August 8, 2019 – The Material Ground of Happiness

4 Replies

Today’s Post

Last week we continued our exploration of the ‘middle ground’ of the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the efforts of science and religion overlap as they continue to address human life. We saw how the aspect of ‘happiness’ in the human person, while much to be desired, is both difficult to quantify, and if common belief would have it, difficult to attain.

This week we will take a closer look at this slippery subject, to see if Teilhard’s hermeneutic of placing a subject in the context of universal evolution will help us to see it more clearly.

What Is Happiness

The long string of human thinking in our literature, philosophy and religions presents us with a wide spectrum of stances that we can take in response to Shakespeare’s “slings and outrages” as inflicted by life. At one end of this wide spectrum lies simple acceptance of endless rounds of ‘fate’ and ‘fortune’, as the Easterners would have it.   At the far other end the ‘joyous embrace’ of cycles, which may well recur, but also rise over time, as envisioned in the West . Not surprisingly, most of us (and our literature, philosophy and religion) occupy the terrain closer to the center. Most approaches to happiness contain both some level of acceptance of those things over which we have no power mixed with some level of confidence that whatever our lot, it is capable of some improvement.

Happiness, to some extent, is the name we apply to the degree of acceptance with which we respond to these cycles.

Thus, happiness is difficult to pin down. Circumstances which might depress one person might be shrugged off by another. Personal welfare that might cause satisfaction in one might not be enough to satisfy others. Our news is filled daily with stories of people unconsoled by their good fortune, as well as those that manage some degree of life satisfaction without significant material welfare.

Where do we get the information that underpins these stories? The answer is that states of happiness are reported by those who experience them. Their subjective stories are reported, with no small measure of bias on the part of the reporter, and interpreted according to the mindset of the receiver.

In other words, not only is the concept of happiness slippery, its basis in reality is highly subjective.

Still, the search for its dimensions continue. Psychologists conduct surveys, biologists explore chemicals, and religionists look to faith. Does this level of contradictory activities mean that there’s nothing that can be said? Let’s look at a few aspects:

  • Surveys: For decades, psychologists have been searching for a process of conducting surveys free of cultural, economic, religious and racial bias. Not only do the continuing waves of surveys show a wider range of reported states of happiness than statistics suggest, but many of them are contradictory.
  • Biology: Many biologists suggest that happiness results directly from our chemistry. They state that chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin are direct causes of the sensation of happiness, and minimize those things that lead to their secretion in the brain. Thus, in the ‘nature vs nurture’ spectrum, in their view, nurture doesn’t have a chance.
  • Genetics: All of us know persons who are generally cheerful, even under difficult circumstances. We also know those whose glass is always ‘half empty’. From this view, we are all predisposed towards some level of happiness or unhappiness.
  • Religion: The religions of the world all aim at some level of accommodation with reality, from (as above) acceptance to embrace. Their hermeneutics and practices are clearly myriad, and often very contradictory.

For all this, science doesn’t have a good handle on happiness, contentment, or any of the ‘states’ of well-being.

A more subtle approach to happiness falls into the realm of relative measures. For example, if a very poor person comes into a large sum of money, the impact on their happiness is directly related to the improvement in their situation. They can be safely said to have increased the level of their happiness by a large amount.

For a rich person, even a large amount of money will not have anywhere near the impact as did the poor person. In the case of the person less well off, the impact will likely be longer lasting, as the money can also be put to use in caring for family and assuring a comfortable future. In the other case, the money will most likely not affect the person’s well-being, much less that of his family.

A curious take on this subject involves generally happy people who are nonetheless report that they are unhappy, a phenomenon which is relatively new in human evolution. This ‘dualism’ occurs when individuals are relatively well-off and well-educated, known as ‘the middle class’. As referred to in a recent article (July 11) of the Economist, this ‘satisfaction paradox’ can be seen when seemingly contented people vote for angry political parties.

This paradox can be seen in the dissociation between longtime political partners: personal well-being and incumbent political parties. As the Economist relates, the common election of an incumbent party has historically been the result of a general feeling of ‘well off’ among the population.   Today, we are seeing a surge in angry ‘Populist’ and ‘Nationalist’ parties elected by populations who consider themselves as ‘well off’.

The Economist traces one possible cause of this phenomena, prevalent in the ‘developed’ world, as the result of aging populations. Certainly, this demographic feels uncomfortable being caught up in rapid changes. As an example, many of us ‘old folks’ were taught, as we taught our children, how to use a dial phone. This same group, in many cases, are being taught how to use ‘smartphones’ by their grandchildren.

The reliance on ‘habit’, those learned since birth to enable us to smoothly function, is becoming a liability, as the necessity for a rapid learning curve seems to be more prevalent. The ‘fruits of our labor’, pensions, investments and assets built up over a lifetime of cultivating productive ‘habits’, may well have provided us with much quality of life, but do not necessarily constitute a comfortable intellectual nest for today’s turbuolence.

This certainly leads to an increase of indignation, a level of personal life satisfaction which is nonetheless deeply critical of others. We have seen how indignation can induce pleasant feelings, but this phenomenon also brings us back to the insights of Yuval concerning the ‘fit’ between the human person and his environment.

Consciousness aware of itself speeds up evolution in an environment highly subject to our influence. This ‘upset,’ not unlike weather (static air mass becomes unstable, leading to the emergence of patterns: a complexification/change to a new organization with new attributes).   Can the tension between a changing environment caused by humans who themselves are rapidly changing have such a future? Is it possible that the process of harmony-disharmony-change of state that we see today result in a new harmony?

And, on top of this, what is the forecast for a level of accommodation, even happiness, for the human person caught up in such a dynamic mileu?

If Teilhard understood it correctly, and the energy by which human persons unite is no more (but no less, as he would say) than the current manifestation of the fourteen billion year upwelling of the cosmos, then how can we not recognize the potential for fulfillment, both at the personal and the level of society?

More specific to the topic of happiness, how can Teilhard’s perspective be applied to each of us?

The Next Post

This week saw a broad overview of the subject of ‘happiness’, its vagueness, and began to place it in Teilhard’s context of universal evolution. If the energy of increasing complexity and emerging consciousness can be seen in human relationships (love, in its most universal appearance) and consciousness aware of itself, how can we better understand how we fit into it?

