Tag Archives: Teilhard de Chardin

November 15 – Religion as a Tool for Understanding the Noosphere

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a second look at Teilhard’s first step of managing the Noospheric Risks by better understanding it.  We saw how a deeper understanding of the structure of the Noosphere involves recognition of and cooperation with the universal agent that for fourteen billion years has invested itself in the continuation of complexity that has eventually given rise to humans.

As we have seen over the past several weeks, this rise is no longer based on instinctual, biological and physical processes: it must be consciously grasped and capitalized upon if it is to continue in the human species.  The ‘noospheric risks’ which we have identified must be consciously overcome if evolution is to continue through our species.

A major step in understanding the noosphere so that those risks can be managed, as Teilhard suggests, is to ‘articulate’ it, to understand how it works to effect our continued evolution, both in ourselves as well in our societies.

One such tool is, properly understood, religion.  This week we will take a first look at religion to understand how it can be seen as a tool to achieve such a goal.

Why Religion?

One of the foundational concepts that the great Western awakening known as “The Enlightenment” introduced was the diminishment of religion’s role in society and government.  One of the results of this diminishment was the rise of atheism, which placed many of the world’s ills (eg ‘Noospheric risks’) at the doorstep of organized religion.  Both the leading Enlightment thinkers, and the atheists which ensued, valued objective, empirical thinking over the subjective and intuitive intellectual processes that had informed medieval Western thinkers.  As we have discussed many times, the rise in ‘left brain’ thinking began to surpass that of the ‘right brain’ as a method of ‘articulating the noosphere’.

Given the many ills of religion that can be seen today in the Mideast governments infused with radical and fundamentalist expressions of Islam, as well as Western religions weighted down by fundamentalism, excessive hierarchical structures and pedophilia, It would seem that these post-Enlightenment perspectives are indeed superior to legacy religion in helping us make sense of what’s happening in the noosphere, and how to navigate our way through it.

Can there be a way that religion can be seen as a tool for helping us ‘articulate the noospere’ or is it destined to end up on the dust pile of history: a perspective that has ‘seen its day’ but is no longer relevant in this new and technical mileu?

One way to look at this question is to see it as evidence of yet another, very fundamental ‘duality’.  We have looked at the concept of ‘dualities’ through the eyes of Jonathan Sacks previously in this blog.  He, like Teilhard, saw such dualities as a way of seeing things as opposites, such as ‘this world’ vs ‘the next’, or ‘human’ vs ‘divine’.  In Teilhard’s insight, most dualities simply reflect an inadequate understanding of a situation, and can be overcome with the proper perspective.

From the traditional perspective, science and religion are often seen in terms of a duality.  This viewpoint reflects a mode of seeing in which ‘right brained’ and ‘left brain’ perspectives are understood as ‘opposites’.  To see them thusly is to forget that there is only a single brain, although it may have many modes of operation.

Teilhard’s method of resolving ‘dualities’ is simply to put them into a single context, as he does with ‘evolution’.  In such a context, the ‘opposites’ now appear as ‘points in a single spectrum’.  By this method, the continuation and coherence between the ‘opposites’ can now be understood.

So, the question above now gives way to a second question: “How can the legitimate ‘right brained’ perspective offered by religion be seen to help us, like the ‘left brained’ perspectives of the Enlightment have done, “make sense of what’s happening in the noosphere, and how to navigate our way through it.”

As we saw in our series on Norberg’s ‘Progress’, the human actions of innovation and invention, obviously the fruit of ‘left brain’ activity, nonetheless turned on the pivot points of personal freedom and human relationships, which are much more the domain of the ‘right brain’.  So, on the surface, it would seem essential for these two modes of human thought to operate less like the commonly understood ‘opposites’ than as the two facets of a single thing that biology shows us that they are.

Earlier in this blog, I have suggested that one measure of increasing human evolution is the skill of using the neocortex brain to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the lower (reptilian and limbic) brains.  Just as important is the corollary of using the whole neocortex, both left and right hemispheres, intuition and empiricism, in making sense of things.

As the above example from Norberg shows, articulating the ‘right brained’ concepts of personal freedom and relationships, while essential to our continued evolution, is not something we can request from science.  Requesting it from religion, as religion is commonly understood, is neither up to the task.  Traditional Western religion has only slightly evolved from its medieval perspectives, and as such would seem to offer little to a partnership with science in the enterprise of ‘articulating the noosphere’.  Extending Teilhard’s approach of understanding difficult questions by putting the subject into an evolutionary context, for religion to be germane in the answering of questions, it must evolve.

The Evolutionary Roots of Western Religion

Re-reading the Christian New Testament with Teilhard’s evolutionary context in mind offers a starting place for such evolution.  There are many concepts that appear with no precedent in the NT, that have been poorly carried forward as Christian theology developed, such as:

–          Understanding the presence of God in all created things (Pau) ,and particularly in the human person  (John), which is contrary to a God eventually taught as ‘external’ to creation

–          Understanding that we are bound together via a force which fosters our personal growth (Paul)

–          Recognizing that this growth enhances our uniqueness while it deepens our relationships

–          Recognizing that this uniqueness gives rise to the characteristic of human equality (Paul)), as opposed to the imposition of hierarchy

So a first step toward maturing religion would be to return to its evolutionary roots, many of which have sprouted anew in secular organizations, as so brilliantly seen in Thomas Jefferson’s reinterpretation of these evolutionary roots in purely secular terms.

       

The next Post                   

This week we took a first look at religion as a tool for helping us understand the structure of the noosphere as a step to managing its risks.  Next week we’ll continue this theme, taking a look at how religion has traditionally ‘articulated the noosphere’, and how the seeds for a more evolved articulation can be found among them.

November 8 – Managing the Noospheric Risks, Part 4- Understanding the Noosphere: The Conscious Spiral

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at a way to deal with the ‘noospheric’ risks, suggested by Teilhard:  to better understand the noosphere itself and what part we play in it.

