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Countless Are the Paths to In-The-Moment Sustainable Living
Sustainable Living Through Art and Music
What is it that the very best of modern science, and specifically from the new breakthrough discipline, the science of complexity, teach us about sustainable living. Ironically, if we don't begin putting art, music, and loving human relations before all else in life, we won't be able to continue for much longer as a species.
Why? Because, like known examples of long-term health - or sustainable development - throughout the greater cosmos-bios, these are the parts of life that emerge spontaneously, naturally, and effortlessly from within. That's right. In the same way that the emergence of all that is long term healthy or sustainable, from quarks to atoms to molecules to cells to complex organisms to entire ecosystems to planetary systems to solar systems to galaxies to the universe as a whole, all that is long-term healthy comes, just like art, music, and loving relations, comes spontaneously, naturally, and effortlessly from within.
In sharp contrast, in our modern world we have come to place a greater emphasis on relying on civilizations sacred trinity of 'knowledge, science, and technology' to gain ever greater 'top-down' control over nature, and as a result, or destiny. By no means is 'control,' in and of itself, a negative when it comes to long-term developmental health. As we all know where we would all be this very minute if it weren't for the controlling influence of gravity - floating around aimlessly out in outer space somewhere.
However, and how wonderful it is, that the message that is coming most loudly to us from the cutting edge advances of knowledge, science, and technology is that 'too much' control, 'too much' manipulation, 'too much' domination of nature is where the problem lies. We need look no further than the behavior of the inner cores of 'black holes' and their lightweight cousins, neutron stars, to know the folly of emphasizing 'too much' control for 'too long.'
How Can Any of Us Put All Our Trust What Seems Like Such a Radical Idea?
How can we be sure that excessive control is potentially as much a problem for us as it is for 'evolutionary endpoints' like black holes and neutron stars? For three reasons. First, in 13.7 billion years for the greater universe, and for 4 billion years for life on earth, hundreds of years of research by the best scientists in the world have yet to identify a single example of a long-term successful anything anywhere that is more 'top-down' controlling than from with cooperating.
Second, by drawing upon the mathematical modeling of complexity scientist Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, specifically his developmental work on the Feigenbaum Constants, to understand theoretically the existence of a link between the ratio of 'from withinemergence' and 'top-down control or order' and long-term developmental health.
Finally, we need look no further than our own state of affairs in the world. That is, the greater our emphasis has been on relying on civilization's sacred trinity of knowledge, science, and technology to control and direct our future, the more destructive we have become as a species, progressively eroding as a result the life-supporting capacities of planet earth. Indeed, one quick glance at the growing litany of crisis now threatening our continuing well being as a species, to include runaway greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, massive habitat destruction and species extinctions, nuclear proliferation and international terrorism, economic instability and infrastructure vulnerability, and endemic poverty and the resurgence of global pandemics, to know that in terms of our and our planet's long-term health and well-being, things are getting worse, not better.
When combined, these three - the absence of even a single 'control > cooperation' example of long-term success, a theoretical underpinning in the form of a mathematical proof, and progressively deteriorating conditions in so many areas of modern life - make a very powerful statement that make an overwhelming strong statement that, in the least, we need to start questioning the long-term viability of our over emphasis on top-down control of inner and outer nature over from within cooperation with it; and consequently, the need to start questioning our placing greater emphasis on knowledge, science, and technology, and as a result, upon the outward or material things of life they have prove so effective at increasing in our lives.
Partnership With Earth Foundation's Wiki Website
For those who already feel in their souls that the from within - the art, music, love, spirit, and wisdom - ways of life are of a greater importance to our overall health and well-being as a species than the outward, or top-down controlling ways, then this wiki website has been created specifically for you as a way of connecting with and creating with other like-minded hearts and souls from around the world. As we already know well, wikis can serve as powerful means for connecting souls the world over in spontaneous, natural, and effortless from within creative activities.
