or about Native American cultures. Any
|
||
|
||
of these tradditional spiritual tradditions will show these
|
||
|
||
similarities to the new ecological paradigm. Now to discuss the some
|
||
|
||
aspects and consequences of the current shift of paradigms, I want to
|
||
|
||
first outline the old world view and its consequences, its influence
|
||
|
||
on science and society, and then go on to discuss the newly emerging
|
||
|
||
vision of reality and its implications.
|
||
|
||
The mechanistic world view was developed in the 17th century in
|
||
|
||
the time that is often called scientific revolution at the end of the
|
||
|
||
middle ages or the age of reason. The key figures were Copernicus,
|
||
|
||
Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, and there were several others.
|
||
|
||
Descartes is a very central figure in this development. Descartes
|
||
|
||
based his view of nature on the fundamental seperation between two
|
||
|
||
independent realms that of mind and that of matter. The material
|
||
|
||
world for Descartes was a machine, and it could be explained in
|
||
|
||
principle by taking everything into peices and understanding the
|
||
|
||
whole from its parts. Descartes extended the mechanistic conception
|
||
|
||
not just to the material world but also to the living world. Animals
|
||
|
||
and plants were for him just machines. Humans were inhabited by a
|
||
|
||
rational soul, but the human body for Descartes is a machine just as
|
||
|
||
an animal or a plant, more complex, but still a machine.
|
||
|
||
Now the central metaphor that Descartes used for his description
|
||
|
||
of living organisms and reality in general was the Clock Work, and
|
||
|
||
you have to remember that clocks had reached a high degree of
|
||
|
||
perfection in the 17th century. At the time of Descartes people
|
||
|
||
delighted in artificial automatic singing birds and other animals,
|
||
|
||
automatic ballerinas and so on. These were constructed with great
|
||
|
||
skill, and delighted people throughout Europe, and so Descartes
|
||
|
||
naturally took this metaphor, and compared the human body to a Clock
|
||
|
||
Work, and he wrote, "I consider the human body as a machine. My
|
||
|
||
thought compares a sick man and an ill made clock with my idea of a
|
||
|
||
healthy man and a well made clock." Now if you think of that then you
|
||
|
||
will realize that this image of the human body as Clock Work still
|
||
|
||
dominates modern medical science and medical practice.
|
||
|
||
The human organism is seperated from its environment both from
|
||
|
||
its natural environment and its emotional and social environment in
|
||
|
||
our medical practice, and it's treated like a machine that can be
|
||
|
||
analysed in terms of its parts. Disease is seen as an outside entity
|
||
|
||
that invades the body, and attacks a particular part, and then the
|
||
|
||
role of the doctor is to intervein and correct the malfunctioning of
|
||
|
||
the specific mechanism, the biological mechanism. This is done
|
||
|
||
either through physical intervention in surgery, with radiation, or
|
||
|
||
through chemical intervention in drugs, chemotheropy, and by
|
||
|
||
concentrating on small parts and forgetting the whole over the parts
|
||
|
||
physicans often have lost the ability to see illness as the
|
||
|
||
disturbance of the whole organism, and have lost in fact the whole
|
||
|
||
human being out of sight, and also have lost the ability to
|
||
|
||
understand the entire phenomenan of healing by just concentrating on
|
||
|
||
the little small mechanisms.
|
||
|
||
Now recently I have discovered a very interesting parallel
|
||
|
||
between the enthusiasm of Descartes and his contemporaries for clocks
|
||
|
||
and the enthusiasm that we have today for computers, and the use of
|
||
|
||
the metaphor of the computer to discribe human brain and also the
|
||
|
||
mind. Now you see at the time of Descartes the clock was a unique
|
||
|
||
machine. All other kinds of machines you had to work. They were
|
||
|
||
extention of muscle power, extention of the senses, and you had to
|
||
|
||
run them or work them in some way. A clock you just wind up, and
|
||
|
||
then you put it there, and then it runs by itself. It is autonomous.
|
||
|
||
It functions autonomously according to some kind of model of reality.
|
||
|
||
A part of reality that it incorporates in this case a model of the
|
||
|
||
planetary system and our measurement of time.
