Living a life more open to the forces of evolution which can bring us to ‘fuller being’ 

Today’s Post

     Last week we saw how we can train ourselves to be more open to the energy of evolution that Teilhard describes which runs through our lives.  This week we take a closer look at some specifics.

The Aspects of ‘Fuller Being”

In addition to Paul’s list of the facets of ‘the Fruit of the Spirit’, in Corinthians he provides another list, this time of the manifestations of love in our lives (From 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Patience                           Calmness

Kindness                              Truthfulness

Self-confidence                              Trust

Humility                               Hope

Respect                                             Non-egotistical

Perseverance

   This list clearly parallels his list of the eight facets of ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’ that were addressed above but have the same reciprocal relation to our quest for ‘fuller’ life.  Both sets of characteristics identify what can be found because of authentic human growth, but as commonly reflected in religious thinking, they are less ‘results’ than they are behaviors which must be practiced.

We have seen how Carl Rogers lists the facets of a ‘fuller’ life.

–more integrated hence more effective

– more realistic view of self

– stronger valuation of self

– increasing self-confidence

–more openness to experience, less denial or repression

–more accepting of others, seeing others as more similar

-clearer in communication

-more responsible for actions

-less defensive and anxious

   Like Paul’s lists, these characteristics identify a ‘fuller’ life, but like Paul’s characteristics they also reflect the ‘work in progress’ necessary to get there.  Paul’s recommendation to ‘Put on Christ’ by adopting the behavior suggested by these lists is simply a method of training our neocortex brains to become more adept at dealing with reality.  Like Sacks’ ‘rewiring the brain’ by ‘rerouting the writing’, our success in dealing with life increases when we practice such behavior.

One distinct example can be found in one of the most fundamental human activities: relationships.  As we have seen many times, from Teilhard’s expanded vision of the nature of the universe, relationships (connections) are essential to the universe’s emergence in the form of increased complexity.  Connectivity between granules of ‘the stuff of the universe’ recurs endlessly in evolution to effect the increase in complexity which eventually manifests itself in the human person’s ‘awareness of ‘consciousness’.

The ‘fly in the ointment’ suggested by almost every religion and reflected in Yuval Harari’s ‘Sapiens”, is that, with the human person, the previously infallible force of ‘instinct’, so successful in our pre-human ancestors, is potentially undermined by our two-edged ‘gift’ of ‘choice’.  While ‘choice’ might well carry on our personal and cultural evolution, the making of it is frequently problematic.  Because of this, as we have seen, there is no guarantee that evolution will continue its fourteen billion year rise in the continuation of the human species.

Teilhard shows how the energy which has so faithfully raised the complexity of the universe thus far can be seen in that which energizes our human relationships: ‘love’.   We have explored the many aspects of this energy by which we are woven into the relationships necessary to our collective states.  In keeping with Teilhard’s convergent spiral nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, ‘love’ can be seen as not only as a state of relationship but as the agency by which state emerges.  As Confucius suggests, to get love we must give love, and that’s where ‘choice’ comes in.

From this perspective, love is quite distinct from the emotional or procreational impetus to unity, it is the ontological basis of the continuation of human evolution.  To love we must decide. Harari is correct when he intuits that with the human mode of consciousness in which we become aware of our awareness, choice is now necessary for its evolutionary continuation.  He is also correct that a dystopian facet of ‘belief’ has wound its way through our history, one which threatens a mode of belief which is more confident, more optimistic and more conducive to our future is.  ‘Belief’ and hence ‘love’ must therefore be consciously ‘chosen’.  Love is, in the human, ultimately a ‘decision’.

Thus, the ability to make decisions in favor of our continued evolution, both as persons continuing our quest for ‘fullness’ and societies continuing their fabrication of the noosphere, we must become more skillful in using our neocortex brains in modulating the instincts of our lower brains.  One way to hone this skill is to adapt the behavior which reflects the presence of the manifestations of it that we have explored thus far.  The lists that Paul and Rogers provide above consist of basic practices which can move us in this direction.