Next week we will begin to explore such ‘universal accommodation’ and attempt to locate the appropriate niche for the human person is this grand process of universal evolution.

 

August 1, 2019 – Human Life: Dealing With the Pain of Convergence

2 Replies

Today’s Post

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring the ‘terrain of synergy’, the area of fruitful coherence between science and religion. In the past two weeks we have seen how Jonathan Sacks looks at this terrain from the middle ground, the terrain in which we live our daily lives.

As Sacks, Davies and Teilhard all avow, both our personal and collective evolution requires us to both better understand this phenomenon in which we are enmeshed, and our need for this understanding to guide us in cooperating with it.

This week we will take another step into looking at this phenomenon as we address it from its influence on our inner, personal life. It’s time to address the slippery phenomenon of ‘happiness’.

If We’re So Evolved, Why Ain’t We Happy?

It’s not difficult to find references to ‘existential anxiety’ in the current press. In spite of the recent increase in global human welfare reported by Johan Norberg, the persistence of pessimism and even depression among our contemporaries seems to be increasing. The causes underlying this phenomenon are certainly not clear, but the effect seems universal.

In his bestselling book, “Sapiens”. Yuval Noah Harari takes a unique position on this. He sees the cause of our ‘existential anxiety’ rooted in the speed of human evolution. In his view, the speed of our human unique evolution has a considerable impact on how we feel.

Yuval notes that, distinct from our pre-human ancestors, we have evolved much faster than our skills of accommodation with the environment could develop.

From his perspective, in the (relatively) glacial speed of pre-human evolution, species could ‘grow up’ with their environment, changing no faster than their environment changes. As a result, ‘Natural Selection’ in turn could ‘select for accommodation’, insuring that each species evolved in concert with its environment. In keeping with his Darwinist perspective, such an ‘evolutionary coherent pace’ insures not only better coherence between these ancestors and their environment but insures their ‘survival’. He cites science’s study of the past as showing ‘life cycles’ of our immediate ‘homo’ genus ancestors (egaster, rudalfensis, and others) to be in millions of years, and believes that these lengthy spans are the result of the more harmonious relationship between them and their environments. It’s not that their environments didn’t change, but rather that when they did change, such as in global warming and cooling cycles, the groups simply migrated, like the other animals, to different areas.

Yuval believes that with our subspecies, sapiens, our rapid population growth changed this dynamic, forcing the need for agriculture, with its corollaries such as towns, governments and laws, and interrupting the migratory instincts developed by Natural Selection. Thus the speedup of sapiens drove a wedge between us and our environment from which we have never recovered. We are, in effect, ‘longing for the good old days’.

In addition, he notes that humans have had a larger impact on the environment than our ancestors, and impose this impact much quicker as well. This is causing an additional disconnect as both our evolution and these environmental impacts change faster than we, as a species, can become comfortable with it.

Harari goes to great length in his book to call out the significant disconnect between humans and their environment, identifying the point in our history which occurred with the ‘Agricultural Revolution’, in which humans ceased to be nomadic and became sedentary, as a pivot point in human evolution. Prior to this point, while the human evolutionary ‘rate’ was slower, its impact on the environment was much less, and as he theorizes, our ancestors were ‘happier’.
After this point, he notes the rapid rise of human population (in which humans had a more reliable food source), which had the downside of introducing a reduction in the human’s sense of ‘belonging’ to the environment. He cites many ills of post-agrarian society, such as the need for intensive, benumbing labor (to tend the fields), the crowding and ugly by-products of overpopulation in cities resulting in diseases and other ills. He sees this turning point as a ‘decision’ and a huge ‘evolutionary mistake’ resulting in what he sees as the root of widespread unease in human civilization today. In his telling, with the Agricultural Revolution, humans, enabled populations to explode, negatively affect their environment and ‘ruining’ a satisfactory accommodation between humans and their environment which persists to this day.

He sees in this an underlying paradox in human evolution. Our ability to impact our environment impedes our accommodation of it. We are more ready, he asserts, to change it rather than (as our ancestors) live with its perceived problems. Each change that we make produces yet another problem that we believe we have to fix, and so on to the present day. Each of these changes creates yet another degree of alienation from nature, and contributes to an additional degree of anxiety. He extrapolates this tendency to a future in which our negative impact on our environment, our increasing discomfort with it and the incessant necessity for new technology to ‘fix’ it, leads inevitably to a future in which we quickly become totally dependent on automation, resulting in our untimely extinction. Unlike the reign of our Homo ancestors, in the millions of years, he gives us only a few thousand or so.

This dystopian view of human evolution (not the first, as Malthus showed us) provides one answer to the question of ‘if we’re so evolved why ain’t we happy?’

So, Why Ain’t We?

Setting aside the fact that not all of us are unhappy, the issue of happiness shows a long trail of evolution in itself, and can be seen in the immense spectrum of attitudes that represents total fatalism at one end and joyful acceptance at the other.

Teilhard also saw the rise of anxiety as resulting from the rapid rise of human evolution:

“Surely the basic cause of our distress must be sought precisely in the change of curve which is suddenly obliging us to move from a universe in which the divergence, and hence the spacing out, of the containing lines still seemed the most important feature, into another type of universe which, in pace with time, is rapidly folding-in upon itself.”

   So, we are brought to the point of considering the ‘terrain of synergy’ from the perspective of human happiness as well as that of the continuation of our species. Are we, as Harari predicts, doomed to a future in which we, unlike the millions of species which preceded us, doomed to carry our increased evolution as a burden in which our survival must be paid for by our unhappiness. Is there a perspective, grounded in both material and spiritual tangibility, in which we can see our future otherwise?

In this blog we have consistently followed the thoughts of Teilhard de Chardin , supplemented by those of other writers whose vision of the future suggest the answer to this question is an unqualified ‘yes’. Admitting, however, that the general issue of human happiness is very slippery, I’d like to take a perspective on the ‘terrain of synergy’ that continues, as Jonathan Sacks has opened the door, to the ‘middle ground’ of it. Harari is certainly insightful in his look backwards in history, but does this retrospective necessarily lead to the dismal future he predicts? Turning Teilhard’s succinct perspective of evolution, “Everything which rises must converge”, might it be true that “Everything which converges must rise?”

The Next Post

This week we followed up on Jonathan Sacks insights on the middle ground of the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the different but complementary methods and insights of science and religion might overlap.   In spite of the optimistic tone of Sacks, as well as that of Teilhard and Paul Davies, we saw how Yuval Noah Harari offers a highly negative prognostication.

