Tag Archives: evolution in human life

May 23, 2019 – The ‘Two-Lobe Brain’ Model of Human Evolution

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­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Today’s Post

Over the past several weeks we have been decomposing Teilhard’s ‘convergent spiral of evolution’ from the cosmic, universal, level to that of ‘ordinary’ human life.  In doing so we saw how we can begin to envision how the fourteen million years of cosmic evolution continues not only in the human species, but in our individual lives as well.

We have navigated this terrain by the use of models.  Teilhard’s spiral model offers an insight into how ‘lesser’ things become things ‘greater’ in complexity over cosmic eons of evolutionary time.  As convergent it also illustrates how this increase occurs ‘exponentially’, how it becomes ‘tighter’ as it continues through the noosphere.

In doing so we have moved from the cosmic spiral model to the personal model of ‘the virtues’, in which we can begin to envision the ‘attitudes’, the three ‘stances’ that we can take as we go about trying to live our lives in cooperation with Teilhard’s ‘winds of the Earth.’  We saw how the three attitudes of Faith, Hope and Love show up in the human as manifestations of Teilhard’s three universal components of the convergent spiral: fruitful unity, resulting complexity and increasing response to the agency of universal ‘complexification’.

This presents a highly unified and coherent concept of how universal evolution ‘changes state’ as it becomes more complex, resulting in an insight into how the human person fits into cosmic evolution, not as imposed from without, or emerging from chance and chaos, but a as a ‘natural’ entity.  Or as the song goes, “No less than the trees or the stars”.

However, as we have also noted, this comes with a price: the need for human ‘volition’ if this tendril of evolution is to continue.  And as so many philosophers have noted, the growth to human maturity is marked with difficulty.

In this blog, we have addressed many of the ‘risks’ to continued human evolution which constitute the locus for this difficulty. We have also noted that many of them present themselves as ‘dualities’ in which human life is depicted as options or positions that we can take which are in significant opposition.  Such dualities are seen in such concepts as ‘this world’ vs ‘the next’, ‘good’ vs ‘evil’, ‘natural’ vs ‘supernatural’, ‘damnation’ vs ‘redemption’, and many more.

These dualities demark the occasions of our maturity that call for us to make choices.  As Teilhard has noted, making the choices which overcome such ‘ontological’ dualities is one of the necessary steps toward our increased personal and social evolution.  And further, one of the steps toward such overcoming occurs when we begin to better understand both the universal process of evolution and our part in it.  As Teilhard notes, understanding evolution in this way permits us to see these ‘dualities’ as simple ‘spectra’: less ‘this vs that’ than ‘this and that’, with both present in some cohesive way.

This week we will continue the ‘decomposition’ of Teilhard’s evolutionary spiral as it manifests itself in the human person.  We will move from the ‘virtues’ to addressing how we can use the gifts of evolution more fruitfully in moving toward a cohesive and integrated mode of being.

Thinking ‘Objectively’: Beyond Duality, Towards Complexity

We have looked at Norberg’s ‘articulations of the noosphere’ which clearly and objectively show an exponential increase in human welfare (and hence human evolution) since 1850, and in which he cites the increased Western value of human freedom as the underlying causality.  This finding illustrates the action of the three virtues discussed last week:

–          Fruitful Unity: Each step of the exponential increase described by Norberg is precipitated by an action of human collective insight, a sharp and clear example of Love as the action of the energy of evolution manifesting itself in the human

–          Resulting complexity: As a result of each step, the complexity of society can be seen to increase in terms of more efficient organization, the reduction of human ills such as wars, famine and disease, and increased human lifespan

–           Increasing response to the agency of universal complexification:  Through the increases in education and communication since 1850, each new step of evolution provides a stage for the next as individual persons become better educated at the same time that collective society is raised to the next level

Norberg also highlights an aspect of this welfare that is less ‘championed’ by Western liberals: the role of wealth in this increase.  Generally, the liberal position calls for a more ‘equitable’ distribution of wealth as a necessary facet of human welfare in opposition to the conservative valuation of capitalism as necessary for the health of society.  Norberg’s extensive and well-cited data shows a different dialectic: Increased wealth as necessary for increased welfare.  Capitalism isn’t, in his view, the opposite of poverty, but rather the underlying solution to it.  Yes, the inequity remains, but not in such a way that poverty increases as a result of the rise of wealth, as if the rich add to their wealth by taking it from the poor.  He sees the rapid (and unprecedented) decrease of world poverty as a direct result of increase of world wealth.

This is an example of the overcoming of a traditional duality: ‘rich’ vs ‘poor’, in which there may be an unequal distribution of ‘rich’, but this is occurring today with an unprecedented decrease in the number of ‘poor’.

This is another example, as well, of Sacks’ observation that to become whole, which implies that we are evolving, we must think with both sides of our brain.  The ability to objectively see both sides of an issue, for example, often requires accessing the issue both intuitively and empirically, from both the left and right brain hemispheres.  Sacks sees such integrated action as looking at a dualism ‘wholistically’.

As he understands such ‘wholism’:

“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.”

   In this statement, Sacks is illustrating the overcoming of several traditional dualisms: subject/object, emotion/reason, love/justice, and attachment/detachment.

Sacks offers a highly integrated insight into human evolution as seen in the increasing skill of thinking with both sides of the brain.  He traces the modes of human thinking through the development of written language from the Semitic to the Roman languages, from right-to-left expression and from the appearance of empirical (left-brain) conceptualization as it emerges from the legacy intuitional (right-brain) legacy.   The trick, he notes, is to find the ‘right’ balance between the two human powers of understanding represented by the skills of empiricism and intuition.

While this is one of the ways that we can increase our skill of using the human resources provided to us by evolution, there is yet another aspect to consider.

The Next Post

This week we took a first 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 look at an extension of this model which addresses the rest of the human brain system as we consider ‘thinking with the whole brain’.

May 16, 2019 – How Does The Spiral Of Evolution Work in Human Life?

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Today’s Post

In the last two weeks, we have turned our focus to Teilhard’s ‘spiral evolutionary model’ of the sweep of evolution from the beginnings of the universe itself to the current manifestation of complexity on our planet today.  We saw last week in Teilhard’s model of the converging spiral how complexity, his metric of evolution, could be seen as increasing in three facets: the unification of entities, resulting in the increased complexity of their offspring which in turn renders them more responsive to the ‘complexifying energy of evolution’.  As ‘consciousness’ emerges as a measure of complexity, leading to ‘consciousness aware of itself’ (the human person), we can also see how such recognition can eventually lead us to awareness of the process by which we become persons.

The Presence of the Evolutionary Spiral in the Human Person

We noted how Teilhard’s spiral model encompasses the entire sweep of cosmic evolution.  How can this be seen as reflected in the noosphere?

