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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts:
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This post #103 is about an especially significant book.
If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com
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Some thoughts I wrote out in July
'04 for a friend; a review of Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind, by Peter Corning ISBN:
0521825474 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
As I’ve
already said, this is the most interesting book about the evolutionary
worldview I’ve seen since I first read Teilhard’s Phenomenon Of Man forty years ago. Corning calls
synergy “magic,” and if “the working together of things to produce results
otherwise not possible” isn’t magic, I don’t know what is. The cooperative
relationship between things, or more correctly, the creative results produced
by such cooperation, is what makes evolution happen: “The synergies produced at
one level become the building blocks for the next level.”
It seems
to me that the very appearance in our time of the idea of synergy is itself an
example of synergy. Such a concept isn’t even possible in a static worldview.
We are, indeed, in the midst of an “immense transition.”
Perhaps
the most fascinating thing about the awareness of synergy is that it is also,
among many other things, the discovery of creativity. In the evolutionary
process, the new forms that emerge were previously unpredictable, so that, as
Corning says, “the whole process of cosmic evolution is profoundly creative.”
In a static perspective, we were able to use the passive tense to say that the
world “was created.” But then we came to see that creation “is still going on.”
And with an understanding of synergy as a central aspect of the evolutionary
process, we can now say something even more significant: the world itself is
creative.
We’ve
come a long way from saying creation “happened six thousand years ago.” But
there’s still more to this synergy perspective. Not only is creation creative,
we now see ourselves as the central agents of that creative process. Human
persons have a major role in the cosmic process of things “working together to
produce results otherwise not possible.”
If the
transition from static to dynamic cosmos is a great challenge to many, the
transition from what Bruno calls the “suppression of the image of person” to
seeing that image located at the very heart of the evolving universe is far
more challenging.
The
British scholar (and now-retired Orthodox bishop Kallistos of Patmos), Timothy
Ware, said in a talk at Princeton a few years that the great task of the 21st
century is that we should finally come to an adequate understanding of
‘person.’ The synergy-perspective helps tremendously. It sees persons called
both to their individual uniqueness and to communion with others. And called to
bring about-- precisely via those cooperative relationships-- new things at new
levels of complexity.
What a
contrast from “the suppression of the image of the person” that prevailed
through most of the history of Western culture.
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Corning
asks at some point, “If synergy is everywhere, why are we not more aware of
it?” His response is that “it seems to have to do with the way our minds work.”
We can perceive parts or wholes fairly easily, he says, but not the
relationships between the parts.
To put it
in Jungian terms: the Sensation function allows us to perceive parts and the
Intuitive function lets us perceive wholes, but our consciousness apparently
does not operate in such a way that we can directly perceive relationships.
Certainly the Feeling function focuses on relationships, but it’s an evaluative
activity: we don’t so much “perceive” as judge relationships (in terms of
whether or not they are agreeable to us). In dealing with the relationship of
parts to wholes, it looks like conscious awareness “skips a step.”
That
thought got me wondering whether something similar might also be true about the
Thinking function. Do we skip a step there, too? I think we do. What the
Thinking function evaluates seems to be the agreeability of words (spoken or
visual) with data (facts). If that’s so, it explains why there can be many
different versions of what’s considered to be the truth about something. It
looks like we don’t directly “perceive” thoughts (and their verbal expression)
any more than we directly perceive relationships.
Most of
us readily accept that “we can not dispute taste.” But we are very far from
accepting that, similarly, we can’t dispute what people hold to be true,
either. If nothing else, this perspective lets us see why pluralism is an
acceptable, and indeed necessary, contemporary attitude. De veritas, non
disputandum.
In any
case, so what if we can see parts and wholes but not relationships? From an
evolutionary perspective, the Thinking and Feeling functions of consciousness
are thought to be later developments than Sensation and Intuition (which
functions it’s understood we share with pre-human animals). With the emergence
of the synergy perspectives, we would seem to be not only witnessing first
hand, but indeed experiencing within ourselves, a newly emerging aspect of
consciousness. I.e., We have first hand experiential evidence of the evolution
of consciousness.