Next week we will continue our exploration of this ‘middle ground’ from the slippery perspective of human happiness. Not only is it difficult to quantify, but even more difficult to establish causes and effects. We will see if our long journey towards seeing the ‘Secular Side of God’ can offer any insights into seeing this phenomenon more clearly.

July 25, 2019 – Human Life: Reconnecting Our Parts to the Whole

Leave a reply

Today’s Post

Last week we moved from the ‘terrain of synthesis’, the areas potentially common to science and religion as identified by Teilhard and Paul Davies, to the ‘middle ground’ addressed by Jonathan Sacks: that occupied by the human person.

This week we will go a little deeper into exploring the potential of this ground to personal human growth.

The Road to Synthesis

Sacks moves from his review of the history between science and religion to address what he sees has resulted from the “crumbling of the arch between Jerusalem and Athens” and the need for rediscovery of the ‘terrain of synergy’.

“Bad things happen when religion ceases to hold itself answerable to empirical reality, when it creates devastation and cruelty on earth for the sake of salvation in heaven. And bad things happen when science declares itself the last word on the human condition and engages in social or bio-engineering, treating humans as objects rather than as subjects, and substitutes cause and effect for reflection, will and choice.

   Science and religion have their own logic, their own way of asking questions and searching for answers. This is not an argument for compartmentalization, seeing science and religion as did (Stephen Jay) Gould as ‘non overlapping magisteria’, two entirely separate worlds. They do indeed overlap because they are about the same world within which we live, breathe and have our being. It is instead an argument for conversation, hopefully even integration. Religion needs science because we cannot (find God) in the world if we do not understand the world. If we try to, the result will be magic or misplaced supernaturalism.”

   He goes on to echo Davies’ observation that science, as it does not address the phenomenon of rising complexity in the universe, is poorly equipped to include the human person in its deliberation.

“By the same token, science needs religion, or at the very least some philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe, for each fresh item of knowledge and each new accession of power raises the question of how it should be used, and for that we need another way of thinking.”

   He offers an articulation of the “Terrain of Synergy” that we addressed last week.

“It is precisely the space between the world that is and the world that ought to be that is, or should be, the arena of conversation between science and religion, and each should be open to the perceptions of the other. The question is neither, “Does Darwinism refute religion?” nor, “Does religion refute Darwinism”? Rather: “How does each shed light on the other, and “What new insights does Darwinism offer religion?”, and “What insights does religion offer to Darwinism?”

   Recognizing the “Terrain of Synergy” is much more than a philosophical goal. While it is a worthy objective to better understand where we fit into the ‘scheme of things’, we are still faced with the need to unpack this understanding into a way of personal life in which

“(in general) religion and science, far from being opposed, are on the same side of the table, using their distinctive methods to help us better understand humanity, nature, and our place in the scheme of things.”

   Reflecting Thomas Jefferson’s reinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching (Part 1 of “So Who And What Was Jesus’), he goes on to say

“Outside religion there is no secure alternative base for the unconditional source of worth that in the West has come from the idea that we are each in God’s image. Though many have tried to create a secular substitute, none has ultimately succeeded. This has been demonstrated four times in the modern world when an attempt was made to create a social order on secular lines: The French Revolution, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Communist China. When there is a bonfire of the sanctities, lives are lost.

   Science cannot locate freedom, because the word is one of causal relationships. A scientific law is one that links one physical phenomenon to another without the intervention of will and choice. To the extent that there is a science of human behavior, to that extent there is an implicit denial of the freedom of human behavior. That is precisely what Spinoza, Marx and Freud were arguing, that freedom is an illusion. But if freedom is an illusion, then so is human dignity.”

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the different but complementary methods and insights of science and religion might overlap.   Three weeks ago we looked at how Paul Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, and this week and the last we saw how Jonathan Sacks looked at it from the perspective of the ‘center’ of this terrain, which is where most of us live our daily lives.

Next week we will build upon Sack’s insights, much closer to home, to look at how this movement toward ‘synergy’ between such things as left-right brain thinking, science-religion coherence and general overcoming of daily ‘dualisms’ can lead to what Richard Rohr refers to as “whatever reconnects (re-religio) our parts to the whole”.

July 18, 2019 – Science, Religion, Synergy and Human Life

Leave a reply

Today’s Post

Last week we looked at, in some detail, how the perspectives and insights of Paul Davies and Teilhard offer the concept of a ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the underlying basis of universal evolution, increasing complexity, can be examined as Teilhard states, by “assailing the real from different angles and on different planes”.

This week we will address this terrain from the insights of Jonathan Sacks, Former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the United Kingdom, who views this from the middle ground.

The Human Person’s Need for Balance

Sacks locate the center point of this ‘terrain of synergy’ in the phenomenon of the human person:

“It is not incidental that Homo sapiens has been gifted with a bicameral brain that allows us to experience the world in two fundamentally different ways, as subject and object, ‘I’ and ‘Me’, capable of standing both within and outside our subjective experience.  In that fact lies our moral and intellectual freedom, our ability to mix emotion and reflection, our capacity for both love and justice, attachment and detachment, in short, our humanity.”

   He notes that the difficulty of attaining such synergy can be seen in the human difficulty to integrate these two modes of understanding, resulting in the dualisms to which we have become accustomed.

“ It is this (potential for synergy) that the reductivist – the scientist who denies the integrity of spirituality, or the religious individual who denies the findings of science- fails to understand.”

   He also notes that most of us do not live our day-to-day lives in such a divided world.  While the empirical facts that guide science must be recognized, our daily lives are lived in a mileu more ‘intuitional’ than ‘empirical’.   He uses the human characteristic of ‘trust’ as an example.  As Yuval Noah Harari explains in great detail in his book, “Sapiens”, the whole human edifice of economics, (so necessary for the welfare detailed by Johan Norberg) is predicated on ‘trust’.   This welfare, unprecedented in human history, requires not only that individuals trust one another, but that they trust the ‘imaginary’ but tangible fabric of society.  The nodes of this fabric, such as states, banks, schools and laws are both results of ‘trust’ and structures upholding welfare.

Such trust isn’t empirically measurable or provable (as the empiricists would require) but it is nonetheless a key strand of the fabric that holds society together.  Those times when it erodes (as in an economic collapse), human welfare suffers greatly.