|
||
|
||
The clocks of the 17th century were the first autonomous
|
||
|
||
machines, and until the invention of the computer they were the only
|
||
|
||
machines of that kind. Well the computer is again a machine of a
|
||
|
||
very new kind. It is again autonomous, but not only that it does
|
||
|
||
somthing new. It processes information, and once it is programmed
|
||
|
||
and turned on then it will do this autonomously. Now since the human
|
||
|
||
brain also processes information it was natural to use the computer
|
||
|
||
as a metaphor for the brain and even for the mind just as Descartes
|
||
|
||
had used the clock as a metaphor for the human body, and like the
|
||
|
||
Cartesian metaphor for the body as Clock Work the metaphor for the
|
||
|
||
brain as computer is quite useful at times, but we always have to
|
||
|
||
remember that this is a metaphor. It is a rough model.
|
||
|
||
Our body often carries out machine like functions, but it is not
|
||
|
||
a machine. It is a living organism, and our brain processes
|
||
|
||
information, but it is not a computer. It is not a machine. It is
|
||
|
||
also a living organism, and this difference is crucial, but is often
|
||
|
||
forgotten today by computer scientists and even more by the lay
|
||
|
||
public, and since computer scientists use these expressions like
|
||
|
||
intelligence, memory, or language we tend to believe that these are
|
||
|
||
the well known human experiences, but they are not. They are
|
||
|
||
somthing very different, and this great misunderstanding is the main
|
||
|
||
reason why computer technology, out modern computer science, is
|
||
|
||
perpetuating the mechanistic image of the human organism as a
|
||
|
||
machine.
|
||
|
||
As humans we face problems that even the most sophisticated
|
||
|
||
machines will never be able to handle. Although we certainly process
|
||
|
||
information we do this in a way that is very different from a
|
||
|
||
computer, and therefore we have to draw a clear distinction between
|
||
|
||
human intelligence and artifical intelligence as it's called. Human
|
||
|
||
intelligence, human judgement, human memory, human decisions are
|
||
|
||
never completely rational, but are always colored by emotions even
|
||
|
||
though we tend to suppress this often, and we tend to want to make a
|
||
|
||
completely rational decision we're not able to because our mind is
|
||
|
||
embedded in our whole organism, and the whole organism influences the
|
||
|
||
decision. So our thinking is always accompanyed by emotions and by
|
||
|
||
bodily funcitions by sensations and bodily processes, and the
|
||
|
||
computer of course dosn't have a body. It has a machine body, but it
|
||
|
||
dosn't have a human body, and therefore a computer decision is
|
||
|
||
somthing totally different. Therefore truly human problems will
|
||
|
||
always be foreign to the intelligence of computers.
|
||
|
||
Now before the development of artificial intelligence it was
|
||
|
||
never possible for humans to make completely rational decisions.
|
||
|
||
Today it possible by just leaving the decisions to computers, and as
|
||
|
||
you know this is indeed done. To take just the most extreme example,
|
||
|
||
the Generals in the Pentagon and in the Kremlen and in the various
|
||
|
||
defense departments around the world don't make human decisions they
|
||
|
||
compute, and the consequences are all too well known. Now these
|
||
|
||
considerations imply in my view that certain tasks should never be
|
||
|
||
left to computers. Namely, all those tasks that require genuine
|
||
|
||
human qualities. Qualities like wisdom, compassion, respect, love,
|
||
|
||
understanding all these have to be left to decisions that require
|
||
|
||
those qualities have to be made by humans and not by machines,
|
||
|
||
otherwise, we will dehumanize our lives, and these are for example
|
||
|
||
decisions of a Judge or of a Psychotherapist or of a General. These
|
||
|
||
are essentially human decisions. In particular the use of computers
|
||
|
||
in military technology should not be increased, but has to be
|
||
|
||
radically reduced. It is tragic that our government and the business
|
||
|
||
community has removed themselves very far from such considerations.
|
||
|
||
Now let me pass on now from computer science and technology to move
|
||
|
||
on as another example of old and new paradigm thinking to social
|
||
|
||
sciences and in particular economics.
|
||
|
||
As physicians tend to separate the human organism from its
|
||
|
||
natural environment when they study it and treat it so economists
|
||
|
||
tend to separate the economy from the web of ecological and social
|
||
|
||
relations in which it is embedded, and they describe economic
|
||
|
||
phenomena then in terms of highly unrealistic models; unrealistic
|
||
|
||
because the basic concepts have been narrowly defined. Concepts like
|
||
|
||
efficency, productivity, gross natural product, and so on are defined
|
||
|
||
generally without taking into account environmental and social costs
|
||
|
||
that are connected with all economic activity, and consequently most
|
||
|
||
of the current economic concepts models are inadequate to map
|
||
|
||
economic phenomena in a fundamentally interdependent world, and hence
|
||
|
||
economists generally have been unable to understand the major
|
||
|
||
economic problems of our time.
