Subject: The Gaian Paradigm
From: Bill Ellis (tranet@rangeley.org)
Date: Wed 08 Dec 1999 - 00:30:05 MET
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 18:30:05 -0500 Subject: The Gaian Paradigm From: "Bill Ellis" <tranet@rangeley.org>
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From: Dennis Nelson <NELSOND@ny-smtp.army.mil>
Bill writes in part>>>The Gaian Paradigm. It shows that everything is
dependent on everything else. That is the deepest and most fundamental
change in our worldview in 5000 years. Also fortunately new
technologies are making it possible for humanity to act in accordance
with the Gaian Paradigm.<<<
DN:
>>We always have known that all is dependent on everything else; our
>>effort remains to control our momentary emotions and desires to act
>>in accordance with the knowledge that all is dependent on everything
>>else.
BE:
No, the Dominator Paradigm on which our EuroAmerican Culture is based did
not recognize that everything was dependent of everything else. The Jewish
creation myth told us that the Universe was created for man. Greek
philosophy bolstered that view with "man is the measure of all things.
Thomas Aquinas gave it a firm base with his "chain-of-being" that held that
the chain started with man at the top with a few celestial beings high above
and women, children, other races, animals, plants, and the earth below with
each rung dependent on and serving the rungs above. for 1000 years the
Inquistion stamped out almost all belief in the unity of the Earth by
burning 1 million Earth worshiprs. Columbus and others with the sword
)technology) the cross (relition) and the flag (territorial nationalism)
made that worldview dominant and domineering throughout the world. It was
the Dominator Paradigm in which Darwin formulated "survival-of-the-fittest."
It was the basis of the Newtonian mechanical world, And was made the basis
of economics and ethics with Adam Smith who preached the doctrin of "self
interest" and individual rights.
DN:
>>Too often we confuse knowledge with acknowledgement. I know most
>>of my shortcomings. Yet too often when confronted with them I fail to
>>accept the help behind the confrontation and I get confrontational. Or I'm
>>too tired to make the effort, or others just don't understand.
BE:
YES, that is the confustion about science (what we know about the universe)
and technology (what we do with that knowledge). The shift to the Gaian
Paradigm suggests that we abandon most of the social mores, conceptsand
institutions of the passion indstrual society and invent new social
innovations that recognize the humanity, the earth and the cosmos are one
interlocked system of systems, or holons within holons.
NR:
>>Too often we become enraptured as someone else's jargon about the
>>truth of the ages makes clear to us relationships and truths that are
>>eternal, but of which we are just becoming conscious and able to
>>articulate. Our new understanding and language doesn't make the truth
>>or relationship new.
BE:
Since Thomas Kuhn the concept that mental paradigms are more than a change
in jarhon. They are more than a rearangement of facts. A paradigm shift
changes the way we see the world, the way we put facts together, and the way
we organize social institutions.
Recognizing the shift from the Dominator Paradigm to the Gaian Paradigm
gives us a chance to reinvent education and learning. It is not just a tool
for educating differently. It is a change in the way we learn.
I think we see it happening already with the time our children spend on
their computers chasing packmen, and driving speeding cars. That has
captured their minds. While tradtional schools are in crises, with dropout
rates and homeschooling increasting a phenomenal rates. The task is to use
that new mental construct in a positive way. To adpt our learning system to
the Gaian paradigm.
Learning needs no longer be linear nor for mass production. With the new
technology we can reinvent every social institution even learning. Learning
can become a maze in which each individual follows jer or his own path to
the knowledge s/he wants. The job of the teacher can become that of mentor
helping the individaul find her or his way. Not teaching erveryone the same
rote facts ant the same time in the same way as was needed for the passing
industrial society.
NR:
>>The new technologies do what new technologies always do: enable us
>>to do faster and more efficiently what we already were doing. If we
>>were doing what would benefit us all, we do that faster and better. If
>>were attempting to shortsightedly make our own situation better (as we
>>shortsightedly see or define better) we will do that also, at great harm to
>>our external interdependencies.
BE:
If we see only the technology made possible by the new science, then yes it
will be used only to do the same things we've always done. If we see the
paradigm shift inplied in the new science, the new knowledge of how the
universe works, we can envision a very different society and a very
different learning system as its foundation. And only the reinvention of a
new learning system will make the new society possible.
As long as we concentrate on the new technology and not the new knowledge we
will only make the society fall faster and faster into oblivian.
I see the purosee of IFETS as mnore than that.
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