In a nutshell, Teilhard saw that over the fourteen or so billion years of existence, the universe can be seen to follow the basic principle of matter entering into more complex (and hence less probable) organizations under the influence of a basic ‘energy of becoming’ which is built into the ‘stuff of the universe’.   He sees this principle manifesting itself more explicitly as the complexity of the ‘stuff of the universe’ becomes more pronounced over time, and therefore sees how the actions of this energy are reflected in in human lives as we participate in our own evolution.

   Last week we looked at Teilhard’s metaphor of the ‘spiral’ as evolution’s rise can be seen as convergent through the first eight or so billion years.  This week we will see how this convergent rise continues through the life era, and to its current state of consciousness aware of itself.

The Conscious Spiral

Last week we saw how evolution proceeds through ‘discontinuities’ in which new and unexpected functionalities, such as a greater potential for union, and increased facilities of each new entity (such as influence over its environment, mobility, vitality and potential for further increase in complexity through future unions).

While the above manifestations of evolution occur in scientifically verifiable steps, each of them represents a highly discontinuous step from the preceding plateau of evolution.  On an evolutionary time scale, the transition to each new state of complexity can be seen to occur at an increasingly rapid rate.  Even to the stage of reflectively conscious entities (humans) the increasing convergence of the spiral can be seen.

Last week we looked at this phenomenon in the ‘material’ realm.  Recognizing that Teilhard makes no sharp distinction between this realm and the ‘realm of the spirit’, we can see how this rise of evolution through discontinuous steps spills over into the ‘conscious’ realm.   While the early days of humanity are only vaguely understood, this convergence of the spiral of evolution can be seen to continue (all dates approximate):

–              Very early humans began to invent intuitive modes of thinking, based on instincts and clan relationships some 200,000 years ago

–              The evolution of primitive ‘laws’ of society evolve from clan norms about 15,000 years ago

–              ‘Axial Age’ concepts of person and society emerge from primitive concepts into ‘philosophies’ based on intuitions and instincts 3500 years ago

–              ‘Left brain’ modes of thinking arise in Greece from the traditionally universal ‘Right brained’ thinking of earlier systems some 3000 years ago.

–              Merging of left and right ‘modes’ of neocortex functions begins with the introduction of ‘left brain’ thinking into the legacy ‘right brained’ mode as Jewish-inspired Christianity becomes more influenced by Greek thinking 2000 years ago

–              Scientific/empirical thinking evolves from the Christian right-left merge 1400 years ago

–              The ‘Enlightenment’ emerges from the prevalent right-brained post medievalism at the same time as establishment of the personal as locus for the juridical (Jefferson) three hundred years ago

–              The abrupt increase in human welfare (as documented by Norberg) begins two hundred years ago.

 

Each of these ‘discontinuities’ illustrate the three key steps ‘up the convergent spiral of increasing complexity’ that Teilhard identifies:

–              They are all initially similar to the less complex entities which preceded them

–              They all in turn effect an increase in both the vitality and potential for union from the components in the preceding stage

–              All such effects require a new and more complex way of uniting with other components in such a way to increase their differentiation, vitality and power to unite.

It’s also important to note the timeline: each discontinuity took less time to effect a step increase in complexity than the preceding.

The Continuity Beneath the Discontinuity

Thus, while Teilhard notes the occurrence of discontinuity in evolution, he also shows how underneath these discontinues lies a basic fundamental, continuous current which powers the ‘axis of evolution’.  He notes that at each such step, several things happen no matter which stage of evolution we are addressing:

–              The evolved element of ‘the stuff of the universe ’rises not only in its complexity, but in its uniqueness.  Each new appearance, while initially retaining its similarity to its parent, is highly distinguishable from its precedent.

–              This characteristic is very important to the recognition that human evolution occurs in the same way that all steps have occurred in universal evolution.  As Teilhard puts it:

“True Union Differentiates”, and this applies to evolution at every phase, from the Big Bang

       to the Human person

Thus, an important step in understanding the noosphere is to recognize that our lives are connected to a cosmic agent which, to the extent that we can recognize and cooperate with it, we will be lifted ever upward.  In Teilhard’s words:

 “..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 he is not an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes and realizes that a universal will to live converges and is hominized in him.”

   Understanding this connects us to a fourteen billion year process which has raised the universe, as Richard Dawkins observes, “into its present complex existence”.   So, if we are to understand the noosphere, as Teilhard suggests is a step towards managing its risks, we need the ‘scales to fall from our eyes’ so that we can not only take in the breadth and scope of the universe, but see that the noosphere fits into it naturally, as a child to a loving parent.

The Next Post                   

This week we took a second look at ‘understanding the noosphere’ in terms of a rising, converging spiral, this week looking at the nature of the spiral as it rises from ‘complexifying’ matter to ‘enriching spirit’.  In understanding that the current state of human evolution is a sure and steady continuation of such rise over the preceding fourteen or so billions of years of universal existence, and that the basic nature of our lives is nourished and assured of survival by this personal agent of evolution, we need only to open our eyes to it, recognize it as active in our lives, and learn to cooperate with it if we are to be successful in dealing with the ‘noospheric risks’.

Having taken a closer look at those risks which can impede human evolution, and looked at a better understanding of the ‘noosphere’ as a start to managing them, next we will return to the core topic of this blog, ‘reinterpretation of religion’, to see how religion can be employed as a enterprise to build on Teilhard’s “clearer disclosure of God in the world” to assure our future.

October 31 – Managing the Noospheric Risks, Part 4- Understanding the Noosphere – Part 1- The Spiral of Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw that one way to deal with the ‘noospheric’ risks was to better understand the noosphere itself and what part we play in it.  In doing so, we are taking Teilhard’s approach which he explains:

“Evolution is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses which all systems must

submit and satisfy from now on in order to be conceivable and true.”