Sacks goes on to show how trust is more than just part of the glue that holds society together, and is the basis for our own personal outlook:

“Almost none of the things for which people live can be proved.  For example, a person who manages the virtue of trust will experience a different life than one to whom every human relationship is a potential threat.”

   And this is where the ‘center’ of the ‘terrain of synergy’ is located.

How Did We Get Here?

As Sacks sees it, the road to today’s bifurcation between science and religion began in the sixteenth century:

“The rise of science can be seen to have resulted from the impact of the wars of religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that led figures like Descartes and Newton to seek certainty on the basis of a structure of knowledge that did not rest on dogmatic foundations.  One way or another, first science, then philosophy, declared their independence from theology and the great arch stretching from Jerusalem to Athens began to crumble.  First came the seventeenth century realization that the earth was not the center of the universe.  Then came the development of a mechanistic science that sought explanations in terms of prior causes, not ultimate purposes.  Then came the eighteenth century philosophical assault by Hume and Kant, on the philosophical arguments for the existence of God.  Hume pointed up the weakness of the argument from design.  Kant refuted the ontological argument.  Then came the nineteenth century and Darwin.  This was, on the face of it, the most crushing blow of all, because it seemed to show that the entire emergence of life was the result of a process that was blind.”

In his view, the Christian religion of the West arose with a few foundational cracks that would eventually weaken it.

“Christendom drew its philosophy, science and art from Greece, its religion from Israel.  But from the outset it contained a hairline fracture that would not become a structural weakness until the seventeenth century.  It consisted in this: that though Christians encountered philosophy, science and art in the original Greek, they experienced the religion of their founder in translation.  While Greek is not the language of Jesus, it was the natural language of thought of Paul, the writers of the gospels, the authors of the other books of the NT, the early church Fathers, and the first Christian theologians. This was (brilliant but with) one assumption that would eventually be challenged from the seventeenth century until today: namely that science and philosophy, on the one hand, and religion on the other, belong to the same universe of discourse.  They may, and they may not.  It could be that Greek science and philosophy and the Judiac experience of God are two different languages- that, like the left- and right-brain modes of thinking only imperfectly translate into one another.”

  Sacks not only envisions the possibility that science and religion can ‘intertranslate’, but goes a little further.  He believes that they need each other.  Better yet, he believes that humanity needs both of them to be able to flourish.

The Next Post

This week we addressed Davies’ and Teilhard’s ‘terrain of synthesis’ as the intersect between science and religion, this time from Jonathan Sacks’ ‘middle ground’: the human person.

Next week we will build on this centrist vision to address how the powerful systems of science and religion can benefit from expanding this terrain.

July 11, 2019 – The ‘Terrain of Synergy’- Areas Common to Religion and Science

Leave a reply

Today’s Post

Last week we went a little deeper on the possibility of synergy between science and religion; one which would enhance and enrich both bodies of thought and contribute to the continuation of our evolution.

However, while Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, the question can be asked, “what areas of focus could be common to science and religion?”  Aren’t they, as claimed by Stephen Jay Gould (and echoed by Richard Dawkins), “two completely different and non-overlapping magisteria?”

Mapping the ‘Terrain of Synergy’

While science’s search for the agency by which the universe becomes more complex will go on for some time, as predicted by Paul Davies, humankind cannot afford the luxury of waiting for an empirical closure on the subject if it’s going to continue its evolution.  Our evolution is not only proceeding ‘under our feet’ whether or not we understand it, the rate rate is increasing.  Each day that passes seems to demand more choices with the mounting of the pressure of our advancement from instinct to volition.

The list of evolutionary threats seems to grow every day, and each individual risk gives rise to the prediction, “if this trend continues… (fill in your favorite evil)”.  Malthus may have been wrong in his prediction, but how do we know that eventually he will be proven right and the curtain of humanity will finally fall?

Therefore it is imperative that we build on those intuitions which have carried us thus far, but with the caveat that they must stay in coherence with the findings of science.  The source of these intuitions is religion, properly divested of Richard Dawkins’ “baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers.”

Jonathan Sacks agrees, and goes a little further by identifying some of the many subjects that when addressed would light the way towards a synthesis suitable for mapping a route to the future.

“There may be, in other words, a new synthesis in the making.  It will be very unlike the Greek thought-world of the medieval scholastics with its emphasis on changelessness and harmony.  Instead it will speak about:

– the emergence of order

– the distribution of intelligence

–  information processing

– the nature of self-organizing complexity

– the way individuals display a collective intelligence that is a property of groups, not just the individuals that comprise them,

– the dynamic of evolving systems and what leads some to equilibrium, others to chaos.

   Out of this will emerge new metaphors of nature and humanity; flourishing and completeness.  Right brain (religious, intuitive) thinking may reappear, even in the world of science, after its eclipse since the seventeenth century.”

   This list is echoed, with much more articulation, by Davies.  Also note that many of these subjects have long been the object of study and debate by religion.  Effectively, Sacks and Davies have begun mapping the territory that, when explored, offer the terrain of ‘synergy’ between science and religion.

Teilhard elaborates on traditional religion as rich ore to be refined into an elixir which enriches human evolution.

   “After allowing itself to be captivated in excess by the charms of analysis to the extent of falling into illusion, modern thought is at last getting used once more to the idea of the creative value of synthesis in evolution.  It is beginning to see that there is definitely more in the molecule than in the atom, more in the cell than in the molecule, more in society than in the individual, and more in mathematical construction than in calculations and theorems.  We are now inclined to admit that at each further degree of combination something which is irreducible to isolated elements emerges in a new order.”

    Davies, from the scientific perspective, echoes the insights of Teilhard and predates those of Sacks toward the need for science to expand its reach to include this underlying principle by which the universe unfolds:

“The general trend towards increasing richness and diversity of form found in evolutionary biology is surely a fact of nature, yet it can only be crudely identified, if at all. There is not the remotest evidence that this trend can be derived from the fundamental laws of mechanics, so it deserves to be called a fundamental law in its own right.

   The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, so it turns out, is not to be understood as a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Rather, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of these new pieces of behavior requires research which is as fundamental as, or perhaps more fundamental than, anything undertaken by the elementary particle physicists.”

