Our biology makes everything we know possible: metabolism, walking, digesting, feeling, thinking, anger, joy, sadness, culture, technology, imagination, creativity, compassion, ethics, a sense of meaning, and anything that is part of our individual and collective lives.
Some of it is shared among all Earth life. Much of it is shared among all animals. A great deal of shared among all mammals. Even more is shared among all humans. And some is differently emphasized among humans.
The present moment is highly overrated. From an evolutionary perspective, the past and the future are where it’s at. Any aardvark, antelope, cat, or cockroach can effortlessly reside in the present moment. Only human beings can engage deeply with the past and consciously co-create the future. By doing so, by looking outward with aims of bettering our world, big or small, we also walk a path that leads to inner fulfillment.
- from by Evolutionary Spirituality: Coming Home to Reality by Michael Dowd
I agree completely. And yet, there is a common misunderstanding here.
The “present” doesn’t exclude past and future. It is just a reminder to notice thought as thought.
My birthday is coming up, and a couple of people have asked how old I am.
In the context of birthdays the answer is simple. It is the age of this human organism after it emerged from the womb.
But there are many other ways of answering the question. Each one equally valid and meaningful, and sometimes even more meaningful.
This organism was born a certain number of years ago, although the dynamics and shape of this organism has changed dramatically since then. The only thing that tells me it is the same organism are stories of different types - name, memories, photographs etc.
My subjective age is different. I experience myself as infinitely old, very young, as about 20 years old, when I am reminded of it - about the age of this organism, and as having no age at all.
This organism was conceived and developed for about 9 months prior to its birth and becoming visible to others, so that is a more accurate age than years from birth.
A friend of mine is a psychologist, and in a recent conversation, she expressed a dislike for evolutionary psychology. In her view, it justifies a cynical and sometimes brutal view on humans.
As any story, the story of evolution is a tool, and it can be used in many different ways.
It is true, some have used a particularly distorted versions of Social Darwinism to justify brutality and injustice. The Nazis are probably the most extreme example.
And yet, the story of evolution can also be used with great wisdom and compassion, as a support for ourselves and others, and even for non-human species and future generations. And more and more scientists, psychologists and others are catching on to this.
If you feel moved to do so, please support Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow. You can give a one-time amount or monthly donations of $5 or more. See more information on Thank God for Evolution. After so many of us benefiting from their generosity for so long, it is now time - and opportunity - for us to give something back….!
The main way we’ve generated income during the last eight years of itinerant ministry has been through selling books and DVDs after our programs, plus the honoraria we sometimes received for speaking. Now because of my cancer diagnosis and our need to stay in one place for treatment, we are being forced to evolve from primarily itinerant to mostly Internet forms of evolutionary evangelism and education. Given that it will take time to build a viable Internet ministry, however, we still need to generate income in the next six months to help make ends meet.
Its a common dilemma: We imagine a boundary, elevate our side and devalue what is on the other side, and make it difficult for ourselves to recognize it as an imagined boundary.
It is easy to see among some Christian fundamentalists. In their own minds, they elevate humans as being made in God’s image, and devalue non-humans as a lesser category of beings. From within such a mindset, removing the boundary means that humans ends up in the same group as beasts, and it is not a very attractive proposition.
The solution is of course to elevate non-human species and gain a more realistic view of humans. We can recognize the immense beauty of the natural world. The intelligence, caring and fit to their environment of all species, come about through millions of years of evolution. Our shared ancestors and close kinship with all life. How we are all expressions of a seamless process of evolution of this planet. The ways our evolutionary past is played out in our daily life, and how a recognition of this can be a great help to us.
I have been fascinated by SETI since I was a kid. Finding another civilization in the universe will be one of the most significant discoveries in the history of humanity.
More importantly, simply reflecting on it - which SETI invites us to - helps us see ourselves more in perspective.
Michal Dowd and Connie Barlow have a new podcast on the Big Integrity model. As always, well worth listening to.
A quick comment about something Connie Barlow mentions early in the podcast:
She says that in eastern models, consciousness is primary and the universe comes later. In her understanding, based on western science, consciousness is born out of the universe. And those two don’t fit well together.
Big Integrity is the art and science of coming into right relationship with Reality and supporting others in doing the same. It can be spoken of as “getting right with God,” but religious language is not necessary and may in some circles be counterproductive, given the fact that so many people still have trivial, unnatural views of the divine. (Indeed, as I suggest here, atheist scientists such as PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins are playing traditionally prophetic roles in this process when they speak on behalf of reality.) Thus, I prefer thinking of Big Integrity simply as “being in right relationship with Reality”—both objective reality: the actual, physical Universe that dozens of scientific disciplines help us understand, and subjective reality: the inner realm of meaning, values, and interpretation that has historically been the focus of religion, psychology, and spirituality.
Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.
Thomas Berry. Catholic priest, author, geologican, and one of the foremost figures in ecospirituality and evolutionary spirituality, died this morning.
This amazingly complete 47 million year old fossil was revealed to the public today. It was found in Germany in the 80s, wasy aquired by the University of Oslo two years ago, and is a link in the early evolution of primates. (See official site and BBC.)
Exploring our evolutionary past helps us understand who we are today, and this has many practical benefits. Our evolutionary story informs a wide range of fields, including medicine, sociology and psychology. And through the epic of evolution, we can find and a deep sense of connection, belonging and meaning, which in turn influences our views and actions and may even help us survive as a species.
There is also another side to our desire to fill in our past through genealogy, history, archaeology, evolutionary past, cosmology and more. We can use it to give ourselves a false sense that we understand and know who we are as a species and individuals. We can use it to get a sense of having ground under our feet, a base to stand on, stories that helps us solidify and flesh out our identities.
These stories can be used as material to solidify our identity as a species, culture and individual, and also as an object in the world - a me, a doer and an observer.
This is where inquiry can be very helpful. Do I know that any of these stories are really true? Do I know that they define who and what I really am? What happens when I take them as true? Who would I be without those stories? What are the truth in their turnarounds? (The Work.)
So while all of these stories from genealogy, history, evolution and cosmology can be very helpful in a practical sense, and may even help us survive as a species, it is good to notice how we hold these stories, what happens when take them as true, and find what is more true for us -including that we really don’t know.
A good overview on planethunting and why technological civilizations may be rare in the Universe. (One reason: They may not be very long-lived on a cosmic - or even planetary - timescale.)
The search for life in the universe is valueable in itself. At the very least, it is a reminder of how incredibly precious life and this living planet is, and it helps us (mentally) place earth and humanity in a much larger context.
(SETI is also one of many mirror for us, although what I can say about it is just the same as in other posts.)
Take a virtual nano journey by zooming down to ever smaller and smaller levels in all kinds of different environments! Just click your language, then the suitcase to start. Pictured is a mosquito on a man’s arm. I zoomed in past him down to the inside of a cell on my first trip. Link [from Neatorama]
February 12th is Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. While reflecting on the life and legacy of this great scientist and devoted husband and father, I’ve been struck by how an evolutionary understanding of the universe has, in fact, REALized my religious faith. I now enjoy all the benefits and blessings of religion from a place of knowledge rather than belief. When I look to the past, I am filled with awe and gratitude. When I look around me in the present, I feel love, compassion, and a desire to do everything I can to ensure a healthy world. And when I look to the future, including a future without me, I feel a deep and all-embracing trust…. - from a post by Michael Dowd on Darwin.
I am enjoying reading Evolutionary Times, and can highly recommend it for anyone interested in science and spirituality. Each post is a gem.
Forty years ago this Christmas, something amazing happened: we visited the Earth’s moon for the first time.
It was the first time humans saw the Earth as a blue marble floating in space, and it gave us the first photo of an Earthrise. (Here is a recent interview with the three Apollo 8 astronauts.)
For the last forty years, we have been familiar with photos of Earth from space. And also the often transformative experiences of astronauts and cosmonauts. (Especially the ones who left Earth orbit.)
It has nudged us to recognize the Earth as one whole. As a living system. And as tiny even in the context of our own small solar system.
In many ways, seeing the Earth from the outside is a recent step in our collective deprovincialization. It is an invitation for us to grow up a little more as a species and global culture.
I have read a few portions of Karen Armstrong’s The Bible so far, and found the history of Christian fundamentalism especially interesting.
(Listen to an interview and read the preface at NPR, and read an interview and review in The Guardian.)
One antidote to religious fundamentalism is knowledge of the history of our religion and its scriptures. Another important antidote is knowledge of how the faithful have viewed our religion and sacred texts through the times. Both are fluid, always changing, so why assume that the views (and versions of the scriptures) we have today is the final word or somehow privileged in terms of validity?
Why, for instance, is this early Bible so different from our contemporary versions? And isn’t it interesting that Christian fundamentalism, as we know it today, is a relatively new invention - from the 1800s?
I had forgotten and this recent photo reminded me: My name is one of a quarter of a million names on that little disc attached to the Phoenix spacecraft, now safely landed on Mars.