An example of such practice can be found in nearly every human relationship.  In our most intimate relationships, found in the lives of committed partners, we profess to ‘love’ each other.   But there are clearly times when the ‘feeling’ of love is absent.  The increasing divorce rate in the West is evidence that this state frequently leads to dissolution of the union.  The recognition that it is possible to continue the relationship is a ‘choice’, one not easy to make but frequently resulting in a deeper relationship.

It is obvious that conflicts are inevitable as two persons pursue their own growth as they are fashioning their relationship.  Faith in one’s unearned capacity to grow and in the ‘grace’ (Chapter 20) that comes with this capacity is necessary to cross this bridge while we are building it.  The ‘putting on’ of Jesus that Paul recommends is a straightforward step towards the other side.

In a society which values such appearances of maturity as Paul and Rogers list, their translation into the aspects of human welfare documented by Johan Norval are abundant.   If the trends he identified continue, the emergence of a welcoming future becomes certain.  The skills required to continue them, to build a bridge over which we are crossing, are ones in which we must also become proficient.

As we have seen, a welcoming future is not guaranteed.  There are tendrils woven into the complex fabric of the human species that are very capable of resulting, as Harari predicts, in an early demise of Homo Sapiens.  But as Teilhard sees it, while we might be early in the game of making sense of things, the tools are for doing so are nonetheless taking shape.  Norberg’s articulation of the shape that they are taking might be an early one, but his articulations are nonetheless examples of what can be seen as we learn open our eyes to the true immensity of the universe and its path to a future into which we are constantly being welcomed.

The Next Post

This week we took a closer look at how we can posture ourselves to become more open to the energy of evolution as it manifests itself in human life.  While such a practice might saturate most religious teachings, Teilhard shows how they also are intuitive attempts to align life with the flow of evolution that rises trough it.  Once again we are reminded of his poetic observation the

“Those who spread their sails to the winds of life will always be borne on a current towards the open sea.”

   Next week we will take yet another look at this activity to see how Teilhard’s insight can be reflected in individual human life.

Posturing life to be more open to the forces of evolution which can bring us to ‘fuller being’

Today’s Post

     Last week we saw how Teilhard’s ‘spiral of evolution’ depicts the process by which the rudimentary elements described by physics reciprocally unite, complexify and re-unite as evolution rises in the universe.

This week we continue our focus on universal evolution to address how it continues in human life.

The Noosphere as the Catalyst to Human Evolution

Teilhard offers a second venue for such reciprocation with his concept of the ‘noosphere’ (February 11).  In its more common understanding, the noosphere is simply the aggregation of human lore, innovations built up over centuries of human cultural evolution.

But to Teilhard (and to some extent, Richard Dawkins in his concept of accumulated ‘memes’) the noosphere not only exists as a passive ‘bank of ideas’ but as an active agent in human evolution.  Along with the treasure trove of technology that it provides, increasing the individual and collective welfare of our societies, it is the underlying and ever clarifying quantum of guideposts to our behavior.  As Johan Norberg notes, while the innovations and inventions we have seen clearly contribute to our increasing welfare, they are not possible without the cultural insistence on the importance of the human person and the betterment of human relationships.

Thus, the noosphere, as Teilhard sees it, is a key reciprocal agent to our evolution.  As we better understand ourselves and enhance our relationships, we contribute these insights into a collective wisdom that increases our capacity for a clearer understanding that will continue to further our personal as well as our cultural evolution.

Thus, we are back to the chicken-egg conundrum proposed by Sacks last week.  Do we act because we evolve, or do our actions cause us to evolve?  Considering the universal convergence that Teilhard sees in the noosphere, the answer is ‘yes’.  The actions of generations of Westerners, demanding more freedom by way of many cycles of ‘charters’ and ‘constitutions’ has contributed cultural ‘DNA’ to an evolutionary process resulting in a society in which increased freedom leads to increased welfare.  While Sacks’ connection between action and neurology might not be strongly suggested here, there seems to be little doubt that the world today (as Norberg documents in posts from Feb 20, 2020 ) is strikingly different from that experienced only a few generations ago.  Actions can lead to consequences which enable further actions.