   Thus both Davies and Teilhard can be clearly seen to “assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.  Such an approach as Davies is suggesting would act as an agent which can help religion to “..divest the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers” from one angle while Teilhard offers the translation of science’s universal insight to the lives of human persons from another.

The Next Post 

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, as represented by Paul Davies and Teilhard, and how they illustrate the potential to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…,(which) are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”.

While Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, there is another voice that contributes to this dialog, and that is Jonathan Sacks.   Next week we will take a look at his insights to move us along in understanding how ‘thinking with the whole brain’ can be understood.

July 4, 2019 – Science and Religion: An Integrated View of Reality

Leave a reply

Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at how the seemingly opposing perspectives of science and religion, our two great modes of thinking on this planet, could be seen as simply two facets of a fundamentally integrated movement towards a more comprehensive understanding of ourselves and the universe of which we are a part.  Teilhard likened them to two meridians on the surface of a globe which draw near as they approach the pole:

“Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.  I say, “converge” advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.

   Given the traditional enmity between them, many would conclude that more of one inevitably results in less of the other.  This conclusion certainly seems to be borne out by the many polls in western countries which show a decline in religious participation.  ‘Accommodation’ has been automatically translated as ‘surrender’.

This week we will look at both Teilhard’s model of “assailing the real from different angles and on different planes” and how Paul Davies’ recognition of science’s need to ‘accommodate’ the human person offers a starting place for a true ‘accommodation’ in which one is enriched by the other.

Science and Religion: Drawing Nearer to the Poles

As a first step to rethink this classic duality, Paul Davies, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, simply puts scientific understanding into an evolutionary perspective:

 “No scientist would claim that the existing formulation of the laws of physics is complete and final.  It is therefore legitimate to consider that extensions or modifications of these laws may be found, that embody at a fundamental level the capacity for matter and energy to organize themselves.”

   One aspect of such ‘extension or modification’ lies in the Inclusion of the phenomenon of increasing complexity into the scope of science.  He notes that not only is such inclusion necessary for a more complete understanding of the universe in which we live, but will open the door to a subject significant but so far poorly treated by science: the human person.

Teilhard de Chardin also understood that the recognition of increasing complexity was key to a comprehensive understanding of reality, and also recognized the missing piece:

“Up to the present, whether from prejudice or fear, science has been reluctant to look man in the face but has constantly circled round the human object without daring to tackle it.  Materially our bodies seem insignificant, accidental, transitory and fragile; why bother about them?  Psychologically, our souls are incredibly subtle and complex: how can one fit them into a world of laws and formulas?”

   Thus, such inclusion as proposed by Davies, requires a new empirical perspective, an extension to traditional science.  Such emphasis on emerging complexity, while perhaps new to science, echoes Teilhard’s insistence that this same emphasis brings more relevancy to religion itself.  After all, he notes, religion has always assumed that there is a facet to the human person which is connected in some way to whatever universal agency by which the universe unfolds.   Again, from Teilhard:

“To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief.  Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter.

    But, as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium- not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis.  After close on to two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary.  On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other.  And the reason is simple: the same life animates both.  Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith.”

   The ‘mysticism’ to which Teilhard refers here is less the classical religious concept of ‘tuning into to the supernatural’ and more the recognizing of the presence of a heretofore unrecognized agency of universal evolution.  ‘Faith’ in this insight refers less to ‘adherence to dogmatic statements so that we will be saved’ and more believing in both the inherent comprehensiveness of reality and our innate capability to understand it.

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, as represented by Paul Davies and Teilhard, and how they illustrate the potential to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…,  bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”.   While Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of envisioning synergy between science and religion, the question can be asked, “what areas of focus could be common to science and religion?”  Aren’t they, as claimed by Stephen Jay Gould (and echoed by Richard Dawkins), independent ‘non overlapping magisteria’

Next week we will take a look at some areas where it would be appropriate to explore the idea of synergy.

June 27, 2019 – Science, Religion and Thinking With the ‘Whole Brain’

2 Replies

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Last week I was floating down the Rhine river from Basel to Amsterdam.   Sorry for the interruption in postings.

Today’s Post

Two weeks ago we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, the mileu in which humans operate, to further understand our place in it and better understand how we can develop the skill necessary to cooperate with the flow of evolutional energy as it rises through the human species.

This week we will extend this theme of ‘coherence’ to our two great human paradigms of understanding and the ‘hermeneutics’ which we employ in them as we further our attempts to ‘make sense of things’.

Science and Religion: Activities of Two Hemispheres? 

As we have seen several times in this blog, the two modes of thought, empiricism and intuition, commonly seen as left and right brained activities, can be used in opposition, as evident in the many dualities that we have addressed.

Ultimately, however, there is but one reality, no matter how hard we try to break it up into bite size pieces to be better able to digest it.  As Teilhard says in his Preface to the “Phenomenon of Man”

 “Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.  I say, “converge” advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.

   Science and religion are typically seen as left and right brained functions, manifest in empiricism and intuition, and the duality expressed as ‘science vs religion’ is common in our debates.  Teilhard’s deep insights into the nature of ‘being’ certainly precipitated heated criticism from both his science-oppositional hierarchy and from the predominately anti-religionists of science.

The fact that they have been so vehemently debated in the past does not necessarily mean that they are in true opposition, but often one or the other holds sway in the reasoning process.  What is necessary for ‘whole brain thinking’ is for recognition of each hemisphere’s need for the other: intuition as the starting point for objective empiricism, and empiricism as the infrastructure to verify and clarify intuition.

Hence, thinking with the whole brain requires these two perspectives to complete and enrich the other, whether we are addressing reality from the ‘left brain’ empirical perspectives of science or those of the intuitional ‘right brain’ of religion.

From the religious perspective, Teilhard (and Blondel before him) clearly understood how the scientific concept of evolution represented the possibility of reinterpreting the teachings of traditional religion in a way which clarified the immediacy of God, diluted religion’s superstitious and supernatural aspects and ultimately opened the door for a belief by which humans could more effectively contribute to their personal as well as societal evolution.

From the scientific perspective, Paul Davies, professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, outlines the many ways that science is beginning to articulate religion’s insistence that a cosmic thread of ‘becoming’ rises through all things, and thus offers a door to inclusion of the human (heretofore omitted from scientific thought) in scientific discourse.

