Awakening Our Humanity

For the first time ever, all services and rituals of Easter and Passover season were canceled—attention was focused on the crisis of the global coronavirus pandemic.  People sheltered in their homes, some watched virtual services on computers and TVs.      …...It felt empty.

We are embroiled in a world pandemic; thousands have died and more will follow.  This is a tragedy beyond reckoning . . . but history of the world shows that out of tragedy there often arises unexpected good.

I have seen signs of an awakening of our humanity.  People reaching out to help others: doctors and nurses volunteering to leave their homes and go to help where the need is greatest; first responders knowingly walking into danger; people in apartment buildings cheering together from their windows the efforts of those facing the danger; healthy people singing and dancing from a distance to cheer up their neighbors; children finding ways to raise money to help strangers; homebound folks making face masks to distribute to nursing homes and shelters; random groups distributing food to those financially challenged by job loss . . . These are people helping people, not for profit or personal gain but because there is a need.  Isn’t this what we are supposed to be about?

In our fast-paced competitive world we have over-valued the material side of life while under-valuing—often ignoring—the spiritual dimension of our reality.  The spiritual dimension is not substantive but ethereal (without weight or measure) . . . the consciousness that is present only in humanity: love, compassion, empathy, hope, dreams, ideas, creativity, inventiveness . . . qualities that define our uniqueness and the very essence of our humanity.

I’ve longed for some unexpected good to come from this tragedy and I see it in the kindness, compassion, and thoughtfulness that is daily emerging.  Perhaps we needed to be slowed down to allow it to shine forth.  This world-wide viral attack shows us the oneness of our small planet, what harms any part harms the whole.  Man made boundaries no longer apply in a world with international transportation and communication.  We are at the point in history which requires our acknowledgement of our One World—our survival depends on it.

A quote from Martin Luther King:  ‘We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

And from a book by Kathleen Duffy titled: Teilhard’s Struggle ‘An evolutionary worldview implies that the cosmos is still unfinished and that its future depends on Human activity . . . the advance of Humanity’s movement in the direction of spirit depends critically on Human endeavor’ . . . not fleeing the world to commune with God but plunging into the World at its deepest and most violent.

Humanity has a purpose--we are here to build a better world.

Patriarchy Challenged

In the book Sapiens, the author Harari states: “All societies are based on imagined hierarchies”.  These imagined orders divide people into make-believe groups—upper levels enjoy privileges and power while lower levels suffer discrimination and oppression. There has been some change over time . . . but, “One hierarchy, however, has been of supreme importance in all known human societies: the hierarchy of gender.” 

“Most human societies have been Patriarchal societies that valued men more highly than women.” “People everywhere have divided themselves into men and women.  And almost everywhere men have gotten the better deal . . . In many societies women were simply the property of men, most often their fathers, husbands and brothers.”  

In rare instances a woman has gained prominence—as in Royal succession—she may inherit the title when there is no male heir; but it is illusionary.  He gives the example of Elizabeth I of England who reigned for 45 years yet during her rule, “all Members of Parliament were men, all officers in the Royal Navy and army were men, all judges and lawyers were men, all bishops and archbishops were men, all theologians and priests were men, all doctors and surgeons were men, all students and professors in all universities and colleges were men, all sheriffs were men and almost all the writers, architects, poets, philosophers, painters musicians and scientists were men.”

“Patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies . . . since it is so universal, it cannot be the product of some vicious circle that was kick-started by chance occurrence.”  How did this happen?  Harari asks, “What accounts for the universality and stability of this system? . . . we just don’t know.”

I want to speculate on a possibility . . . it is evolution.  Teilhard says evolution is the underlying principle of all that is. Life is dynamic, ever changing and time is one directional—an ever expanding process.  Looking at the law of complexity-consciousness, in all things, as the external (the without) grows more complex, the internal (the within) expands in consciousness.

When the Homo sapiens first acquired language and complex thought, it was an untamed brutal world. It stands to reason that men were better equipped with their strength, aggression, and violence to take command in that world.  It was also obvious that since nature gave women the responsibility of bearing, birthing, and nursing the next generation (which was not a one-time thing but continuous) that confined her activities to a smaller circle thereby the domestic scene with its requirements became her primary stage of operation.  Those obvious roles were dictated by nature in a primitive world.