But the question still remains: how do we keep this recursive cycle going?  How do we assure a future in which the unprecedented progress documented by Norberg will continue?  Put another way, what is required at the unique granularity of the human person to foster the increasing convergence of the aggregate species in such a way that our personal and collective growth to ‘fuller being’ is ensured?

Values and Virtues as ‘Training for the Future’

We saw in the posts beginning April 8, 2021, how Paul masterfully summarizes what Jefferson refers to as “The Morals of Jesus”.  To some extent, Paul addresses Richard Dawkins’ ‘de-baggaging’ of the gospels in his summaries of Jesus’ precepts.  Focusing less on the ‘Stories of Jesus’ found in the gospels, Paul extracts and summarizes the teachings themselves into such lists as the three ‘Theological Virtues’ the eight examples of the ‘Fruit of the Spirit”..

One of his metaphors is the admonition to “Put on Christ”.  A traditional interpretation is to understand such an action as ‘armoring’ one’s self against unbelievers, but a more direct interpretation is simply to see Jesus as a model for correct behavior.  Of course, the rationale for ‘correct behavior’ as evolved in Western Christianity has traditionally been satisfying God’s criteria for ‘salvation’ as promotion into the next life.  From Teilhard’s insight, however, ‘correct behavior’ involves that which positions us for ‘closer union through fuller being, and fuller being through closer union’, the two essential steps of both human evolution and personal growth.

We saw in the above reference how Paul’s concepts of the ‘Theological Virtues’ and the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ translate easily into the insights of Teilhard as aspects of human evolution.  We can do likewise as we explore situating ourselves more securely into the ‘tree of evolution’.

We have suggested frequently that a necessary aspect of human evolution is developing the skill of using the neocortex brain to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the ‘lower’ reptilian and limbic brains, and further learning to use the two (left and right) thinking modes of the neocortex harmoniously in dealing with reality.  As we saw last week, Sacks observes how the performance of skills such as writing sharpens our mental ability to think more clearly.  This reflects one of the most common adages in history, ‘Practice makes Perfect”.  Athletes train, scholars and linguists memorize, children are taught to read, pilots train in simulators.  All anticipate an increase in the skills to which they train.
We have seen how Paul’s eight facets of the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ can be understood as facets of the ‘happiness’ that is possible as we move toward Jesus’ ‘fuller being’.  They can also be seen as both aspects of behavior which reflect an inner maturity and acts of ‘training’ which can lead to the ‘fuller being’ that Jesus suggests is possible for us.  As in all ‘training’, repetition of an action expands our ability to act.  Thus, when Paul tells us to “Put on Christ”, he suggests that acting out the behavior that he identifies as resulting from ‘an indwelling of the spirit’ will lead to the ‘fullness of being’ in which these facets can be found.

The Next Post

This week we moved from an approach to understanding evolution as it proceeds in the universe to looking at its traces on human existence.  As Teilhard suggests (and echoed by Haught and others) a rising awareness of this phenomenon in our personal lives is not only critical to the quality of life, but also to the continuation of our species.

Next week we will continue this approach to see how Paul’s insights into such aspects of human life are echoed in today’s psychology.

    Understanding our evolution as a step towards managing it

 Today’s Post

For the past several weeks we have been exploring the slippery phenomena of human happiness, concluding that a clearer understanding of our fit into our evolutionary process can bring us into ‘fuller being’ and hence greater satisfaction.

This week we will begin a closer look at how such a clearer understanding of this process can help us to do this.

How Did We Get Here?

We have seen how Teilhard and other contemporary thinkers offer insight into the critical process of ‘making sense of things.’  Very few thinkers from the full spectrum of these insights believe that humans are near the end of their process of becoming what it is possible for them to become, from the materialists who cite the ongoing mutations of the genomes that are the machinery for our future morphological manifestations to those who sense the incompleteness of our understanding of the universe and our role in it.

At the same time, we recognize that there is little agreement between these two poles of thought on what is essential to the continuation of the evolution of our species.  We can paraphrase Carl Rogers’ insight on personal maturity into an insight about the potential of our species to

“… reorganize itself at both the personal and cultural levels in such a manner as to cope with life more constructively, more intelligently, and in a more socialized as well as a more satisfying way”.

