For some 2,000 years or more, civilization has
been ruled by a social paradigm on which all
aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are based
-- the "dominator paradigm." In the past two
decades a new social paradigm has been
emerging that could have the most profound and
fundamental impact on human civilization since
hominids first came down from the trees.
The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful
universe created by some supernormal power for
the domination and use by man. The new
paradigm we, call "A Gaian Paradigm," suggests
a spontaneously self-organizing universe in
which humanity is but one of the created
tightly linked, interdependent webs of being.
THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM
The "dominator paradigm," has had a long
evolution. It evolved from the Jewish creation
myth that held that the earth was created for
the use of and domination by man. It was
strengthened by Greek philosophy with the
postulate that man is the measure of all
things. The early Church held that a
chain-of-being put man at the top of a
hierarchy with only a few celestial beings
above.
The "dominator paradigm" was imbedded in the
minds of Europe by the thousand-year
Inquisitions that burned thousand of heretics,
mostly women, at the stake for believing in
Earth as our creator. It was spread to the
East by the crusades that destroyed "infidel"
humans, cities and nations. During the Age of
Colonization and Discovery it was perpetuated
and made worldwide by the sword (technology), the flag
(nationalism),
and the cross (Christianity)
Newton's clockwork concept of that cosmos,
and Darwin's theory of evolution were
interpreted to "prove" the validity of the
dominator paradigm. It was fixed in our secular
moral system by the acceptance of Adam Smith's
economy that human "self-interest",the-fittest
come
into play. Networks of potential mutations may
develop and remain dormant until triggered by an
environmental change or another phenomenon that
brings on the avalanche of transition.
Autocatalysis, linked with-survival- competition
and materialism should, and do, dictate all
human actions. This abomination as the essence
of humanity now rules the world.
A GAIAN PARADIGM
A
Gaian paradigm not only has many roots but can
be, and is becoming, the underpinning of a new
global network of cultures replacing the now
dominant and domineering man-centered industrial
cultures. Like all cultures, the new cultures
will be holistic and unified coherences of
interdependent components -- religion,
economics, social and others.
The emergence of a Gaian paradigm is resulting
in a deep fundamental transition of our world
view, our social institutions, our cultural
norms, and our lifestyles. The need for this
transition is being made obvious by the growing
numbers of dangers inherent in industrialism
including endless wars and economic breakdowns.
But the transition is happening, and being made
real by the introduction of many positive and
creative social innovations.
This millennium is being looked upon as a time
of radical and fundamental change. Minds are
opening to new ideas. People are looking for new
actions. It is in this spirit of a hopeful,
deep, fundamental social transformation that
this book is addressed. These are the concepts
we'll explore in the next few chapters.
FOUNDATIONS FOR A
GAIAN PARADIGM
Many
basic scientific observations led to this new
scientific/social paradigm. The advancement of
the Gaia theory, the establishment of Chaos and
Complexity theories, and new concepts of
evolution were among them.
New observations that biological evolution did
not progress, as Darwin predicted, in a series
of minute changes which led over time to the
emergence of new species. Rather, biological
evolution happened in quantum leaps. Major
biological changes and new species are created
in relatively short periods of time after long
periods of stability. This observation was
designated by Stephen Jay Gold as punctured
equilibrium.
James Lovelock, a scientist working for NASA,
observed that the biosphere of the Earth was
radically different from all other planets. It
stayed amazingly constant within ranges which
supported life.
At the same time Lynn Margulis, a
microbiologist, was studying the evolution of
microorganisms over the billions of years before
animals appeared on the face of the Earth. She
found that life forms were interdependent. Life
was able to exist on Earth because of a
symbiosis among all life forms and the
geological Earth. Everything was interdependent
with everything else. Life created its own
biome.
Lovelock and Margulis proposed that the whole
Earth was a self-organized, self-supporting
ecological system At the suggestion of a
neighbor of Lovelace, William Golding, author of
Lord of the Flies, they termed this living Earth
system Gaia, after the Greek Earth goddess.