My point
is that whether my thoughts about the Thinking function are right or not, the
emphasis of synergy on cooperative relationships seems to be, in itself, a
further evolution of human awareness. And, in this sense, consciousness of
synergy really is a very big step away from the rationalism of the patriarchal
worldview, which so neglects (and indeed suppresses) of the Feeling function.
We not
only can know by inner experience that the universe is evolving but also that,
as personal centers of consciousness, we humans are at the creative heart of
it. The book by Mary Coelho, Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood, is precisely about this dawning
emergence of our understanding of the central place of ‘person’ in cosmic
evolution. We are well on our way to fulfilling the task Bishop Kallistos
spelled out so clearly.
===
The
immense transition also has a third important aspect. It’s not only movement
from a static to a dynamic cosmos and from the suppression of the image of
person to recognition of our central participatory role in the cosmic process.
The immense transition also includes movement from a dualistic understanding of
God to a non-dual or unitive sense of the divine mystery.
When
Corning says synergy is “a fundamental property of the universe and of human
societies” [italics added], it’s clear that he intends no dualism between
nature and culture: the synergy perspective moves us well beyond the
patriarchal alienation of anthropos from cosmos. And it is equally clear, when
Corning makes the point that synergy is the creative source of the world’s
evolution, that it sees no dualism between the creative mystery we call theos
and the manifest world of anthropos at the heart of cosmos.
Synergy
offers us a worldview that is just the opposite of patriarchal dualism. Corning
describes synergy as “the wellspring of creativity which makes evolution
happen.” In older (if, alas, still unfamiliar) language, that same thought
would sound something like, “Synergy is the manifestation of eternal wisdom.”
Synergy is nothing less than the inner wisdom of God, the divine Sophia,
manifesting in the workings of the universe. The early 20th century Russian
Sophiologist, Sergius Bulgakov, even uses the same word, synergy, when he talks
about the results of what he calls Bogochelovechestvo, the cooperative inter-action of
the world and God.
A
fascinating aspect of Corning’s book is its emphasis on economics (“in a broad
sense,” as he says) with regard to how the world works, and Bulgakov began his
career as an economist.
Corning’s
economic perspective is that the “payoff” of synergy at the biological and
anthropological level is “simply” those results which contribute to life’s
on-going survival and reproduction. This is a radical change from the
patriarchal perspective. It puts fairness and cooperation, rather than
competition and violence, at the center of human life and cultural evolution.
It’s no small thing to recognize that what causes evolution to happen on the
biological level is “simply” life itself working at keeping itself going. It’s
even more significant to see that this understanding of synergy-- as yielding
an economic payoff-- is valid at the cultural level as well.
Life
makes use of the helpful new things that result when at one level things join
together to become parts of a more complex new thing at the next level. And
what promotes the on-going survival of human life is nothing other than
cooperation. What a positive outlook! And, in our troubled times, what an
extremely hopeful one! As I mentioned in the review, the synergy perspective
provides us with a straightforward ethics and morality, a way to be human based
on the clearly observable fact that what succeeds is cooperation: on how the
universe works.
So, here
we have a “rationally-based norm for human life in an evolutionary world:
cooperation rather than competition, creativity rather than conventionality, awe
and wonder rather than dullness and boredom.” But also-- and especially-- a
non-dualistic and participatory (person-centered) understanding of the workings
of the world. This is realistic and down-to-earth view couldn’t be more
different from those of competition and alienation on which patriarchy is
based.
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I have a
half-dozen or so other thoughts about Nature’s Magic which I need to mention. I
don’t know how to put them into any meaningful sequence.
