See Dan Dennett on “Belief in belief” here

Updates: I’ve just put a couple of updates for clarification and a couple more links. I’ve marked them in the text.

I also want to say, whatever about my concerns regarding the ideology behind Transition, there is heaps of great work being done in the movement, which is hugely influential in exploring  responses to Peak Oil and Climate Change. I am particularly looking forward to reading the “Can Totnes District Feed Itself” report- I hope it has some recipes in it!

I paid a visit to a forum on Transition and permaculture over at Transition Culture recently- wow, I only just got out in time before they lynched me! Apparently, post-modern lunacy is alive and well in the Transition Land where in a very interesting discussion on Transition, Permaculture, inclusiveness and the like, it became apparent that some things are just not on the table for discussion- yes you guessed it, yours truly raised the old chestnut of the evils of faith and all Hell broke loose. I quickly found myself embroiled in a disappear-up-your-own backside post- modern attack on my freedom of speech and left the forum just before the hounds were let out to accuse me of “bashing people of faith”.

The trouble started because of my comment:

“Faith is the one thing that will not help us deal with what is coming down the line!”

To which Rob replied:

“As fascinating observation, but, to my thinking, complete nonsense, and a somewhat dangerous perspective. I understand where you are coming from, that religion is not based on science, that it is irrational, ‘The God Delusion’ etc. etc. That is as maybe.

However,there are many many people around the world in crisis right now, whether it be through illness, war or whatever, for whom their faith is one of the key things that gets them through, logical or not. Of course one can construct an intellectual argument that says that we should be aiming to move people away from that, but there is, I would suggest, a deep arrogance to that.”

Now the charge of arrogance is predictable coming from Rob- all to easy a put-down and way of avoiding the issue. It should not be hard however to think of some of the evil consequences of faith (belief without reason):

-suicide bombings

-jihadism

-oppression of women

-institutional child abuse spanning decades in Irish industrial schools

-promotion of and support for quack medicines that dont work and might put people’s lives at risk;

-support for Man U FC (just joking- that’s not really evil, just demented).

I’m sure you can easily think of more.

Update: Here are a few more:

-the cynical exploitation of the bereaved by charlatan spiritualists;

-the dumbing down of education by the insistence on teaching Creationism as a theory of equal standing with the facts of evolution;

-the stiffling of stem-cell research

OK, you could argue that not all of these are a direct result of the faith in question, but in the case of the kind of institutional child abuse of the kind described in The Ryan Report- which has been widely referred to in the public debates as the Irish Holocaust- it is the special treatment demanded by churches over the years and the deference paid to “people of faith” as a special category who should somehow be revered and exempt from scrutiny and criticism which allows such horrors to continue unchallenged for so long.

On a forum such as Rob’s it seems a sad day that I should have to defend my right to criticize faith in a general sense and ask for more rational approaches to life, but this just shows that there is still a strong post-modern influence in the Transition movement.

This could be described as the “mean green meme”- a phrase from the stages of consciousness model Spiral Dynamics, which I have written about before here:

Instead of looking ahead to what the next Emergent meme may be, Green thinks it has found Nirvana already and in a paroxysm of narcissism and naïve romantic views of what life used to be like back in the good old days it destroys the goose that laid the golden egg- the very scientific method that lead to the deeper Green ecological understanding in the first place.

Incidentally, I don’t subscribe to SD as an accurate model and feel that it has cultish aspects itself; however it does provide a useful framework to discuss  cultural values and attitudes.

The Green or Post-modern Meme has certain characteristics which actually work towards oppression and restriction of free speech:

-over concern of political correctness and concern about how things are said rather than what is being said;

-a contradictory stance that claims all beliefs are equal -but some (their own) are more equal than others;

-a rejection of science- usually selective- as being “just another belief system”;

-this can lead to for example a tolerance and even promotion of pseudoscience and superstition which claim “equal status”;

-an over-sensitivity and concern with feelings over facts which tends to take offense at the first opportunity, thereby making intelligent debate impossible;

Update: The insistence that I drop my arguments or modify my tone because “I am so sure I am right but my view is really only one amongst many” is a particularly insidious argument that could be seen to be the hallmark of post-modern hypocrisy and delusion. It is only, note, used as a defense against the requirement of evidence for beliefs, never with regard to beliefs that we all know to be true: climate change is mainly man-made; peak oil will usher in an energy descent we are ill-prepared for.