The Partnership With Earth Foundation wiki website has come to serve as a clarion call to all who car deeply about making a difference, about contributing more to the health and well-being of all life on earth that we take away from it, to begin to make the necessary changes in their lives so that art, music, and loving relations
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Re: 'Trickle-Up' Art before 'Trickle-Down' Science - On Exploring the Potential Role of Global Philanthropy's in Emulating Nature's Only Known Approach to Sustainable Development
In brief, like all known examples of sustainable development in nature, artistic expression is a from within or 'trickle-up' - or thus inherently regenerative - process. In contrast, civilization's developmental sacred trinity - knowledge, science, and technology - appear share far more in common with the inherently reductive phenomena that give rise to 'black holes,' their lightweight cousins, neutron stars, and species in the process of driving their way toward extinction. Consequently, as explored below, one has to wonder if many of the intractable problems that now plague our modern world, to include runaway greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, massive habitat destruction and species extinctions, nuclear proliferation and international terrorism, economic instability and infrastructure vulnerability, and endemic poverty and the resurgence of global pandemics, are but the outward symptoms of our having abandoned long ago the universe's only known approach to sustainable development. And, if true, an equally important question, is there anything that can be done to reverse course before it is too late? And finally, what is the potential role of global philanthropy in restoring These are three topics to be explored in an international symposium
Discussion
Anyone caught up in an artistic or creative act will find themselves intimately familiar with the process of trickle-up development. Carried away in the flow, one of the experience's more remarkable aspects is how entirely natural, spontaneous, and effortless it all seems. However, by expanding our horizons just a bit, we can see that there is really no reason for us to be so surprised. It is, after all, essentially the same natural, spontaneous, and effortless - or trickle-up - way that all in the greater universe and among the balance of life on earth sustain their existence.
What should come as somewhat of a surprise, however, is how hard we in the civilized world have as of late been trying to use civilization's sacred trinity - its knowledge, science, and technology - to 'top-down,' or 'trickle-down,' control our way to a sustainable future. Indeed, if we were to be successful, it seems that it would be the first time in 13.7 billion years for the greater universe, and 4 billion years for life here on earth, that a primarily trickle-down approach has contributed directly to sustaining anything. Or at least contributed directly to long-term developmental health of anything that that modern science has been able to identify. Given our current levels of commitment to increasingly 'trickle-down' everything, this may prove to be no small concern for us.
On the whole, the the 'trickle-up sustainable development' process actually appears to be not only blantantly obvious, but incredibly simple. However, and in the same way that it is possible that fish have yet to discover water, all of our major efforts at sustainable development appear to be overlooking its most essential ingredient - emergent, or from within, or, if you will, 'trickle-up' cooperation.
Why Art Contributes to Sustainable Development,
While an Excessive Reliance on Knowledge, Science, and Technology Erodes It
Knowledge, Science, and technology, civilization's developmental sacred trinity, rely primarily on gaining greater top-down or 'trickle-down' control over our deepest inner nature, the life force within, and the natural world around us. In contrast, all known expressions of sustainable development throughout the greater cosmos and amongst the balance of life on earth rely primarily on using from within or 'trickle-up' cooperation. Whereas civilization's developmental approach is more reductive than regenerative, and thus tends to be more predictive and prescriptive, and therefore causal; nature's and human artistic expression is more regenerative than reductive, and is consequently more nonpredictive and nonprescriptive, and therefore emergent. As a result, the long-term effect of civilization's preferred approach is to emphasize developmental diversification to the extent that it erodes long-term sustainability, and the long-term effect of nature's is that the lesser emphasis on developmental diversification tends complement or enhance sustainability.
Evidence for the former can also be seen in supernovas, where increasing degrees of reductivity initially give rise to tremendous diversification in the creation of heavy elements, until the reductivity eventually becomes so great that all development ceases with the creation of cosmic evolutionary endpoint such as a 'black hole' or a neutron star. Instead of relying on gravity as the primary controlling factor, human civilization now appears well along in a parallel - more-reductive-than-regenerative - process where we are using the controlling abilities of knowledge, science, and technology to give rise to increasingly breathtaking degrees of diversity of nearly every kind imaginable, but in the process risk the inertia of the resulting exponentially expanding reductivity to pull the civilized cores of into biological evolutionary endpoints. Although the actual mechanisms are very different, reductively controlling gravity versus reductively controlling knowledge, science, and technology, from a sustainable development perspective, a close examination reveals that the eventual outcomes for the central cores of both to be highly similar.
Accordingly, what we can expect here on earth is that, like with 'black holes' and neutron stars, once the point of no return threshold has been reached, the world's civilized centers (knowledge, science, technology, and population cores) will begin imploding, resulting in catastrophic failures of the interlinked global socioeconomic infrastructure, along with corresponding massive reductions in the world's human population. In contrast, those in the peripheral areas, especially those who still know how to grow their own food and provide for themselves off of the land, will be ideally poised to glean from the more beneficial aspects of civilizations, the seeds for an entirely new - nature emulating, this long-term healthy - way of being human on planet earth. And hopefully, the one overarching bit of wisdom they will have learned as they go forward is to consciously limit or restrict the amount of time and energy given to inherently reductive phenomena, thus allowing for a healthy measure of inherently regenerative phenomena to naturally, effortlessly, and spontaneously express itself.