|
||
|
||
Now this situation is further aggrivated by the fact that most
|
||
|
||
economists in the classical ideal of a rigorous objective science
|
||
|
||
pretend that their science is value free, and avoid acknowledging the
|
||
|
||
value system on which it is in reality based. Since economics deals
|
||
|
||
with the buying and selling of goods and the production of goods and
|
||
|
||
services and distribution of them it deals very much with values.
|
||
|
||
What I buy depends on what I like and what I don't don't like and so
|
||
|
||
on. So values are very intrensic and very basic too in economics,
|
||
|
||
and when we look at our society then we see that what economists
|
||
|
||
tacitly accept is a very highly imbalanced set of values. These
|
||
|
||
values have lead to an over emphasis of hard technology, on wasteful
|
||
|
||
consumption, on rapid exploytation of natural resources all motivated
|
||
|
||
by a persistant obsession with growth.
|
||
|
||
Undifferentiated and unqualified economic and technological
|
||
|
||
growth is still regarded by most economists as a sign of a healthy
|
||
|
||
economy, but it has now brought us ecological disaster, social
|
||
|
||
disintegration, and all kinds of very drasitic and harmful
|
||
|
||
consequences. The threat of nuclear war is certainly the most severe
|
||
|
||
consequence of our imbalanced value system. It is brought about by
|
||
|
||
an over emphasis on self assurtion, control, power, by excessive
|
||
|
||
competition, and by an obsession with the whole concept of winning
|
||
|
||
which is also one of these concepts that has become outdated because
|
||
|
||
nobody wins in a nuclear exchange.
|
||
|
||
Now you have to imagine for a moment being one of those generals
|
||
|
||
in the Pentagon, Chief of Staff, Five Star General, sixty or sixty
|
||
|
||
five years old somthing like that, and you have worked your whole
|
||
|
||
professional life to win a war. You've done it in real wars, and you
|
||
|
||
have done it theorieticly. Most recently in computer modeling games
|
||
|
||
and so on. The whole emphasis is how would I win a war how can I win
|
||
|
||
a war, and now you realize or sombody tells you, "Look this whole
|
||
|
||
concept of winning is outdated.". Now that's not an easy shift to
|
||
|
||
make, and yet it is a very necessary shift because it is outdated in
|
||
|
||
the nuclear age. Nobody wins, and holding on to this concept and
|
||
|
||
therefore holding on to the arms race and building up of more and
|
||
|
||
more weapons in a process that nobody can win is perhaps the most
|
||
|
||
tragic case of people holding on to an old paradigm that has lost its
|
||
|
||
usefulness.
|
||
|
||
Connected with this is the fragmented world view that we have
|
||
|
||
and which leads us to seek security in isolation rather than seeking
|
||
|
||
security in communication, in cooperation, and so on. We tend to
|
||
|
||
isolate ourselves, and the last and most extreme expression of this
|
||
|
||
erronious and unwise stratagy is the SDI or Star Wars project. To
|
||
|
||
build a shield around the United States that would isolate it
|
||
|
||
completely from any aggressor. Now I'm not going to talk about the
|
||
|
||
technological folly of this concept. There is not a single scientist
|
||
|
||
who has stated that he or she believes that it would work. It's
|
||
|
||
absolutly clear that it's not realistic, but I just want to point out
|
||
|
||
here the philosophical background of it; that it is an extreme case
|
||
|
||
of seeking security in isolation rather than seeking security in
|
||
|
||
communication, in relationship, in cooperation.
|
||
|
||
So we now need to change this situation. It is absolutly vital
|
||
|
||
for our well being and survival to change it, and change will be
|
||
|
||
possible only if we are able as a society to shift to a new and very
|
||
|
||
different vision of reality, and indeed such a shift is now
|
||
|
||
occurring. Being a scientist I have been especially interested in
|
||
|
||
the scientific formulations of the new paradigm, and I have come to
|
||
|
||
the conclusion that a theoritical framwork known as Systems Theory
|
||
|
||
and in paraticular a recently developed theory called Living Systems
|
||
|
||
is the most appropriate scientific formulation of this ecological
|
||
|
||
world view, and I would just like to give you a brief overview of
|
||
|
||
what the formulation is.
|
||
|
||
The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships
|
||
|
||
and integration. Systems are integrated wholes whose properties
|
||
|
||
cannot be reduced to those of smaller parts. Instead of
|
||
|
||
concentrating on basic building blocks the systems approach
|
||
|
||
concentrates on basic principles of organization. Now examples of
|
||
|
||
living systems abound in nature. Every organism is a living system.
