Monthly Archives: June 2018

June 28 – The Future of the Past

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at the future.  As we noted, on the surface, it’s not necessarily pretty.  Even though we are some eighty years out of a global quagmire from which, for a while, seemed capable of destroying civilization as we knew it, other threats seem to incessantly loom.  Last week we considered, “with all this, can there be a basis of optimism?”

This week, we will continue to explore Teilhard’s metaphor of the sphere as a surface that we must navigate is we move increasingly Northward from open territories and plentiful resources into a space that closes up on us even as we continue to multiply and consume.

Crossing the Equator

   Let us focus for a moment on that critical point, the ‘equator’ of the sphere: the point at which each new wave of expansion is met by a reduction of space and an increase in tension.  The massive two ‘world wars’ of the past century certainly seem to reflect the inevitable conflagration that occurs when literally the whole world, with all of its arms of expansion, seems to be bent on conquest.  The sheer size of the conflict intensified by the destructive efficiency enabled by advancements in technology, made the carnage so unbelievable that still, some eighty years later, it is very difficult to put it all into perspective.  Literally every family in our United States was impacted by the loss of life or property that resulted from these wars.  In Europe and Asia, the effects were even more devastating.  Although it may be true that ‘literally’ the whole world was not bound up in them, they were significant enough to register as true ‘world’ conflicts.
Can we say with some confidence that the past few hundred years mark the ‘crossing’ of Teilhard’s ‘equator’?  The histories of clashing civilization in antiquity all point to an increase in human conflict as time goes on.  Now that we can forecast the loss of space and resources to be expected as we enter the North half of our metaphorical sphere, it seems safe to expect yet more of what we have come so vividly to see in the past.  Is the future of the past the past?  As the tensions of the increasing pressures from human expansion continue to grow, can we expect even more such ‘world wars’?

As Teilhard sees it, the perception that we are surely moving into uncharted territory is well warranted:

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

   As Teilhard points out, it’s not just that things are becoming tighter and less comfortable as we cross over into this new mileu, it’s that they are happening at an increasing rate.  No sooner do we become inured to some new and uncomfortable aspect of our society than some new innovation is discovered to have a negative impact on our lives.  Our homes become more comfortable as our environment is endangered, our wealth increases even as the number of people dissatisfied with life increases, those behaviors that, in retrospect, brought us safely through adolescence into responsible adulthood, now seem to have become antiquated, even injurious, to our children.  Our acquisitions, now easier to acquire, offer less and less satisfaction.  While such changes have always occurred in history, never before have they seemed to be so drastic so quickly.  In a single lifetime, we now see, it seems that the world we live in has changed drastically from the one into which we were born.

Then, the problem seems to be greater with ‘resources’.  It seems today that we are ‘running out of everything’.  Even more importantly, as Richard Rohr frequently observes, we are running out of ‘love’.   Even the most casual review of current events reveals a seemingly endless increase in scorn, bullying and disdain in our social norms.  It has become commonplace to revile competitors, demonize enemies (a class in which more and more others seem to belong) and disparage those not in our ‘class’.

This ‘casual review’ also surfaces another aspect of our new Northern Hemisphere.   The increasing cheek-to-jowl packing of the noosphere speeds up the dissemination of information.  As a commodity, to compete for the eyes and ears of subscribers, the news must be increasingly ‘clickworthy’.  ‘Bad news’ sells much better than ‘good news’.  Not only do we get much more of it, but what’s alarming about life (and there is much to cause us alarm) occupies an increasing percentage of what we read.

Indeed, the ‘tightening’ of the noosphere as we cross over into this uncharted territory seems to be squeezing the capacity for forbearance, patience. out of our lives.  As the news is so quick to print, such breakdown of tolerance shows up frequently in acts of personal violence.  The ownership of half the world’s billion guns by the citizens of a single nation, especially one evidentially so irritable, surely is a recipe for instability.

Given all this, such aspects of life as Paul’s ‘fruits of the spirit’ (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness) now seem antiquated, suitable for another time when seen in the light of current events, even at the exact time when they are most needed.