A theoretical understanding of how Gaia, or in
fact any system, might spontaneously
self-organize came from other fields of science
including mathematics, physics and particularly
computer science. Chaos and Complexity theories
(made possible by computer modeling) have moved
science beyond the limits imposed by linear
mathematics, algebra and calculus. Study of the
transition of order into chaos, or chaos into
order, and the formation of complex systems from
simpler ones has opened a whole new area for
science. Two particular breakthroughs in the
field are relevant to the Gaia concepts.
Self-organizing criticality is an idea proposed
by Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist, Per
Bak. His first computer model representing
self-organizing criticality was of a pile of
sand. As you pour grains of sand on a spot it
slowly builds into a stable inverted cone. As
you continue pouring, the cone becomes unstable
until sand slides and avalanches restore a new
larger stable cone. Bak showed that biological
evolution occurred in such bursts. Simple
entities formed more complex systems, which
remained stable until internal pressures built
up and caused a rapid reorganization. There
seems to be a law of nature, self-organizing
criticality, by which new forms come into being.
Autocatalysis, developed by Stuart Kauffman at
the Santa Fe Institute, is another concept which
provides a theoretical base for the evolution of
Gaia. Autocatalysis holds that systems of
biological entities may promote their own rapid
transition into different forms. Kauffman uses
the simple example of the slippery-footed fly
and sticky-tongued frog. The mutation of
slippery footedness gave no environmental
advantage to the fly until the mutation of the
sticky-tongued frog. Only then did Darwin's
survival-of- of-the-fittest. explains how
complex organs like the eye, or new species
emerge.
Self-organizing criticality and autocatalysis are
among the scientific concepts that show how
biological entities spontaneously self-organize in
quantum-like leaps from simple cells to linked
complex networks of cells, organs, plants and
animals.
More than that, physicists like Lee Smolin and
Nobel Laureate Murray Gellmann, have extended
self-organizing back to the beginning of time at
the Big Bang, suggesting that the same principle
may apply to the self-organizing of fundamental
particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, and
molecules into galaxies, solar systems, planets,
and life.
At the same time economists like Nobel Laureate
Kenneth Arrow, Brian Arthur, and Jon Holland have
extended the new paradigm in the other direction,
to include economics, social organization, and
human consciousness.
This new scientific-social paradigm suggests that
people have no superior divine mandate within a
universe created for them. They are not
independent of, above or beyond the natural world
in which they are imbedded. They do have the
unique ability to understand, through science, the
laws that govern them, to envision future worlds,
and to co-create those future worlds within the
laws of science.
CYBERSPACE AND THE
NETWORKED UNIVERSE
"Everything is
connected to everything else" is one way of
stating the Gaian paradigm. It is a fact of
science, and is a social mindset.
In addition it is more than those; it is a
fact of technology. "Networking" was
identified by John Naisbitt in Megatrends as
one of the major rends of the age. It was a
social and political as well as a scientific
trend. It was made possible by the major new
findings of the twentieth century. As he saw
it, networking was like roads, the automobile,
the telegraph, airplanes, the telephone, and
computers. Each of these technologies made the
Earth smaller and put people in more rapid and
reliable touch with one another.
The real quantum jump in networking is only
now before us. Computers and the Internet are
providing a challenge that has hardly been
explored. Cyberspace is a global phenomenon
providing humanity the opportunity to work
globally in real time. This takes networking
well beyond the concept about which Naisbitt
wrote only a few years ago, or the concept of
transnational networking which was the root of
the formation of TRANET, the organization with
which I've been working since 1976.
The Gaia hypothesis, the theories of chaos and
complexity, the Gaian concepts, and the
computer technologies which now face us grew
independently of one another. But they form a
unity. They, in themselves, are an example of
the self-organizing principle which shapes all
of cosmic evolution. Together they make up the
Gaian Paradigm. They challenge us to prepare
ourselves for an avalanche of social,
political and economic change in the years
ahead. This millennium is evolving radically
differently from anthropocentric
(man-centered) paradigm which has dominated
the past 2000 years.