   Teilhard’s approach, therefore, is to place any subject into the context of universal evolution if we are to better understand it, and the noosphere is no exception.

This week we will continue down this path of looking at the noosphere in an evolutionary context to help situate ourselves in this process of understanding ‘complexification’ as it takes place in human evolution.

The Convergent Spiral of Evolution

Teilhard used the ‘sphere’ as a metaphor for understanding how the expansion of humanity compresses us as it reaches the equator of our metaphorical sphere, and instead of continuing to spread, we begin to press in on ourself.  In the same way, he uses that of the spiral to illustrate how ‘the stuff of the universe’ becomes more complex as its components unite to increase their complexity at the same time that they are drawn ‘upwards to more complexity’ and ‘inwards towards closer union’.  The spiral that Teilhard envisions isn’t just a simple coil, like a bedspring, it’s a spiral which converges as it rises over time.

Teilhard identifies the energy which induces convergence as ‘radial’, and the energy by which the components of the ‘stuff of the universe’ become more complex in their uniting as ‘tangential’.  These two components, work together to increase the complexity  of this ‘stuff’ as the convergence  of the spiral pulls these components not only closer to each other but also closer to the ‘axis’ of the spiral (Teilhards ‘axis of evolution’.  In doing so they become closer to the source of the universal energy by which all things become united in such a way as to differentiate themselves at the same time that they are enriched.

Applying this metaphor to humanity, we can understand ourselves as the most recent manifestation of such ‘stuff of the universe’, produced as the result of these three components of energy which interact to increase the complexity of the universe.  We engage with  ‘tangential’ energy when we relate to others while enhancing and enriching our ‘persons’; we engage with ‘radial’ energy as we become more conscious of, and learn to cooperate with the ‘tangential’ energy which differentiates and enhances us, and in this cooperation both our persons and our ‘psychisms’ become more complete and enriched.

So, to the question of where are we in this universal journey from pure energy to some future state of increased complexity, Teilhard offers a suggestion:  We are early in the process of learning both how relationships and cooperation are essential to our progress.

That said, can we quantify how such process can be seen?

The Empirical Spiral

While an integrated understanding of all the facets of energy acting on us, much less an understanding of how to cooperate with them, might be so far immature in understanding at this point in our evolution,  empirical science can offer some insight.

While the light which science can show on the past may not yet be complete, Physics highlights the many ‘discontinuities’ which appear in the past evolution of ‘the stuff of the universe’, such as:

–          Matter appearing from pure energy

–          Atoms emerging from combinations of the first, simple grains of matter

–          Molecules emerging from an infinitude of combinations of atoms

–          Such molecules evolving to the relatively astonishing organization of cells

–          Cells continuing this unprecedented explosion into the relatively complex groupings found in neurons

–          Neurons find ways to compact themselves into centralized neurosystems, then to  brains

–          Neocortices emerge from limbic brains,  themselves from reptilian brains

–          Conscious brains become aware of their functionality

Each of these transitions can be considered a ‘discontinuity’ because the conditions which preceded each of them, taken out of context, do not suggest the significant change in complexity which ensues.  While science can describe the physical processes which are involved in the transitions, it cannot explain the increasing complexity that results.  There is no current explanation of how the ‘stuff of the universe’ manages its slow but very sure rise in complexity as it moves from the level of the big bang to that of the human which is capable of an awareness aware of itself.

While all these stages and their transitions can be described and to some extent understood by science, their increase in complexity following each discontinuity into human evolution requires a look into how the element of ‘consciousness’ can also be seen to evolve.

Next Week

This week we took a first step toward ‘understanding the noosphere’ by following Teilhard as he situates the noosphere in an evolutive context.   To begin this phase we saw how Teilhard used the metaphor of the ‘spiral’ to map out the manifestations  of energy which power our evolution, and how their manifestations can be seen in the ‘disconuities’ which have occurred in the history of the universe.

Next  week we will look further into the metaphor of the ‘spiral’ as we carry it forward into the realm of consciousness.

October 25 – Managing the Noospheric Risks, Part 3

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how Teilhard  places ‘spirituality’ into the context of evolution,  in which context it can be seen not as a ‘opposite’ of matter but an essential aspect of what causes ‘the stuff of the universe’ to energize matter into increased complexity.  We also saw how Norberg, who articulates how such ‘matter-spirit’ combinations can be seen to increase human welfare, provides ‘proof of the pudding’ for Teilhard’s recognition of the necessary elements of human evolution and his audacious optimisim.

This week I’d like to continue exploring what’s involved in managing ‘Noospheric risks’ by placing them (as Teilhard has) into an ‘evolutionary’ context.

Seeing Human History in an ‘Evolutionary’ Context

As Teilhard suggests, one way to understand who and where we are is to place ourselves  into  the context of universal evolution.  This includes understanding how both religion and science occur in human history.

As many thinkers, particularly Johathan Sacks, point out, religion originally began as a very early human activity characterized by such right brain activities as instinct and intuition as enterprises which helped to making sense of both themselves and their groupings.   Stories such as ‘creation narratives’ provided a basis for societal conduct and were eventually coded into the first laws as humanity began to emerge from clans to social groups, then cities, then states.

As we saw in posts from September, 2015,The History of Religion , a record of the rise of human left brain thinking began with Greeks

The first movement toward some level of synthesis between the right and left modes of thought can be  seen in the New Testament  Paul, then John, who began to incorporate left brain ideas such as Paul’s “Fruits of the Spirit” and John’s  ‘ontological’ articulation of God (“God is love…”) as an essential aspect of ‘the ground of being’ in each of us.   While demonstrating a clear departure from the traditional right-brained Jewish approach of the Torah, they mark less of a departure from it than evolution from it.

Thus, as Sacks points out , Christianity can be seen as possibly the first  attempt to synthesize  right and left brain thinking modes.