|
||
|
||
Every cell, every single small bacterium, every plant, every animal,
|
||
|
||
and also parts of organisms are living systems. The heart, the
|
||
|
||
liver, the brain, and mussle tissue always are living systems, and
|
||
|
||
living systems are not limited to individual organisms and their
|
||
|
||
parts. There are also social systems for example a family, or a
|
||
|
||
community, and then there are ecosystems in which individual
|
||
|
||
organisms and inanimant matter are woven together in a network of
|
||
|
||
interactions. So you see the systems approach is very powerful
|
||
|
||
because it can be applied to a very wide range of phenomena through
|
||
|
||
the study of individual organisms, social system, and ecosystems and
|
||
|
||
how all these interact.
|
||
|
||
The study of integrated wholes all have properties and
|
||
|
||
structures all have properties that arise from the interdependence of
|
||
|
||
their parts, and by disecting a whole into isolated elements you
|
||
|
||
would destroy these properties. Either physically doing it,
|
||
|
||
actually, and cut somthing up physically or even conceptually to
|
||
|
||
understand it. Although we can discern individual parts in any
|
||
|
||
system the nature of the whole is always different from the mear sum
|
||
|
||
of its parts. Another important characteristic of these living
|
||
|
||
systems is the intrensic dynamic nature of living systems. All
|
||
|
||
processes are seen as primary and all structure is seen as a
|
||
|
||
manifestation of underlying processes. So there is a shift in
|
||
|
||
thinking from the part to the whole and from structure to process.
|
||
|
||
An important aspect of living systems is their tendency to form
|
||
|
||
systems within systems like in the human body we have a nervous
|
||
|
||
system or a digestive system, and these consist of individual organs,
|
||
|
||
the organs of tissues, and the tissues of cells, and at each level we
|
||
|
||
talk about living systems that interact with all the other levels.
|
||
|
||
Now we can go a little further and ask what is the organization
|
||
|
||
that is characteristic of the living system. What are the patterns
|
||
|
||
of organization characteristic of life, and you find suprisingly,
|
||
|
||
that has been worked out over the last 15 years or so, that there is
|
||
|
||
a single dynamic principle that can be used to describe the
|
||
|
||
characteristic of living systems, and that principle is called Self
|
||
|
||
Organization. Living systems are self organizing systems which means
|
||
|
||
that their structure and their pattern of organization is determined
|
||
|
||
by the system itself not by the environment. It's not imposed on the
|
||
|
||
system by the environment, but it is determined by the system itself.
|
||
|
||
In otherwords there is a certian autonomy of the living system vis-a-
|
||
|
||
vis its environment.
|
||
|
||
Now we have to be careful not to confuse autonomy with
|
||
|
||
isolation. Living organisms are not isolated. They interact with
|
||
|
||
the environment all the time, and we all know that we need to breath
|
||
|
||
and to eat and drink in order to stay alive. We need to take in
|
||
|
||
energy and matter and food, and all living organisms have that very
|
||
|
||
essential requirement. Then there is this whole process of
|
||
|
||
matabolism that is characteristic of life. So living organisms or
|
||
|
||
living systems are not isolated, but they are autonomous. There
|
||
|
||
interaction with the environment does not determine their
|
||
|
||
functioning. It will influence their functioning, but it does not
|
||
|
||
determine it. They determine it themselves.
|
||
|
||
Now over the past two decades a theory of self organizing
|
||
|
||
systems which is a new systems theory of life has been worked out in
|
||
|
||
considerable detail, and one of the very exciting aspects which I
|
||
|
||
just want to mention without going into further details is that this
|
||
|
||
theory includes a radically new conception of mind where mind is not
|
||
|
||
seen as a thing but as an activity, and in particular it's seen as
|
||
|
||
the organizing activity of these living systems. The process of
|
||
|
||
self organization. So you have a structure, and you have an
|
||
|
||
activity, and if you take say the brain as a living system the
|
||
|
||
neurophysiology of the brain would be the structure and the activity
|
||
|
||
that is involved in maintaining that structure and maintaining the
|
||
|
||
functions that it has is a mental activity. So mind is not a thing,
|
||
|
||
but we talk about mental activity or mental process, and the
|
||
|
||
relationship between mind and brain is the same as the relationship
|
||
|
||
between process and structure. That to me is a very new step which
|
||
|
||
allows us for the first time to go beyond this Cartesian division
|
||
|
||
between mind and matter or mind and body.