But as the world became more civilized, more complex and with more opportunities, men, having come from that ‘might means right’ brutal world, saw themselves as being ‘in charge’ . . . so as civilization advanced, there was no desire on the part of man to share decision-making authority with woman.  Clearly men had the strength/violence advantage to enforce that, so what began as a natural biologically ordered division of labor became a dictatorial Patriarchal system in which, almost universally, women became second-class citizens with no authoritative input and the ‘voice’ of women was silenced. 

In psychology it is recognized that all human qualities are present in all people, but are exhibited at different strengths in each individual.  It is also understood that taken as a whole, each gender emphasizes certain preferences.  Lists of gender characteristics give males as having: strength, courage, independence, dominance, violence, competitiveness, assertiveness . . . and females as having: gentleness, empathy, sensitivity, compassion, jealousy, nurturance, tolerance . . . Given these characteristics each gender sees the world through different eyes and speaks with a different voice.   

By having long ago adopted Patriarchy as the basic societal hierarchy, half of humanity was eliminated from shaping the forward movement of civilization.  For uncountable generations this system was unchallenged and those dominant male qualities shaped the world to his view—with aggression gaining ever more prominence on the world stage as wars increased in frequency and intensity. 

Slowly female consciousness has awakened to the inequality and danger our world has found itself in.  It was and is an evolutionary awakening of consciousness.  By Patriarchy silencing the female voice during civilization’s advance distorted the outcome; the violence, aggression, dominance, and competitiveness of male characteristics have gone unchecked by female sensitivity, compassion, empathy and tolerance.  That makes no claim of female superiority; rather, it recognizes those qualities present in all humanity but associated more with the female.  They have been left out of the equation by silencing the female ‘voice’ thereby unbalancing our world.

Evolution is kicking in to bring attention to the ‘left out’ dimension, and the changing of the state of women on the world stage gives evidence to it. 

Evolution moves forward by advancing in complexity while increasing in consciousness and transforming to a higher state.  That is our present challenge—to fully embrace the whole of humanity.  There is purpose and direction to be found in evolution . . . we are to build the earth, not destroy it.

Is Humanity Evolving?

Herein I make references to the concepts of Teilhard de Chardin, a scientist, Jesuit and Theologian who has stated that evolution is God’s plan ‘which is the underlying principle of all that is.’  Evolution is transformation.

It is easy to see how we have made progress with our technology.  In the life span of our oldest senior citizens society has moved from horse drawn carriages to supersonic jets for transportation; and from the cumbersome stationary telephone to smart phones that we carry in our pockets for communication.  The without—the material things—are so much more obvious, right there before our eyes.  We can weigh, measure and take apart the ‘things’ of the world and come to understand them and make improvements, but that isn’t evolution, it is production. The evolution is represented by the inventiveness.  In the within—the non-material thoughts and feelings—which are out of sight, there is nothing to weigh and measure so until recently they have been overlooked—yet in that within is the driving force of our advances. 

So what is that driving force?  Let’s call it consciousness—a word bantered around much these days but is still ill defined.  The agreed definition is that the word refers to ‘awareness by the mind of itself and the world.’  (Teilhard calls that reflective awareness.)  It was Sigmund Freud (1856 -1939) who initiated interest in the study of the mind by dividing the mind into two parts: the conscious and the unconscious.  Later Carl Jung added the concept of the collective unconscious, defined as ‘the part of the unconscious mind which is derived from ancestral memory and experiences that are common to all mankind.  (The way our humanness preserves consciousness).

Let’s return to our question: Is humanity evolving?  It’s an important question.  I postulate that if the question were asked in a survey, answers would fall into 3 groups. The smallest group would be those who say ‘yes’; the next group, a bit larger but more emphatic, would say ‘NO!’ and the remaining largest group would be made up of those who just shrug or say ‘I never thought about that.’  It’s an important question because a ‘yes’ answer opens the door to hope whereas the ‘no’ answer keeps company with fatalism. 