Science is born from such an early such application, but was initially seen as competitive with the prevailing right brain concepts of the time, and hence threatening to the established church hierarchy (which is still stuck in many of the traditional dualisms which accept the dissonance between right and left brain thinking).

Science in its own way is also stuck.  Thinkers of the Enlightenment, ‘threw the baby out with the bath’ when they attributed human woes to religion.  Not that this was totally incorrect, since the ills of the secular aspect of all religions can be seen in their need for ‘hierarchies’, which have traditionally required adherence to absolute and dogmatic teachings to maintain control over their followers.  However, by neither recognizing that the primacy of the person and his freedom require more than ‘permission’, they also require such things as faith and love (as understood in the Teilhardian context), which science is hard pushed to articulate.

As Sacks puts It,

 “To understand things, science takes them apart to see what they are made of while religion puts them together to discern what they mean”.

From the Religious Side

One way to understand Teilhard (or any such ‘synthetic’ thinker, such as Blondel or Rohr) is to apply their concepts to such traditional ‘dualisms’.  We saw in last week’s post how Teilhard’s thoughts on spirituality show one such application, and how in just a few words, the traditional dualism of spirit and matter can disappear.  We have seen many other examples over the last many posts

Thus, we can see that putting traditional science and religion concepts into a truly ‘universal’ context, such as Teilhard proposes, can move us unto a mode of thinking which sees things much more clearly and less self-contradictory  than we could  in the past.  Teilhard saw such an enterprise as

 “A clearer disclosure of God in the world.”

   So we can see how Teilhard’s approach illustrates that one thing necessary for continued human evolution is a continuation of right/left brain synthesis by which science and religion can move from adversaries into modes of thinking in which our intuition is enhanced by our empiricism, and in which our empiricism can build upon our intuition.  We effect our own evolution by use of both modes of thinking.

This approach also, to  some extent,  recovers much of the optimism contained in the gospels, such as  the recognition that , as Blondel  puts it, “The ground of being is on our side”,   and as John puts it, “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him”.

Such recognition of the positive nature of the agent of increasing complexity, and the awareness that such an agent is alive and empowering each of us, is another example of Teilhard’s “Clearer disclosure of God in the World”.  It also repudiates the natural Greek pessimism that had such influence on Christian doctrine and emerged in the Christian Protestant ontology by which Luther could see humans as “piles of extrement covered by Christ”.

From the Empirical Side

By the same token, Norberg’s rich trove of facts, which show how ‘progress’ is powered by increased human freedom and improved relationships, can be seen as evidence that we are indeed evolving.  The fact that the facets of empowerment which he documents:  personal freedom and improved relationships also happen to be the cornerstones of Western religion, strongly suggest that the continuation of human evolution is based on enhancement of them: an empowerment fostered and strengthened by our increased understanding of them,  of how they work and of how to deepen  them.

Something else is necessary.  Putting these concepts, ‘persons’ and ‘love,’ into an evolutionary context may well be necessary for us to overcome the profoundly influential dualisms which have thus far forged our world view, but this same evolutionary context also offers yet another aspect: Time.

Considering that the human species is some 200K years old, and only in the past two or so centuries have we begun to unpack these dualisms and recognize them  less as contradictions than as ‘points on a spectrum’, we need ‘patience’.  The morphing of such an integrated insight of humanity into a civic baseline in which it would be stated by Thomas Jefferson that:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

occurred only two hundred years ago.  An evolutionary ‘blink’, to be sure,  but by ordinary human standards,  represents many lifetimes, and an incessant search for how this ideal of human freedom and relationships should be played out (or in some cases,  stomped out) in human society.

Thus an appreciation of the pace of evolution must be learned.  Certainly it is not fast enough for most of us, especially if we live in ‘developing’ countries, watched our children suffer from curable diseases, hunger or war, or born with the ‘wrong’ skin color or ‘sinful’ dispositions.   It’s less important to rue the pace if human evolution than to appreciate its ‘axis’.

The Next Post

This week we have seen how putting human history into a ‘evolutive’ context helps us to begin to see how what have been traditional and deep seated ‘dualisms’ can be put into into a single integrated context, and begin the process of using both our human modes of thought to better understand who we are and how can move ourselves forward.

Next week we will continue this line of thought further.

October 18 – Managing the Noospheric Risks, Part 2

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at managing the ‘noospheric risks’ that we can see as evolution rises through the human species.  We boiled down the essential approaches to ‘building the noosphere’ (from the Post of October 4)

“…that human persons must be free to capitalize on their ‘interiority’ and be given the ‘liberty’ to continuously rearrange both their personal perspectives to identify enterprises which can be either used as stepping stones to new arrangements or corrected if they do not effect an improvement, and to engage with other persons to freely form ‘psychisms’ to perform these tasks.”

   But we noted that these approaches themselves need to be continually improved if they are to reflect true ‘articulations of the noosphere’.

This week we will continue this look, by exploring  a little deeper into science and religion, our two great systems of thought, as they attempt to help us ‘make sense of things’.

Spirit and Matter: Spirituality and Progress

We have noted, as both Teilhard and Norberg show, that no human movement forward (towards continued improvement in human welfare, toward increased complexity) occurs without some unplanned and unwanted consequence.  Skeptics of ‘secular progress’ decry the fact that such progress is meaningless if unwanted consequences ensue, and therefore decrease true spirituality in favor of 9simply) materialistic improvements .  Such critiques highlight what is seen as the futility of humans to overcome their ‘sinful nature’ and grow spiritually.  This criticism is well countered by Teilhard in his understanding of spirituality as simply a facet of ‘the stuff of the universe’.

“…spirit is neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but that it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call, for want of a better name, the ‘stuff of the universe’.  Nothing more;  and also nothing less.  Spirit is neither a meta- nor an epi- phenomenon, it is the phenomenon.”

And

“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. “

   In this unique perspective, Teilhard  offers a totally new perspective on the traditional spirit/matter duality  which sees them as opposites, requiring divine intervention into ‘lower’ matter in order to ‘save’ it, much as Luther envisioned humans as “piles of manure covered by Christ”.

