paradigm shift | THE CONVERSATION

Here are a couple of articles that interest me in dealing with how mired we are in an unworkable world. They are from the Network Review, a publication of the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), which is a journal I read cover to cover. SMN, out of England, is several hundred impressive members, including Nobel Prize winners, who think outside the box.

The Network seeks to provide a forum for pursuing truth, wherever it leads, to widen the intellectual horizons of science and of society as a whole, to stimulate research at the frontiers of human knowledge and experience, and to make the results of such research more widely known through its educational programmes. The Network is committed to no dogma or creed. It encourages intellectual discernment and is wary of the ill-founded and sensational claims of ‘pseudo-science’. In asking searching questions about the nature of life and the role of the human being, the Network abides by its guidelines of open-minded, rigorous thinking and care for others at all times.

The editorial in this issue is Heresies and Paradigm Shifts, and, as you might guess, I read it with crop circles in mind. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Alfred North Whitehead, who was born 150 years ago, recognised the stultifying effect of scientific conservatism only too clearly in a statement in 1948: “Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge. Advance in detail is admitted: fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophical adventure.” Some mainstream scientists may give the SMN a rough ride for supporting heretics but I believe that is a price we must be prepared to pay in the search for a new paradigm.

A piece that has been published elsewhere as well, called Worldshift 20 Declaration, comes from a council of 20 prominent people, and has a mission “to give urgent attention to the new condition of the world emerging today and provide essential orientation so that an informed and determined movement toward a peaceful and sustainable planetary civilization could be brought into being…intends to shift the attention of the global public and media from the increasingly intractable problems and deepening crises of our deteriorating world to the opportunities and vistas of a new world where seven billion and more human beings can live in peace, prosperity and harmony with each other and the Earth’s natural systems.”

Here are a couple of salient paragraphs that express what I talk about when I encourage people to pay attention to the circle phenomenon:

There are many crises affecting humanity and many others are yet to come. All these crises are effects of the same cause: the lack of a “planetary consciousness.” We lack a holistic perspective that embraces both humankind and the ecosystem. In a democracy the majority rules, decides and imposes its laws and behavior, and people with a planetary consciousness are still in the minority.

We need a consciousness that recognizes that wide-ranging cooperation based on solidarity and oriented toward fundamental transformation is the basic precondition for human peace and sustainability. We need a consciousness that inspires and motivates cooperation not only in the economic and financial domain, but also in the domain of the ecology, as well as in technology, education, public information, and cultural communication. We need a planetary consciousness that unambiguously apprehends the interdependence and the Oneness of all People on Earth, and the Oneness of our destiny.

THE CONVERSATION

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