Such complexification can be seen in the phenomenon of personification.  As we become more aware of the energies from which our personal evolution evolves and continues in us, we can become more aware of how cooperation with them can be enhanced.

As Teilhard points out, the energy by which entities move along the spiral unites them in such a way as to:

–           advance their complexity (eg atoms into molecules)

–           become less’ intrinisic’ (eg ‘built into’ the entities as in atoms-to-molecules)

–          become less ‘instinctual’ (eg as in mammalian nurturing)

–          and become more ‘volitional’ (eg as in humans-to-humans).

As can be seen in this brief list, the energy of evolution itself changes state from chemical principles to biological imperatives, to emergence in the human as the ‘energy of relationship’.  In this series of transitions, love emerges as the current manifestation of the cosmic energy by which the universe evolves.  As we saw in the post on love as energy, love is much more than an emotional encouragement for relationship and procreation as it effects not only an increase in complexity of human offspring, but has an ‘ontological’ influence in the evolution of the human person himself.

Hence, we can see the ‘spiral of evolution’ equally at work in the human person as it is in the universe.  Learning to cooperate with the current state of evolutionary energy not only enriches our relationships, (which increases the complexity of our society), but enriches ourselves.  Such enrichment in turn increases our ability to enrich our relationships.  In such a way, the ‘universal spiral’ can be seen to be active in each human life.

However, as we saw, a successful relationship requires us to move from affection as an instinct to one which requires conscious decision.  The practice of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ described in the May 10, 2018 post (referenced above) requires us to modulate our lower brain stimuli as well as the resultant egoism that we have seen in our treatment of ‘noospheric risks’.   As the result of the ‘change of state’ seen in the energy of love, love becomes more a ‘decision’ than a response to an emotional imperative.  It becomes more ‘volitional’ in the human than it was ‘instinctual’ in the mammal.

That said, knowing what we know about the universal spiral of evolution, how can we map it into human life so that we can better understand it and respond to its new manifestation of energy?  What sort of ‘model’ can we use as a guide?

The Three Virtues Model

In the series of posts in which we looked at reinterpreting the concepts of Western theology, we addressed the idea of the Theological Virtues.   Just as we addressed the unique quality of the energy of human evolution as ‘spirituality’ in the context of secular phenomenon, we saw these three familiar ‘virtues’ as three ‘stances’ that we can take as we go about trying to live our lives in cooperation with Teilhard’s ‘winds of the Earth.”  Just as Teilhard’s model of the convergent spiral can be applied to better understand universal evolution, the ‘theological’ virtues can be seen as fitting into this model as a secular guide to applying it to human life

As we have seen, the ‘spiral’ model applies equally throughout the process of universal evolution.  It works at the level of the atom just as it does at the level of the human.  The ‘virtues model’, however, only works at the level of the human, but is an example of how universal processes can be seen at work in the ‘noosphere’.  These three ‘virtues’ are the human equivalent of the three universal effects of the spiral:  unity, response to evolutional energy and rise in complexity.

The first of the three human components of this converging spiral is ‘Love’, the component of unity.  As we have addressed in many places in this Blog, Teilhard’s assertion that the idea of love must be freed from its popular understanding as a strong emotion and allowed to flower as the energy of the power of evolution to unite its products in ways that increase their complexity.  Love is less an act of emotion or instinct that encourages our relationships and more one of uniting us in such a way that we become more what it is possible for us to become.  To Teilhard, love is ‘ontological’: to love is to become.  It is the energy which unites in such a way as to move us forward on the spiral.

The second component is that of ‘Faith’.   Faith is the pull of our lives toward the axis of evolution and hence the human response to the universal evolutional principle of complexification.

As we become more adept at ‘articulating the noosphere’, we begin to better understand the structure and the workings of the reality in which we are enmeshed.  Such articulations of the universe will be undermined, however, if they are not preceded by a ‘faith’ that they exist at all.  While this sounds religious, imagine if Newton had not first believed that there was some objective, measurable and most of all ‘comprehensible’ force by which objects moved from their static state.  Faith is the first step toward increasing our grasp of reality and enhancing our response to the energy of evolution.

The third of these three components is ‘Hope’, which encourages us on our journey toward our potential for increased complexity as we move forward on the spiral.  One of the gifts of evolution in the human is the ability to look into the future, as murky and risky as that might be.  If our look into the future is pessimistic and without hope, such negativity inhibits our movement up the spiral, toward a future in which the results of our growth are bleak, the fruit of our love is rejection, and sees us as hopelessly inadequate to build a full life.  Without hope, the evolutionary power of love, itself guaranteed over the fourteen or so billion years of universal becoming, is diminished.   Hope is that component of evolution by which we ‘rise’ as we move forward on the spiral.

The Next Post

This week we took another look at the mechanism of human evolution, and how recognizing and beginning to understand it is key to the important process of replacing ‘instinct’ with ‘volition’ as we begin to consciously take the helm of our evolution at the same time that we are beginning to better understand the winds, waves and tides that constitute our ‘noosphere’.

We saw how the three components of the ‘theological virtues’ can be seen in a purely secular context as the three components of our individual personal evolution.  These three components are the personal instantiation of a cosmic process which takes us ever onward, upward and inward.

Next week we will look at yet another model, one which addresses a different but equally important skill of continuing our evolution as we get closer to understanding how we can begin to consciously respond to its agency.

May 9, 2019 – How Does the ‘Spiral Model of Evolution’ Continue in the Human Person?

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how Teilhard envisioned the process of universal evolution as proceeding in the form of a ‘convergent spiral’ in which entities, products of evolution, join in such a way as to produce ‘offspring’ of higher complexity.  We also looked at how, in the human, the evolutionary spiral is slowly taking on a ‘volitional’ characteristic, built on top of the ‘instinctual’ characteristic which has powered it for the past four billion or so years of life.  While the agency of ‘natural selection’ is undoubtedly at play in biological evolution, at the level of the noosphere it is becoming superseded by the human need to consciously choose the future.  Evolution is slowly becoming less ‘something that happens to us’ and more ‘something that we must consciously choose’.

This week we will take a more detailed look at how this ‘spiral of evolution’ is at work in universal evolution as a step toward better understanding of how we can respond to it in order to insure our continued evolution.

A Closer Look At The ‘Convergent Spiral’

We ended last week with Teilhard’s succinct description of cosmic evolution, in which he summarizes the action of a ‘convergent spiral’:

“Everything that rises will converge.”

   This simple statement has many facets of meaning which we will begin to unpack this week.  Each of these facets illustrates some characteristic of Teilhard’s ‘convergent spiral’.

First, the joining of products of evolution can effect an increase in complexity in their offspring.  As Teilhard sees it, this characteristic is the basic thread of universal evolution.  Nowhere in the universe does matter move toward greater complexity without this basic step.  Evolution is complexification, and complexification is the action that moves an evolving entity along the spiral.