When considering the evidence for climate change, for example, we are not likely to hear the objection:

“Ah, no man, you’re so arrogant!! You seem to think you’re right!! Why can’t you see you’re view is just one amongst many- and all views deserve equal respect.”

Honestly, if I were to give climate deniers some advice, I would say, take a page out of the New Age book- throw the “scientism” or “science is just another belief system” argument at them! Failing that, just claim your climate -denying beliefs are sacred -they are part of your religion and therefore cannot be challenged.

(Ironically, I just found this story of a climate change activist using the special priveledge afforded religion to defend his case!)

Do we really have to still have this corrupt and turgid debate about epistimology, even amongst ourselves as we prepare for the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced?

Let’s all join hands in a circle and repeat after me:

-not all beliefs are equal

-evidence is better than faith

Really, our future may depend on this. The views of New Agers regarding science as “another belief system” that cannot answer “holistic questions” are false. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a fact. You would think really that we should be able to state that in the context of a debate on Transition without being dismissed as being “arrogant”.

These Post-modern positions have had many dire consequences for society over the last several decades and have been criticized for such things as

-giving more resources for perpetrators of crime rather than their victims;

-a complete inability to deal with extreme beliefs and fundamentalism which are explicitly opposed to the post-modern agenda itself (“I’m sure if we could just bring Al Quaeda to the Heart and Soul Group, reach out to them and really show that we respect their beliefs they will be happy to work with us”);

-the existence of homeopathy degrees.

In the forum- which was Rob’s response to Sharon Astyk’s astute critique of Permaculture and Transition- the discussion covered many interesting topics and many opinions, but several people clearly had issues on the “hold-hands-in-a-circle-and-share-your-feelings” aspects of the inner work often found within Transition groups, which is strongly influenced by the work of Joanna Macey.

The comment that best sums up the issues raised here- which were also common on Sharon’s forum- was this brilliant piece from Julian on Rob’s forum, in response to a commentator who complained that the discussion on faith in a debate on inclusiveness in Transition was not appropriate:

Maybe you could provide a profile of the type of chaps/chapesses that you would like to “wander” in and join the circle and be made to feel welcome in to the light of the infinite sun.I have already witnessed inquisitive folk “wander”off from transition meetings for the foreseeable even before the enlightened ones hands have clasped one another.Perhaps the speed at which this debate has moved from circles to religion to exclusion should tell us something!

Clearly this is a divisive issue and both forums had many interesting and useful comments on it. My own perspective on this is, yes circles and feelings can take many forms and can be very useful for personal growth work etc, and some people get a huge amount out of them. For myself, I have done more than my fair share of this kind of thing and no longer feel the need. I worked with Joanna Macey many years ago and at the time was hugely influenced and inspired by her work; however I do feel it is ideological and lacks a critical component- hence the “cultish” aspects that can put people off (including people of other faiths.)

Sharon has already discussed this in her blog, personal development work is important for some but there should be more  models available.

I am not claiming TT is a cult, far from it, but this represents a “cultish aspect” that maybe should be avoided- or at least made less prominent. The ideological basis for Transition is hard to deny – and the New Age influence, particularly in regard to the promotion of Alternative Therapies in the Transition Timeline should be of concern to everyone who undertands the movement is dependent on a good understanding of the science that underpins climate change and peak oil.

Nor am I “bashing people of faith”- I have no problem working with “people of faith” but I do take strong issue with ascribing them a special privilege with ring-fences their beliefs putting them above critical appraisal. You want arrogance? Hard to beat an inviolable and unchallengeable belief in the Supernatural.

And that is the whole problem with Faith- by its very nature it demands that it is not questioned- believe in it and it and it will be true is I think the  basis of New Age pseudoscience- ie that your feelings thoughts and consciousness create physical reality- but underpins much more traditional religious belief also, eg the Power of Prayer- God will answer your prayers if you just believe in him enough.

I was accused on the forum of making assumptions about people’s faith, that they must be stupid or something. Sharon herself kindly responded and did not seem to find me arrogant but made a couple of very revealing observations:

I know few really religious people who haven’t experience with atheism. I’m sure there are some who don’t, but I don’t think it is a majority experience – how could it be, if you are a reasonably thoughtful person who has reasonably thoughtful considerations of the question of G-d? The reality is that more people go through atheism and come out at faith than vice versa – and far more in times of difficulty. To some, I’m sure this looks like an irrational strategy, or an inability to tolerate the truth. To others it will look different.

