The strange genius—and limits—of living beings
A reflection on animal behaviour, evolutionary feedback systems and why living beings can appear both extraordinarily intelligent and strangely “dumb” depending on context.
evolution
What Could Possibly Go Right?: Episode 95 Geneen Marie Haugen
Geneen Marie Haugen, PhD, grew up as a free-range wildish kid with a run amok imagination. She is a guide to the experiential, intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche with the Animas Valley Institute. She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
Evolution and Climate Change Through the Lens of Power
Just as the humble American pika has developed strategies to avoid overshooting its environmental limits, we can and must rein in the extreme powers that currently threaten our success and even our survival.
Cosmos as Home: Evolution as Context
With such an understanding of the continuity of all life we can develop a more robust cosmological ethics highlighting responsibility and reciprocity for our magnificent Earth community.
Complexity, cooperation, and civilization
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.
Resilience and Change in the Age of Pandemic
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