Another scenario that might yet unfold, providing civilization's core areas are not already long-past the point-of-no-return threshold, or are carrying so much inertia in that direction as to make getting carried over that threshold inevitable, is for essentially everyone to begin limiting how much of their days is consumed by the inherently reductive. Consequently, the less time, energy, and money that are so consumed, the more that will be freed up, and thus subsequently available to impulses from the inherently regenerative. Given the emergent, or nonpredictive, nonprescriptive ways of the inherently regenerative, it is somewhat doubtful that we could consciously intend, direct, plan, design, manage, or program more long-term healthy ways.
Some of the more challenging issues complicating the long-term prospects of either of the above two scenarios is the ubiquity of:
1. The belief in many of the world's religions of the existence of a top-down or trickle-down, and thus inherently reductive creator deity. 2. The belief in essentially all religions that inherently reductive 'ultimate realities' supersede the eternal developing dynamics of the greater cosmos-bios (as in the West where nature is seen as 'inherently inadequate, evil, or sinful," and personal salvation can only be achieved by escaping into the perfection of god, heaven, or paradise; and for the East, "all life is suffering," and that escape can only be achieved by escaping to the perfection of nirvana, enlightenment, or never being reborn). 5. The belief that the universe is inherently entropic rather inherently syntropic. 6. A neurological hard wiring in the literate that skews cognitive processes in favor of the inherently reductive predictive ad prescriptive predictive, and away from the inherently regenerative and sustaining nonpredictive and nonprescriptive. 7. The existence of a deeply entrenched or embedded global educational, economic, political, medical, technological and human built infrastructure that encourages and supports lifestyles favoring more trickle-down reductive than trickle-up regenerative human behavior and activities.
Or for a third scenario, if modern science could yet identify even one other phenomena anywhere in the greater universe or amongst the balance of life on earth where - over the long term - the trickle-down or reductive aspects are of a greater measure than the trickle-up or regenerative aspects, then civilization's current approach might have at least a fighting chance. That is, providing the In the absence of such a discovery, especially after several hundred years of very active research in exploring essentially every nook and cranny of the universe imaginable to apparently no avail, it must be assumed that the 'trickle-up regenerative > trickle-down reductive' approach is in fact a universal law of sustainable development. Consequently, should the greater masses of modern humanity aspire to continue on for very much longer, it will be in everyone's best interest to begin modifying there ways accordingly.
In the same way that it is because of inherent nature to do so, a child's rubber ducky will pop back up to float sustainably again on the surface of the water the instant it is released, it is out of our inherent nature to do, that as soon as we start to reduce the extent and the degree of our inherently reductive ways that we as a species will 'pop right back up' to live in sustainable harmony with world of nature, and upon which we are at every instant entirely dependent for our long-term success as a species.
Every example of long-term healthy development discovered so far is the outcome of a tickle-up or emergent process. From the beginning it was by cooperating together that quarks developed or trickled-up to give rise to atoms, then cooperating atoms in-turn trickled-up to give rise to molecules, and so on, the process continued on through cells, organisms of cascading complexity, entire ecosystems, and culminating in the biosphere here on earth. And similar emergent processes can be seen at work within and among the planets, stars, and galaxies giving rise to the heavens above. It is here important to note that for 13.7 billion years and 4 billion years - respectively - for the greater universe and amongst life on earth, modern science has yet to identify any 'long-term-healthy' exceptions.
This is not to say that trickle-down phenomena don't exist. Three of the most widely recognized are 'black holes,' their lightweight cousins, neutron stars, and human civilization. However, in contrast to the above, the first two are now widely recognized as evolutionary endpoints, and the third has been behaving increasingly like one starting from its earliest beginnings. And in contrast to cooperatively interacting so as to trickle up, all three emphasize exercising increasingly greater top-down or trickle-down 'control.'
Given the potentially urgent nature of the issues outlined above, I invite the MacArthur Foundation to consider joining with the Partnership With Earth Foundation in co-sponsoring a series international symposiums on global philanthropy's potential role of global in assisting modern humanity emulate nature's inherently regenerative, trickle-up, approach to sustainable development. For additional information I can be contacted via email at lance@partnershipwithearth.org.
Like the universe, Art is
And because all sustainable living is in each and every moment . . . .
Yes You Can!
Investing in the long-term health and well-being of all life on earth.
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