Most people of faith may question their faith; it is often seen as a virtue to struggle with these doubts and overcome them, thereby strengthening the faith. Maybe, though, many who profess faiths do not hold them strongly if at all- it seems clear that the “faith communities” are at least as much about community as about faith, but even so, the faith- aspect is surely a hindrance than a help precisely because these communities do not presumably foster and help develop critical approaches- the faith is a given even if you are struggling with it.

I dont assume people with faith are stupid or have not considered atheism; it is not hard to find other reasons why they may be reluctant or unable to make the leap:

-as said already, the need for the community may be stronger than the need for critical thinking;

-the nature of faith itself- and especially the post-modern culture of political correctness and false concepts of “equality” suppresses the emergence of a strong secular alternative, which is largely absent from public debate;

-we have an evolutionary predisposition to irrational beliefs

(see also the work of Susan Blackmore)

-historically, the church has been very powerful and effective at indoctrinating us and scaring us as children with visions of hell which may still contribute to our reticence to take on beliefs in adulthood;

-it is also possible that they are, well, stupid… Update: or perhaps more vulnerable to exploitation by powerful groups who use the “faith is a virtue” card to manipulate and control and extort.

I have consistently tried to draw parallels between the kind of thinking that denies climate change or fails to recognize our dependence on oil and its depletion and the psychology of faith; this is why I see these issues as so important for Transition. This may translates into the transition movement as being an over-reliance on “vision” and less on realism and substance; and while it does not advocate any particular  faith (other than in Transition itself) there is a promotion of pseudoscience (which undermines people’s understanding of climate science etc) ; a tolerance of the Faith Communities as somehow privileged; and an intolerance of secular values and critical thought.

Rob says:

Is it a tenable perspective to suggest that we only work with and engage those that have renounced any world view based on anything other than rational science? Of course not.

Of course that is not what I am suggesting. The post-modern idea that we can work with anyone who supports the need for Transition doesnt work, because we wont work with the BNP and that is NOT because they dont believe in climate change; equally we might not tolerate female oppression per se, but what if there is a “faith-based group” which treats women as second class citizens but is very strong on adaptive strategies to PO and GW?

I balk at Rob’s idea of:

I am particularly taken with the idea, which has got me thinking feverishly over the weekend, about what Transition trainings might look like if the inner aspects were developed with people from different faith groups, and if those elements of the trainings were based in that culture and language. Doesn’t feel like we disagreed on the need for some element of an inner aspect to the Transition training, rather on where it is coming from, how accessible it is and how comfortable it feels…

There is an alternative. Transition could adopt specifically secular values, and have a Critical Thinking Class alongside every heart and Soul Group. This would educate people about science and the scientific method, an essential part I would have thought of transition.

Udate: The public understanding of science is very poor, which is one of the reasons people are still reluctant to accept the inconvenient truth- they are easily swayed by the deniers who use some of the same methods to discredit climate science as quacks use to confuse the public about medical evidence. The parallels should be obvious; but by exposing one, we cannot ignore the other.

There is no need to avoid faith-groups or in any way demonize them- although we must be bold enough to accept that some of them are indeed diabolical, but we must not give them special status because of their faiths.

The promotion of pseudo-science should be dropped and explicitly avoided especially with reference to health care.

Rational, secular and atheist approaches should be welcomed and promoted, they should not be dismissed as “arrogance”; with tools to develop critical faculties added to the tools for inner work.

The whole area of faith and the freedom to challenge it; of the public understanding of science and rationality, and evidence-based approaches are issues not just for Transition, but for society as a whole and for democracy. These issues concern what kind of values we hold and what kind of world we want to live in.

Update: Inner work -personal development- can be done in a secular fashion, and in fact Transition could be positioned to play a great role in developing this. There is already models out there; for any seeker of truth who is dabbling with religion, spiritual practice or personal development, I would invite you to try the work of Eric Maisel. I found his book The Atheists’ Way- Living Well without Gods- wonderful and I wish I had come across it years ago.It should be much more widely known.

The website Point of Inquiry has regular interviews on the subject of secular humanism.

There is plenty more material available once you start looking for it. The “inner work” bit does not have to be done in any context of religion or spirtituality, or ideologies of any kind, and would be far more effective and useful to people if it were not.

There are no gods, no spirits, the supernatural is a delusion- one we are however, all susceptible to believe at times.

Whether you can accept this or not, you should at least join me in making it normal and acceptible to have people express this view.

Ironic and appropriate then for us in Ireland that this debate takes place the week a Balsphemy Law is passed here- which has in turn spawned a new religion of Dermotology!