I have written earlier about some aspects of the bigger picture of space exploration, so I won’t repeat it here. But it does give me pleasure to think that if there are future colonies of martians (humans), this little disc and its content will be displayed at their museum.
Seen in the context of Earth reproducing itself - through humans and terraforming - that disc represents the contemplation of reproduction, and the first steps of the foreplay.
I watched the BBC fictional documentary Voyage to the Planets which reminded me of the bigger picture of space exploration.
It helps us see our planet from the outside, as a whole, as one ecological and social system, as the larger body for each one of us and humanity as a whole. It helps shift our awareness into a global sense of us, realizing that what we do to the larger whole is what we do to ourselves.
Us is no longer a group of humanity, or even the whole of humanity. It is the earth as a whole, with its complex ecological systems, species and individuals. In this sense, space exploration is one of the ways the earth brings itself as a whole, as one living system, into awareness.
Space exploration is also, in a quite literal way, how the universe explores itself. As Carl Sagan once said, we are the local eyes, ears, feelings and thoughts of the universe. And space exploration is one of the ways this universe, through humans, brings more of itself into awareness.
Space exploration is the first step in the Earth, as a living system, reproducing itself. It is the beginning of the birth of new living planets in our solar system, through terraforming of dead ones.
Space exploration is also the beginning of humanity as a multi-planet species, which is of benefit to our long term survival and would help this particular sense and awareness organ of the universe to hang around and evolve a little bit longer.
Although the episodes didn’t explicitly bring in this context, I thought the episodes were very well made. It made a possible future manned mission to several planets in the solar system seem sexy, gritty and real.
So why not do something similar with a sustainable, or thrivable, future? It could be a glimpse into a society where those forming it act from a global and ecological sense of us, in a very practical and real way.
It could be a society where what is easy to do, individually and collectively, is also what benefits the larger ecological and social whole. Shifting taxes away from work, and to what does not support the larger social and ecological whole, is a good start.
It could be a society where buildings and factories clean the air and water that goes through them, and produce food of its waste products. Where energy is produced cleanly and locally. Where communities are organized around humans and basic human needs, not around cars.
This is not an utopia. There are already many examples of each of these, and they could serve as models and be extended upon for such a documentary, serving as a guide for choices we make today, and making such a future a little more real for us.
I was reminded of this part of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series yesterday, after Michael Dowd’s talk.
And we, we who embody the local eyes, and ears, and thoughts, and feelings of the cosmos — we’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins. Star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of 10 billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter — tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and, perhaps, throughout the cosmos.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
This made a huge impact on me when I saw the series as a kid, and it was a seed of a deep shift in my orientation to life.
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow are back in Oregon, giving a string of presentations in early April.
They will be in Roseburg April 9, Eugene April 10, Portland April 12 and 13, and Salem on the 16th.
If you happen to live around here, it is well worth attending. They are both amazing speakers in the area of evolution and spirituality, and Michael often uses the aqal framework to organize his presentations.
As soon as we take ourselves to be an object in the world, there is an impulse to feel connected, to find that wholeness we feel - and rightly so - is missing.
One of the ways to find this sense of connection is through the Universe Story, with all its minor stories woven in at different size levels (holons in a holarchy) and areas of life. The history of the universe is our history. We are made up star stuff. All life on earth shares the same basic building blocks. We share the same ancestors. We are the ways the universe touches, sees, tastes, knows itself.
It is beautiful, poetic, scientific, aligned very much with spirituality (at least certain forms of it), and gives a deep sense of connection, belonging, shared existence, and meaning.
It also widens our circle of care, compassion and concern, our circle of us. If this human self is a local expression of this universe and its evolution, and the earth and its evolution, what can I leave out of my sense of us? There is really nothing that can be left out.
The more we learn about these connections, the deeper we can feel it. And one way we can learn about it is to read books like Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. (On my reading list.)
I have been pretty sick this morning, with not much energy for anything deep, so I decided to do the movie equivalent of comfort food, which meant watching an episode of Cosmos.
Up until my mid-twenties, when I got a crash course in the topic, I was somewhat of a mood junkie. I was hooked on the sense of magic, awe, wonder, beauty, love created in me through books, movies, music, art, theater, the Universe Story, conversations with friends about the big questions, being in love, having picnics in beautiful places, imagining my life in the future.
(Although I can’t help thinking that they could have done more out of it, maybe emphasizing how the universe has reorganized itself in all these ways including now through/as humans and human civilization, culture and technology.)