   This is deeply resonant with Teilhard’s assertion that we must

“…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.”

   While surely a daunting task, we saw in posts from Feb 20, 2020  how Johan Norberg, in one of the first attempts to gather data on such a process as these two thinkers propose offers a relatively unambiguous picture of our potential for evolutionary advancement.  Building the bridge upon which we are travelling is surely risky (as we saw in in the post of March 26, 2020), but if we understand how to put our history into an objective perspective (as Norberg suggests above), we can’t help but be encouraged in its construction.

Therefore, a recalibrated look at the past helps to see how far we’ve come and extrapolate to a future which we can see as one which welcomes us.  We have seen John Haught’s’ insight that such a recalibration helps us to read

“… nature, life, mind and religion as ways in which a whole universe is awakening to the coming of more-being on the horizon.  It accepts both the new scientific narrative of gradual emergence and the sense that something ontologically richer and fuller is coming into the universe in the process.”

   For all that, then, how are we to go about Roger’s ‘reorganization’ and Teilhard’s ‘rearrangements’ to ensure Haught’s realization of a ‘richer and fuller’ future?

Thinking With The Whole Brain

We saw in the posts from Feb 20, 2020, how human history can be seen to unfold as humans began to supplement the long legacy of reasoning through ‘right brain intuition’ by introducing the skill of ‘left brain empiricism’.  Jonathan Sacks traces this ‘neurological’ path through the slow reversal from ‘right to left’ writing (primarily written by the left hand) to that of writing in a ‘left to right’ direction (primarily written by the right hand).  He tracks this transformation as seen in the evolution of writing from the Phoenicians in the tenth century BCE to that of the Greeks by the sixth century BCE.   While this might initially be seen as simply a change in custom, Sacks goes further as he correlates this ‘custom’ with the unprecedented rise of empiricism seen in the explosion of Greek thinking with the appearance of Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and many others whose empirical thoughts laid the ground for the later emergence of Science.  He cites the neurological aspect of this evolution by noting that not only did the ‘handedness direction’ change, so did the hand commonly used to do the writing.  Right-to-left writing is done by the left hand, but left-to-right writing is done by the right hand.  Since such ‘handedness’ is controlled by brain hemispheres the shift that Sacks notes indicates a shift in the brain activity which controls the writing.

The ‘long’ period from the emergence of Greek empiricism to the first stirrings of Western Science, (approximately two thousand years, a blink of the evolutionary eye) is evidence of the slowly emerging skill of ‘thinking with both sides of the brain’.  The practice of using of the neocortex brain to modulate the stimuli of the ‘lower’ reptilian and limbic brains predates this relatively new skill, as can be seen in nearly every ‘pre-empirical’ society in their growing awareness that a conscious relationship to both the environment and to our fellow humans is necessary for social stability.  The many expressions of ‘correct’ human relationships can be seen as evolving from the basic axiom of Confucius,

“Do not do to others what you would not like done to yourself”.

   However, the many historic examples of human activity which are orthogonal to this axiom offer evidence of how difficult it is to practice.

The Reciprocal Nature of Evolution

Such difficulty is much in evidence as the ability to address ‘self’ emerges in human culture.  In our rapidly increasing access to ‘news’, afforded by the exponential growth in communication technologies, we are constantly inundated with evidence of the ills of our times.  As we saw in April 2020, there is a tendency towards a ‘moral lassitude’ which presents itself as a diminishing confidence in the future.  To many (as can be seen frequently in history), belief in an ‘end times’ offers the ‘promise’ of a supernatural intervention in which God will finally be repair the mistakes of his creation.

Such dystopia is clear evidence of the difficulty of practicing Confucius’ axiom.  What’s the alternative?

We can start by recognizing the reciprocal nature of the evolutionary process in which we are enmeshed.  An example of such a phenomenon can be found in Sacks’ example of the relation of thinking to writing.  In his example above, a chicken-egg question arises.  Did the practice of writing change from left-to-right because the skill of using the left brain emerged, or did the left- brain practice emerge because the ‘handedness’ of writing changed?  Either way, we can see a cultural norm and a neurological capability change in concert with each other.  This suggests that the use of a skill supplements its facility, which in turn enhances the use of it.