1. While
it results from the serious study of the scientific worldview of the last few
centuries, the synergy perspective would seem to be a validation of the
intuitive wisdom of Israel and early Christianity (and also of India). The
emergence of the synergy perspective is the beginnings of a rational
understanding, from the “science of history,” of the intuitions of those
ancient cultures about “how the world works.” That’s real progress.
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2. The
whole idea of creativity is much clearer from the synergy perspective. We
humans create, in a literal sense. By our cooperative interaction with others,
increased complexity allows newness to emerge.
At its
deepest level, this creative newness seems to me to be what Meister Eckhart
meant when he talked about “releasement” (sometimes translated as “waiting”).
Eckhart’s understanding seems to be an intuitive sense of the synergy process
precisely in its aspect of allowing newness to emerge via the cooperative
synergy of anthropos and theos.
To put it
in obviously inadequate language, our cooperative inter-action with God (via
Eckhart’s “waiting”) allows what’s in the divine unconscious to seep out (leak
out, be released) into the world.
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3. With
regard specifically to Christianity, the evolutionary-synergy perspective
allows us a deeper understanding of traditional ecclesiology and eschatology.
If synergy is the creative source of the dynamic evolutionary universe, and if
the relationships between things is that out of which newness emerges, then
relationship is the very essence of cosmic creativity: the world creates
itself, precisely by forming relationships. If human persons are that world
become conscious of itself and, now, with the synergy perspective, we see
ourselves as the world become conscious of itself as self-creative, then
ecclesia would seem to be a name for that segment of humanity that is aware of
humanity’s central self-creative role in the cosmos.
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4. The
evolutionary-synergy perspective also opens up once again the long-neglected
area of eschatology. Thomas Berry names the ultimate goals of the universe to
be “differentiation, subjectivity and communion.”
In
response to a question about these abstract terms, Brian Swimme said once in a
note that the ideas are Teilhard’s, although the terms themselves are Berry’s.
The synergy perspective offers us a much less abstract but still conceptual
expression of the ultimate eschaton: something like “the on-going cooperative
relationships between (uniquely differentiated) persons.” Swimme expands on
Berry’s terms nicely: “the fullness of differentiation, the deepest
subjectivity and the most intimate communion.” Personally, I like Bruno’s
Teilhardian phrase even better, “eucharistic omega.” But, in any case, being
able to talk about the eschaton in terms of creative personal relationships in
an evolutionary cosmos is a delight. And it makes clear, as nothing else I know
does, the traditional understanding of the ecclesia as already the beginnings
of the eschaton.
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5. Thomas
Berry repeatedly describes patriarchal culture as being under a spell with
regard to its alienation from the natural world. One of the best things about
Corning’s work is that it makes clear how we can break the spell. The means by
which we can step out of the patriarchal prison is nothing other than our awe
and wonder at synergy’s magic. We need only look and see the real world as it
is, see that we are active participants in the creative evolutionary process,
to replace patriarchal dualism’s feelings of anger and rage at not being wanted
by Mother Earth.
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6.
Personally, it’s a delight for me to realize that helping others experience
that awe and wonder at the natural world is the essential task of the shamanic
personality. I find the understanding of complexity and synergy to be a
profoundly liberating and validating affirmation of my life-long focus on both
science (nature, evolution) and religion (spirituality, shamanism).
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7.
Finally, a thought that keeps impinging on me is that while the focus on cosmic
evolution is a tremendous breakthrough for human culture, these synergy
perspectives of the New Cosmology need artistic expression. Science education
is obviously essential; so is a serious understanding of the nature of
religious ritual (although that would seem to be still a long time coming). But
the invitation to awe and wonder seems to require something else, something
“earlier” or prior to such things. I’m thinking especially in terms of fiction.
Since I retired, I’ve been reading several contemporary works of fiction
weekly; that’s hundreds of books in the last four years. Not once did I ever
see a reference to humanity’s creative role in cosmic evolution. I wish I could
write a novel.
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