Man vs. Nature

The universe is chaotic. We are floating in a frigid airless expanse full of scorching radiation and speeding rocks the size of many countries. To make matters worse, things are continuously changing; weather is marginally predictable, resources run out, geological events alter the face of the planet, suns explode, the universe expands... Our reality hangs on by a thread, or at least it seems.

A natural reaction to this is one that we, in our civilization, embraced some millennia ago: to create safeguards against the forces of change; to remove, or at least reduce, the unpredictability of the natural world. Such has been the charge of technological innovation, and we have had great success, at least in the short-term. We have managed to control the flow of water in order to maintain a steady supply of food. We have developed ways of tapping into chemical energy stored in the earth to keep our towns lit at night and our homes a comfortable temperature.

We have made the necessities of life so consistently available that people have time now to fret over what sort of shoes might go best with their new designer handbag. The chaotic has become rather static, and we have filled our lives with new sorts of worries that never occurred to our ancestors.

There is a major psychological consequence for this shift. In a static reality the universe is knowable; it is possible, in theory, to acquire a grasp of all that is, to become knowledgeable. And we have been at it for some time now. We hold in high regard those who are best at knowing, and feel ashamed of what we don't know.

Naturally, our educational system reflects this. We are taught to seek knowledge, operate within a structured, rigid construct, and pursue a particular ideal character, regardless of our individual uniquenesses. We are assessed only on our organizational skills and our mental capacity for- and dedication to- collecting details, while genuine understanding, and the tools to acquire understanding, is often neglected entirely. With our sense of self now reliant on knowledge, we cling to our internal libraries of static information, protecting them, occasionally to our detriment.

This mental game of acquisition has a physical parallel; there is a material outcome of this training. In the tangible world, many of us in our society find ourselves obsessed with objects. Our civilization is built on the idea of a life full of stable and secure possessions, cordoned off from others. We are protective of what is ours, and fence in our corner of the world, mirroring the confining and limiting nature of our intellectual reality.

There is a conflict. We are products of the universe, and the universe is continuously in flux. Our nature is to work within this chaotic sea of change, but yet we fight to control it, and ourselves, and we waste a tremendous amount of energy doing it. We limit ourselves to something static and almost immediately obsolete in the quest to bolster an ego whose foundation is unnatural.

But there is another way. We can choose to value the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, with no judgment for where one might find themselves on that journey. We can teach our children the processes by which they might seek understanding, and trust them to find their own understanding. We can embrace diversity, flexibility, and the creative nature of exploration.

I am a science teacher. I teach students to pursue truth, their own truth, through empirical methods. I work to encourage them to seek truth on their own terms, coaching by presenting them with challenges to their ideas and asking them to consider the quality of their methodology. My classes are science methods courses that, incidentally, lead to some new knowledge and understanding.

But the knowledge is not my primary concern. I, like most of my peers, was not instructed in this way. Science, as I once conceived of it, was a collection of information. My memories of science from public school involved memorizing periodic tables, anatomical structures, and right hand rules. I was successful, and I felt good about myself as a future scientist, but not because I knew how to do science. I had memorized the "scientific method" and could regurgitate it verbatim, but I had never knowingly applied it myself.

It wasn't until I had been teaching for several years that I finally learned that I was actually a pretty good scientist. As details started escaping me, replaced by conceptual conjectures and analytical exercises, my notion of science started to resemble the pursuit that it actually is.

But the real breakthrough for me occurred when I chanced upon a group in Seattle teaching physics instructional methodology in a whole new way (to me), and my eyes were opened. They were putting the learning in the hands of the learner, simultaneously handing responsibility and respect over to the students. Everything that they were doing seemed RIGHT to me; it was what had been missing from my own education. When I began applying this in my own classes, the response from students was incredible, though particularly so from the younger students, who are less indoctrinated in the knowledge and teacher-pleasing games of industrial-model classrooms.

With some, however, it was excruciating. To be expected to create their own conclusions is terrifying, particularly for those who have already acquired a substantial body of information and now consider themselves to be excellent students by 'traditional' standards. Again, I have found this to be more common with age, and have heard stories of furious educators walking out of such an instructional demonstration feeling toyed with at not being handed "the answer." But this should be, and is in reality, the norm in science.

