A Coin Always Has Both Heads and Tails

by John K. Stoner   (June 30, 2017)

Science which has studied human behavior in the last two decades has not answered the bad old question “Is nature or nurture the decisive shaper of human behavior?”

What it has demonstrated in new ways is that both nature and nurture are profoundly and inseparably important.  

I will venture, however, than there is an important sense in which one deserves more emphasis than the other.  That is, we should give nurture more emphasis because it is the one which we can do something about.  And science has confirmed that in significant ways.

Lisa Miller writes in THE SPIRITUAL CHILD:  

Our children [read: human beings] have an inborn spirituality that is the greatest source of resilience they have as human beings, and we, as parents, can support our children’s spiritual development.  Our parenting choices in the first two decades affect our children’s spiritual development in ways that last their entire lives.  Natural spirituality, in fact, appears to be the single most significant factor in children’s health and their ability to thrive. 

(p. 6).  

Miller says that recent science has shown decisively that this natural spirituality is a universal human faculty.  “We know now that an ‘inner spiritual compass’  is an innate, concrete faculty and  like EQ [emotional intelligence], a part of our biological endowment.  It has a biological basis, which can also be cultivated.  The evidence is hard, indisputable, and rigorously scientific.” (p. 6).

The argument I am pursuing in these blogs is that the Empire way of running the world, by hierarchy, domination and overwhelming homicidal violence, ignores and denies the human capacity for compassion, forgiveness and cooperation, which Miller calls natural spirituality or an inner spiritual compass.  

Hence, we have a task:  to discover or rediscover our innate spirituality and to nurture that.  In this, we will shortchange ourselves if we think that it is all about nature or all about nurture.  Every coin held between the fingers has both a heads and a tails side, and trying to prove it is all one or the other is a useless project. 

Next blog we begin looking at the nurture of this innate capacity. This will help us think about what is possible and what is desirable in human behavior (yesterday's blog)  

What is Possible? What is Desirable?

by John K. Stoner   (June 29, 2017)

My recent blogs have been addressing the question of “what is possible?” in terms of human behavior.  It is an old and important question, and I will keep returning to it. But there is a related question, which is “what is desirable?”  In other terms, that question is, “What do we want to see in human behavior?”

It would be interesting, and I think actually necessary, to speculate on which of these two questions is more decisive in the mind of most people.  And so, let’s speculate on that today.

Let’s face it: whatever is going wrong, or going right, in the world is doing so basically because of human behavior—human choices.  We could spend a long time reviewing ways in which people— societies— try to deny and avoid their responsibility for their choices.  The elaborate justifications of greed, oppression and violence which we see in our world are basically all ways of denying responsibility for the suffering humans visit on other humans.  

Domination systems seek to justify their methods by arguing that the only possible way to restrain human proclivities toward greed and violence are by organizing “superior” greed and violence.  Thus, we have a capitalist economic system which claims that greed is a self-governing human capacity, and violence is an essential and redemptive corporate duty rooted in realities of human nature.  These mantra’s—truth claims—of our society seem to be based on assumptions about what is possible in terms of human behavior.  

So the domination system which is deemed desirable is desirable because it is the only thing that is possible.

Or is it?  

Which takes us back to what is possible in human behavior.   In the coming days I’m asking for a fair look at that question.  We will even drag in a little science.  And a little imagination.  What if, for example, human behavior is actually capable of being 10% more compassionate and forgiving? 

From Rock Sitting to Neuroscientist

by John K. Stoner   (June 28, 2017)  

Today I add to the June 20 blog, which was a high school student’s “experience of a vital world.”  What that young woman saw in a Rocky Mountaiin lake influenced her for life.  Here is one man’s story, never shared until he was in his forties.