Second, this universal phenomena (without which we wouldn’t have a universe or be here to address it) happens under the influence of some sort of implicit energy, which Teilhard understands as radiated by the ‘axis of evolution’ (the center line of his spiral).  While it is common in the scientific community to see this statement as ‘teleogical’, and hence a back door intrusion of religion into the field of science, Paul Davies, secular physicist and astrobiologist, in his book, “The Cosmic Blueprint”, states:

“I have been at great pains to argue that the steady unfolding of organized complexity in the universe is a fundamental property of nature”.  (underline mine.)

   As we saw last week, even the atheistic scientist Richard Dawkins acknowledges the existence of a ‘mainspring of complexity’.

Third, the action of such joining of entities, which results in an increase in the complexity of their offspring, can result in a new entity which, because of its increase in complexity, is more responsive to the energy emanated by the ‘axis of evolution’ and better able to produce yet another level of complexity.

Fourth, the increase in complexity can be seen to occur exponentially over time, which means that as time goes on, products of evolution manifest higher measures of complexity more quickly.  A simple sampling of internet sources will quickly show that the observed interval of time between the appearance of the first atom and that of the first molecule is much longer than the interval between the molecule and the cell.  The intervals leading up to each of evolution’s major milestones (atoms, molecules, cells, single cell animals, neurons, brains and consciousness) are each shorter than the last.  The exponential decrease of the distance from the evolving entity to the ‘axis of evolution’ is a metric of the spiral’s ‘convergence’.

Fifth, each of these transitions appears as a ‘jump’, a ‘discontinuity’, or as Teilhard puts it, “a change of state’.  The resultant new entity of such transitions is radically different from its ‘parents’, and the diversity and volume of new capabilities of the ‘child’ are radically different from those of the ‘parent’.

As an example, hundreds of atoms are capable of uniting in such a way as to join to produce millions of different types of molecules, and the types of cells which eventually emerge from the initial cells is as yet uncounted.

As Davies cites biologist Bernhard Rensch:

“For example, when carbon, hydrogen and oxygen become combined, innumerable combinations can originate with new characteristics like alcohols, sugars, fatty acids, and so on.  Most of their characteristics cannot be deduced directly from the characteristics of the three basic atoms.”

   The presence of Teilhard’s spiral of evolution is therefore clear when we look back at what we understand of the past.  As Dawkins understands it, there is clearly a process at work “which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence. “

This process, while decidedly hard to quantify, nonetheless powers complexification via the intrinsic nature of matter which, as it becomes more complex, also becomes more ‘spiritual’.  I am using the term ‘spiritual’ here not in the vernacular of religion, but in that of science (as recognized above by Davies and Dawkins).  As Teilhard puts it:

“Spirituality is not a recent accident, arbitrarily or fortuitously imposed on the edifice of the world around us; it is a deeply rooted phenomenon, the traces of which we can follow with certainty backwards as far as the eye can reach, in the wake of the movement that is drawing us forward.   The phenomenon of spirit is not therefore a sort of brief flash in the night; it reveals a gradual and systematic passage from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the conscious to the self-conscious.  It is a cosmic ‘change of state’.”

   What is less clear is how this spiral can be seen to continue in the human.  Since the continuation of human evolution becomes less and less ‘instinctual’, and more and more ‘volitional’, it seems clear that our understanding of this spiral is increasingly necessary if we are to insure its continuation.  If we don’t understand this, it will be difficult to organize ourselves to align with it and make the choices necessary for its continuation.  In Teilhard’s words:

“Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the Earth will always find themselves borne by a current towards the open seas.”

   Implied in these poetic but insightful words is that if we do not understand the ways that evolution continues its universal unfolding in the human, we will not be able to cooperate with them, and thus will ultimately fail.   Understanding Teilhard’s ‘spiral of evolution’ may well help us to understand more about how evolution works on a universal scale, but other models are needed to see how such a process can be extrapolated into human life, and to better understand how we can move from ‘instinctual’ to ‘volitional’ response to ‘the winds of the Earth.”

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at Teilhard’s model of a convergent spiral as a way to better understand how evolution proceeds as a process central to the history of the universe.   We then began to address how this spiral can be seen in human life.

Next week we will look a look at another set of models that can be helpful in moving from this week’s ‘universal’ model to one closer to human life as we get closer to understanding how we can begin to consciously respond to the ‘winds of the Earth’

May 2, 2019 – A Model for Universal Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week, after looking at how the ‘addiction’ that is possible as we enhance our subjectivity and anger in the acidic pool of internet ‘likes’ that dilute our brain’s ability to reason with dopamine, we saw how this can be seen as another risk (when added to all the other ‘dualisms’ that underlay pessimism) to our continued evolution, and looked a little more closely at this phenomenon of ‘human evolution’.

We saw how the first eight or so billions of years of evolution, ‘pre-life’, and the following four or so billion years of ‘biological’ evolution depended on an innate and instinctive (in the biosphere) agent by which the ‘coefficient of complexity’ slowly rose.  In contrast, in the past two hundred thousand years, as humans have evolved, we noted the slow rise of ‘volition’ as the agency which is becoming the prominent force.  We saw again how the past one hundred fifty years (a nanosecond in evolutionary history) human evolution, as measured by human welfare, has increased exponentially, and how the key agent of this new surge could be recognized as the increase of freedom of the human person.  Such an understanding represents the beginning of our (in Teilhard’s terms) ‘articulation of the noosphere’, and the process of building personal freedom into our political constructs is a beginning to construe our ability to cooperate with it.

We have also seen throughout this blog, examples of ‘risks’ to our evolution, the last of which identified an insidious rising of subjectification and ‘progress pessimism’, which offers yet another ‘risk’.

This week we will begin to move forward to look at the action of universal evolution and see how our understanding of it can help us better overcome these risks and hence develop appropriate responses to it.

A Geometrical Model for a Universal Process

Developing a truly objective and wholistic grasp of universal evolution can be difficult.  After all, we are products of this process.  Whatever and whoever we are, whatever the energy or agency by which we seek this grasp and whichever cause we attribute it to, we are still caught up in its grasp.  Developing a comprehensive but objective view of cosmic becoming and our part in it is not dissimilar to constructing a bridge while we are traversing it.

Teilhard offers a fairly straightforward geometrical model which may help to better grasp this situation.   He sees universal evolution taking place as a ‘convergent spiral’, and this model can be clearly seen in our scientific understanding of the past.  Science understands the eight billion year period preceding the cell as the production of increasingly complex products of evolution, and this elaboration always leads to richer ‘entities’ which are always more conducive to ‘offspring’ of even more complexity.  Biology understands the following four billion years in much the same way: products of evolution appear as richer, better organized and more autonomous entities with each wave of living things.