I heard something beautiful the other day from a professional on the cutting edge of science education. She said, "if you're not comfortable with uncertainty, then you cannot do science. And this reminds me of the universe, in that it is vast, and fundamentally unknowable, though we can certainly do our best to approach an understanding.

I talk about science because it is the area that I have studied most. This is but one road and one skill set. There are paths for all of us, but the unifying idea is the search; the journey. If we honor each person's path through life, we can begin to do something bold and transformative for society.

Here are some of the possible changes that would take place in the world if we stopped fighting to control possessions and embraced the journey, the chaos, so as to finally begin working with the nature of things instead of against it.

I propose that we shift our paradigm. We should move from a vision of the world as discrete, static, and controllable to one that embraces the continuous flow of things. Our innovation has been sorely limited by an insistence on attachment to what came before. Our capabilities have been bridled by an artificial perimeter to our reality, and those who have broken out of the box have either been heralded as genius-heroes or crucified for their heretical objection to their contrived containment. We have shown what we can do when we put our minds to something, now the next step of our social evolution is to step back away from our egos, view the world and ourselves as we truly are, and return to the endless flow of change.

The Long-Term Vision

The end is near. The beginning has begun. As the wild binge comes to a close, and our vision slowly returns to normal, we are gradually realizing the horrid condition our party has left everything in. Living on the very surface with little connection to the depths, our shiny celebration of radical ingenuity must give way to a more fulfilling, and ultimately more natural, experience. The music is stopping. The dance coming to an end.

We have never been sicker. By "we," I mean the whole thing; the system from which we emerged and of which we are a part. And as with all sickness, long term health begins from within. We must look within our system and ourselves, recognize our connection to it in all its complexity, and behave according to its principles. Anyone who has experienced real connection -- to another person, to nature, even to an animal -- has experienced the power of this awakening; awakening to the reality of connection. We are a part of the grandest systems, layered, scaled, mysterious, and incredible. And we have a responsibility to the source from which we came.

It is time for radical change. Many have already begun, living as much for connection as for independence. This balance is the way of all things -- independent action that aligns with system health. Returning to this balance is the path to sustainability, well-being, paradise (eventually). The emergence of ever-more powerful collaborations whose principal aim is not material, a growing interest in deeper processes and complex intangible value, and a shift toward community interests, all signal this movement.

The market will die. Exchange will be driven by resources and mutual gain. The unit of economic action cease to be the individual. Instead, it will be at first the family, then the neighborhood, and eventually the community. The corporation will be replaced by the cooperative. Resources will be allocated locally.

One of the richest places I've been is rural north central Nicaragua. There, unemployment is among the highest in this hemisphere, but the communities are thriving. Subsistence production, community involvement, and free exchange mark the local culture. Poor in material resources, but rich in spiritual and ecological well-being. My wife and I were welcomed and given free lodging when we visited. We were fed and given effective herbal remedies for minor ailments.

The future I see is one where this kind of community is combined with the clever innovative developments of the past centuries. If our scientific advancement and unprecedented ingenuity is paired with a deep natural spirituality, a mindfulness of the beautiful complexity of which we are a part, then a kind of universal real wealth will spread globally.

At first, this will be tumultuous -- a rocky, clumsy transition until we get our systems grossly sorted out. We will distribute our resources and population according to what each local environment can support. This age will be followed by an age of refinement, where each region will apply ever-more careful experimentation and design to ensure the long-term health of the system. From there we will refine, change, and grow along with these natural systems, learning ever-more detailed aspects of their functioning.

Ancient Wisdom

In the heat of this alarmingly severe California drought, farmers and planners have gotten desperate. One measure has been to tap into the wisdom of native American elders regarding management practices that sustain the health of the associated ecosystems while helping to recharge aquifers and reservoirs through optimizing precipitation capture.

I would like to submit that one of the most imperative actions right now is to catalog a compendium of indigenous knowledge and wisdom, world wide. Soon, we will realize the end of our current social system, and we will need to replace our mythology; our characterization of humans and the world around us.