Recognizing this, as Teilhard does so succinctly, bridges the gap between the ‘spitituality’ so prized by religionists and the ‘progress’ equally  prized by secularists.  In his view, they are not opposites, but simply two facets of a single integrated reality.  Both Teilhard and Norberg would agree that, properly understood, spirituality is embodied in any progress by which human welfare is advanced.  More succinctly, spirituality is the agency by which matter becomes more complex, therefore more evolved.

Thus the religionists are correct: the world needs more spirituality if it is to succeed.  However, with Teilhard’s more universal  understanding of ‘spirituality’ we can now see that spirituality is that which underlies the evolution of the ‘stuff of the universe’ (eg: matter, eg: us).  With this understanding, the idea of spirituality rises from the ‘otherworldly’ nature which requires us to look down on matter to one in which matter and its evolutionary rise in complexity are equally important to the spirituality which underpins it.

With this new approach, human welfare is not only just as important as ‘spiritual’ growth, it is actually a facet of it.  And seen in this light, Norberg’s metrics of ‘progress’ also provide evidence of the continued rise of spirituality in human evolution.

This perspective doesn’t mean that the human species will be ‘saved’ by all forms of religion or science; the ills of both of them are commonly enough reported in the free press, but the successes of both are embodied, as Teilhard, Norberg and Rohr point out, in the freedom of the individual, the recognition of the importance of relationships, and in the trust that these two facets of existence will

lead to a better future.  Compromising any of these three will compromise the continuation of human evolution.

As Richard Rohr succinctly puts it:

“The first step toward healing is truthfully acknowledging evil, while trusting the inherent goodness of reality.”

The Next Post

      This week we took a second look at managing the risks of continued human evolution, but relooking at how Teilhard offers a perspective in which spirituality and human progress aren’t just not in opposition to each other, they represent two facets of a single thing, increasing complexity.    Seen thusly, Teilhard’s extension of spirituality from human ‘holiness’ to a universal agency of ‘becoming’, and Norberg’s list of how such ‘becoming’ plays out in human affairs permits us a fuller appreciation of how evolution is occurring in our everyday lives.

Next week we will take a third look at this new perspective so we can better understand how it can make a difference in where we go from here.

October 4 – Where Have We Got to?

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a final look at the risks that Teilhard saw in the continuation of human evolution. This post concluded the part of the Blog which has seen how Teilhard understands human evolution, and how it can be objectively assessed.

Beginning last summer we summed up Teilhard’s perspective on Articulating the Noosphere and Living the Theological Virtues.  We went on to explore his metaphor of evolution as the advance of humanity over an imaginary sphere, and how as we come to the equator, everything begins to change as the increase in human population no longer finds empty space to pour into, and consequently begins to fold in on itself.

We then began to address how this new phenomena effects a change in human evolution by starting with the question,  Is Human Evolution Proceeding and how Would We Know?, and proceeded to answer the question with evidence from Johan Norberg which quantifies such metrics.  We also saw how his quantification (beginning with July 26- Fuel as a Measure of Human Evolution) illustrates how Teilhard’s insights are being borne out today, but as we saw, not without risks.

This week we’ll begin to address how all this fits into our focus of “The Secular Side of God”.

A Relook at ‘Articulating the Noosphere’

Teilhard believed that understanding how evolution proceeds both in our lives and in our societies depends on developing an understanding of the structure, the warp and woof, of the ‘noophere’:  the ‘mileu’ which appears in cosmic evolution with the appearance of the human.  Without denying science’s understanding of evolution as seen in the stages of pre-life and biological life, he offers a perspective on not only how such evolution can continue on in the human species, but how the ‘articulations’ of the spheres of ‘pre-life’ and ‘life’ as described by science can be seen to continue in the ‘noosphere’.   His straightforward observation that ‘evolution effects complexity’ is just as valid in the noosphere as it was realms of Physics and Biology.  This observation, then, is the key to beginning to understand the structure of the ‘noosphere’.  To understand how evolution works in the human is to understand how such ‘complexification’ can be understood as acting in both our personal lives and in the unfolding of society.

As we saw last week, Teilhard summarizes the unfolding of such complexity in the human species as we

“…continually find new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   And as we have seen in the past few weeks, Johan Norberg offers “A tornado of evidence” on how Teilhard’s projections of how “a rise in interiority and liberty” constantly effect “new ways of arranging ourselves” but requires “harmonious interrelations”.  Effectively, in Norberg’s evidence we see how Teilhard’s approach to understanding how the classical duality, “The one vs the many” plays out as we get better at ‘articulating the noosphere’.

And, as the subject of the blog has taken shape, the ‘reinterpretation of religion’, we can see more clearly now why such an undertaking is important for our continued evolution.  Classical Western religion, entwined as it has become with superstition, mythology and weighted down by medieval philosophy, nonetheless contains within it nuggets of true understanding of those ‘articulations’ which Teilhard asserts we must uncover and follow if we are going to continue to move forward.  Western religion is rife with teachings which address Teilhard’s  three essential elements of human evolution:

–          New ways of arranging ourselves (our cultural/social structures and how they expand across the globe through ‘globalization’)

–          A rise in interiority (our person) and liberty (our autonomy)

–          Harmonious interrelations (relationships which are capable of forming ‘psychisms’ capable of employing increases in our person and our liberties to effect new arrangements)

but as we have seen, require reinterpretation to uncover their relevance and focus to the job at hand.  Such reinterpretation of religion is necessary for it to provide signposts to the future.

Continuing the March to the Future

So, Teilhard asserts, to continue the rise of complexity in the human species, which is the same as continuing its evolution, we must increase our knowledge of the noosphere so that we can learn to cooperate with its ‘laws’.  As Teilhard forecasts and Norberg cites, in the past two hundred years we have seen distinctive examples of both.  Since the mid-1800s, as Norberg maps in detail, the speed at which we better understand what works and what doesn’t in an increasingly tight spiral of ‘trial and error’,  is ever increasing.   While Norberg and Teilhard both address this phenomenon, they also address the underlying evolutionary ‘physics’ which underlies it.