The Next Post

   This week we took a closer look at this unique and danger-filled era of human history when we seem to be crossing Teilhard’s metaphorical equator.   Teilhard cites the error of looking to the past for the ‘articulations of the noosphere’ that will serve our navigation of this new, Northern hemisphere.  As we saw last time:

 “…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.”

   For this new hemisphere, he sees the need for new articulations, more appropriate to the new terrain that we are entering.  Next week we will continue our exploration of this new terrain, not by looking further into the dangers that lie ahead, but into the human capabilities for managing life that we are only recently (in evolutionary terms) becoming aware of.

June 21 – Where Is All This Taking Us?

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Today’s Post

Last week we concluded our series of posts on the structure and navigation of the milieu in which we are immersed, the noosphere.  We followed the sacraments, values and morals which humans have (so far) fabricated in an attempt to order the seeming cacophony of personal human energies in ways beneficial to both the person and society on the one hand, and the attitudes and stances that can be taken in order to receive the maximum benefit of our noospheric navigation on the other.  The question can be asked, however, “To what end?”
This week we will begin to take a look at the future.  Although Teilhard’s mystical experience of the ground of being was balanced by a strong empiricism, heavily informed by his deep scientific bent, he applied both of these strengths in a vision of how those religious and scientific perspectives can be seen as guides to moving us towards the future.

Surveying the Status

A good way to begin to look at the future is to understand the past and the present.  Teilhard offers a wonderful use of metaphors in his writings, and one excellent example is that of ‘the sphere’.  He develops this metaphor to peer into the future at the end of his book, “Man’s Place in Nature”, which he presented as a somewhat simplified rewrite of his “Phenomenon of Man”.

Consider, he proposes, a geometric sphere with north and south poles, meridians from south to north, and an equator ‘round the middle.  In this metaphor, the axis from south to north represents time, with the south pole representing the past, and the north the future.

In this metaphor, he sees the human race beginning as a small population at the south pole, and as it branches  into its various (‘manifold’) manifestations of families, tribes, cities, states and countries, it ‘ramifies’, spreads out, seeking unsettled territory and available resources as it enlarges, and as it grows it progresses towards the equator.

As this wave of human expansion approaches the equator, due to the curvature of the surface of the sphere, the amount of available territory necessarily decreases with the increase in human population.  This of course increases the tensions among the branches of human population as they begin to compete with each other for the remaining space and resources.

At the same time, consider, he suggests, that the individual human entity (the ‘person’) does not appear as a finished product of evolution, with any particular expertise in utilizing the unique capability with which he has been endowed, the neo-cortex brain.  Just as with the cell at its birth resembles the molecule from which it evolved (“it arrives ‘dripping in molecularity’”), an onlooker at this first moment of human evolution would have been hard pressed to distinguish the new human ‘person’ from its predecessor ‘higher anthropoids’.

As a result, it should not be surprising that in these early years, the human was more subject to the influences of the same instinctual stimuli which served ancestors so well, than able to modulate these stimuli with actions stemming from the new level of brain which is unique to the human species.   And, further, given the slow increase in the tensions resulting from closer contact with humans from other, alien. and potentially dangerous, social units, it’s not surprising that the instinctual needs for resources and survival would outweigh any thoughts of cooperative engagement at this early stage of development.

Then, there is the agency of basic human mistrust.  We do not seem to ‘naturally’ seek closeness with those outside our closely-knit family or clan groups.  We recoil from being forced into closeness with others that we did not initiate ourselves.  And, as a result, when it becomes more necessary for our small, familiar groups to federate into larger states, the problem of ‘cohesion vs aggression’ begins to rise.  As Jonathan Sacks points out:

“Reciprocal altruism creates trust between neighbors, people who meet repeatedly and know about one another’s character.  The birth of the city posed a different and much greater problem: how do you establish trust between strangers?”