Science has had a difficult time with this viewpoint, in fear that it is a ‘back door’ for inserting subjective theology into an objective method of inquiry.  However, there are few practitioners of science today that disavow the fact that the universe has become a much more complex thing today than it was at the ‘big bang’, and that humans are products of evolution which exemplify such complexity.

Even those atheists with a scientific background do not deny this.  We have seen how one of the most famous atheists, Richard Dawkins, in his book, “The God Delusion”, states it:

“There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God, but God is not an appropriate name unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers. The first cause that we seek must have been the basis for a process which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence. “

Other than to note that this does not constitute a vote for religion (he seems less ‘a-theistic’ and more ‘a-religionist’), he doesn’t develop it further or recognize the many contemporary theological concepts that do so.

Teilhard, in one such concept, completely agrees with Dawkins’ premise, but goes on to elaborate in some detail how such a ‘process’ can be articulated in terms of the model of a ‘convergent spiral’.

Such a spiral is simply like a vertical spring, except as the spiral becomes increases in height, the diameter becomes smaller until the spiral converges on a single point at the top.

How Does Teilhard’s Evolutionary Model Apply to Universal Evolution? 

Teilhard applies this model to universal evolution, seeing each stage of such ‘raising of the world’ as located at some point on the spiral.  The vertical axis of the spiral is time, with the past at the bottom and the future at the top.  Along the spiral itself, evolving entities (eg, atoms) join in such a way as to increase the complexity of their products, with the result that the new entity (eg, the molecule) is located further along the spiral.

In addition to the new attributes of the new entity, a measure of such complexity can be also understood as the proximity of the new entity to the ‘axis’ (the centerline) of the spiral.  This distance slightly decreases as each new entity emerges with its slight increase in complexity, and can be seen as the influence of the agency of evolution by which the hew entities become more complex.

The third component of the converging spiral, which distinguishes itself from a simple spiral, is that the increasing complexity of the new component manifests itself as ‘vertical’.  To move along the spiral, the evolving entity must move upwards, increasing its complexity. The entity’s new level of complexity can therefore be seen as a ‘rise’.

In simpler terms, as each new product of evolution appears, it ‘rises’ in complexity in response to some ‘agency of complexification’ which equips it to produce an increase in complexity in its offspring.

In Teilhard’s words:

“Everything that rises will converge.”

The Next Post

This week we have taken a look at Teilhard’s spiral model of evolution and how such a model can be used to conceptualize and even visualize how evolution can proceed.  It still remains to see how such a model can offer a way to see it at work in each of us as we live our lives.

Next week we will unpack Teilhard’s simple statement into terms which articulate how he sees the agency of evolution in universal becoming.

April 25 2019 – The Risk of Dismissing Progress and Ignoring Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

    Last week we looked a little more closely at the phenomenon of ‘indignation’.  While it might be understood as a normal and frequent response to the vagaries of the world around us, we saw how the rapidly growing new milieu of the internet can amplify subjective thinking as it compounds it by rapid validation of biases and negativity on a near universal scale.

We also saw how such fixation with the internet can lead to an insidious form of addiction, known as ‘motivational toxicity’, which appears as a deterioration in the ability of normal rewards (such as careers and sex) to govern behavior and requires ever increasing cycles of subjectivity, expression and reinforcement to receive the pleasurable effects of dopamine.

This combination of the internet as an enabling device for an addiction which skews our judgement and our increasing addiction to it can be seen as a danger to our continued evolution.  As we have seen, continuing our evolution increasingly requires that we understand it and cooperate with it.  Anything that undermines our ability to think objectively and cooperate with others bodes poorly for our future.

This week we will move on to looking at how we can understand evolution to be taking place today.

Instinct and Volition in Human Evolution

In this blog we have looked at many facets of both universal and human evolution in the light of insights from Teilhard de Chardin and others (eg Jonathan Sacks and Richard Rohr) as we have explored a concept of God that is couched differently from that traditionally expressed in the thousands of religions on our planet.  We have also seen, however, how Teilhard’s concept, which pursues a different approach to understanding the ‘ground of being’, is not only consistent with that of science but is quite compatible with the ‘basics’ of Western theology.  We have seen how such an insight permits the sweep of cosmic evolution, from the ‘big bang’ to the present day, to be seen in the context of a single current which raises the ‘complexity’ of its products from that of pure energy to that of consciousness aware of itself.

The existence of this current suggests that, with the advent of the human person, evolution will manifest itself increasingly less as a force which guides the inherent restructuring of simpler entities into those of richer and more complex forms, (such as atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into brains, and brains into consciousness) and more as an ‘axis of evolution’ which must be consciously recognized and cooperated with for human evolution to continue.  In Teilhard’s view, human evolution becomes less ‘instinctive’ and more ‘volitional’.

Teilhard sees the first step of such ‘volition’, recognizing, as ‘articulating the noosphere’, quantifying the structure to which we advert as we go about our affairs.  Examples of such articulations can be seen in our many religions, philosophies and social structures (our laws).  In the several hundred thousands of years since the first ‘homo sapiens’ set about trying to make sense of his environment, human history (and to some extent ‘prehistory’) shows a vast variety of such ‘articulations’, with their underlying assumptions, beliefs and practices reflecting their diverse grasp of the underlying ‘nature’ of reality.  Such history also shows the profound ability of humans to ‘learn from mistakes’ as the world has grown more populated with the attendant crowding of people on a planet with decreasing open space.   Somehow, in spite of our collectively discordant understanding of ourselves and our environment, we have managed to thus far not only survive but thrive. 

Towards a Mature ‘Articulation of the Noosphere’

The past hundred fifty years shows an exponential increase in human welfare, as articulations such as those expressed in the ‘Enlightenment’ have come to be imbedded in our social structures.  While perhaps not being conscious of advancing evolution per se, or of even increasing the complexity of the human as a measure of advancing evolution, a simple but key underlying principle of such advance can be seen in the statement of Thomas Jefferson:

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves.”

    This statement is the cornerstone of the increase in welfare that Norberg charts in his book, ‘Progress’.  However, Norberg carefully notes the necessary extension of Jefferson’s assertion for such increase in welfare to take place.  To achieve such a rapid increase in the level of welfare that he details, personal freedom is required for the innovation and invention that is necessary for understanding and surviving our mistakes.

In effect, while the Enlightenment might be seen as the point in history where our ‘articulation of the noosphere’ began to mature, the increase in human welfare since 1850 might be seen as the point in history that humans began to learn how to ‘cooperate with the forces of evolution’.  In this brief time frame, our grasp of our ‘complexification’ has taken a quantum leap.