Norberg essentially agrees with Teilhard that human persons must be free to capitalize on their ‘interiority’ and be given the ‘liberty’ to continuously rearrange both their personal perspectives to identify rearrangements which can be attempted and either used as stepping stones to new arrangements or corrected if they do not effect an improvement, and to engage with other persons to freely form ‘psychisms’ to perform these tasks.

This should come as no surprise to many of us, put into these terms.  For the past hundred years, scientists and those in technical fields have experienced increasing participation in ‘psychisms’ as well as the satisfaction of using their innate skills and education to design, develop, field and deal with the consequences of their products.  They were not necessarily explicitly aware of how they were ‘articulating the noosphere’, nor always conscious of how their participation in their work groups contributed to their personal growth, but grew into an appreciation of the contributions of others as well as of the limited autonomy of those groups which bore fruit.  They were effectively participating in small ‘Teilhardic’ rearrangements.

The Next Post

For the last few weeks we have been exploring both the mechanism of increasing complexity in the human as well as the many examples of how this mechanism is playing out.  We’ve looked at both examples and risks- while progress is being made, how can we insure its continuation?

Next week we will return to address how religion, ‘divested’ of Dawkins’ ‘baggage’ can be reinterpreted to provide both relevance and functionality to such insurance.

September 27 – How ‘Noospheric’ Risks Undermine The Continuation of Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how, although there are risks to the continuation of human evolution in our perennial break-fix-break cycle,  faith in our ability to manage this cycle is more important than the expertise we develop to invent fixes to those things we break.

This week we will take a second look at these ‘Noospheric’ risks from the perspective of our place in the sweep of cosmic evolution.

The Fragility of Evolution

Consider that the enterprise of cosmic evolution itself is a risky business.  Evolution occurs when the ‘stuff of the universe’ thumbs its nose at the basic nature of matter by which each unification of like matter may well contribute to evolution by an increase in complexity, but at the same time is accompanied by a small loss of energy (Entropy: The Second law of Thermodynamics).  By this understanding of Physics, the universe begins with a certain quantum of energy, and as soon as it begins it it starts running down.  In seeming opposition, not only do things evolve while this is happening, but they evolve from simple configurations to more complex ones.  As Steven Pinker points out in his book, “Enlightenment Now”,  since there are obviously many more ways for things to be ‘un-complex’, disorderly, than there are for things to be ‘complex’ or more orderly, the very existence of evolution seems counter to the Second Law.  According to Pinker, “Evolution occurs against the grain.”

Worse yet,  As Teilhard observes, while nature seems to have a built-in ‘coefficient of complexity’ by which such complexity increases over time, (and without which evolution could not proceed) this factor becomes secondary to continued evolution when it enters the realm of the human and now requires ‘cooperation’.  As Richard Dawkins sees it, “Genes are replaced by ‘memes’ as the agent of evolution”.  Once humans acquire the capability of ‘reflective consciousness’, by which they are ‘aware of their awareness’, the rules change once again.

Evolution must now be chosen if it is to continue.

So What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

But if evolution needs to be ‘chosen’  to continue, what’s involved in choosing it?  In a word, ‘faith’.   Restating and simplifying the Teilhard quote from last week:

“(we need) to be quite certain, … that the (future) into which (our) destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   Such ‘choice’ requires ‘trust’.

We saw in the last three posts how common it is to engage in denial of progress and how such denial reflects a fear of the future.  We also touched on the fact that such fear can be (and has so often been ) seized upon by populists who offer themselves as bulwarks against the woes of the future if only we would trust them.  Their first move is to insist that there is much to be feared, then to begin to use this fear to undermine trust in the Western structures of freedom which they claim to have unleased such woes  as the free press, individual freedoms and open immigration.   Other Western liberal practices are also denigrated, such as the development of a global infrastructure by which every advance, such as those reported by Norberg, can be shared globally and contribute to progress across the globe.  While walling off the rest of the world may shut us in it is advertised as necessary to make us safe.

Once traditional Western norms can no longer be trusted, Teilhard’s  ‘psychisms’ identified last week as not only one of the fruits of these norms but an essential component of continued evolution, will  become less efficacious and over time will begin to fail to mitigate the negative effects that result from future inventions such as new sources of energy.

So, while Norberg’s quantification of human progress is in optimistic agreement with Teilhard, the risks are nonetheless substantial and cannot be overlooked.  Evolution is in our hands, and stewardship of its continuation requires a clear-headed knowledge of the past, a commitment to the energy of evolution as it rises in the human species and confidence in the future.  In the words of Teilhard:

“..the view adopted here of a universe in process of general involution upon itself comes in as an extremely simple way of getting past the dead end at which history is still held up, and of pushing further towards a more homogenous and coherent view of the past.”

The Next Post

This week we took a second look at the second and more serious category of risks to human evolution.  While we acknowledged the ongoing risks of fixing what we have broken, the greater risk lies in the possibility of losing faith in our historically proven ability to, as Teilhard says,

 “continually find new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   In short, the interruption of this “rise in interiority and liberty” will stifle the flow of evolution in the human species.

Next week we will sum up where we’ve been in tracing Teilhard’s ‘articulation of the noosphere’ through Norberg’s enumeration of the articulations and arriving at the risks evolution undergoes as it enters into the realm of the human.

September 20 – The ‘Noospheric’ Risks to Continued Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we addressed those risks to continued human evolution that are based on the seemingly inevitable negative consequences of every aspect of human ‘progress’, but noted that, at least thus far, human innovation and invention seem up to the task of maximizing the advances over the consequences.