We can see another example in the common cycle of intuition-to-empiricism activity found in the human pursuit of ‘energy’.  Newton began this cycle with the intuition of the existence of an agency of motion.  He goes on to articulate this agency as ‘force’, framing it in an equation which relates the mass of an object to its rate change of velocity to determine the force.  This in turn leads to other intuitions of how this force can be ‘employed’, which leads to further application of Newton’s articulation into designs of machinery which supplement human work.  This blossoms into standards of conduct for the human activity in which these machines can be employed.

Each of these steps involves a collaboration between states of ‘imagining’ (right-brained intuition) and processes of ‘implementing’ (left-brained empiricism) in a spiral which leads from less complex results to ones that are more complex.

We can see this reciprocal nature of evolution at work in the very essence of universal evolution.  In the post of November 8, 2018  we outlined Teilhard’s ‘convergent spiral’ in which the union of grains of matter can result in new grains whose enhanced complexity further enhances its capacity for future union.  This reciprocity recurs in the convergent spiral of history, with the ‘coefficient of complexity’ becoming larger in each cycle and thus increasing the potential for union all the way up to the evolutionary phenomena of the human person.

The Next Post

Putting our evolution into the context offered by Teilhard, Jonathan Sacks, Richard Rohr and John Haught is essential for ‘making sense’ of things in such a way that we can begin to ‘pay attention’ to how evolution emerges in our lives.  This week we took a first look at how evolution can be seen on a ‘macro’ level.  Next week we will narrow the focus to how these forces play out in human life, and, more importantly, how we can posture ourselves to be become more aware of them.

Today’s Post

For the past nine weeks we have been exploring the phenomenon of ‘human happiness’ from reaction to the ‘pain of convergence’ caused by the facets of our evolution to outlining the eight facets of happiness that occur when we manage to open our lives to it.

This week we’ll sum up these nine posts.

Why Pain?

We concluded exploration of the preceding subject, the ‘Terrain of Synergy’ by identifying the recognition of such terrain as a step to ‘reconnecting our individual parts to the whole’.  Richard Rohr frequently mentions this as a very basic goal of religion, ‘re-ligio’.

The problem arises, however, when such a connection becomes difficult, seemingly impossible, and we are caught up in what is often referred to as ‘existential angst’, pain which is unfocussed and leaves us feeling alienated and alone.  In such a state, ‘better’ is always the enemy of ‘good enough’, “yesterday was the best day of the rest of our life”, and the ability to feel satisfied denied us.

In addition, we are caught up in the inevitable side effect of human evolution: convergence.  With the crowding that we see increasing every day, on our streets, in our schools, in our neighborhoods our personal space increasingly dwindles.   The need for re-connection is countered with the need for de-connection.

As Yuri Harari points out in his book, “Sapiens”, these articulations of our existential angst can be traced to our breaking of the ‘evolutionary covenant’ that ancestors enjoyed in their millions of years on this planet: the evolution of their species proceeded at the same pace as the evolution of their environment.  Yuval notes that, distinct from our pre-human ancestors, we have evolved much faster than our skills of accommodation with the environment could develop.

With humans, in contrast to ancestors, our evolution proceeded much faster than that of our environment.  To make matters worse, we exacerbated this disconnect by degrading the environment itself.  And even worse, our ancestors dealt with population growth by simply disseminating, a tactic that we can no longer employ as once-empty spaces disappear.
According to Harari, this has robbed us of the evolutionary balance that our ancestors enjoyed with their environment, and thus opening us up to a future of continued disconnect with not only our environment but to ourselves as well.  This ‘evolutionary singularity’, as he sees it, prevents us from experiencing true happiness.

Toward Happiness

We went on to consider this dystopian conclusion in the light of three perspectives on happiness that show a different outcome to our evolution:

• Happiness from the material perspective

There is much in contemporary society, news, religious lore and scientific theory which address the human experience of ‘happiness’, but as we noted on August 8, very little of it is consistent, and much contradictory.  Other than being highly subjective, and subject to physiological stimulation, one does not come away with a comprehensive understanding of what it is and how to come by it.