Not only that, but Sharon is quite correct: in times of crisis, people may turn in desperation to irrational faiths to save them- it was widely reported in the Irish media this week that hundreds of people are gathering at a tree stump near Rathkeel in Co.Limerick to pray around a tree stump where has appeared the face of the Virgin Mary. One commentator made the point that we should not mock these people -they are the same ones who put their faith previously in the Irish Banking system!

Ah the many angles and aspects of Faith- faith we can succeed; faith we are doing the right thing (are we?); faith things will be alright.

If we are to have Faith in transition, we must be free to speak out against the problems caused by faith. And if we succeed in this, maybe we will find a future world where faith itself  moves into transition, away from its privileged status which has held humanity in chains for so long.

Further Reading

The End of Faith Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris

Why dont more people care about the environmental crisis? and

what values do we need to carry forward with us into this period of transition?

Dave, Chris and myself had not known each other previously but were brought together by Davie Philip for this workshop because of our common interest in Spiral Dynamics

The workshop attracted the largest numbers of participants for that session- the word “consciousness” strikes a cord for many people, but clearly means very different things for different folk.

Chris facilitated the discussion using the “fishbowl” technique. This was ideal as it allowed a focussed discussion to take place on complex issues with a large group.

The basic discussion seemed to split between those who saw consciousness as something that we can hope for some kind of evolutionary leap in which will lead humanity into a new dawn of co-operation and communality; and those including myself who saw it as something that will more likely regress to earlier and perhaps more savage forms as resources begin to run scarce- “Civilisation is only three meals deep”.

“If the rich world does not currently care about the poor world or the environment at a time will unparalleled wealth and resources, how on earth can we expect it to start caring after peak oil?” was one of the comments made to question the more romantic views of the subject.

In a short workshop there was only so much we could go into; I would have loved to have had the time to consider aspects of evolutionary psychology for example; but a good discussion took place nonetheless on a subject that I feel is much neglected by the environmental movement.

After the weekend Dave emailed me and had these reflections to share on the workshop and the general state of the planet:

“I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now. I count the Convergence 13 event as a high quality success but I sense that we are all still tinkering around the edges of a problem that we need to believe we understand.

I hear today of food riots in 28 different countries while Gordon Brown promises he’ll do everything to restore the UK housing market and help 1st time buyers get on the property ladder. We are already in the first rounds of that ‘prisoners dilemma’ game, a grand charade in which tragedy of the commons will be played out with oil and bread alike. I am not impressed by human nature.

All my worst case scenarios seem to be happening years ahead of forecast. I’m not feeling well prepared or potent with understanding and foresight. I do feel an increasing sense of destiny though and believe that those like us will very soon be called to a major step up.

The Global Insight models that correlate UK economic growth rates with energy price ‘shocks’ all point to 2.5% negative growth from about 2009. All this is just the economic impact of peak oil and climate change… And I suggest we will see the high water mark of Orange in 2008.

Can we contribute to some kind of message to friends and colleagues about this? I feel a need to warn people. The time for voluntary attendance at greeny workshops might be passed, perhaps we need to get stronger with our communication. It was after all, free will or the illusion of it, that got us into the current mess! I’m serious about this: people need to reconnect in the Joanna Macy sense, they need to understand that “If you haven’t done enough inner work then you cant be sure about where your outer work is coming from.” An attractive choice of workshops to choose from is a mirror of a major part of our human problem – the choice to believe what I will. The antidote is for the subjective to accept the objective – real learning!

I’m ready to try whatever is necessary to wake people up, key players preferably. Choosing to not see is fast becoming the problem that we need to solve. “

Thanks to Dave and Chris for their experience and insights.

“Here’s the point: you look out there, at the environment, and with your senses you can plainly see the wonderful, glorious, empirical world of nature. And of course you want to help save nature from destruction, not only because nature is beautiful, but because your own existence depends in many ways on a healthy environment. So you say, stop doing those things that are destroying nature! Stop polluting the oceans, stop dumping toxic wastes into our rivers, stop using fluorocarbons that create an ozone hole, stop burning carbon fuels that pollute the atmosphere and cause global warming- instead let us live in accord with nature, let us adopt energy-efficient production, use renewable resources, practice natural capitalism’ and in all ways honour Gaia. “Congratulations, you have just bought into the world of Flatland. And it is flatland that above all else is destroying Gaia. And thus your very efforts to save Gaia are destroying Gaia”.

-Ken Wilber, Boomeritis (2002)

Last week we looked at the story of the cultural and psychological evolution of human consciousness through the Spiral Dynamics model.