But can we count on this phenomenon to continue?  What can happen to ‘dry up’ this pool of intellectual energy, Teilhard’s ‘psychisms’, which have kept us moving thus far?

The Noospheric Risks

As we saw in our series a few weeks back on “Mapping the Noosphere”, the phase of human evolution in which increased population simply spills over into available space is over.  Even though the rate of increase of population has slowed, each increase now brings us into ever increasing proximity to each other, and our natural initial reaction is to recoil.  Take the example of looking for a seat at the airport.  Few will choose to sit near a stranger if a seat can be found next to one which is vacant.  The only instances in which we seem to be able to tolerate being closed in by the crowd are when we are related, as families or tribesmen, to those crowding us.

This recoil from increased compression is an indication of the fear that in the future we will be subsumed into the hoard, losing our identity, our autonomy and squelching our person.   There is a facet to the future that is ‘dreaded’; the future seems far less secure than the past.

   Each human innovation that has been cited in this series has occurred in the face of political, religious and philosophical pushback.  In the yearning for a non-existing but nevertheless attractive past, the practices of innovation, invention and globalism can be undermined.  The very fact that a strong majority of well-off Westerners can still consider the future to be dire is an indication of how little faith (well-justified faith if Norberg’s statistics and Teilhard’s projections are to be believed) is to be found.  In 2015, a poll cited by Norberg showed that a whopping 71% of Britons thought “The world was getting worse” and a miniscule 3% thought it was getting better.

Teilhard comments on this phenomenon:

“…so many human beings, when faced by the inexorably rising pressure of the noosphere, take refuge in what are now obsolete forms of individualism and nationalism.”

   With this insight, penned some eighty years ago, he correctly forecasts trends which can be seen in today’s increasingly divided West.  He goes on to elaborate:

“At this decisive moment when for the first time he (man, that is) is becoming scientifically aware of the general pattern of his future on earth, what he needs before anything else, perhaps, is to be quite certain, on cogent experimental grounds, that the sort of temporo-spatial dome into which his destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   And here he identifies the crux of the ‘noospheric’ risks to increasing evolution in the human species.  As he forecasts, we seem to be entering an era of “rising ideological division” and a “culture war” that has the potential to undermine our well-documented knack for problem-solving.  Nowadays, few adversarial groups seem capable of negotiating peaceful consensus solutions to problems, especially with opponents that are perceived as ‘even more unreasonably dogmatic’ (Pinker) than they are. This cycle is often driven by the irate stubbornness of a few vigorous leaders.  After all, as David Brin points out,

“the indignant have both stamina and dedication, helping them take high positions in advocacy organizations, from Left to Right.”

   And exactly how does this jeopardize our continued evolution?  Again, Teilhard explains how human evolution is shifting from the neurological increase in brain size to the ability to synthesize brains to increase the power of thought to innovate and invent:

“..as a result of the combined, selective and cumulative operation of their numerical magnitude, the human centers have never ceased to weave in and around themselves a continually more complex and closer-knit web of mental interrelations, orientations and habits just as tenacious and indestructible as our hereditary flesh and bone conformation.  Under the influence of countless accumulated and compared experiences, an acquired human psychism is continually being built up, and within this we are born, we live and we grow- generally without even suspecting how much this common way of feeling and seeing is nothing but a vast, collective past, collectively organized.”

   In short, such ideological division undermines the formation of such ‘psychisms’, and weakens their power to solve problems.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look the ‘Noospheric Risks’ to human evolution, ones which are more subtle, and hence more dangerous than those of a ‘structural’ nature.

Next week we will continue looking at these ‘Noospheric’ risks to better understand how they can undermine the continuation of human evolution.

September 13 – The ‘Structural’ Risks to Continued Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

As we saw in our initial post on the subject of quantifying human evolution, Teilhard acknowledges that his audacious optimism for the future of the human race is nonetheless balanced by risk.  As we saw in the last two weeks, there is considerable resistance to the data which supports his optimism.

This week we will take a look at some ‘structural’ risks and see how they could play out to undermine the continuation of human evolution.

The Structural Risks

As we have seen in a few of his many examples of human progress,  Johan Norberg identifies a “Tornado of Evidence” (The Economist) which supports Teilhard’s optimistic projection for the  future of human evolution.  But even as he goes through the numbers which show exponential growth in human welfare in nine distinct and critical categories of human existence over the last two generations of human evolution, he also notes that every such aspect of ‘progress’ comes with an unplanned and unwelcome consequence.  Humans learned to replace wood with coal for fuel, which avoided the deforestation of the planet, and probable human extinction, but at the same time led to the near asphyxiation of those living in cities as population increased along with density.  Advances in sanitation, agriculture and medicine exponentially lowered the death rate of both mothers and children in childbirth, which then led to a huge growth in human population, which then threatened to overtax food production and lead to widespread famine.  And today we see the threat of global warning (at least partially) caused by dumping tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping heat, possibly leading to the rising of the seas and the drowning of millions.

However, as Norberg and many others note, forecasts of the effects of such consequences  have historically failed to materialize as predicted.  Such forecasts, such as those of Malthus, who predicted population growth overwhelming food production and leading to global famine by now, did not factor in the human ability to innovate and invent.  While improvements in crops have led to a global decrease in hunger, the population did not continue to grow at the predicted rate.  Why not?  As Norberg points out, the reduction in childbirth deaths actually led to a decrease in the rate of population growth as parents no longer felt the necessity for large families when such a large percentage of children began to survive the vulnerable early years.

As we have seen, the introduction of coal did indeed lead to deaths caused by foul air, but of course, once again, innovation and invention produced methods of cleaning coal smoke, and new technologies to produce more BTUs with fewer side effects.