• Happiness from the evolutionary perspective

We noted that if Teilhard’s perspective on evolution is applied, and the ‘rise of complexity’ from the big bang to the present is still alive in human evolution, then some optimism in the future can be justified.  Therefore, such an insight into the process of evolution is a facet of ‘being happy’.  Just ‘belief in the future’ alone contributes to our happiness.   As Patricia Albere, author of “Evolutionary Relationship”, puts it, this long history of rising complexity suggests that we have only to allow ourselves to be “lifted by the evolutionary forces that are ready to optimize what can happen in our lives and in humanity”.  To do this, “we only have to begin to pay attention”.

• Happiness from the ‘spiritual’ perspective

We noted that Teilhard’s use of this term differs considerably from that of traditional religion, spending more time on this particular perspective than the other two.  Key to this perspective is the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the insights of science and religion can be seen to overlap.  As we have addressed many times, science and religion have much to offer each other, and the subject of happiness is no exception.

We also noted the insights from John Haught which clearly delineates this terrain from that of traditional religion and science.  Such delineation also opens the subject of happiness to understanding it from the perspective of Western religion.  This insight provides further articulation to how Albere’s suggestion of ‘paying attention’ can take place.

We ended our look at happiness by proceeding with the process of ‘reinterpretation’ of traditional Christian tenets, first addressed back in May, 2016.  Once again, we saw how Teilhard’s ‘principle of evolutionary context’ makes it possible to understand anew how our religious lore can become more relevant to our lives, and hence our continued evolution.

We first looked at how Teilhard’s three ‘vectors’ of universal evolution: ‘forward’, ‘inward’ and ‘upward’, manifest in every step of evolution from the big bang to the human person, can be seen as active in us when we reinterpret Paul’s essential actions of ‘faith’, ‘hope’ and ‘love’.

Finally, we reinterpreted Paul’s ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ into articulations of nine facets of human life which underlie the dimension of human happiness.  While the subject of human happiness might well be a ‘slippery subject’, the facets of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control certainly offer an outline for a relationship to life that brings us ‘happiness’.

In this search for Harari’s ‘accommodation to evolution’, we have generally taken two approaches to Patricia Albere’s suggestion to ‘pay attention’ so that we can learn to trust evolution, one from Maurice Blondel and the other from John Haught.

From Blondel,

“In the light of evolution, religious tenets can be reinterpreted in terms of human life.”

   Then Haught,

“…every aspect of religion gains new meaning and importance once we link it to the new scientific story of an unfinished universe.”

  Therefore we have seen, using Teilhard’s evolutionary hermeneutic, how happiness is not only possible in our species, to a large extent it is both necessary for our continued evolution and the payoff for the finding of our place in it.

The Next Post

This week we wrapped up our look at the experience of human happiness, tracing it from “The Terrain of Synergy’ to a practical way to relook at our religious lore and reinterpret it in the light of Teilhard’s hermeneutic of cosmic becoming.

John Haught proposes that such an approach to the nature of the cosmos can also bring about a profound sense of ‘belonging’ once we begin to trust the upwelling of wholeness warranted by fourteen or so billion years of ‘complexification’.

“An anticipatory reading of the cosmic story therefore requires a patient forbearance akin to the disposition we must have when reading any intriguing story.  Reading the cosmic story calls for a similar kind of waiting, a policy of vigilance inseparable from what some religious traditions call faith.  Indeed, there is a sense in which faith, as I use the term…, is patience”.

Thus the anticipatory approach to the cosmic story requires a certain patience with the ongoing process of complexification, certain in confidence in a future that somehow will be better than the past.  Placing the universe into the context of becoming requires us to understand that

“Not-yet, however, is not the same as non-being.  It exists as a reservoir of possibilities that have yet to be actualized.  It is a realm of being that has future as its very essence.”

Albere’s “paying attention” is echoed in Haught’s tapping into this ‘reservoir of possibilities”.  As Teilhard puts it, “Those who set their sails to the winds of life will always find themselves borne on a current to the open sea”.

Next week we move on to the idea of living life in a way in which Albere’s “paying attention” can bring us into a closer resonance with the energy of evolution that Teilhard asserts rises in us.