Article archive / April 1, 2013
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 8. Source pages: 11, 12.
Science, Wisdom, and the Future Humanity’s Quest for a Flourishing Earth Edited by Cheryl Genet, Jack Palmer, Linda Gibler, Linda Palmer, Russell Genet, & Vera Wallen Collins Foundation Press, 2012
Science, Wisdom, and the Future: Humanity’s Quest for a Flourishing Earth is a collection of essays emerging from participants at a 2009 conference in California, organized by the Collins Educational Foundation. Collins’ mission is to provide leadership in “humanity’s efforts to live sustainably on Earth.”
The essays take the reader on a journey through the practical, scientific, and philosophical perspectives, as the authors lay out their ideas in an interdisciplinary frame. The important and sometimes a little frightening message is: human beings keep outpacing their own level of wisdom in the burgeoning technologies they create and because of this the survival of all living things on our planet is in doubt.
The text provides a clarion call to wake up about the quickly approaching environmental cliff, while pushing for awareness and action. The contributors give some fascinating reasons why we can’t seem to function logically when it comes to the environment and lay out ideas for solutions.
Roughly matching the sections in the text, author Russell Genet, sets out general solutions in the introduction: 1) to increase our understanding of ecology, ourselves, and cultural evolution; 2) to develop and implement plans to change our trajectory; 3) to make corporations sustainable; and 4) to raise our evolutionary consciousness through our evolutionary story.
Topics match these ideas and are organized into Part I, Understanding Ourselves and Our Cultural Evolution; Part II, Changing Our Evolutionary Trajectory; Part III, Making Corporations Sustainable; Part IV, Raising our Evolutionary Consciousness.
Dr. Jack Palmer, psychology chair at University of Louisiana–Monroe, and wife Linda Palmer, writer and author, are contributors. The pair also did the heavy lifting in getting the text edited and organized, no small effort with 41 authors. (The Palmers have authored Evolutionary Psychology together, and Linda Palmer was author and editor for the second in this series, “The Evolutionary Epic Science's Story and Humanity's Response.”)
Science, Wisdom, and the Future includes the salient theme that humans and their way of life have impacted all living systems on the planet. This focus runs throughout the book and in different authors and voices. It is both a warning and call to action.
Throughout the chapters the authors ask the question, “What is happening that we don’t wake to the larger reality?” And they try to answer, “What can be done to halt or slow the speed of environmental change and our race to the tipping point?”
Their answers include ideas from evolution, cultural evolution, and the nature of wisdom.
Students of human nature will enjoy the variety and breath of topics. From Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade) in a chapter on human nature and social organization, to Linda and Jack Palmer on “The Wisdom of Virtue,” to Pauline Le Bel in “Sing Two Songs and Call Me in the Morning: Science and the Healing Power of Music,” the text provides the reader with ideas that intrigue and push the imagination. John Gowan’s “A Space-Time Map of the Universe” pushes it with bells on.
While focusing on humankind’s accelerated consumption of the earth’s resources and the issue of conscious awareness and decision-making, the book also is a collection of very individual voices, perspectives, and creative offerings.
In the introduction Russell Genet writes that human’s runaway success in evolution could likely end the same way as in all biological cases of extraordinary evolutionary success: Our species will eventually exceed the resources, “bringing on a sudden crash to oblivion.” The message comes across with some chilling discussions in “Time is Up!” by Duane Elgin and “Climate Change,” by Peter Hess.
Hess writes, “Humanity is conducting an unprecedented and possibly irreversible experiment on the gas composition of our atmosphere. Our descendants will live with the consequences of this experiment for centuries to come.” Elgin says, “Never before have so many people been called upon to make such sweeping changes in so little time.”
The need to reassess the meaning of the “good life,” is another theme woven into the essays, connecting the definition of consciousness, wisdom, and human choice. In helping find our way, say the authors, the value of science and the interconnectedness of all things are essential.
Part I, “Understanding Ourselves and Our Cultural Evolution,” includes the Palmers’ contributions as authors, “The Wisdom of Virtue.” Bringing together aspects of the field of positive psychology, evolutionary theory, and the study of virtue, they present an overview of three traits that can impact humanity and the planet: honesty/integrity, humility, and altruism/universal love.
Part I also includes Shani Robins’ “Wisdom Therapy: Developing Wisdom Sooner Rather Than Later and the Impact of the Emotions.” She points out that wisdom is positively correlated with age (although not a guarantee). Robins walks the reader through a model of wisdom: fewer cognitive distortions, increased humility, mindfulness, empathy, gratitude, compassion, and emotional intelligence.
Other offerings in this section include science mixed with philosophy by Paul Fast, “Evolution is More than Genetic Determinism,” and “A comparison of the Development of Life on Earth and the Human Embryo.”
A chapter by Jack Palmer, “Power and Restraint: The Question of Human Genetic Engineering,” takes us in a time-machine forward to when the choices will include genetic enhancements. He warns that the gap between human and artificially modified humans may become greater and greater.
The spiritual and metaphysical theme appears in chapters such as Eve Baumohl Neuhaus, “Ganesh Bab’s Cycle of Synthesis: A Blend of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science,” and in Heather Mendel’s “Eve, God, and the Quantum Age.”