We have been living under this absurd philosophy for so long now, that many will feel quite lost without the familiar stories (e.g. "the American dream," "prosperity through market economics," etc.). The best alternatives will have their derivatives in the many-millenia-backed mythologies that were developed and refined in concert with our resource systems. Of course, we will have to weave them together, along with the best that our age has provided. But this should be a gradual process, founded on core principles that we can all agree underlie anything that will carry us far into the future as a species.

I've written considerably about the problems with the current social paradigm, but for convenience (and because each iteration brings new insights), I'll summarize them:

• Sustainability

• Resource

Probably pretty obvious, but capital and free market based society is necessarily wasteful, short-sighted, and dirty. Because the imperative is individual material gain (especially since corporations are individuals too), any way to outsource or reduce costs for any potentially profitable venture is encouraged. That, clearly, includes all sorts of destructive and wasteful practices.

• Biosphere 

A bit redundant, but since resources are extracted from our earth, living systems are at risk of being disturbed during the extraction process as well as by subsequent processing of those resources. Also, monetary-driven social growth pays little heed to ecological system health. Finally, the consequences of our aforementioned wastefulness and dirtiness have lead to what appears to be a system-wide collapse. While our biosphere has, according to the fossil and geological record, shown remarkable resilience, the short-term nature of our life-spans, and the relative fragility of our species, means that the consequences of anything remotely as severe as some of the more extreme climate disasters of the past could be catastrophic.

• Human well-being

• Promotion of "tactics"

Because of the individualism that characterizes our current paradigm, and the extremely narrow focus on the material gains of the individual, much value has been placed on the tactical abilities that might be applied to that game. "It's just business" has been used to turn the tables on what would otherwise probably be viewed as selfish deceit, now highlighted as an example of clever success stories. This value is pernicious in its tendency to erode trust between people, ultimately weakening the connections between members of a community. It also undermines security, as there is always present a risk of someone inventing a novel tactic that you didn't protect yourself from.

• Gaming vs. Living

This focus on strategy and tactics is similar to what one might find in learning chess or some other game from a skilled player. And that shouldn't be surprising, because we have a contrived social structure that has become a patchwork of policy, red tape, special cases, and exceptions. Our market society is a game, whose rules are being constantly revised, generally according to the whims of those who are "winning." Buying into the game means necessarily sacrificing some significant portion of one's life to the work of gaming for comforts, status, or whatever. This is why a "job" is so appealing; because it means that you can think less about many aspects of the game -- they're "handled." The expectations for workers, however, are constantly being pushed. Whether you're an entrepreneur or a worker, it is likely that you'll have to work much more than you will be able to live. We suffer from a collective life imbalance.

• Resource distribution

This one is hot right now in the media, as we're ramping up toward another political slog on the way to another presidential election. Bernie Sanders is the biggest bullhorn on this one, but many of the mainstream candidates are also claiming that this is a problem. Regardless, it's inevitable in our system, as more resources means more influence, even over the policy-makers. And that leads to even more resource accumulation among those who are influencing policy with their resources. Classic snowball.


So, what are the core principles that should guide the development of the new mythology, the new social stories? Next time...

Mutualistic Civilization

Why are young people so full of energy for change, progress, and innovation? Conventional wisdom says that it's largely a function of their developmental stage, which is certainly true. But I would like to suggest that there is another reason, working in tandem with the "development" theory:

We need to be trained to fit into our current social structure. Young people are not fully trained, and therefore are in a better position to raise fundamental questions. This seems very obvious, but I wonder whether this is universal. That is, I wonder whether the learning curve associated with falling in line is variable depending on the structure of the society. And I further wonder whether our current structure is particularly problematic.

Here's a suggestion: the preposterous economic model that underlies many of our social policies is unnatural. There are alternative, much more natural, ways of being together that would result in a much quicker and smoother learning by young people. There are, in fact, ways of relating to one another that require zero training.

Faced with a serious challenge, do we not quite naturally collaborate, form rank, and connect? Much like a herd of musk ox or bison protecting the calves, we align with little thought or planning. Those who do not are often suffering from their thorough indoctrination into the individualistic culture that we have created.