The essence of evolution is transformation from a lower state to a higher state. Here we need to consider the law of complexity-consciousness.  This law reflects the tendency for creatures to become more complex and at the same time to increase in consciousness.  We can see this operative in species development which, over billions of years, simple one-cell creatures grew increasingly more complex eventually developing spinal cords and brains which enabled them to have more freedom while rudimentary awareness increased to allow a choice of reacting patterns.  Initially evolution focused more on the without until Homo sapiens appeared, then evolution turned inward.  The within in humanity became the focus for evolution.The human is not merely ‘another creature, the human was God’s plan from the beginning.  Teilhard calls mankind ‘the flower on the tree of life.

From 800-400 BC a major evolutionary step was represented by the Axial Age when, throughout the then inhabited world, clusters of humanity simultaneously and independently produced thinkers and philosophers who laid spiritual groundwork which became the foundations of human civilization.

It is easier to see evolutionary advances from a distance . . . look all the way back to the early Homo sapiens.  The emergent humans came with the inherent ability for speech, but speech had to be invented . . . and they found ways to turn their grunts and vocal sounds into words—a gigantic evolutionary step forward without which civilization could not have been accomplished.  Those sounds-become-words needed ways to be captured and preserved . . . marks on objects became letters which became permanentized words . . . with time, more and more ways to preserve words came into being . . . writing on clay tablets, parchment, paper . . . all came to be from human effort.  Then came the marvelous invention of the printing press which hundreds of years later gave way to the computer.  We take those long-past innovations for granted, but stop for a moment and realize how transformative each of those steps was.  Those were evolutionary advances because the scope of what was possible had expanded.  The without of the shapes and forms are only incidental, the wonder lies in the non-material—the expansion of consciousness within the human mind.

It seems hard to accept that humanity is evolving when we can see so much humanly produced evil . . . but it make sense from the point of view of our freedom.  God gave the human free will.  That means God does not control us; we can choose our ‘next step’. The important thing to remember is that with the expansion of consciousness comes the advancement of knowledge.

Let’s think of an early human taking a new path and coming upon a tree with red objects hanging down. His tribe hadn’t encountered apples before.  He picks and bites into one and finds it tasty and good to eat.  He has three choices: He can take some back and share them with his tribe; he can eat his full and return to his tribe saying nothing thereby keeping this secret pleasure to himself; or he can lie to his people, telling of his encounter with a tree with large red berries and many dead animals around who must have eaten the poison berries—thus insuring no one else will eat them.  Humans are free to use their knowledge in any way.

Is humanity advancing? Clearly that is the case, but because of equal opportunity between the negative and positive uses of our abilities we are now in a precarious position unless and until we consciously and collectively choose for the good.

5th Anniversary

Five years ago today I began my blog 'ofseriousthoughts' with this poem.  I repeat it today on this anniversary.  It speaks to my main concerns.
I have maintained the goal of two entrys a month.  Because of other writing projects I will reduce that to once a month.  I have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy this project, just less frequently.  I only wish I had more comments from my readers.

Un-named God

You are the un-named God

      the soul-giver

Who or what you are

      is a mystery requiring humble acceptance,

      not a problem demanding arrogant solutions.

You gifted man with consciousness--

      the invitation to participate in the mystery!

We responded with arrogance--

      imposing solutions upon a perceived problem.

We’ve misinterpreted what and who you are.

We’ve misconcluded who and what we are!

---

How wise the admonition 

      to not utter God’s name!

We ignored it to our peril--

      we named you and contained you;

We locked you within dogmas,

      confined you to denominations;

We borrowed your power to levy control,

      stole from you your glory to praise our creations;

We molded and made you into our image,

      chose and selected what pleased our design.

---

Foolishly, men of power became God-namers

      and for a time...

The God-namers ruled

      presuming to control both God and men

The God-namers ruled

      luxuriating in glamour and arrogance

The God-namers ruled

      dividing humanity into controllers and controlled

The God-namers ruled

      losing the quest for the Holy Grail.

---

And so history unfolded...

Till finally the controlled awakened,

      forever beyond blind obedience.

They looked and saw the illusion--

     God wasn’t as they’d been told!

They saw empty dogma and warring denominations,

They saw corrupted power and tainted glory,

They saw false idols and self-serving gestures.