Lisa Miller tells the story of Stefan: 

Stefan, a neuroscientist in his forties, divulged over lunch with colleagues that just such an experience [a childhood mystical experience] at age eight was responsible for the great sense of purpose and passion that has distinguished his career and his life.  As a child, Stefan had always enjoyed taking walks in the forest near his parent’s home.  He loved the woods because they felt “so vibrant and full of life and mystery.”  One beautiful summer day, much like other days, he wandered into the forest, and growing tired, sat down to rest on a big gray rock.

“While sitting on that rock, I watched the pretty trees 

surrounding me.  After a few minutes, I started feeling

connected to the rock and the trees.  It then appeared

to me that the rock, the trees, and myself were part of

a whole much greater than ‘little Stefan.’  Following this

experience, my purpose in life became clear; I would

later become a scientist to demonstrate that the essence 

of human beings cannot be found in the brain.”

Stefan never mentioned this experience, or others that followed, to his parents, Grandparents, or the children at school.  It was an experience beyond words for him as a young boy, something he intuitively sensed that no one would understand or even believe.  But the experiences belonged to an intimate and profound realm as concrete and real as the rock on which he’d sat that day.  Even as a child he recognized his experience as transcendent, a higher order of knowing.  (P. 165)

The high school student (June 20 blog) and Stefan both experienced sure knowledge of a transcendent order of beauty and goodness which shaped their lives thereafter.  My point in these blogs is that without our awareness of and appropriation of our innate capacity for this kind of knowing, we will not know enough to develop an alternative to empire—another way of running the world.  

Who Has Shaped Us?

by John K. Stoner  (June 27, 2017)

Yesterday we read  whatever ideas we hold, we almost always hold in the context of a circle of conversation partners. ''

Think about that.  Have you chosen your conversation partners deliberately, or has it been a haphazard thing, by guess and by golly?

Dennis Rivers offers us the challenge of choosing one conversation partner very intentionally, so that we share a common search for wisdom and direction.

And I am suggesting that, in the context of seeking a deeper awareness of our spiritual capacity, a capacity for more creative responses to the challenges of our world, a partner may help to discover a hidden or unused element of ourselves.

Who has shaped our understanding of our selves and our capacities?

Finding Help For Thinking New Thoughts

by John K. Stoner   (June 26, 2017)

Today I am sharing the introductory thoughts of Dennis Rivers in  his essay "Friendships for The Greater Good: Building Transformational Teams of Two."  Such partnering, I am suggesting, will help us to discover the spiritual capacity of ourselves and others to know the larger universe of love and helpful guidance in which we live.

How new thinking partners can help us think much-needed new thoughts.
https://www.earthcitizens.net/library/teams-of-two.pdf

I'm sure most of you are familiar with two of Einstein's famous sayings, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." and, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." In spite of the fact that runaway free market industrial capitalism appears to be killing the planet, there are still loud calls for even lower taxes, even less regulation, and less planning, so that the system which has been happy to provide us with child pornography, leaking nuclear power plants, heroin, private prisons, and the rusted out wasteland cities of the Northeast and Midwest, can finally somehow provide us with a happy and sustainable life.

In my experience, once having invested their hopes and dreams in a particular path of action, people become extremely reluctant to admit that the path chosen might have been a mistake. And the larger the mistake, the larger the reluctance. (I know that tendency well in myself.) Just think of the Iraq war: fifteen years of fighting, thousands of lives lost, perhaps millions injured, several trillion dollars spent, with the situation now much worse than when the war began. And people are still arguing that this war was a good idea! As an American citizen horrified by the Iraq war, it makes me wonder... Will the death of the Earth follow the same blind path as the destruction of Iraq? We have already shown how reluctant we humans can be to facing the consequences of our actions.

To think new thoughts we will often need new thinking partners. Although every now and then people can think wonderful new ideas all by themselves, thinking has a deeply social element in it. Those wonderful ideas will probably not get developed unless there is someone to talk with. We learn to think, early in life, in the company of those from whom we learn to speak. Then we spend ten to twenty years in classrooms and teams where our thinking power unfolds even more in the company of others. In this social view of language and thinking (for which there is a large body of evidence), whatever ideas we hold, we almost always hold in the context of a circle of conversation partners.