However, as startling as such a sudden change in our evolution can be seen in Norberg’s nine metrics of recent human evolution, the continuation of this trend is not guaranteed.  If we don’t recognize first that such an increase in human welfare has actually taken place and second, that such increase reflects an increase in the evolutionary complexity of our species, we can tend to take a stance in which not only do we ignore it, we dismiss it and fail to recognize it as actual progress.  Such dismissal and denial will make it increasingly difficult to cooperate with it and thus extend our evolutionary progress.

The pessimism that we have been addressing in the past few posts is evidence of such disbelief.  A critical way to insure continuation of our evolution is to better understand it, but a sure way to undermine it is to ignore, or worse disbelieve in it.

The Next Post

This week we took another look at the mechanism of human evolution, and how recognizing and beginning to understand it is key to the important process of replacing ‘instinct’ with ‘volition’ as we begin to consciously take the helm of our evolution at the same time that we are beginning to better understand the winds, waves and tides that constitute our ‘noosphere’.

Next week we will look a little more deeply into how universal evolution continues its rise of complexity through the human species as we get closer to understanding how we can begin to consciously respond to its agency.

April 18 2019 – How can Indignation Jeopardize Human Evolution?

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Today’s Post

    Last week we explored what goes on in our ‘thinking system’ as external stimuli is processed by the ‘lower brains’,  stimulating the neocortex faster than it can examine and evaluate the external stimuli to decide on a reaction.  We also saw how these stimuli manifest themselves in the form of ‘messenger chemicals’ or ‘neurotransmitters’ sent to the neocortex, many of which are experienced by the neocortex as ‘pleasurable’.

This pleasurable response to a negative stimuli is captured in our term for it, ‘indignation’.  When we disapprove of the actions of others, for example, we can feel good about it.

This week we will take a look at how this natural condition, known to thinkers for ages, can metastasize to new proportions in the milieu of the rapid, ubiquitous and near universal world of the internet. 

The Danger of Indignation Today

What’s different about such a common condition today, and how can it be seen as possibly undermining the continuation of human evolution?

David Brin, author and social critic, notes the “rising ideological divisions that are becoming more prevalent today, even to the point of “culture wars”, that makes it increasingly difficult to form coalitions to solve problems”. Today it seems that fewer groups seem capable of negotiating peaceful consensus solutions to problems.  Such an impasse is often driven by the irate stubbornness of a few vigorous leaders, especially if they are armed with the stamina and dedication of indignation, knowing, in Brin’s words,

“.. with subjective certainty, that (they) are right and (their) opponents are deeply, despicably wrong.”

   Last week we saw how the internet, with its various forms of social media, not only act as an amplifier for beliefs and assertions, but as a positive feedback mechanism which can enhance and reinforce biases, negativity and pessimism.

What’s involved in getting to this deeply dogmatic, self-centered and troubling state of mind?

Brin calls attention to studies that investigate reinforcement processes in the human brain, especially those involving dopamine and other messenger chemicals that are active in producing pleasure responses, such as those at the Behavioral Neuroscience Program State University of New York at Buffalo.  He refers to this physiology as “chemically-mediated states of arousal that self-reinforce patterns of behavior”.

Such self-induced arousal can be seen as “self-doping”, in which individuals have the power to trigger the release of psychoactive chemicals simply by entering into certain types of consciousness.  Typical types of such arousal include anger, or more specifically, ‘indignation’.

When such self-induced behavior becomes frequent it can become habitual, even to the point of addiction.

Such ‘self- doping’ of course is not limited to indignation. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, using MRI, have examined the brain activity that occurs when volunteers won games of chance, and found that responses were very similar to those responding to cocaine.  Evidently, gambling produces a pleasant stimulus similar to cocaine.

Simple activation of brain reward systems does not necessarily constitute addiction.  We do this every time we hold our love ones, hear beautiful music, or even find the word which satisfies the crossword clue.  Those who practice meditation, also a self-induced state, also report the pleasure of entering into a meditative state.

Rather, the extreme control of behavior—exemplified by a deterioration in the ability of normal rewards to govern behavior (termed ‘motivational toxicity’)—is the distinguishing feature of an addiction.

Motivational toxicity is apparent when rewards which are normally effective in influencing behavior lose their ability to motivate.  This is typically seen in drug addicts when they neglect formerly potent rewards such as career, relationships and sex, and focus their behavior on the acquisition and ingestion of drugs.

So it appears possible to habitually pursue drug-like reinforcement cycles — either for pleasure or through cycles of withdrawal and insatiability that mimic addiction — purely as a function of entering an addictive frame of mind.  Such pursuit requires no mental discipline (such as does the practice of meditation) and produces much stronger sensation.  A sense of righteous outrage can feel so intense and delicious that those caught up in this emotional whirlpool actively seek to return to it, again and again.  It is not necessarily associated with one political outlook or another, as it seems to be a trait that crosses all boundaries of ideology.

Since it undermines our ability to empathize with opponents, accept criticism, or negotiate practical solutions to problems, it undermines the mature discourse necessary to a healthy society.  Further, it skews how the world is experienced.  While the torrent of news today, and its incessant reliance on ‘click-bait’ content promote a sense of pessimism, motivational toxicity takes this level of pessimism to the point that the positive trends such as reported by Johan Norberg can not only be ignored, they must be seen as insidious ‘fake news’ designed to lull us into a untrustworthy sense of security.   Such an enhanced and reinforced pessimism increases the paranoia in which long-standing and successful social and political norms are no longer to be trusted.  In a society in which such pessimism prevails, the structure of democracy will not survive.

The problem with chronic dopamine release is not just the danger it poses to society at large.  As the cycle increases, brain receptors become desensitized and continued self-doping bring less pleasure.  As with any psychotropic drug, regular release of dopamine will in turn result in a craving for a larger release to feel the same ‘high’.  When this happens, the only way to achieve the high is to increase the rage and act out more; either verbally or violently.  This is how anger addiction is born.

As we saw last week, this cycle is further reinforced by the feedback power of the internet.   This sort of dopamine response is induced by the many ‘clickbait’ posts found on social media, and as the need for more production of it increases, the internet gladly ups the volume and content of negative and indignation-worthy content to accommodate.  At the same time, the skill of using the neocortex to modulate and minimize the stimulation is eroded.  The person becomes less and less capable of objective evaluation of the increasingly indignation-inducing posts.

The Next Post

This week we took a closer look at how anger, and its everyday manifestation of indignation can metastasize to new proportions in the mileu of the rapid, ubiquitous and near universal world of the internet, and how this can constitute new dangers to both personal and societal evolution.

Next week we will look into how this natural and common phenomena can turn into practices which can jeopardize our continuing evolution.

April 11 2019 – What’s Different About Today’s Indignation?

