Conscious Evolution
Conscious Evolution
We, as a species, reached a point in our evolutionary journey when even inventing “better” and “better” technologies will not help us to overcome our social and ecological crises. We either evolve – as individuals and societies – either collapse. We have reached a “bifurcation point”. The old equilibrium state is lost for ever: our world will never be the same. Thus we have to evolve in order to go further!
On our heroic journey we have reached “the innermost cave”, where we face our ordeal. It comes for us the time to die for our old form in order to be reborn spiritually. We have to reinvent ourselves as a species – to reinvent our way of living on this planet. Otherwise, we will destroy the environment enough for our civilization to collapse to ruins.
At the same time, as Life has always found ways to overcome its challenges and go further, a new level of consciousness emerges in human species, a planet-centered one that is able to embrace as its new self the whole planet. From this new level of consciousness we became conscious of ourselves as a species. Moreover, we can perceive ourselves from a higher level, one that encompass the whole planet and is able to understand the consequences of our actions in space and time. If we start to take decisions from this place, we will find solutions that works both for us and the whole body of Life.
Conscious Evolution is about understanding the “big picture” in space and time and deciding – for the first time consciously – who we want to become and what should we do for the betterment of the Great Circle of Life.
Conscious Evolution is aware that the direction of evolution on this planet is toward increasingly wider scale of cooperation and symbiosis. Also, it is very aware of the barriers against evolution/cooperation and able to design ways of overcoming them.
In this course, after an introduction of the concepts of “conscious evolution” and “evolutionary consciousness”, we will tackle step by step the three barriers against evolution, offering every time a solution. For all three barriers the solution we offer is the same: Butterfly Community open-project, an emerging alternative social space consciously designed to be conducive to fairness, cooperation, authentic self-expression and ecologically sustainability.
The three barriers agains evolution
We will introduce the concept of Conscious Evolution and unveil the three barriers against evolution.
The first barrier against evolution
We will tackle the first barrier: Find an innovative behavior that could overcome the challenges and design a social space conducive to that behavior.
In this day we will let ourselves be inspired by “something greater than us”, will sense “the future that wants to emerge” and together will come up with the innovative behavior we need to evolve. Also, we will design the alternative social space that would foster such a behavior. (see imagine and co-design a holarchic organization exercise from the Map your Life Journey 2)
We can not overcome our challenges acting from the same level of understanding that created them in the first place. We can not expect that, behaving in our old ways that brought us in this social and ecological crisis, we can overcome the crisis. The innovative behavior that we have to find is not easy to be grasped by the people that still let themselves be informed by the old metaphysics of separation, conflict and exploitation. We tackle this behavior in many ways in our seminars and courses (see An innovative Behavior, Sense-and-Respond, Map your Life Journey 2, Stigmergic Correlation, Sense-and-Respond and Symbiotic Behavior) and will continue to grant it a lot of attention because our goal is a radical transformation at metaphysical and behavioral level.
This innovative behavior is informed by the Living Universe metaphysics and could be called “Holarchic or Symbiotic Behavior” because, as every holon, focuses at the same time on its well-being and the well-being of the greater whole is part of.
The solution for the first barrier
As a solution to overcome the first barrier, we propose the Butterfly Communities open-project.
The holarchic/symbiotic behavior could flourish only in a social environment conducive to it.
Butterfly Communities open-project is not about building only a community or two: rather, imagine it as a social “niche construction”. Perceive it as a new way of human organization: A holarchic social architecture that has as its building blocks the human-scale (Butterfly) communities. This way of human organization could reach even the global scale.
That is why it is an open-project: Open-projects are open-ended: there is no resolution yet. There is some kind of opportunity in the future and it is not clear whether it will materialize or not. The resolution of the open-project hinges on you, the listener. The resolution depends in part on the choices you will make and the actions you will take. An open-project is a call to action directed at the listeners, stressing the role that they can and need to play in resolving the story. Effectively framed open-projects are designed to inspire and motivate others to come together to accomplish something that none of us could fully accomplish on our own.
The second barrier against evolution
The second barrier is inside us: Past evolution have tailored our emotions, motivations and values so that we find security and satisfaction in behaviors and actions that would have produced success in the past, not those that will produce success in the future.
We “feel secure” doing things that have proven successful in our species biological and social history, regardless of their possible success in the future. Our old set of emotions and motivations is driving us to choose actions that have proven successful in our species past, but not for the future success. This is an important barrier to human further evolution.
The solution for the second barrier
As the solution to overcome the second barrier, we propose the Butterfly Communities open-project.
Butterfly Communities is an emerging social space that is conducive to evolution of a symbiotic behavior. Besides our courses and seminars, as this social space will grow, artists of different kind will join and a whole new Yellow-Turquoise culture – conducive to this behavior – will emerge.
The third barrier against evolution
The third barrier is outside us – our current social environment. To overcome this third barrier we have to consciously design an alternative social space that can help us to choose, as a winning strategy, the symbiotic behavior. This is called “niche construction”. Living beings not only adapt to their environment, but shape/model the environment to become conducive to their well-being. The construction of a niche is not happened randomly, but is the outcome of living beings intentionality, creativity, imagination and willingness to cooperate together.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead)
The solution for the third barrier
As the solution to overcome the first barrier, we propose the Butterfly Communities open-project. Butterfly Communities open-project is the “niche construction” that could come forth through our intentionality, creativity and the understanding that only through cooperation humans always prevailed.
What will we learn?
Our discussions will create an emergent space of meaning, choices and opportunities from where each of us will take whatever makes sense for us.
My hope is that we will learn that now humanity reached a point in evolutionary journey where we really have to evolve. Now, “to evolve” means not only to improve some skills but to really reinvent ourselves and radically change our ways of living: from exploitative to regenerative and from individualistic to cooperative.
Without an symbiotic behavior and a social space conducive to fairness and planetary regeneration we will not be able to overcome our crisis and will collapse to ruins. We can not expect to solve our problems from the same level of understanding that created them in the first place. I hope in this course we will learn how to move further.
Be a Collaborator!
Anyone can become our collaborator!
We are searching for artists, trainers, film-makers, web-designers and for everyone that is inspired by the same vision as us.
Whatever the challenges of the future, cooperators will have a clear evolutionary advantage compared to non-cooperators.
In the new VUCA world, we will have to survive and thrive in new ways, different from those that have been successful so far. As a multicellular organism is smarter and has better capacities to deal with its environment than a cell alone, as an ant-hill is smarter and has better capacities to deal with its environment than an ant alone, the cooperative groups will be smarter and better equipped to deal with future challenges than single individuals.
Educators, trainers or artists – those who aim to have a social impact, to spread an idea – have to cooperate, if they want to succeed. However, the evolution of Life has a clear direction: towards ever-increasing scales of cooperation.
Those who want to move forward must learn to cooperate in mutually enhancing ways.
The open project “Butterfly Communities” is an emerging community that is searching for young artists, trainers, filmmakers, etc. that have understood that we have to help each other to have a stronger social impact.