Ordinary men turned, first on the God-namers,

                          --then on God!

Yet foolishly they accepted the divisions of 

                          controllers and controlled

And everyone raced to be in charge

          while denying responsibility for control.

The 20th Century ‘common man’

     accepted the proclamation 

               of God’s death

And in so doing, brought about

                ...his own

               Emptiness

               Soullessness

               Meaninglessness...

---

The structure of civilization

     has been built upon domination and control.

The hope for its continuation

     hangs upon humankind embracing true Wisdom

               The formula is there for us to discover

                     Beyond dogmas

                     Beyond controllers:

               “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

                     “Love one another”

                        “Go and sin no more”

                     “Forgive your enemies”

---

Is it that God IS NOT?

     or

Is it that God is beyond our containing?

                     --our naming?

God is Unity, Totality, Infinity

God is Love, Justice, Truth

God is Benevolent Transcendent Power

---

Without God upon whom to center

                     my life,

My Life becomes the center of 

                     my universe.

     Alienation!

          Exit warmth and compassion

               honor and integrity:

          “Take care of #1”

          “If it feels good, do it”

          “The one who dies with the most toys wins”

---

But we’re made to seek God

It’s programmed into our being

     so imitations fill the vacuum:

          sex replaces Love

          legalisms replace Justice

          data replaces Truth

     and the almighty dollar replaces Benevolent

                                         Transcendent

                                            Power

          Soul-less

     We’ve become the hollow men!

---

Louder, Faster!

Louder, Faster!!  Hide the hollowness!

But no matter how loud and how fast

          there are moments of 

          self alone with self

     and the hollow places echo

     the absence of the soul

                          ...another suicide

                             one more senseless killing.

Here and there, a tear is shed, a cry is heard

     another tear, another cry

          and another and another

     till the Louder and Faster 

          aren’t loud enough or fast enough

               and we finally realize...

There’s a cry echoing across the land

The cry of a hollow generation

          wailing for its lost soul!

---

With our own hand, we fashioned hell!

We refused to see we did it to ourselves--

We not only named God, but dictated the spelling!

---

But You are the unnamed God

     The soul-giver

I know you by your absence.

When we turn from You

     we dispossess our soul--

          soon to discover

               we are the hollow men.

Without You we cannot save ourselves

                       from ourselves.

Only in Your presence do we partake of the mystery--

Only in Your presence do we reach beyond ourselves--

Only in Your presence do we find fulfillment.

To Build A Better World

Series:  Long-Term Vision   #7   final 

I want to bring together the various themes of my writing.  This blog began 5 years ago with an all-encompassing poem; then I wrote about observations from the world of our times and humanity’s search for God. Throughout I’ve made references to Teilhard de Chardin, a scientist and theologian.  In 2015 herein I wrote a 7 part series outlining some of his concepts. Although he is well known among theologian, the revolutionary nature and complexity of his writing makes him little known to the average person so I strive to make his ideas more understandable because he is the key to the integration of science and religion—which are NOT incompatible but rather two sides of the coin of knowledge.  Science seeks the when, where and how of the world while religion seeks the who and why of existence.

 The revolutionary concept of our time is the realization of the interconnectedness of all life.  We are moving toward unifying our world, not into sameness but with respect for our diversities.  Peaceful co-existence is the goal.  That understanding begins with evolution and consciousness—both new concepts to the 20^thand 21^stcenturies.  Evolution is the underlying principle of all that is.  Consciousness is the unique human quality that allows for our freedom and the ability to shape our world.  Darwin gave us the mechanistic understanding that life evolved from simple forms to more complex ones (complexity).  Teilhard gave us the understanding of the non-material dimension of life (consciousness) whereby, over long spans of time, rudimentary awareness in lower creatures increased to become reflective awareness in humans. He identified ‘the law of complexity-consciousness’.  Our human consciousness continues to expand to ever see greater order and 'rightness'.