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Today’s Post 

Last week we began looking into the current wave of pessimism that seems to be embedding itself into our social fabric.  As Johan Norberg clearly delineates in great detail in his recent book, “Progress”, by almost any measure (and he cites nine distinct ones) we are living in an unprecedented ‘golden age’ of human welfare, but from the incessant negative chatter on Twitter, Facebook and the other faces of social intercourse, the world is increasingly seen to be heading to the dogs and our institutions can no longer be trusted.   The recent political trend toward nationalism in the West suggests a similar dissatisfaction with the current state of the state.  Does this trend suggest that an inevitable side effect of our collective evolution is the souring of our outlook?

This week we will take a closer look at this phenomenon.

Isn’t This Just More ‘Progressophobia”?

We took a look at the history of pessimism in the West last Fall, citing the historical trends of ‘progressophobia’ as reported by Steven Pinker, and briefly exploring the threads of pessimism woven into Protestant theology and Freudian psychology, but here we’re dealing with something quite different.  The pessimism we are now addressing, while containing overtones of the above influences, is much more intimate and prevalent, therefore more difficult to grasp.

Last week we identified an age-old condition of the human psyche, ‘indignation’ as complicit in this trend.  But we noticed that there’s nothing new about this mental state, simply a ubiquitous emotion we attach to disapproval of the actions of others, so why would we see this as a factor in today’s trend toward a deeper, more intimate, and potentially more dangerous form of pessimism?

The Amplification and Reinforcement Loop of Social Media

One thing that is clearly different today than in the past is the phenomenon of the internet.  Via this new technology, we are not only able to connect with many more other persons, our thoughts and opinions are available to thousands, and their approval, their ‘likes’, are instantly available to us.  Thus, social media is not only an amplifier of our opinions, it provides feedback which tends to reinforce them.

Russ Douthat, pundit for the New York Times, notes that in just a few years, the Internet as a new manifestation of our culture has morphed from a “just enough (interconnection) to boost economic productivity, encourage social ferment, challenge cultural gatekeepers, and give lonely teenagers succor” to “an addictive dystopia for everyone.”

Such reinforcement can easily boost our feelings of ‘being correct’, reinforcing our biases and diluting self-criticism.  This reinforcement cycle is very effective at supporting a ‘dogmatism’ in which every issue is painted in black and white, and addressed only at the extremes.  Indignation therefore works to different degrees, from the logical observation and simple disapproval of actions which we do not approve, to the extreme cited by David Brin, author and social critic:

“.. knowing, with subjective certainty, that you are right and your opponents are deeply, despicably wrong.”

   Even the most casual read of current social media shows the prevalence of such extreme thinking.  The proof of such a conclusion is only reinforced by the volume of ‘likes’ that flow back in and complete the reinforcement.

It is even clearer in our social and political activity.   Opponents are demonized, cataclysmic consequences are predicted from their proposals, pronouncements are structured to insure a maximum of outrage, conspiracies are spun and reinforced, and it is all amplified and reinforced through the power of the internet.

Why Should It Feel So Good to Feel Bad?

There are several studies that can be found on the internet that show the direct relationship between anger, indignation and rage, and the increase in activity of dopamine and other pleasure-inducing ‘messenger’ chemicals in the brain.  Several of these studies show that, for those who frequently give in to rage (an extreme form of indignation), “nothing makes them happier than getting angry.  Rage can actually feel quite exhilarating.”  The pleasurable sensation at work in such feelings is generally ascribed to the effects of dopamine.

The secretion of these drugs is no longer a mystery.  It is generally understood that the production of these ‘neurotransmitter’ drugs emanates in the ‘lower’ brains (those formed earlier in evolution), and is therefore common to all vertebrates.  Their importance to evolution is also clear: they provide pleasurable feedback to activities essential to survival and therefore continued evolution.  While much pleasurable feedback stems from the body itself (sex, eating, etc), dopamine provides pleasure from just thinking about such activity.  Since some activity which insures survival requires anger (defensiveness), it is not surprising that anger should activate the production of these neurotransmitters.

Since these ‘messenger chemicals’ are provided to the neocortex brain, the center of objective reasoning, there can be competition between the pleasurable sensation invoked by the neurotransmitters and the objective process of reasoning which tries to establish the appropriate response to the external stimuli which set off the response to begin with.

I may initially respond to a casual comment from a friend with the sensation of anger arising from the vagueness of the comment.  “Have I been insulted?”  This sensation arrives at the neocortex much quicker than it can process the appropriate response.  “What exactly was said?  What is he intending?  Should I be angry?”

One way to look at the skill of such neocortex activity required for the appropriate response is to recognize that as we grow,  the lower brains begin to stimulate our neocortices long before they are mature.  The neocortex is generally considered to mature by age twenty, but we are embedded in the often confusing context of families, friends, and schools for most of those twenty years.  If our environment is consistently filled with fear, anger and danger, the influence of the ‘lower brains’ on our eventual neocortex skills will be much stronger than if we are more surrounded by affection and safety.

I have suggested several times in this blog that one of the critical skills necessary for our continued personal evolution is that of using our neocortex brains to modulate the stimuli of the lower brains.  Here we can see such a process clarified in neurological terms.  Other human thinking processes also are clarified as well, such as thinking with both sides of the brain to avoid dualisms, and thinking objectively to avoid egoism.  In both cases the neocortex is required to ‘ride herd’ on the stimuli rising from the lower brains in order to manage a perspective which is appropriate to the objective reality which is at the base of the external stimuli.

That said, how can we quantify the ‘evolutionary risk’ of ‘indignation’?  What difference does it make if we allow ourselves the pleasure of basking in the glow of our neurotransmitter activity?

The Next Post

This week we took a look at how our instinctive responses to things we disapprove of can be pleasurable, and how there can be a conflict between such ‘knee jerk’ reactions and reactions more appropriate to the external stimuli.

Next week we will look into how this natural and common phenomena can turn into practices which can jeopardize our continuing evolution.

March 28 2019 – What’s At The Root of the Pessimism?

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Today’s Post

Over the past few weeks we have been addressing the ‘Cosmic Spark’, the principle of ontological development of the universe by which it comes to be and continues its increase in complexity from the big bang all the way to the human-unique ‘awareness of consciousness.’  We have looked at this ‘principle’ as one which requires both recognition and cooperation if human evolution can be expected to continue.  Evolution is now in our hands.

We have traced awareness of this Cosmic Spark first through the attempts of religions and philosophies to ‘articulate the noosphere’, then through the rise of science as this articulation took on greater empiricism, then through how the pace of human evolution, as quantified by objectively measured and rapid increases in human welfare, has risen over the past hundred fifty years first in the West, then spreading rapidly through the ‘developing world’.