We don’t need to be able to empirically understand the nature of this underlying agent of increasing complexity to be able to cooperate with it.  The ancients understood enough of it to be able to craft a belief system and the resultant social organization that benefited from it.

Are Religion and Science Compatible?

As Davies moves towards articulating the underlying agent by which the universe ‘complexifies’, he is moving beyond the traditional scaffolding of science.  He acknowledges the need for an ‘extension’ to the traditional science of Newton, Einstein and Planck if we wish to empirically treat such complexification.  Religion needs a similar extension which places this same complexification in a more central focus.  Teilhard fits this bill:

“”The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world”

   I believe that Davies would reply that:

The true science is that which recognizes the existence of a creative agency in the ever-increasing complexity that underlies universal evolution.

   Davies notes that Einstein didn’t replace Newton’s ‘laws’ with relativity, nor does quantum physics replace relativity.  In both situations, the understanding of phenomenon simply expands from the realm previously described into a realm more recently recognized.  As new phenomena are so recognized, new concepts, relationships and paradigms are required to address them.

Teilhard does the same for religion.  As he goes to great pains to describe, the scientific concept of ‘evolution’ does not require the jettison of legacy religion in the human journey toward completeness.  He simply offers an approach to religion that, anticipating Richard Dawkins:

“..divests the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers.”

   Teilhard sees the ‘secular side of God’ in fact as the ‘religious side of science’

Thus Davies’ empirical quest for the agency of universal complexity is the scientific equivalent of Teilhard’s intuitional religious quest: the object is ultimately the same, and requires healing of the basic ‘dualism’ between religion and science.  The facilitation of such cohesion would equip the human mind with a ‘wholeness’ with which it can more adeptly navigate the process of human evolution.

Newton addressed the narrow but essential niche of existence of which we are aware in our daily lives.  Einstein (relativity), then Planck (quantum physics) expanded Newton’s field of view to the mini- and macro- spheres of the universe: the mega hot and the mega cold, the mini-small and the cosmically large outer reaches of existence of which we are unaware in our day-to-day existence, but which underpin (and overarch) it nonetheless.  These three steps have led in turn to the elegant but still incomplete models of the Standard Model of Physics, Relativity and Quantum Physics as science advances in its quest to ‘make sense of things’.

What Teilhard brings to the table is that these visions of reality are all somehow woven into a single cloth of cosmic existence, and what Davies recognizes is the necessity to first acknowledge this single cloth, then go to work expanding Einstein and Planck to the next level of theory.  Not a ‘meta’- physics but an extension of Newton, Einstein and Planck to the next level in which the agency of evolution and its universal product of ‘complexity’ becomes not just better recognized but quantified in such uncertain terms that the necessity for our allegiance to the laws which they reveal is unquestionably clear.

In such a way, Teilhard’s vision of ‘coherence’ between science and religion, in which they mature their legacy gifts of understanding into a collegial effort “to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”, begins to be less a dream and more of a reality.

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, and how it is possible to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…, bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”.

Next week we will dig a little deeper into what many would consider unlikely: the possibility that science and religion, and the perspectives, viewpoints and hermeneutics which they traditionally represent, are nonetheless simply facets of a single, integrated, and coherent attempt to make sense of the universe in which we live.  Is it possible for science to accommodate the intuitions of religion, with its hopes, faith and insistence on love, and for religion to (as Dawkins insists) “..divest the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers” and accept the scientific discovery of ‘complexification’ as the manifestation of God’s creation?

June 13, 2019 – Science, Religion and Thinking With the ‘Whole Brain’

Leave a reply

Today’s Post

Last week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’: further understand our place in it and better understand how we can develop the skill necessary to cooperate with the flow of evolutional energy as it rises through the human species.

This week we will extend this theme of ‘coherence’ to our two great human paradigms of understanding and the ‘hermeneutics’ which we employ in them as we further our attempts to ‘make sense of things’.

Science and Religion: Activities of Two Hemispheres? 

As we have seen, the two modes of thought, empiricism and intuition, can be used in opposition, as seen in the many dualities that we have addressed.   It’s not that they are in true opposition, but that often one or the other holds sway in the reasoning process.  What is necessary for ‘whole brain thinking’ is for each to recognize the need for the other: intuition as the starting point for objective articulation, and empiricism as the infrastructure to verify and clarify intuition.

Ultimately, after all, there is but one reality.  As Teilhard says in his Preface to the “Phenomenon of Man”

 “Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.  I say, “converge” advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.

   Science and religion are typically seen as left and right brained functions, and the duality of science vs religion is common in our debates.  Teilhard’s deep insights into the nature of ‘being’ certainly precipitated heated criticism from both his scientific-oppositional hierarchy and from the predominately anti religionists of science.

However, thinking with the whole brain requires these two perspectives to naturally complete and enrich the other, whether we are addressing reality from the ‘left brain’ empirical perspectives of science or those of the intuitional ‘right brain’ of religion.

From the religious perspective, Teilhard (and Blondel before him) clearly understood how the scientific concept of evolution represented a way to reinterpret traditional religion in a way which clarified the immediacy of God, diluted religion’s superstitious and supernatural aspects and ultimately opened the door for a belief by which humans could more effectively contribute to their personal as well as societal evolution.

From the scientific perspective, Paul Davies, professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, outlines the many ways that science is beginning to articulate religion’s insistence that a cosmic thread of ‘becoming’ rises through all things, and thus offers a door to inclusion of the human in scientific discourse.

We don’t need to be able to empirically understand the nature of the underlying agent of increasing complexity to be able to capitalize on it.  The ancients understood enough of it to be able to craft a belief system and the resultant social organization that benefited from it.

Are Religion and Science Compatible?

As Davies moves towards articulating the underlying agent by which the universe ‘complexifies’, he is moving beyond the traditional empiricism of science.  He acknowledges the need for an ‘extension’ to traditional science which empirically treats such complexification.  Religion needs a similar extension which places this same complexification in a more central focus.  Teilhard fits this bill:

“”The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world”

   I believe that Davies would reply that:

The true religion is that which recognizes the creative aspect of God in the ever-increasing complexity that occurs with universal evolution.

   Davies notes that Einstein didn’t replace Newton’s ‘laws’ with relativity, nor does quantum physics replace the Standard Model of Physics.  In both situations, the understanding of phenomenon simply expands from the realm previously described into a realm more recently recognized.  As new phenomena are so recognized, new relationships and paradigms are required to address them.