We have this heavy-handed, and poorly supported, mythology which says that people are inherently mean and selfish. Sure, people are naturally aggressive and cold toward those of a different tribe, but our tribes are merging and converging toward something much more global.

The retrospectively obscene treatment by one race/nationality of another (e.g. slave trade, and nearly any genocide) was only possible because there existed little to no empathy between the two groups. This is not the case for most people any more. Modern media and communication technology has made it difficult to impossible to observe even quite disparate suffering without a small sense of connection to those experiencing it.

Rights are spreading, and the notion that all people are people, and deserve rights, has been accepted almost universally. We are in the middle of a steep uptick in tribal convergence, heading toward a singularity of humanity (though we will likely never reach such an asymptotically approachable concept).

My point is that it is high time to throw out these concepts of an aggressive, selfish humanity, along with the training that makes people that way, and take a lesson from young people by adopting something that is much more natural: mutualism.

Abort Mission

If the path you tread becomes perilous, at what point should you change course?

A recent podcast (maybe freakonomics? I don't remember) was discussing the inherent resistance that many people have to turning back -- declaring failure. I guess it's particularly bad in America, where our national mythology, and therefore our identity, is largely built around the underdog story; the gritty, unlikely hero who triumphs despite terrible odds. Succeeding at "mission impossible." It's the truest American dream to pull yourself up and work yourself to the bone, to finally rise above your own misfortune.

This story doesn't always play well. The example case used in the podcast was that of the challenger space shuttle, that horrible tragedy that shocked much of America back when I was in grade school. Apparently, the person responsible for signing off on the launch that day refused to do so, on account of the extremely low temperatures which he believed to be a danger to the equipment. Of course, NASA went ahead with the launch, marching forward with imprudent determination born from past successes and an unwillingness to choose anything but the course that had been set.

I, too, suffer from this common, and stereotypically masculine problem; getting wrapped up in "the mission," perceiving the unflinching ability to overcome challenges as they arise, as a universal virtue. My wife often chides me for refusing to stop for comforts, even a bathroom, when on a family drive. It is tough for me to change course. I put on optimism glasses whenever I set my sights on something, and regard problems as more trivial than they are. This serves me, as it does for many of us, in that it prevents the worst course of action when confronted by a problem: doing nothing. The deer in headlights.

But there is a better way; a middle road. How about spending time at the beginning, staring down failure, getting comfortable with it, recognizing what kinds of obstacles are deal breakers, and which might be resolved with relative ease.

The best choice is often difficult: making an informed choice, and attaching no stigma or ill regard to a decision to call off the mission, or even to simply change it, should such a choice prove pertinent. Let's call that celebrating a good failure. This is something I've tried to preach as a teacher, even though I've never been so good at it myself, at least under some circumstances.

Now I'd like to turn this insight toward humanity, collectively. We are suffering from a generalized obsession with forward progress despite the obvious evidence that it might not be going very well. We are resting, artificially assured, that the plan in place is the right plan, as we watch our planet slowly slip into disaster. Our food supplies are spoiled by toxic farming practices, our climate is becoming increasingly hostile, and our global culture is accelerating toward unprecedented disparity and unrest.

At the same time, there is much hope, as always. We are connected to one another more than ever. Global empathy is on a steep rise, as rights are being extended to new corners of the human experience. Honesty is on the rise as well -- acceptance of others always reflects acceptance of equal parts of ourselves.

I’d say, looking objectively at our current situation, that it is a good time to change course. For a person considering the capitalist experiment as it began in full form around the time of the French Revolution,   trying to predict likely mechanisms of failure for capitalism, over-consumption, waste, excessive focus on the short term, the tragedy of the commons, and otherwise general environmental disasters would likely have been on the list. Also corruption, poverty, desperation and despotism. It’s not likely that someone could have predicted the food and medical industries encouraging most people in many “developed” countries to become needlessly sick. Many of these other predictions have been made, many times.

No matter. It’s really all water under the bridge, so long as we figure out how to right our course. Survey a bunch of kindergarteners, and they’ll tell you:

“You should bring food to the people who don’t have food!”