This is an astoundingly optimistic outlook, one which Johan Norberg, who chronicles such a viewpoint admits is difficult to share in the face of a steady drumbeat of a perceived ‘march towards the dogs’.  We have discussed this strange phenomena as can be found in the negative fibers in our Western religion, as well as the nihilism of Nietzsche and the failed police states, but there are others, more neurological in nature, which are more insidious and hence more dangerous, at work.

The Fruits of Negativity

One would think after reading Norberg’s nine specific measures of the phenomenal improvement in the human condition over the past hundred fifty years, a ‘microblink’ in the history of universal evolution, that there would be every reason to see ourselves, especially in the West but as emerging worldwide, as living in a true ‘Golden Age’.  The reduction in warfare, increase in life span, reductions in disease and hunger, and rapid reductions in poverty, all delineated by Norberg, present a powerful picture of ‘Progress’.  Rapid advances in technology make our lives more comfortable, and the explosion of communications links us together in a way that would have seemed to pure magic just a generation ago.

But an undercurrent of dissatisfaction beneath all this cannot be ignored.  Even the most casual subscriber to social media, or follower of disturbing political trends such as extreme Nationalism, hints of resurgence of racism, feelings of ‘unfairness’ and inequality, quickly realizes that there trends in society which generally work against the idea of a ‘Cosmic Spark’.

And of course, our propensity for more and better connectivity itself can be a ‘two-edged sword’.  Resentments that have been built up over the past seventy years have created the perception of inequality out of control, even among those who are well off.  How can I be ‘well off’ if there’s somebody out there better off than I, and look at the benumbing volume of data that pushes this in my face every day?

To some extent, the ‘egality’ of social media (amplified by our rapidly polarizing politics) has stripped the cover of ‘political correctness’ (once referred to as ‘politeness’) from social intercourse and introduced the ‘right to indignation’.  The image this conjures is unhappy persons sitting behind dimly lit, spittle-covered computer screens and hurling invective into a coarse, hostile but ever-welcoming neuro netscape.

But is there anything new here?  Can’t we find such invective in our holy books?  Haven’t prophets for centuries predicted our long, slow but inevitable descent toward ‘the dogs’, (even if the poet Jeanette Walworth could remind us, “The dogs have had an awful wait.”)?

It’s certainly true that the internet provides us with a megaphone of unprecedented size, scope and volume, as well as an anonymity which eludes consequences.    The imprimatur which validates our messages is simply the volume of ‘likes’ from the logosphere.  Memes survive in a sort of crude Darwinism in which ‘the fittest’ becomes the ‘most popular’, and the most popular is increasingly that pitched at the lowest denominator of human emotion.

So, what is actually new about this phenomenon, other than perhaps its technology-driven unprecedented size, scope and volume?  Further, why should it be considered more threatening to our continued evolution?

The Next Post

This week we continued our look at the ‘flip side’ of Norberg’s (and Teilhard’s) profound and well documented affirmations of ‘human progress’, which optimism, (if one is to believe in the rising tide of pessimism as found in today’s politics and social media) is not necessarily shared at large.

Next week we will look more closely at the truly unprecedented roots of this phenomenon.

March 14 2019 – How Does the Cosmic Spark Contribute to Quality of Life?

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Today’s Post

    Last week we continued our look at the ‘Cosmic Spark’, that thread of becoming which is at the heart of the universal evolution towards increased complexity as it rises through the human person.  Recognizing that referring to this aspect of ‘cosmic becoming’ as ‘divine’ does not square with the secular aspect of God that we have focused on (thanks, responders), I am now referring to it as the ‘Cosmic Spark’.

This week we shift our focus from the need for discovery of and cooperation with this agent of evolution in the human, to its ‘effects’.  While acknowledgement of it is at the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s assertion of the ‘equality of all men’ and thus necessary to our successful mode of societal government, what happens in our lives as we become more aware of it and adept at cooperating with it?

Quantifying a ‘Good Life’

Our history is rife with prescriptions and proscriptions for human behavior.  All societies contain lists of such acceptable behavior, and the criteria for acceptability is some combination of behavioral norms that most frees the individual to produce for the society without undermining the production itself.  The assumption in all cases is that ‘what’s good for society is good for the individual’, and in some cases, ‘what’s good for the individual is what’s good for society’.

But how can we objectively define ‘what’s good for the individual’ other than that which is good for the society?  We can easily make such generalizations such as ‘freedom is good’ and ‘we must all get along’, but how much freedom, and in what areas?  Is it possible to objectively quantify a ‘good’ life?

As we have seen previously, the Apostle Paul is very adept at summarizing the teachings of Jesus as found in the three ‘synoptic’ gospels available to him.  We have seen how Paul’s organization of Jesus’ concepts into ‘virtues’, for example, can be seen to fall into three categories of ‘stances’ or attitudes we can take for a ‘fuller’ life.

As Jesus says, “I come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10).  More germane to this week’s subject, Paul does the same for abundance as he did for virtues, summarizing what he sees as Jesus’ insights into ‘what is good’ for the human person.

Paul listed those attributes of life that he saw as deriving from a life informed by the Theological Virtues, and his list is a good start to describing ‘abundancy’ as an underling principle of ‘goodness of life’.  These attributes are summarized in his ‘fruit of the spirit’, which in our secular reinterpretation can be seen as attributes which the human person takes on as he becomes aware of the Cosmic Spark and becomes adept at cooperating with it.

The ‘Fruit’ of the Cosmic Spark

The ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ is Paul’s term that sums up nine attributes of a person or community living ‘in accord with the Holy Spirit’.  Chapter 5 of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians lists them: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Among the many attempts to objectively quantify the attributes of a ‘full’ or complete human life, these seem high on the list.

Love –  We have addressed the attribute of love several times in this blog, noting the significant difference between the traditional understanding of it as the emotion by which we are attracted to each other and Teilhard’s insight that it is a manifestation of the universal evolutive energy by which things become more complex, and hence more united over time in such a way as they become more complete.  By participating in love we become more complete, more whole.

Peace –  It is hard to imagine something more conducive to peacefulness than that the recognition that our efforts to grow more complete are underwritten by a universal energy which rises unbidden and unearned within us.  God, as Blondel understood ‘Him’, is on our side. Life, as it is offered to us as a gift, is guaranteed to be open to our strivings, welcoming to our labors.  As the Ground of Being is uncovered as our own personal ground of existence, it is understood more as father than as fate.

Patience – Patience becomes more than long-suffering teeth gritting endurance necessary for  ‘salvation’, but the natural acceptance of what cannot be changed in light of Teilhard’s “..current to the open sea” on which we are carried when we ‘…set our sails to the winds of life.”

Recognition of the Cosmic Spark within us, the ‘gifted’ nature of it, and confidence in where it is taking us, can instill a patience with the vagaries of life that was would have been previously considered to be naive.

