Complexity, cooperation, and civilization
By Jeremy Lent, Resilience.org
Life’s glorious triumph on Earth has been achieved, not just through increased complexity, but also increased cooperation. In fact, the two go hand in hand.
Tag: evolution
Resilience and Change in the Age of Pandemic
By Heidi Appel, Resilience.org
Here was an environmental challenge for which we had no precedent in our lifetimes. Would we persist and adapt? Would we be resilient through change?
Half-Baked and Out of Time
By Helen Camakaris, New Internationalist
Representative democracy was the political system that most successfully exploited capitalism for the generation of wealth, but in recent years it has been compromised by the power of corporations through lobbying and donations, and has proved to be an unsatisfactory vehicle for generating equity and for responsiveness to long-term problems.
Guiding the Evolution of Cultural Sciences
By Joe Brewer, Medium.com
We are living in a world where holistic, systemic crises threaten the future of humanity. And yet, there has been an historic pattern of fragmentation in the physical and social sciences needed to tackle them. I have taken on the life mission to guide the evolution of cultural sciences so that they become fully integrated with the dynamics 0f our changing Earth.
Life’s Economy is Primarily Based on Collaborative rather than Competitive Advantage
By Daniel Christian Wahl, P2P Foundation
As our focus shifts from individuals and individual species as the unit of survival to the collective of life — its complex dynamic interactions and relationships — we begin to see that collaborative and symbiotic patterns and interactions are of more fundamental importance than competition as a driving force of evolution.
Make the Anthill Great Again: The Ant Colony and the Human One
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
In history, we see the widespread attempt to place a single human being - that is, a single brain - in charge of the activity of the state. That sometimes leads to attempts of planning for the future of the whole colony, but it often backfires creating disasters. A single human brain cannot manage the immense complexity of a human state.
Andreas Weber’s “Biology of Wonder”: Aliveness as a Force of Evolution and the Commons
By David Bollier, David Bollier blog
Drawing upon a rich body of scientific research, Weber outlines a different story of evolution, one in which living organisms are inherently expressive and creative in a struggle to both compete and cooperate.
Wisdom: Re-Tuning for a Sustainable Future
By Peter Whybrow, Post Carbon Institute
In our social evolution as a species, biology and culture run on parallel tracks, but they do so at different speeds. Thus biology, quickly and disruptively, can be outpaced by cultural change.
The Quest for a Common Language
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
It’s a very old choice: which will you have, the love of power or the power of love?
Don’t Trust Your Stone Age Brain: It’s Unsustainable
By Helen Camakaris, The Conversation
Humans have evolved to feel a single sense of self, but our emotional brain is encouraging us to pursue perceived self-interest even if it means trashing the planet, leaving our rational brain to try and justify our actions. Why are our intuitions so poor, and how might we engage rational thinking?
The Lurking Inconsistency
By Herman Daly, The Daly News
Ecological economics of course has roots in ecology and biology as well as in economics. Most of ecological economists’ and steady-state economists’ time has been well-spent correcting economics in the light of biology and ecology. And there is still more to do in this direction. However, we should be careful to avoid importing some deep metaphysical biases frequent in biology, along with its scientific truths.
The necessary transition to a new economy
By Atlee McFellin, Shareable
Even Forbes is jumping on the bandwagon of the “sharing economy” with a recent article on AirBnB. This closely follows Van Jones’s CNN article about the “sharing economy,” but the push to transform our broken economy isn’t just about sharing, though; it isn’t even just about renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, and the other elements of the green economy movement. There is a “new economy movement” that’s pushing for a fundamental shift away from the neoliberal policies that have dominated our economy and society for decades.