Alternative Creation Stories

At this time we only have stories (no confirmed scientific theories) about our “creation” (assuming that there was a beginning and not a “steady state” background for change) and our “becoming” (to where we “are”). These stories are “based” on some “accepted” “facts” of the cultures who live by these stories. There are no confirmed scientific theories about cosmological creation, although many good partial hypotheses. The Big Bang and the physical Evolution of the Universe hypotheses were not refuted by the “confirming” discovery of the “background radiation”. “SCIENCE” is a social-cognitive process in the (circularly based physicalist theories of biology and brain) that creates space-time causal models and associated narrative stories.

 

But, as pointed out by David Korten in THE GREAT TURNING, both the religious “creationist” story and the physicalist Big Bang and Expansion story relegate life, mind and spirit to late emergence, without “cause”. One of the universal assumptions among humankind today is that “time is one dimensional”. There are interesting speculation that life, mind, and spirit “were around” at the Big Bang and may have had some influence in cosmic evolution [but they still adhere to 1D time].

 

I encourage creating physicalist stories, as they do represent “one” possible theme of reality, and have powerful heuristic value. But the story should not be told so as to exclude other stories (the best don’t). Especially when they encourage a passive, go with the flow of evolution, perspective.

 

Consider a highly speculative story. Fact: most of what we know about the traditional physicalist, Big Bang and Expansion story is less than two hundred years old, most much more recent. Assume that some psi phenomena are real, such that collective minds might influence subtle variables in the matter-energy world. [I believe such phenomena have not been refuted by experimentation.] Our knowledge of the Cosmological Story comes from processed and interpreted data generated from complex physical instrumentation and computers. Imagine both the design and use of these instruments being created so as to create the Cosmological Story in the interpreted data. The origin or zero point of time is always NOW! We continually create both past and future! Our stories are fictional (created) reality! [I expect that this may be consistent with some spiritual-religious stories.]

 

The holarchical (nested hierarchical) story of living systems is a wonder totally independent of the cosmological evolution story. That is, just the story of steady (dynamic) state molecular-biological processes – without evolutionary change – is a challenge to comprehend and appreciate. Within accepted physicalist constraints, the field of creativity is wide open to life (mind and spirit).

 

SEED: The organization/learning details beyond viable communities and persons (from our evolutionary herstory) towards a global holarchical network of highly diverse communities, will need to be commensurate in complexity with the intra- and inter- cellular processes of known life. To date, we are orders of magnitude below this. In analogy, we individualized persons are as proteins, except that instead of being a 3D folded form from a linear string of molecular beads, we are a changing web of components with fractal-like depth – with high diversity. This is why viable and sustainable communities and awakened persons is necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT, for long-term survival of Humanity/GAIA.

 

I conclude with praise for visual artists and other creators who celebrate the Cosmological Story. I eagerly look forward to viewing your creations at the conference. To think/speculate/plan beyond the Here&Now does not exclude augmenting and enjoying the present.

 

Larry (nuet)

An imagineering story of "co-intelligent" local politics

My Co-Intelligence Institute website is filled with theory about what “wise democracy” — collectively wise and co-intelligent politics and governance — would look like. I love working on theory…

But eleven years ago some friends challenged me to write a story of exactly how it would work.

Of course, wise democracy could work in many different ways, and I don’t think of myself as a great story writer, but this vision suddenly came to me and I described it.

Pat & Pat is an imagineering view from 2020 — a futuristic, down-home story about a new, co-intelligent politics. It tells how Patrick and Patricia McFallow become co-mayors of Story City, Iowa, in 2016. During their four-year mayorship they engage thousands of citizens in powerful, empowering conversations about what they want their community to be like and how they can change it. Of course, the community starts changing, brilliantly and fast….

Even though it doesn’t cover the idea of citizen deliberative councils, which surfaced in 2003, I still love it. Some day I’ll revise it, but for now, here it is….

A personal vision of what could happen with this conference

I wrote the short story The Evolving Storycology Project in February 2007 after some prodding about what sorts of outcomes I was hoping for from this conference.

I’ve been thinking about this kind of story field conference for more than a decade — I began writing about story fields in 1993 — and visions of what might be possible have been emerging and mixing in my mind and spirit ever since.

This imagineering story — it reports back to you from 2015 — is nowhere near a complete vision, but it is one coherent one. If we came anywhere near doing what this story describes, I would be totally blown away. I suspect we’ll do a lot that is totally different from what it envisions — and I’ll still be blown away.

But if by any chance this story excites you, let me know. One of the interesting potentials of imagineering stories is using them to network with others who would like to see that particular dream come true….

Enjoy!