All that exists follows an ordered pattern of development.  The coming-to-be of materiality resulted not from random happenings (though randomness is involved) but in a discernable order.  We can see a relentless directionality from lower to higher order.  Telescopes show us the order of the universe, we have discovered the order in our solar system, science tell us of the order and delicate balance of the elements that make up our world, we know of the order to new life coming into existence, and we have all lived through the ordered pattern of growth and development from childhood to adulthood.  We will collectively come to see a higher order in recognizing the interdependence of all of life and act accordingly; harm to any part affects the whole. 

A dictionary definition of order: 1) a condition of logical or comprehensible arrangement among separate elements of a group; 2) prescribed arrangements among component parts such that proper functioning or appearance is achieved. Note the words logical, comprehensible, prescribed, and functional.  Order is a product of conscious intent.The overwhelming presence of order in life and the universe points to ‘something’ consciously guiding the process, because order follows intent.  

I choose to call the ‘something’ Mystery God.  Others can choose other names or no name—but what I see is an ordered universe and beings with consciousness capable of long-term vision, people that can formulate and reach for goals.  And I see in those beings of every race and culture a shared desire for a sustainable world at Peace.  Not all, and not soon, surely not in my lifetime or my children or grandchildren’s, but it is enough to join the flow of life striving for unity that will one day realize all life’s interconnectedness.

Some would consider that ‘seeking God’ (source of love, truth, goodness, hope . . .).   Or others may prefer to consider it as seeking ‘indestructible rightness’, by whatever the name; our goal is to build a better world.

The Modern Era

A few days ago I wrote here about the 1^st Axial Age, the name given to the time in history when humanity made a major leap ahead, a change in consciousness that brought scattered humanity—each in unique ways—to lay the foundations for civilization that still serve us today.

The modern era necessitates another axial change wherein humanity comes to embrace a new consciousness of what and who we are.  We’ve seen ourselves from outer space—earth as one small interconnected interacting unit.   We must come to realize that what happens to one part effects the whole.  We can no longer choose war; we are One world threatened with self-destruction. 

We were given a planet in which to create a world according to our choice.  Little by little, with glory and strife, we came together to become a global world; we have yet to realize our oneness.  May we in our lifetime experience humanity's rise in consciousness.

                                                                          - - -

        

 I repeat an earlier poem from my blog of 10/15/13

POTENTIAL

I believe in human potential--

     Man can be more than he is

     if armed with the will to become.

I see the inherent dangers--

     Power can either create or destroy

     so knowledge of it awakens fear.

I know of quantitative quality--

     That which can be expressed positively

     can likewise be expressed negatively.

     I look to civilization’s development

          - the taming of fire

          - the mastery of communication

          - the understanding of order

          - the creation of beauty

          - the invention of systems

          - the development of industry

          - the perfection of technology

     Laced with wars, tyranny, slavery, holocaust, bigotry, treason, genocide...

     This is my heritage, my lineage, my ancestry;

     It all came before me and is mine because I am!

     This awareness engenders painful ambivalence;

     Majesty and pride joust with horror and shame.

     All this is because of human potential;

     Our being has changed the face of the earth.

     Man has traveled to the moon

     And he has created Auschwitz and Dachau.

               Are we gods or demons?

     The more we refine our being

     the more aware we become of its flaws.

     Ignorance once hid from us our vast potential;

     Yet once glimpsed, that image holds the mind in bondage.

     Reality forces us to live with the less that is

     while desperately longing for the more beyond reach.

Now, together, we are called to create a better world--      

     The negatives are painfully real

     but somewhere, somehow, progress happens.

Truth demands we acknowledge our potential's full range

     without abnegating the responsibility;

     --each person's choices help shape the future.

A New Axial Age?

Has the modern era brought us to a new Axial Age?  Some say so, but what does it mean?  The German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term ‘Axial Age’ in 1949 when he noted that during the period between 800-200 BC there was a shift in how humanity viewed itself.  A turn as if on an axis—a change in consciousness that allowed civilization to develop.  Prior to the shift, tribalism was the dominant form of social organization.  The general characteristics were: small populations closely related, closed to outer influences, lacking individualized thinking, total submission to the group (ultra-conformity), with non-members of the tribe usually seen as ‘enemy’.