Teilhard does the same for religion.  As he goes to great pains to describe, the scientific concept of ‘evolution’ does not require the jettison of religion in the human journey toward completeness.  He simply offers an approach to religion that, anticipating Richard Dawkins:

“..divests the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers.”

   He sees the ‘secular side of God’ in fact as the ‘religious side of science’

Thus Davies’ empirical quest for the agency of universal complexity is the scientific equivalent of Teilhard’s intuitional religious quest: the object is ultimately the same, and requires healing of the basic ‘dualism’ between religion and science.  The fabrication of such cohesion would equip the human mind a ‘wholeness’ with which it can more adeptly navigate the process of human evolution.

Newton addressed the narrow but essential niche of existence in which we live life.  Einstein (relativity), then Planck (quantum physics) expanded Newton’s field of view to the mini- and macro- spheres of the universe: the mega hot and the mega cold, the mini-small and the cosmic large outer reaches of existence of which we are not aware in our day-to-day existence, but which underpin (and overarch) it nonetheless.  These three steps have led in turn to the elegant but still incomplete models of the Standard Model of Physics, Relativity and Quantum Physics as science advances in its quest to ‘make sense of things’.

What Teilhard brings to the table is that these visions of reality are all somehow woven into a single cloth of cosmic existence, and what Davies recognizes is the necessity to first acknowledge this single cloth, then go to work expanding Einstein and Planck to the next level of theory.  Not a ‘meta’- physics but an extension of Newton, Einstein and Planck to the next level in which the agency of evolution and its universal product of ‘complexity’ becomes not just better recognized but quantified in such uncertain terms that the necessity for our allegiance to the laws which they reveal is unquestionably clear.

In such a way, Teilhard’s vision of ‘coherence’ between science and religion, in which they mature their legacy gifts of understanding into a collective effort “to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”, begins to be less a dream and more of a reality.

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, and how it is possible to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…, bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”.

Next week we will dig a little deeper into what many would consider unlikely: the possibility that science and religion, and the perspectives, viewpoints and hermeneutics which they traditionally represent, are nonetheless simply facets of a single, integrated, and coherent attempt to make sense of the universe in which we live.  Is it possible for science to accommodate the intuitions of religion, with its hopes, faith and insistence on love, and for religion to (as Dawkins insists) “..divest the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers” and accept the scientific discovery of ‘complexification’ as the manifestation of God’s creation?

June 6, 2019 – Thinking With the ‘Whole Brain’

Leave a reply

Today’s Post

We have decomposed Teilhard’s convergent spiral model down from its universal configuration to that of the human person, to the three ‘virtues’ by which we make our personal way up the spiral, to the thinking functions that differentiate us from previous products of evolution, and by which we are equipped to make the transition from ‘instinctual’ to ‘volitional’ evolution.

Last week we addressed the model of the ‘whole brain’, by which we perform these thinking functions that power us up the convergent spiral of human evolution.

This week we will look at this model in a little more detail, and see how it manifests itself in our most common concepts.

The Coherent Brain

We have looked at length at ‘dualities’ in human thought, and how most of them can be moved from divergence to coherence once the subject begins to be addressed ‘holisticly’.  This is especially true for the historical approach to ‘right’ vs ‘left’ brain modes of thought.  As we have seen from the perspective of Jonathan Sacks, while these modes are understood as active in the right and left lobes of the brain, they are more psychological than physiological in the way they work.

Further, the popular concept of this dichotomy suggests that those who are left brain dominant are more quantitative, logical, and analytical (eg engineers and mathematicians), while right-brained individuals are more emotional, intuitive, and creative free spirits (eg artists, dancers, musicians).  Thus we have the common concept of left brained individuals more tending to the ‘empirical’ approach to making sense of things and the right brained individuals more ‘intuitional’.

This simplistic treatment overlooks the fact that neither art nor mathematics are firmly set in their ‘brain-ness’.  Even the simplest of mathematical expressions requires an initial conceptualization (intuition) of what is being expressed before the factual (empirical) task of formulation.  And of what value is a melody if it is not subject to be quantified into a series of objective notes?  And if we take both these examples into their ‘life cycle’, they will possibly go through several manifestations as the math model is used or the melody played, with each cycle repeating the intuition-empirical dance that iteratively matures the model.

So, at the very base of our evolution, both at the level of the person and of society, these two modes of thinking come into play not as opposites, but as facets of a single, coherent, uniquely human action.

The ‘Golden Rule’ As the Earliest Example of Thinking with the ‘Whole Brain’

One of the earliest examples of pragmatism in human relations was Confucius’ principle of the ‘Golden Rule’, as recorded in ‘The Analects’:

“Zi gong (a disciple of Confucius) asked: “Is there any one word that could guide a person throughout life?”  The Master replied: “How about ‘shu’ [reciprocity]: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself?”

   Variations of the golden rule of Confucius appear in nearly every major world religion and in most other belief systems as well, as it is frequently believed that this one rule not only underlies the fullness of personal life, but insures the success of society.

This ‘rule’ is based on ‘reciprocity’, which in turn is based on the sense of our ‘universality’.  In universality, what we believe about ourselves is a valid hermeneutic for what we should believe about others.  Very simply, our desire to be well treated can be understood in others to reflect their own such desire.

In terms of ‘thinking with the whole brain’, this simple principle can be seen to have several facets.

The First step is an employment of the ‘right’ brain mode of thinking.  It is necessary to have the intuition that ‘others’ have the same sort of feelings that we do.  “If I want to be well treated, it is likely that others would as well’.  This is intuitive because there is no way to objectively prove such; it must be believed and acted upon without empirical data.

Secondly, the ‘left’ brain hemisphere kicks in as we look into ourselves to establish what constitutes ‘good treatment’.  What sorts of actions towards ourselves would be described as ‘good treatment’?  Further, if we can quantify these actions, we can come to a decision on how they should be ‘reciprocated’ towards another.

Thirdly, this whole process is done while the lower brains continue their never-ending stimuli.  What sort of risks are being taken by following through with these actions?  Is the ‘other’ deserving of such treatment?  If the situation were reversed, would I receive such good treatment?  Will others consider me ‘weak’ because of my thoughtfulness?

