An Innovative Behavior
Series 8: An Innovative Behavior – Introduction
We have to start from here: to understand why it is necessary and what it takes to evolve a more adequate behavior.
Any evolutionary step further always employed an innovative behavior.
A behavior is the obvious expression of intentionality, guiding intelligence, purposefulness and conscious choice. Innovative behaviors are not random behaviors that happened to be useful, but purposefully chosen ones. When old behaviors are not anymore useful, it is the time to change them consciously.
But what means to change them?
First, how can we find what behavior could be more useful, more adequate for the new life challenges, for future success?
Second, how can we evolve a new behavior?
Then, the questions could go even deeper: if every innovative behavior is actually a step forward in evolution, how can we overcome the barriers against evolution? This “how” is itself an aspect of a true innovative behavior.
How can we find what behavior could be more useful, more adequate with the new conditions and life challenges? This is what conscious evolution is all about: to find a breakthrough, a way forward from a kind of predetermination. Our old behaviors are a kind of predetermination that are driving us – again and again – to the same outcome that is not anymore desired: for sure we can not solve our problems behaving in the same way that created them in the first place. When old good solutions are not anymore good solutions we are in a crisis. To overcome a crisis, an innovative behavior is necessary.
Connecting in new way the knowledge we have, using imagination and inspiration, we can come with a solution. Though is our creation, this solution is inspired by above. I believe that each evolutionary step further is inspired by above. Many people are speaking about a “future that wants to emerge”, that is evoking them to become creative participants of this evolutionary process. And these “futures” are so similarly described!
The approach is scientific: taking insights from scientific discoveries, it becomes clear why our society is in this social and ecological crisis. Our economic and politic ways have departed too much from Life ways to be: Our way of organization is alien to our human nature and alien to our Mother Nature. All we have to do is to orient ourselves again toward Her ways. The innovative behavior that I am talking in this series of seminaries is mainly about changing our life strategies from individualistic to cooperative. A cooperation able to bring forth again tribes – human-scale communities conducive to fairness and mutual-consistency, but tribes that are able to cooperate between them in a fair and mutually-consistent ways at a global scale.
There is even a new concept: “biological thinking” – to think and act accordingly with Life principles, as you would be a living being and not a cog in a capitalist machine. Martin Reeve employs biological thinking in an economic approach, in his search to mimic nature principles in building resilient economic entreprises. It makes sense to employ in our communities that kind of organization that fosters Nature resilience, flexibility and adaptability.
There are many aspects of this innovative behavior. We will tackle them step by step in this series of seminars. If you want to know more how to reinvent yourself and how to inter-relate with others in mutually-consistent ways, just engage this series of seminars. I said “engage” because it will be as inter-active as possible for a seminar. I would like that each seminar and each series of seminars to be engaged as a journey of discovery. Everyone of them was thought of as a puzzle of a map. Connecting these puzzle pieces in your own way, you can craft your own map that could help you better orient in our changing world.
Each seminar will have 2 parts. In first part we will talk – around only 25 minutes – about 4 or 5 ideas. I do not want to make it complicated. I will make it so you to have time to take some notes. The second part – around two hours – each of you could come with its question and I will answer. Hence, the discussion will be always oriented to your interest. Anyway, I will be glad a third part to follow – free discussion between audience triggered by the presentation. I will happily join this dialogue, ready to listen to your points of view and to improve mine.
Seminar 8.1: Crossing the First Threshold and taking our Heroic Journey
Have you ever heard of Hero’s Journey Archetype? The image below is a kind of spiritual map and can give you an idea of the path of the heroic journey. In this Seminar we will talk about its main milestones:
1. The Hero in its Ordinary World
2. Hearing a mysterious call
3. Refusal of the Call
4. Meeting the Mentor/Secret Map/Holly Book etc
5. Crossing the First Threshold
6. Trials, Challenges and Learning from them. Allies and Enemies
7. Meeting the Goddess, receiving Her gifts and going further and further
8. The Innermost Cave: Facing the Ordeal – the hero dies for its old form to be spiritually reborn
9. Meeting the Goddess and receiving his/her true gift: the authenticity
10. The feeling to “Return Home”
11. Refusal to Return (Why?)
12. Crossing the Second Threshold to renew the Kingdom and share his/her true gifts
Seminar 8.2: From individualistic to cooperative life strategies
This is our main “First Threshold” to be crossed. Without crossing this important threshold we can not overcome our crisis and can not take our evolutionary journey further. The evolution of Life on this Planet has a clear direction: toward increasingly wider scale of cooperation/harmony/mutual-consistency. So, let us be aware that now we – as a species and as individuals too – are facing the same challenge and having on our shoulders the same responsibility: to find a way further, a breakthrough, an innovative behavior conducive to cooperation and fairness.
In this seminar we will speak about:
1. The direction of evolution
2. “Why” cooperation?
3. “How” cooperation
4. “What” world cooperation can bring forth?
5. Holarchic human-scale communities
Seminar 8.3: From unsustainable to sustainable life strategies
You can ask yourself: How is it ever possible – in our capitalistic world – to change our life strategies from exploitative to regenerative/ from unsustainable to sustainable? Of course, if you don’t get out from the old metaphysics of separation that declares that you are powerless to do something meaningful in this world, that is impossible to change something in this world, you can not even believe that you can do something. But “miracle” are very possible, from the Living Universe metaphysics perspective!