|
||
|
||
Well the systems view of life is appropriate not only for
|
||
|
||
biology and psychology but also for social sciences and in particular
|
||
|
||
is also appropriate for economics and in fact is very useful there to
|
||
|
||
give economist the urgently needed ecological perspectives. We can
|
||
|
||
learn alot from studing natural ecosystems, and I want to just give
|
||
|
||
you one example from what we can learn. When we study ecosystems or
|
||
|
||
any other living systems we observe that all the interactions and all
|
||
|
||
the pathways of energy and matter that travel in these systems occurr
|
||
|
||
in cycles. There are no straight lines. Everything goes in curves
|
||
|
||
and cycles and more complicated pathways. It's a highly nonlinear
|
||
|
||
system, and the recognition of this nonlinearity to me is the very
|
||
|
||
essence of ecological wisdom, ecological awareness, and I'll give you
|
||
|
||
two rules that you can derive immediately from the recognition that
|
||
|
||
everything in nature moves in cycles.
|
||
|
||
One rule is when you do somthing that is good the more of the
|
||
|
||
same will not necessarily better because when things move in cycles
|
||
|
||
we may just shoot straight out in a line and miss the curve so to
|
||
|
||
speak. You have to adapt your activity to these natural cycles in
|
||
|
||
other words there is an optimal size for everything. The question is
|
||
|
||
not to maximumize things but to optimize things, and the question of
|
||
|
||
scale becomes very important. There is an optimal size for every
|
||
|
||
organization, for every company, for every university, for every
|
||
|
||
city, and so on, and just by growing more and more and more you will
|
||
|
||
necessarily be destructive to the system as a whole. Of course
|
||
|
||
growth is a very important aspect of life, but growth has to be
|
||
|
||
qualified. It's good for some things or for some living systems, for
|
||
|
||
some people. It's not good for others. I have a two and a half
|
||
|
||
month old baby at home, and she grows alot, and I'm going to be away
|
||
|
||
a week now, and I'm sure when I come home she will have changed alot.
|
||
|
||
She will have grown alot, and that's very good and very healthy and
|
||
|
||
very wonderful to observe, but if I grew alot it would be a disaster.
|
||
|
||
So growth is relative and has to be qualified. Not all things can
|
||
|
||
grow all of the time, and this is what, for example, our economists
|
||
|
||
have not yet learned and our politicians have not yet learned. They
|
||
|
||
continue to tell us about economic growth and technological growth
|
||
|
||
without qualifying it.
|
||
|
||
The second rule that follows from this nonlinear way of cyclical
|
||
|
||
transportation. The more a society and its economy are based on
|
||
|
||
continual recycling of its substances the more it will be in harmony
|
||
|
||
with nature, and the more stable it will be. When you observe a
|
||
|
||
natural system like a forest for instance then you will observe that
|
||
|
||
the same molecules, the very same molecules of earth, water, air, and
|
||
|
||
so on are being recycled, and have been recycled not only for
|
||
|
||
hundreds of years or for thousands of years or for millions but for
|
||
|
||
billions of years. Life has existed on this earth for about maybe
|
||
|
||
four billion years, and the very same molecules have been recycled
|
||
|
||
and reused over and over again. So there is tremendous wisdom in
|
||
|
||
this recycling that nature shows us, and a stable society is one, and
|
||
|
||
a wise society will be one that copies that wisdom, and tradditional
|
||
|
||
societies have done that. Recently I have traveled to India, it's a
|
||
|
||
few years ago now, and I went to some villages in south India, and I
|
||
|
||
noticed there dosn't seem to be any garbage collection, and there are
|
||
|
||
no trash cans or anything like that simply because there is no trash.
|
||
|
||
Everything is recycled. The materials they use are organic, and they
|
||
|
||
throw away alot of things, but the things are organic so they
|
||
|
||
disintegrate. For instance they take clay from the rice fields, and
|
||
|
||
they make pots, and when they don't use the pots and the pots get too
|
||
|
||
old they just throw them out. They throw them to the earth where
|
||
|
||
they disintegrate and recycle into the earth, and the same way they
|
||
|
||
use wood and fiber and various other materials for their tools and
|
||
|
||
instruments, and there is just no trash, no garbgage. The garbgage
|
||
|
||
is fed to the animals as we use to do on our farms. So it's
|
||
|
||
continual recycling, and there is great ecological wisdom in that.