Ideas about action and hope characterize much of the next essays, beginning with Part II, “Changing Our Evolutionary Trajectory.” “This section opens a window into the magnitude of human ingenuity and creativity,” writes Cheryl Genet. “The authors search in every corner of our understanding of the world for solutions to the challenges that humanity faces…”
Duane Elgin writes about “New Ways of Living,” outlining the need for and value of simplicity. “Vision without action is a recipe for frustration and failure,” he writes. “To transform adversity into opportunity, we must act in ways that genuinely respond to the unprecedented challenges facing humanity.” He describes that we must make a “collective shift toward simpler, more sustainable and satisfying ways of living.”
Essays include “Voluntary Simplicity: Cool Lifestyle for a Hot Planet” and “Simplicity Is Not Sacrifice.” Elgin gives specifics and points out in convincing words that sacrifice is “investing long hours doing work that is neither meaningful nor satisfying,” and “sacrifice is the stress of commuting long distances and coping with traffic” and “sacrifice is the massive extinction of plants and animals and a dramatically impoverished biosphere.”
In “A Garden of Simplicity,” he describes uncluttered simplicity, ecological simplicity, family simplicity, compassionate simplicity, soulful simplicity, business simplicity, civic simplicity, frugal simplicity.
Jack Palmer writes the short essay introduction on “Positive Psychology” and then lays out twelve specific practices, beginning with developing gratitude, focusing on good things, savoring life’s simple joys, counting one’s blessings, identifying and using personal strengths, developing strong and positive relationships with friends and family.
The science between music and song, is described in Le Bel’s chapter, “Sing Two Songs and Call Me in the Moring: Science and Healing Power of Music.”
Louis Herman points out the challenge of conscious living in “Future Primal: A Politics for Evolving Humanity.” He writes that Earth’s ecosystems are collapsing and that we are living in the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs of 65 millions years ago. Truth and wisdom have disappeared from universities and government, he says, and he calls for this to change.
More about changing patterns of behavior come in a chapter on plant-based diets, by Linda Palmer, Jack Palmer, and Nani Palmer, “Vision for the Future: The Wisdom of a Plant-Based Diet for Humans.” The authors point to the health benefits of a plant-based diet, including fewer heart attacks, strokes, lower blood pressure, reductions in cancer, diabetes, and obesity from less consumption of meat and greater consumption of whole foods. They also list the benefits to the environment, showing how concentrated animal feeding operations add intense demands environmentally. “The difference between the vegetarian and beef versions of the meal is about the same as driving an average car for 35 miles,” the authors point out.
Part III, “Making Corporations Sustainable,” brings the focus on the industrial aspects of modern life, with editor Genet noting in the introduction that helping corporations become more sustainable and more responsible is one of the most difficult challenges, calling on social and political awareness to develop new ethics and motivations in the corporate world.
“I am concerned that we are running out of time,” he writes. “Leading climate scientists say we have 10 to 20 years before we reach an irreversible tipping point, maybe less,” Bob Willard begins in “How to Lead a Transformation to a Sustainable Enterprise … From the Middle.”
“What is the ‘Good Life’ in a Finite World? Engaging Chinese Scholars with a Pragmatic Approach to Economics,” is Ron Nahser’s look at how better decisions may come from the moral philosophy of pragmatism.
The final section, “Raising our Evolutionary Consciousness,” lays out the idea that if humankind can fully understands its evolutionary past and the “cultural evolutionary trajectory,” then we will have the best chances for positive changes.
Duane Elgin lays out archetypes as evolutionary tools, in “The New Story for the Human Journey.” For a maturing and heroic species we need to create a new story that helps guide the global community, he writes.
Richard Trowbridge in “Wisdom: The Highest Part of the Mind” and Josefina Burgos in “The Necessary Flow of Wisdom” outline the need for awareness and collective insight.
A fascinating and different chapter, “A Space-Time Map of the Universe,” by John Gowan, casts the problems into the largest perspective conceivable. This chapter deserves (and requires) a re- reading, and to absorb what I think was the message, other than what might be as metaphor, I had to visit his website.
Gowan explains the universe and our place in it, being embedded in the flow of time and space, as defined by our particular intersection of space, time, light, and matter. We mold our future with a mixture of “ ‘karmic’ influence from the past, physical contact with present matter, and free-will action embedded in the ever-moving entropic flow of time and space.”
Another must read chapter is Tom Lombardo’s “Wisdom, Enlightenment, Science, and the Future.” He blends the topics again between consciousness and the future of human life, and links it with character virtues, wisdom being central.
While at times a bit disjointed, and sometimes a bit heady, the work is a fascinating collection of big minds thinking. They are passionate visionaries who are looking into the crystal ball and pointing. They provide a compelling invitation for us to wake up and follow them. To save the planet. And to save ourselves in the process.
Science, Wisdom, and the Future can be purchased Collins Foundation Press at www.CollinsFoundationPress.org.
Authors Linda and Dr. Jack Palmer traveling in Hawaii. They have also authored Evolutionary Psychology: The Ultimate Origins of Human Behavior. (Courtesy photo)
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.