But what about global warming?  The CO₂ content in the air may take centuries to dissipate naturally, and by then humans may well have effected their own demise.   Again, such a forecast fails to factor the ability of humans to invent.  Considering the number of initiatives under development today, such as wind, solar and nuclear power, such prophesies may well be premature.  There are also studies underway to not only extract CO₂  from the air, but to market it as a source of fuel as well.  All these, of course,  are optimistic forecasts,  and all subject to unplanned consequences which will set off new rounds of invent-pollute-clean up.  Can humans win this war, or will the inevitable consequences rule out in the end?

The question can legitimately be asked, “What costs are we prepared to pay for progress?”  This is followed by the more significant question. “How can we be sure that we will continue to find fixes for the things we break?”

One key to perspective on this conundrum is to address the other type of risk: the ‘Noospheric Risks’.

The Next Post

This week we took a brief look at ‘Structural’ risks to the continuation of evolution in the human species.

Next week we will address risks to human evolution that are more subtle, and hence more dangerous, the ‘Noospheric’ risks.

September 6 – Why the Pessimism?- Part 2

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at why pessimism over human progress (entitled ‘progressiphobai’ by Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”) seems so entrenched in the West, particularly among those comfortable, secure, educated individuals who are unable to project their personal well-being into optimism about their future.
This week, staying with Pinker, we will take a look at several reasons why such a fear of the future might be at the root of this ‘progressiphobia’.

Pinker’s  List

   Pinker identifies several phenomena at work in Western society that contribute to such a notable lack of trust in our future.

Ubiquity of News – We are immersed in news in a way which is truly unprecedented.  Thanks to technology, we receive it not only in ‘real time’ but in unprecedented volume.   As Pinker observes:

“Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is.”

     And not only does immediate news sell, negative news sells better than positive news, resulting in negative slant.  Pinker cites a survey showing a ‘negative count’ in the New York Times from 1945 to 2015, in which the use of negative terms in news articles shows a distinctive increase.

In addition to the financial desire to ‘sell’, the competition between paper and electronic media is also raising the stakes.

   While the result of such a plethora of information might be seen as simply leaving us ‘better informed’, it can also be seen as leaving us ‘miscalibrated’  For example, we worry more about crime even as crime rates are falling.  As Pinker points out, such information can “part company with reality altogether”.   He cites a 2016 American poll in which

“77% agreed that “Islamic militants operating in Syria …pose a serious threat to the existence and survival of the United States.””

  Pinker notes that such an opinion is not only an example of ‘miscalibration’, it is “nothing short of delusional”.

The Negativity Bias – As we have seen in the above examples, such pessimism isn’t just due to skepticism about the data, but suggests an ‘unpreparedness’ for the possibility that the human condition is improving.  This is sort of a ‘human original sin’, in which it is easier for humans to imagine a future in which their life is degraded by violence, illness, poverty, loss of loved ones or a nearly endless list of woes than it is to imagine it as uplifted, their lot improved, their relationships deepened, or their future brighter than their past.

One reason for such bias is the simple fact that our lower brains continue to stimulate us with the basic urges common to our ancestors, such as fight or flight, hunger, anger or other ‘base instincts’ so necessary for their survival.  Just because evolution has endowed us with a neocortex brain capable of rationally dealing with such instincts (“am I really threatened?”) doesn’t mean that the limbic and reptilian brains cease to function.

It also doesn’t mean that our skill of using the neocortex has reached maturity.  Teilhard notes that humanity is still in the early stages of its evolution, considering that if universal evolution was captured in a thousand pages, the appearance of the human would not occur until the bottom of the last page.  Just as he envisions the first, most primitive cell emerging in evolution “dripping in molecularity”, he also sees humanity still in a stage which is ‘dripping’ with ‘animality’, and very much influenced by the instinctual stimuli which served our ancestors so well.

The Illusions of Maturity – As Pinker sees it, we tend to “mistake the growing burdens of maturity, wage-earning and parenthood for a less innocent world”.  Along these same lines, as we age we also have a tendency to “mistake a decline in our faculties for a decline in the times”.  As the columnist Franklin Pierce Adams pointed out

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”

The ‘Wisdom of Pessimism’ – Pinker notes that throughout history, “pessimism has been equated with moral seriousness”.  This can be seen, for example in the Hebrew prophets who “blended their social criticism with warnings of disaster”.  The best way to be perceived as a prophet, it seems, is to predict the worse, because there’s always something happening to confirm the prediction, somewhere.

Pinker also notes that “Intellectuals know they can attain instant gravitas by pointing to an unsolved problem and theorizing that it is a symptom of a sick society.”  As we saw last week, the affluence of the Graham family (and many Evangelicals like them) is testimony to how financially successful this strategy can be.

Not that pessimism is all bad.   The fact that there are more of us concerned about harms that would have been overlooked in more callous times, itself contributes to the increase in human welfare which Norberg documents in such detail.  The danger that Pinker sees is tbat “as we care more about humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen”.

Human Neurology – This last example comes not from Pinker but from recent studies in which brain activity was recorded under different stimuli.  In these studies, the researchers were able to identify which part of the brain ‘lit up’ with different activities.  They noted that when a person was shown information that made them indignant, the same part of the brain responded as when they ate chocolate.  This suggests that indignation, a state of anger which the person feels is justified, can set off a reaction in the brain which is registered as ‘pleasure’.  It turns out that being indignant releases the same kind of endorphins as eating chocolate.  In a nutshell, indignation feels good.  As my old supervisor at the ‘Bomber Plant’ used to say, “Indignation is the balm that soothes the pain of inadequacy.”

The Next Post

This week we completed a brief summary of Steven Pinker’s observations of our seeming reluctance to acknowledge the fruits of human evolution.  In Pinker’s words

“The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being”

   But, he goes on

“Almost no one knows about it.”

   The fact that there clearly exists such a plethora of ‘fruits’ (well documented by Norberg), at the same time that acknowledgement of them seems so scarce presents us with yet another ‘duality’.  When Teilhard addresses what he considers to be the risks to the continuation of evolution in the human, he rates such duality high on the list.  Next week we will address risks to this continuation, and take another look at Teilhard’s concerns.