“Everyone should live in a comfortable home”

“People should not get sick”

“We should make spaceships to find aliens”

Ok, that last one was actually me. The other ones came from my own 6 year old.

Freedom from civilization

The concept of freedom is deeply embedded in the American story and psychology. We are the ones that fled the oppression of theocracy and monarchy to shape a new existence. Indeed, this sense of autonomy and independence colors much that we do and celebrate.

Lately, though, many Americans have expressed a particularly troubling interpretation of freedom, a binary, absolutist interpretation. The choices are 1) externally mandated, dictated structure on one hand (as is the case with monarchy or other non-participatory society), or 2) absolute freedom from structure (as with the popular understanding of anarchy).

This idea of freedom is used to justify uncompromising opposition to any and all restrictive legislation. For example, many who oppose firearm regulation stand on a platform defined by a resistance to any imposed structure, and thus neglect to engage in a meaningful discussion about the particular issue.

A polarized, binary view of freedom doubly misses the mark, by skirting around either side of a third, typically superior option: to participate in designing the structures that govern our interactions. Our country was founded by people dedicated to such an enterprise, and the constitution is revered not only for its elements of liberty, but those that encourage participation. Instead of following that lead, we citizens often behave as if at war with one another, entrenched in some or another extreme position, divorced from the processes of reasonable scrutiny and collaboration.

But this is a manufactured war. The battle lines are created to marginalize meaningful change, which is always rather moderate. It is a play on the psychology of fear to maintain the dominant paradigm.

Here's to hoping that we can step off the battleground and move productively together.

Take Back the Story

A while back I read a very interesting book: "Program or Be Programmed" by Douglas Rushkoff. It coincided with my first foray into computational programming (for engineering tasks), and it was therefore both relevant and eye-opening. In it, Rushkoff argues that we are influenced heavily by programming, and that by learning about the concepts and methods employed in creating such codes, we gain both empowerment and awareness.

The rise of literal programming (i.e. computational or computer-based programming) has coincided with advancements in another kind of programming: media programming. TV shows are literally called "programming" within the industry, and every other kind of information medium-- radio, billboards, internet, magazines, etc.-- is analogous. They are all engineered to deliver "messages" to us, and this engineering is informed by the sciences of sociology, psychology, and biology to maximize their efficacy.

A quick tour of advertisements from the 50's run in parallel with those of today reveals very clearly the advancement of programming sophistication. This, of course, is a dynamic system which plays off of the evolving cultural sensibilities which are both drivers of- and driven by- the messages that permeate our lives.

This kind of messaging is a quite natural element of a market-driven society. Our social structure, based on the notion that pursuit of individual, short term gains collectively drives an emergent prosperity in society as a whole, carries an implicit imperative to utilize any and all tools at our disposal to pursue our individual interests.

There is a cost, however. It's actually visible on every level of this structure, but it's most famously identified at the large-scale corporate level: the externality. This is the idea that if it is possible to outsource the cost of your action, you will increase the net gain from that action. Highly visible on those larger scales (e.g. pollution, sweat shops, climate change), the externality plays out on a small scale as well - with similar costs.

This concept was popularized in 1968 by Garrett Hardin in his "Tragedy of the Commons," and previously, in 1833, by William Lloyd in a pamphlet discussing shared grazing rights. Both interesting reads.

The severity of the consequences outlined by Hardin and Lloyd has reached a peak in today's society. We are in the midst of the most dramatic, ever-increasing sickening of... everything: our personal health, our social health (sense of connection between one another), and our ecological health.

On all of these levels, the trend is pointed toward an inevitable tipping point. The foundations of our civilization are actually in peril. Few will debate this point reasonably.

My proposal (probably not original) is this: let's take control of the messaging; take control of the story. We need to recognize that the media messaging is designed to reinforce the status quo. Our messages should be re-designed from the roots - replacing the mass-produced messages with those that make sense at an individual level, and with a longer timeline in mind.

The number of absurdities that we have come to regard as normal and acceptable is incredible. I hope that we might start to "see" the programming and take control of the message. Our story needs to be more about the space between us -- connections -- and less about the discrete entities (people and things).