Now Mother Earth is falling apart, and we need to think big new thoughts about what sort of social arrangements will allow life to flourish rather than perish. We already know the kinds of social arrangements that have brought us to our current impasse. Inventing something new and actually better (evolution!) will be the cooperative challenge of a lifetime.

As one possible way of meeting that challenge, I am proposing in this article that each of us begin by cooperating with at least one other person, each partner giving the other permission to "think outside the box," and also to care about life in widening circles, outside the box of the individual selfishness that is, un- fortunately, the glowing ideal of capitalism everywhere. When you start thinking new thoughts about the society in which you live, or start to care with a wider caring that your society allows, you risk evoking intense hostility from people around you who may have given up all hope of a better world. Having a small circle of supportive friends, or even one, can make all the difference. You could think of that new conversation partner as a swim-buddy for the ocean of life, or perhaps a Mother Earth accountability partner. 

Two Might Be Better Than One

by John K. Stoner (June 23, 2017)

Today I would just like to intrigue you with the idea of finding a partner to walk with you in this journey of awareness and active living.

The awareness I speak of is awareness of being part of something greater and good, some sense of awe before the grandness of the  created world and human relationships. 

The active living is creative engagement to address the ominous signs of decay and failure which mark our world today.

I suggest that another person who shares your caring, thinking, listening and acting could be a greater resource than you’d first suppose.

My friend and mentor in California, Dennis Rivers, is writing and experimenting with “teams of two” as a more democratic and inexpensive way of  mobilizing human resources for social change than most forms of “education” and “political action” which our society offers.  He asks, What if mortgaging your future to get an education, or joining a political party, are not actually the best ways to understand what is happening or to get involved in making something better happen?  

For today, let me just ask you to probe your memory for an experience or relationship with one other person that you found noticeably rewarding.  Have you ever discovered an insight or accomplished a task with the help of a partner?  Is there anything there which you are willing to share with other readers through the comment function below?

How Can We Become Aware?

by John K. Stoner  (June 22, 2017)

To summarize my blogs since June 6 on finding an alternative to the empire’s way of running (trying to run) the world with violent, dominating power, several points:

1.  Prior to my blogs, Berry’b blogs have been diagnosing and disclosing the futility and fraudulence of the Empire’s narrative of world events.

2.  I’ve said that there is another voice to be heard and another way to be taken—starting with some learning from Lisa Miller’s book THE SPIRITUAL CHILD:  The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving.  The wars and environmental destruction and mindless capitalism/greedy wealth we are looking at in todays world is not “lifelong thriving,” am I right?

3.  As people, from childhood right up until where we each are today, we have an innate capacity to receive experiences of the beauty, goodness, and life-giving possibilities of the planet and universe. 

4.  Recognized, remembered, and appropriated for motivation and guidance, these experiences can be the foundation of human actions and responses to life which create alternatives to war, greed and environmental destruction. 

What I have started to probe, and invite your comments and input as I continue this exploration, is “How can we become aware of this neglected innate capacity for contact with the universe’s mystery of life and love?”

Lisa Miller’s book recounts the findings of science in the past 15+ years on our capacity for hearing this other voice; religion is another human project which has paid attention to this listening for millennia.  Spirituality is Miller’s word for naming this inborn capacity and proclivity.  Science, religion, spirituality—I invite you to walk with me in this creative exploration.  Use the comment function at the end of the blog to send your thoughts and experiences.  Talk to a friend about IF NOT EMPIRE, WHAT?, on the Bible’s exploration of an alternative to empire, and about our continuation of that journey on these blogs.  

Tomorrow, thoughts on the value of finding a partner, one serious, fun, interested fellow-traveler to make a team of two in this creative process.