“We have to create miracles. A miracle is not the intersession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. A miracle is simply something that is impossible from an old story but possible from within a new one. It is an expansion of what is possible.” (Charles Eisenstein)
These series of seminars are all aiming to the same thing: to help you to overcome the spell of the old metaphysics that makes you believe that you are powerless and insignificant.
So, let us understand what we can do to really change our life strategies from exploitative/unsustainable to regenerative/sustainable. Don’t forget that, in order to be able to create “miracles”, we have to die for our old form and let ourselves be spiritually reborn!
1. Life Principles
2. Biological Thinking
3. Circle Economy
4. Commons-based world
5. Voluntary Simplicity
Seminar 8.4: From unconscious to conscious life strategies
Life goes further through trial-and-error process. But, with the emergence of humans, this process becomes more and more conscious. We have started to become conscious of ourselves as a species. we started to embrace the whole Planet as our new self.
“Today we are beginning to discover a systems perspective to guide our new capacities: one that respects 15 billion year history of successful transformation. Many of us realize that there is an implicate pattern of success, that we are not random events cast on the seas of time, that we are co-creative with evolution itself. We no longer need to be solely reactive to our problems. We can be proactive and choose a future commensurate with our new capacities.” (Barbara Marx Hubbard)
“This does not mean we will inevitably succeed. Evolution is a contingency, not an inevitability. We see the potential of evolution in living systems and could take appropriate actions. From now forward, evolution will proceed more by choice and conscious intelligent design than by chance.” (Barbara Marx Hubbard)
In this seminar we will talk about:
1. Conscious Evolution
2. Becoming aware of the direction of evolution
3. Universe-centered consciousness
4. Being aware of the barriers against evolution
5. Designing consciously a fair world
Seminar 8.5: A behavior conducive to cooperation and fairness
We all praise fairness and would like to be treated fair. But can we treat other fair? Are we truly able to cooperate in a fair and mutually-consistent way? Here is the key for future survival and well-being: let us consciously develop a behavior more conducive to cooperation and synergy and unite ourselves to bring forth human communities conducive to fairness and cooperation! This is Butterfly Communities open-project all about.
1. A new understanding of the meaning of life
2. A new approach for human relationship
3. Holarchic consciousness/attitude
4. Being part of “something greater than you”
5. A social space conducive to cooperation and fairness
Seminar 8.6: A behavior conducive to planetary regeneration
We all are aware of our ecological crises: the way we live destroy the planetary ecosystem. But are we aware that we too are part of the problem, are part of those who live unsustainable?
Are we truly ready to change our ways of living? Here is the key for future survival and well-being: let us consciously develop a behavior more conducive to planetary regeneration and unite ourselves to bring forth human communities conducive to ecological regeneration! This is Butterfly Communities open-project all about.
And yes, it is about Voluntary Simplicity!
In this seminar, we will speak about:
1. Why Voluntary Simplicity?
2. A world that praise and incentives Voluntary Simplicity
3. Why “Living Technologies”?
4. Why commons-based economy?
5. A new meaning for human life, a Great Work for a future civilization
Seminar 8.7: Butterfly Community – the heroes of a new metaphysics
If you want to change something to yourself, change the story you tell yourself about the world!
Change the Story, change the Future! But every story has a hero. Thus, the New Story (the new metaphysics) has a new hero to: the integrated human community.
If we want to increase our levels of symbiosis and solidarity, self-determination and correlation, we need a new story that praise these qualities. The holarchic inter-connected communities will be our next archetypal heroes.
If we need to reconnect us with Nature, our new myth will regard Nature as our Mother. Our true heroes will be the human communities inextricably intertwined with Nature, mimicking Nature ways, co-living together in generative ways.
If we want to build a fair and regenerative society, this will be the true quest of Butterfly Communities, the heroes of a new mythology: autonomous communities, brought forth by people that perceive themselves as stewards of Life, not owners of others (means of) life.
As a conscious endeavor, we can try to understand who we are, from where we came and who we need to become to bring forth a civilization able to overcome our crisis.
The science brought us a New Story that is speaking about a Universe that is alive, that is informed by a Spirit, that is stirred and allured by a Cosmic Dynamic. We are crafting a new mythology where our Womb and Beloved and Teacher is Mother Nature itself. She is nourishing us, she is loving us, she is teaching us. What we need now is to perceive the whole Planet as a Womb that nourishes us, as a Mother that loves us, as our larger Body, as our Beloved, as our only Family as our living Household for whose well-being we are responsible.
We have to perceive and design our societies as ecosystems among the planetary ecosystems. The ecosystem is our new archetypal image to inform our society. We need to design our houses and technologies like Nature does. The organisms intertwined with their environment is our new archetypal image to inform our technologies. We are already doing this.
In this seminar we will speak about all these and more.
What we will learn?
As the Logo of Butterfly Communities shows, we will learn how to interconnect with each other.
I hope that we will learn together how to evolve a behavior that is conducive to cooperation, fairness, solidarity, mutual-consistency and planetary regeneration.
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.