One answer, repeated over and over in history, is that you don’t.  In order to assure the stability of a society which grows in size as it increases in diversity, one tactic is total control over the individuals that make it up.  The objective is not ‘trust’, which comes from within, it is ‘control’, which is imposed from without.  The police state, which insures order at the expense of personal autonomy, has been common to nearly all civilizations going back to antiquity, and still can be found today.   Even in those societies which have tried to equitably accommodate the person and the state, there are many who abhor the ‘closing in’ of outsiders.   As Teilhard remarks, in terms that are as applicable to  today’s Western societies as they were when he expressed them seventy years ago:

“…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.”

   Given this state of affairs, what sort of light does Teilhard see ahead?  Can there be a basis for optimism?

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at where the flow of evolution which we have been addressing may be taking us.  At first glance, it might well seem that the future of an increasing human population on a world of decreasing space and resources is one to be considered with some trepidation.  Is the future of the past the past?  Do we anticipate ‘more of the same, only moreso’?

As we will see in the remaining posts of this blog, however, based on the picture we have constructed, anchored firmly on Teilhard’s clear-headed foundations, there is indeed a strong case for optimism in both our lives as persons who make up this population and the organization of our human energy which makes up our societies.

June 14 – Summing Up: “Articulating the Noosphere” and Living the “Theological Virtues”- Part 2

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how Teilhard understood  the ‘spheres’ of existence (and the difficulty that both science in religion have dealing with them) as the first part of summing up the last fifteen posts.  This week we will review how he saw overcoming the duality in such traditional approaches and how such an understanding can lead to our navigation of the noosphere not only successfully, but joyfully.

The Unity of the Spheres

As Teilhard sees it, it’s not the evolutionary perspective that provides the wedge that is evident between all the different perspectives of the spheres of existence,, but the lack of a more comprehensive and universal understanding of evolution.  Such an integrative and universal approach to evolution affords the possibility of bringing all four of these cornerstones of belief into a coherence that begins to erase the dualities that plague them.  (See the posts on “The Teilhardian Shift” for a more comprehensive treatment of his unique insights).

So from this unique insight Teilhard sees the noosphere in need of a perspective in which matter, life and the person can all be seen in a single context.  If this can be done, it is possible that whatever structure which underpins this context will provide the light that we need in order to successfully manage our habitation of it.  He understands this ‘sphere’ of human existence to be in need of our grasp of its structure, expressed in our beliefs of its ‘nature’ and the calls to action that such beliefs require.   In his words

 “The organization of personal human energies represents the supreme (thus far) stage of cosmic evolution on earth; and morality (the articulation of the noosphere) is consequently nothing less than the higher development of mechanics and biology.  The world is ultimately constructed by moral forces; and reciprocally, the function of morality is to construct the world.” (Parentheses mine)

   More to the point, he goes on to say

“,,,to decipher man is essentially to try to find out how the world was made and how it ought to go on making it.”

  with the goal, as identified by Jesus, for us to

“.. have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Navigating the Noosphere

In a quote I have frequently used, Teilhard remarks that

“Those who set their sails to the winds of life will always find themselves borne on a current to the open sea.”

  As we saw in the post on “Grace and the DNA of Human Evolution”, Teilhard sees the ‘abundant life’ that Jesus offers as requiring us to develop the skills of reading the wind and tending the tiller.   As he sees it:

“And, conventional and impermanent as they may seem on the surface, what are the intricacies of our social forms, if not an effort to isolate little by little what are one day to become the structural laws of the noosphere.

In their essence, and provided they keep their vital connection with the current that wells up from the depths of the past, are not the artificial, the moral and the juridical simply the hominized versions of the natural, the physical and the organic?”

Paraphrasing Teilhard, this ‘trimming our sails to the winds of life’, is nothing more (and as he would add, ‘nothing less’) than aligning our lives with the axis of evolution.  This alignment is where the ‘articulations of the noosphere’ that we have been addressing for the past fifteen weeks, come in.