Kindness – As an essential building block of both society and personal relationships, kindness is prescribed by nearly every religion as the ‘Golden Rule’.  Beyond this prescription is the natural emergence of kindness as a recognition that not only are we underpinned by the Cosmic Spark, but others are as well.  Treating others as we would be treated ourselves requires us to be aware of how our own Cosmic Spark is the essence of being by which we all reflect Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’.

Goodness –  Goodness, of course, is that tricky concept which underlays all the ‘fruits’ of Paul.  In Paul, as echoed by Teilhard, that which is ‘good’ is simply that which moves us ahead, both as individuals and members of our societies.  If we are to have ‘abundance’ of life, whatever contributes to such abundance is ‘good’.

Faithfulness – As we saw in our look at the Theological Virtues, faith is much more than intellectual and emotional adherence to doctrines or dogmas as criteria for entry into ‘the next life’.  Faith has an ontological character by which we understand ourselves to be caught up in a ‘process’ which lifts us from the past and prepares us for a future that while it might be unknown is nevertheless fully manageable.

Gentleness – As a mirror to ‘goodness’, ‘gentleness’, once we have become aware of the Cosmic Spark not only in ourselves but in all others, becomes the only authentic way of relating to others.

Self-Control – Self-control acknowledges that while we might be caught up in a process by which we become what it is possible to become, this process is dependent upon our ability and willingness to choose.  Being carried by Teilhard’s ‘current’ (‘Patience’, above) still requires us to develop the skills of ‘sail setting’ and ‘wind reading’.  The instinctual stimuli of the reptilian and limbic brains do not dissipate as we grow, but the skill of our neocortex brains to modulate them must be judiciously developed.

The Next Post

This week we looked a little deeper into how finding and cooperating with the ‘Cosmic Spark’ adds to the abundance of our lives.  .

Next week we will move on looking deeper into how denying the cosmic spark can not only leave us unable to taste Paul’s ‘fruits’, but can undermine our continued evolution.

March 7 2019 – What Part Does the Divine Spark Play At The Personal Level?

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Today’s Post 

   Last week we looked a little deeper into finding and cooperating with the ‘Divine Spark’, and addressed how through history to the current day, there are sociological strands active in our societies which would not only deny it, but actively work against it.

We also took a first look at how recognition and cooperation with the Divine Spark can overcome these negative trends, and thus insure the continuation of the enterprise of human evolution.

This week we will move on to looking deeper into how cooperating with this ‘divine spark’ is not only essential to the continuation of the advance of evolution in the human species, but to our own personal evolution as well.

The Divine Spark As The Principle Of ‘Personness’

    Teilhard strongly asserts what happens when we realize the existence of the divine spark within us:

“..I doubt that whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being than when the scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that the is not an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes and realizes that a universal will to live converges and is hominized in him.”

   Why should this be such a ‘decisive moment”?  In what way is it indeed ‘decisive’?

To answer we must consider what happens in the normal maturing process of the human person.  We begin as children at the center of our own universe, surrounded by attention and provision of our needs.  One of the first things that must happen as we grow toward adulthood is to become more aware of our environment, particularly in the form of other persons.  The complete human ‘gestation’ process is quite long compared to the ‘lower mammals’, but like them, it is initially more stimulated by the nurturing instincts of the mammalian ‘limbic’ brain. Unlike them, however, the development of intellectual maturity requires development of the skill of using the neocortex brain to modulate these emotional stimuli.  This modulation, the emergence of ‘objectivity’, is essential to ‘learning’ and inevitably incurs an increase in openness to the surrounding world, especially to other persons.

We have seen how, in Teilhard’s view of the world, love is also something that develops in the same way.  For love to be able to energize human growth (instead of just a lubricant to relationship), it must become more open to the other, whose reciprocation stimulates our own growth.  Teilhard refers to this recursive cycle of ‘humanization’ as excentrationfollowed by centration.

To Teilhard, love is the humanized manifestation of the energy of evolution.  It is the unique energy rising from the existence of the divine spark in each of us.  While not denying the limbic-tinged emotion that is undeniably present in human relationships, Teilhard’s grasp goes much deeper, seeing love as the essential energy by which we become what we can be, and how doing so contributes our small increment to the continuation of human evolution.

It is very common among all religions and most philosophies to value ‘selflessness’ over ‘egocentricity’, but in most cases it is valued for the social stability that it provides, or as a qualification for the rewards of the ‘next life’.  The recognition is very revolutionary indeed that when we undertake such an excentration-centration cycle in our life that we are cooperating with  ”a universal will to become and to be” that manifests itself in each of us and which is essential to continued human evolution.   Once realization of the existence of this Divine Spark begins to take place within us, our potential for the fullness of human becoming is increased.

The ‘Fruits’ Of The Divine Spark

How can we quantify such increase in potential?  What difference does it make that we awaken to such a possibility?

At the coarsest level, that of society, we have seen in quite a bit of detail of how human welfare has increased exponentially over the last two hundred fifty years.  In this same overview, we saw how the chronicler of such welfare attributed such explosive development to the rise in human freedom and improvement in human relationships.   We have also seen how the cornerstone of such freedom and relationships was based on Thomas Jefferson’s assertion of the basic ability of “the people themselves” as the “safe depository …of the ultimate powers of the society”.  And in the past few posts, we have seen how such an assertion is only possible if we assume the presence of the ‘Divine Spark’ in every human person.

Richard Rohr writes extensively on how one of the most important concepts of early Christianity, the idea of “God in Us”, has been superseded by Christianity’s rush to codify theology in Greek terms, and organize a structural hierarchy to insure its endurance.  Rohr refers to the many teachings of Jesus which refer to what was later understood as ‘The Christ’.  To be sure, these teachings are sprinkled among the many teachings which were understood as essential elements of the resultant theology and normative to church hierarchy, but Paul, the ‘great summarizer’ of Jesus’ teachings, stressed them.  It was Paul who highlighted Jesus’ teachings on Love, and on the ‘virtues’ (last week), but also Paul that first stressed not only the existence, but the universality of the Divine Spark:

“There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything” (Colossians 3:11)

  In spite of his insistence on this intimacy with God, not only the universal nature of the Divine Spark, but of its presence in each of us, came to be second to the more structural basis adopted by the church.  The church came to stress more a remote, judgmental God who required human sacrifice to reconcile himself to his creation than an intimate God of which John could say,

“God is Love, and he who abides in Love abides in God and God in him”.

And At The Personal Level?

But what about the human person ‘himself’?  Are humans just cogs in the machinery of evolution, whose relationships and freedoms are needed to insure the increase in human welfare?  Or is there some level of ‘payoff’ at the personal level?

The Next Post

This week we looked a little deeper into finding and cooperating with the ‘Divine Spark’, and it is active in each human person.

Next week we will move on looking into how acknowledging and cooperating with this ‘divine spark’ can make a difference in our individual lives.