During the first Axial Age there was a revolution in human thought.  Independently in most clusters of humanity (China, India, Persia, Judaea, Greece and Rome) there was a change in consciousness that produced great advances in intellectual, philosophical and religious thinking.  Great men arose to define a ‘way of life’ (Confucius and La-Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses and the Prophets, Socrates and Plato).  In each cluster there was some version of The Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’.  Humanity had moved from the isolation of tribalism to recognizing the necessity of cooperation for mutual benefit.  It was a huge leap, laying the groundwork for civilization to emerge.

How is this relevant to today?  The modern era has brought tremendous technological change.  From 1900 to 2018 we’ve leapt from horse and buggy transportation to rockets to the moon and back; in communications, then the telephone was new and cumbersome and today we carry it around in our pocket not only for conversations but also to navigate highways and instantly obtain limitless information . . . it isn’t the same world!   In the early 1900s we were just awakening to the terrifying destructive power we held, erupting in a World War with heretofore-unimagined armament—which escalated to nuclear arsenals capable of destroying all life on planet earth.

This new world requires a shift or change in how we see the world; another revolution in human thought is needed.  War has been the way to settle disputes since man first walked the earth.  It is no longer a viable option—viable means: capable of working successfully.  There is no ‘success’ with nuclear weapons.  Until we ventured into outer space and looked back on this tiny planet in the vast universe, we still believed (although science told us otherwise) we lived in a limitless static world where earth was the center of it all with sun and moon and stars revolving around us, as God sat on a cloud watching our every move. 

That isn’t the reality.  We are a dynamic evolving interacting singular unit, dependent upon each other for survival.  Early in the Bible (Deut. 30:19) God says:  “I have set before you life and death . . . choose life.”  God left it up to us. Whether or not you believe in the Bible or God, that clearly is a statement to us today.

The choosing of death is to continue to war, enlarge the nuclear arsenal, and deny reality.  The way to ‘choose life‘ is to embrace our interconnectedness, change our consciousness to find the way for humanity to work together in peace and build the world. . . thus bringing on a second Axial Age.

I once again quote Teilhard de Chardin:

 

                       “The Age of Nations is past,

     The task before us now, if we would not perish

                              Is to build the earth”

Pattern Seen

How can an otherwise intelligent person conclude there is no God?  I understand rejecting the god-images we have constructed—none are true.  But there is pattern and order to existence, which can be discovered, and that is the product of consciousness.  How can anyone look at the wonder of the universe and conclude it is all there by random chance without direction and intent?  Even the simplest scientific exploration tells us of the amazing delicate balance of elements that allows for existence and life.  Order does not self-create; it is the product of forethought and planning.  Whoever or whatever God is, God is Consciousness and our consciousness is humanity’s link to the unknown God.  Creator of the Universe, originator of pattern and order, I can only bow in humble thanksgiving.

When the species human emerged eons ago, man entered the world of nature as it had appeared to all other living creatures, but the human possessed a unique quality, that of consciousness tuned with reflective awareness—the ability to reason, look back and recall, to look forward and anticipate—the quality slowly awakened and relentlessly evolved; with it the human constructed language and began to alter the environment to his advantage.

Fast forward millions of years and see how the human has changed the face of the earth: from outer space one can see earth’s darkness dotted with lights; we have built structures and machines which have connected all parts of the globe with marvels of transportation and communication; we have made discoveries that combat diseases and enable us to see beyond this small world into the vast universe.  Surely chance plays a role, but it is the result of thought born of consciousness that brings forth the marvels of human effort.  Is that not a reflection of all creation?

Human kind is not just ‘another animal’; the human person is a new species--evolution's goal.  “If a tree falls in the forest and there are no ears to hear, is there a sound?”  Mankind is the being who sees, hears, knows and comprehends the wonders of it all and has the freedom to change what is given—that is co-creation.  We discover truth, we don’t invent it.  The pattern and order is there for us to find and see. 

In the evolution that produced life there is another necessary element which is ‘attraction’ (seeking union; which at its highest level is love).  Atoms join to form molecules, molecules join to form cells, cells join to form organs, etc.  Male and female join to form family units and produce new beings; thoughts and ideas join to form new concepts; enemies that have fought wars become allies to promote peace—slowly it all comes together—human consciousness seeks love and harmony.  We have yet too fully awaken, but the intended pattern can be seen.