The Joy of the Noosphere

As we saw in the posr on “Hope” those wonderful ‘Fruits of the Spirit’ which are promised by Paul resonate strongly with Carl Rogers’ empirical insights into personal growth.  In our secular context, they are not ‘rewards from God’ for following His (sic) laws’, but the direct result of first understanding the ‘noospheric articulations’ and then orienting our lives to living them out.  While Teilhard’s metaphor of sailing is a wonderful way to contemplate the journey of life, it is significant to see his critical point that when we are employing such ‘sailing skills’, it is ‘alignment to the winds’ that makes it possible to be ‘borne by the current’.  The articulations that we humans are developing (thus far still under construction) are necessary for undertaking the journey of life, but it is the quality of the life, the abundance of it, which is enhanced by the attitudes and stances that we have seen in the ‘Theological Virtues’

The Next Post

In the last fifteen posts we have been addressing the structure of the noosphere, looking at its ‘articulations’ from the perspective of sacraments, morals and values, and from the additional perspective of how it is that we can orient ourselves to navigate it.  The goal is not only navigating it successfully, but abundantly: not only are we to manage our lives, but fully partake of the joy that is possible in life.

But there is yet another aspect to these articulations and attitudes, and next week we will begin  explore it as we begin to conclude this blog by looking at where evolution is taking us.

June 7 – Summing Up: “Articulating the Noosphere” and Living the “Theological Virtues”- Part 1

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Today’s Post

Last week we concluded our secular look at the three so-called “Theological Virtues”- Faith, Hope and Love- by seeing how Cynthia Bourgeault’s reinterpretation of Paul encapsulated the workings of these virtues in our most intimate relationships.

This week we will conclude this segment of the blog in which we have looked at Values, Morals and Sacraments as ‘articulations of the noosphere’ and saw how the ‘Theological Virtues’ of Faith, Hope and Love serve as attitudes, stances that we can take, in living them out.

The Articulation of the Spheres

Two things that nearly everyone can agree are the comprehensiveness of reality and the human’s ability to comprehend it.  Science depends on it and Religion offers a long history of human inquiry into the nature of existence and our response to it.

The current state of religion is a many faceted, often contradictory, but fervently felt set of beliefs about the world and our place in it.   The ten posts on the ‘History of Religion ‘ (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?m=201509) offers a brief and somewhat superficial overview of religion and its quest for insight into the human condition.

Science, coming into play much later, also offers an approach to understanding existence, although coming at the enterprise from an entirely different perspective.  While religion relies on the intuitions developed, passed down and modified in many ways into metaphors, practices and expectations, science, at least nominally, constrains itself to a collegially empirical approach, with heavy dependence on objective data, which is itself a product of independently verifiable observations.

Both of these powerful modes of thinking have developed significant ‘articulations’ of their respective spheres of thought.  Physics, the mainstay of the science of matter, has laboriously effected its ‘Standard Model’, which underpins many of the modern discoveries and applications by which we are surrounded.  Biology, the investigation of living things, through development of the theory of Natural Selection, has brought a profoundly deep understanding of living things, and more importantly, how we and they interact.

The Duality of the Spheres

As is commonly known, while these two profound modes of thought both address the single reality in which we all live, they are frequently seen to be in conflict.  Like nearly every human enterprise, they fall into different sides of an underlying ‘duality’, a dichotomy divided by a deeply conflicting understanding of the human person.

Physics, with its ‘Standard Model’ can be seen to have developed an ‘articulation of the lithosphere’, and Biology with its theory of Natural Selection an ‘articulation of the biosphere’.  Psychology steps in as the first attempt at a secular ‘articulation of the noosphere’.   But, as I have discussed in the four posts addressing psychology beginning with “November 24 – Relating to God: Part 5- Psychology as Secular Meditation- Part 2: The Transition”, (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?p=302), psychiatry seems no more united in addressing the human than are science and religion.  All three would seem, sharing as they do an adherence to the concept of evolution,   to be in competition with Religion, and its basis of intuition and scripture, for a comprehensive ‘articulation of the noosphere’.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at summarizing the last fifteen posts in which we have addressed Teilhard’s ‘Articulation of the Noosphere’,  in values, morals and sacraments,  and finally in the attitudes captured in Paul’s so called “Theological Virtues’.

Next week we will conclude this summary by seeing how Teilhard understood uniting the Noosphere to the spheres of matter and life, and how his ‘articulations’ can lead to their successful inhabiting..