So, ‘whole brain’ thinking requires the intuition that all humans persons are sufficiently alike to warrant the treatment we ourselves prefer, the empiricism to determine what that treatment would consist of and the decision to overcome the fears introduced by the ‘lower’ brains.

(It is not coincidence that these three facets reflect the three ‘virtues’ (16 May) which themselves map our journey ‘up’ the convergent spiral of evolution towards increased complexity.  ‘Faith’ is necessary for belief that others are ‘like us’, ‘Hope’ reflects our expectations for outcome of reciprocity and ‘Love’ is simply the energy which effects the unity that results from reciprocity.)

Note that the ‘Golden Rule’ is itself the result of ‘intuition’.  As Jonathan Sacks notes, ‘empiricism’, as found in ‘left brained thinking’, did not arise in the historical record until the Greek era, and finds its way into Western history via the Greek translation of Christian scripture and its subsequent influence on Western religious thought.  In his terms:

“… Christianity was a right-brain religion … translated into a left-brain language [Greek]. So for many centuries you had this view that science and religion are essentially part of the same thing.”

   Sacks’ assertion that the “view of science and religion as essentially part of the same thing”, however, has never been a mainstay in Western thinking, as the emergence of scientific empirical thinking was initially seen as a threat to Western religious concepts, as well as to the established and strongly entrenched Christian hierarchy of the time.

Nonetheless, Sacks, as Teilhard before him, was adamant that these two classical modes of thought were somehow connected at their root.  Further, they believed that recognition of this connection would lead to a clearer understanding of what it meant to be human as a necessary step toward continuing our evolution.  As Sacks sees it:

“It is not incidental that Homo sapiens has been gifted with a bicameral brain that allows us to experience the world in two fundamentally different ways, as subject and object, ‘I’ and ‘Me’, capable of standing both within and outside our subjective experience.  In that fact lies our moral and intellectual freedom, our ability to mix emotion and reflection, our capacity for both love and justice, attachment and detachment, in short, our humanity.”

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, further understand our place in it and how we can develop the skill necessary to cooperate with the flow of evolutional energy as it rises through the human species.

   Next week we will extend this theme of ‘coherence’ to the great human paradigms of understanding and the ‘hermeneutics’ which we employ in them as we further our attempts to ‘make sense of things’.

May 30, 2019 – The ‘Whole Brain’ Model of Human Evolution

Leave a reply

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Today’s Post 

Last week we continued our decomposition of Teilhard’s ‘convergent spiral’ model of universal evolution into how the dynamic at work in this spiral is manifested in human life as we advance our evolution through the transition from ‘instinctual’ to ‘volitional’ behavior.  We took a look at how the two brain lobes, the ‘left’ and ‘right’ hemispheres, are associated with ‘intuitive’ and ‘empirical’ modes of thinking and how for a fully human approach to such thinking, they must be used in balance with each other.  In the words of Jonathan Sacks:

“Think of ‘right’ and ‘left’ not as precise neuroscientific descriptions, but merely as metaphors for different modes of engagement with the world.”

   As he notes, most human dysfunctionality can be placed at the doorstep of dualities in which existence is understood in terms of opposites (love-hate, life-death, rich-poor, we-they, etc).  Advancing our evolution, therefore, calls for us to overcome these dualities by understanding the ‘noosphere’ as the single, integrated thing that it is, and this requires us to see it in a single integrated manner.

This week we will extend our look at the human thinking system from the neo cortex to the other two brain segments which contribute to our awareness, and thus extend our view to ‘the whole brain’.

Thinking With the Whole Brain

The neo cortex brain is clearly the most recent product of evolution, and one unique to humans, but there is yet another dimension to the task of ‘thinking with the whole brain’.  We have addressed this facet several times in this blog, but to recap: the limbic and ‘reptilian’ brains contribute significant stimuli to the neo cortex brain that we discussed last week.  In the human, the two lobes of the neo cortex brain are located ‘above’ (in evolution as well as vertical position at the top of the spine) the limbic and reptilian brains.  As we have seen many times in this blog, we are never without the stimuli of these ‘lower’ brains, which wield great influence over our ability to make sense of life.  As we saw six weeks ago (April 11), not only are these stimuli powerful, they are active in our personal growth, at work very early in our life and long before our neo cortex brain brains mature.  As a result, their stimuli is in play much earlier than our reasoning process can mature.

Further, their stimuli makes its way to our neo cortex much quicker than our neo cortex can formulate a reasoned response.  Add to this the factor the fact that their stimuli are capable of producing the pleasurable effects of dopamine, and it is easy to understand why it can be difficult to ‘being reasonable’.  This necessity for the neo cortex brain to formulate an objective decision in the face of powerful and more immediate stimuli from the lower brains is an aspect of the long (in comparisons to other animals) gestation of humans.  As we mature, for a comparatively long period of time, our ‘volitional’ skills lag our ‘instinctive’ responses.

It’s not that we have to learn to ignore these two ‘lower’ sources of stimuli, as their activity is essential to human evolution, but it is necessary to develop the skill of consciously and objectively dealing with them for us to be able to effect our own evolution as human persons.  Trusting our instincts, evolved over two billion years, is necessary for a full life, but the ability to modulate them when necessary is essential to the objective thinking that underpins our continued evolution.

As Richard Rohr puts it:

“If we do not move beyond our early motivations of personal security, reproduction and survival (the fear-based preoccupations of the ‘reptilian’ brain), we will never proceed beyond the lower stages of human or spiritual development.”

   As we have noted several times in this blog, the term ‘spiritual’ is not to be understood as other-worldly or supernatural, but as Teilhard understood it as the flow of evolutional energy by which we (and everything in the universe) is lifted up the convergent spiral to a higher levels of complexity.   In his words,

“Fuller being in closer union.”

   So, ‘thinking with the whole brain’ not only involves understanding our ‘noosphere’ in an increasingly integrated manner, using both our instinctual and empirical ‘modes of engagement with the world’, but being able to modulate ‘lower brain’ stimuli (such as the ‘fear-based preoccupations of the reptilian brain’) as well.

 

The Next Post

This week we took a second look at a model of the unique human brain as a step to addressing a more comprehensive skill of using the evolutionary gift of human thought as we go about trying to live our lives in cooperation with Teilhard’s ‘winds of the Earth.”

Next week we will take a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’ and further understand our place in it and how we can develop the skill necessary to cooperate with the flow of evolutional energy as it rises through the human species.