|
||
|
||
Now another observation is that a living system will be healthy
|
||
|
||
when it is in a state of balance that manifests flexability so that
|
||
|
||
it can adapt to new situations. The more flexable a system is the
|
||
|
||
healther it will be, and this can be more even a wide variety of
|
||
|
||
flexability. Physical flexability in terms of resources, flexability
|
||
|
||
of ideas, social flexability, technological flexability, and so on.
|
||
|
||
Small scale units will be more flexable than large centralized
|
||
|
||
societies and enterprises.
|
||
|
||
Now the restoration of balance and flexability in our economies
|
||
|
||
and technologies and social institutions will be possible only if it
|
||
|
||
goes hand in hand with a profound change in values. Contrary to
|
||
|
||
conventional beliefs value systems are not peripheral to science and
|
||
|
||
technology, but are their very basis and driving force, and therefore
|
||
|
||
the shift of world views of paradigms that I'm talking about will
|
||
|
||
have to also include a shift of values. From excessive competition,
|
||
|
||
dominance, and control to cooperation and to more social justice,
|
||
|
||
from expansion to conservation, from material aquisition to inner
|
||
|
||
growth, and those of us who have begun to make this shift have
|
||
|
||
recognized that it is not at all a restriction, but on the contrary
|
||
|
||
is liberating and enriching to make this shift.
|
||
|
||
Now these new values together with new attitudes and new
|
||
|
||
lifestiles are now being promoted by a large number of social
|
||
|
||
movements. We have the peace movement. We have the feminest
|
||
|
||
movement. We have an ecology movement. We have the wholistic health
|
||
|
||
movement. We have various ethnic liberation movements. Numerious
|
||
|
||
citizens movements and initiatives. We have spiritual movements.
|
||
|
||
There is a whole range of movements that have emerged over the last
|
||
|
||
20 years or so. During the 60's and 70's those movements operated
|
||
|
||
rather separately, and didn't quite recognize how their purposes
|
||
|
||
interrelate, but over the last maybe 5 or 6 years they have come to
|
||
|
||
realize that they address to just different facits of the same new
|
||
|
||
vision of reality, and they have indeed begun to emerge and to
|
||
|
||
coalesce, and I believe that this process of coalescence will
|
||
|
||
continue as we go through the 1980's, and will give rise to a
|
||
|
||
powerful force of social transformation. I've called this newly
|
||
|
||
emerging social force the Rising Culture. Borrowing this image from
|
||
|
||
Arnold Toynbee's description of patterns of rise and fall in cultural
|
||
|
||
transformations and cultural development.
|
||
|
||
Toynbee, a cultural historian, has described in great detail how
|
||
|
||
a culture rises slowly and then reaches a culmination and then
|
||
|
||
declines and disintegrates, and while it goes down and disintegrates
|
||
|
||
a new rising culture is emerging. When you compare his description
|
||
|
||
in its details to the situation we experience today you can see quite
|
||
|
||
clearly that there is a declining culture, and there is a rising
|
||
|
||
culture. The declining culture is broadly what we call the
|
||
|
||
Establishment. Of course it dosn't look like it's declining because
|
||
|
||
it has all the power, but if you take a static view a sort of
|
||
|
||
snapshot then you see it's on its way out, but it is going down and
|
||
|
||
in fact it recognizes that it is going down. It recognizes that
|
||
|
||
things are not working quite the way they use to, and so what the
|
||
|
||
establishment culture does is instead of changing its views and
|
||
|
||
values and attitudes it goes even further back to the old values that
|
||
|
||
don't work and becomes more ridged and therefore declines even more,
|
||
|
||
and it is bound to decline unless it changes, and the rising culture
|
||
|
||
is bound to rise and eventually take the leading role.
|
||
|
||
Now I don't want to give the impression that there are two
|
||
|
||
camps, and there are us over here. Who are the good guys, and we are
|
||
|
||
the rising culture, and them over there. They are the bad guys, and
|
||
|
||
they are going down. It's a process that takes place in each
|
||
|
||
individual. We all are part of the old world view and part of the
|
||
|
||
new world view at the same time. Its a change and a struggle that
|
||
|
||
takes place in each of us, and the realization that evolutionary
|
||
|
||
changes of this nature are somthing much larger than day to day
|
||
|
||
events and short term political activities provides in my view our
|
||
|
||
greatest hope for the future.
|
||
|
||
Thank you.
|
||
y
|
||
|
||
events and short term political activities provides in my view our
|
||
|
||
greatest hope for the future.
|
||
|
||
|