We stopped at Green- the environmental stage that has emerged as a significant cultural form in the last few decades in many western countries, influencing politics, social movements and heralding a New Age of transformation and care for all people and All Beings.

Green however, although representing much advancement in terms of ecological and social awareness over the previous stages of Blue and Orange, has failed to recognize that these earlier stages are necessary for the emergence of green in the first place. The Green belief of the dawning of a new Age of renewal and Global Consciousness cannot be realized because to reach Green requires a developmental process that must include and value all the stages and all their values in some way.

The Post-modern “meme” has a tremendous resistance to this idea however because it tends to be at war with its parents generation of Orange and Blue which extol the virtues of hard work, discipline and tradition. Green has other ideas and rebels against the earlier stages that generated the wealth and processes to make the Green meme possible.

In its rebellion, the Green meme rejects Orange materialism and Blue structure claiming that only its own values of Universal Rights and Ecological awareness are the best.

It also fails to recognize that perhaps yet higher stages that see even more may be emerging from the more progressive ranks of Green; a stage that recognizes not the need for the imposition of a new set of values so much as a deep understanding of the inner developmental process that leads to these values; a stage that not only looks outside at the world of Gaia and the need to care for Her; but that also looks inside at the development of the consciousness that is required for people to care enough about the world in this way and to understand their relationship to their environment.

In these two failings, coupled with a disaffection for the excesses of Religion on the one hand and Rationality on the other, Green makes a fatal mistake: in its distorted, pathological form, it mistakes the simpler, pre-rational and more “natural” and “holistic” -looking earlier stages of Purple and Red as being in some way more developed than modern rational perspectives. This translates as children being having higher consciousness than adults (they are “closer to the source” as one young mother once told me;) animals, trees and plants and even rocks have personalities and spirits with higher consciousness than humans (“more natural”); instinct and intuition being higher forms of knowledge than science or rational inquiry (“more spiritual”).

All these views are very common in New Age Religion which is really just a reversion to much earlier forms of human consciousness, forms which played their own essential evolutionary role in their day, but which will prove quite inadequate to meet the challenges of the modern world.

Instead of looking ahead to what the next Emergent meme may be, Green thinks it has found Nirvana already and in a paroxysm of narcissism and naïve romantic views of what life used to be like back in the good old days it destroys the goose that laid the golden egg- the very scientific method that lead to the deeper Green ecological understanding in the first place.

Psychological Models of Human Development

The psychologist Jean Piaget (1962) was one of the earliest to research the theory that there are distinct phases of cognitive development that a child will go through as it matures. Maslow (1943) amongst others suggested similar models of psychological development and produced a “hierarchy of needs” model showing how, as the more basic physical needs of the individual are met- food, shelter, relationships- so higher needs of “self actualization” can be pursued.

Clare Graves (Beck and Cowan 1996) suggested that these stages of individual development also had collective or cultural forms: he borrowed the word meme from genetics to describe broad stages of psychological development that resulted in a society stratified by culturally distinct values. These “V-memes” or Value-memes-are represented by colors corresponding to a sequence of values and coping mechanisms of psychological needs:

1 BEIGE -as natural instincts and reflexes direct; automatic existence, as in a new-born child. 2 PURPLE – according to tradition and ritual ways of group; tribal; animistic; parochial 3 RED – asserting self for dominance, conquest, and power; exploitive; egocentric; in contemporary societies, criminal organizations, Hell’s Angels, Mad max; 4 BLUE – obediently as higher authority and rules direct; absolutist; conforming; traditional values of church and state; The army, the boy scouts; 5 ORANGE- pragmatically to achieve results and get ahead; multiplistic; competitive; capitalist; materialistic; 6 GREEN -responds to human needs; affiliative; relativistic; “the sensitive self”; ecological consciousness, the Environmental movement; equality and social justice for all.; 7 YELLOW -build functional niche to do what one chooses; existential; systemic; “spans the spiral” with the ability to meet the core psychological needs of the other memes 8 TURQUOISE -experiential to join with other like thinkers; holistic; transpersonal

According to developmental models, to revert to some earlier stage of human consciousness- that of hunter-gatherers for example, who often had animistic and superstitious beliefs- would be like getting kindergarten children to run the country. The kind of scenario that might ensue has been explored in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

There are a few key ideas to understand the developmental model:

Firstly, you cannot skip stages. You cannot run before you can walk. Each stage builds on the earlier ones – including them but transcending them also in certain important ways. The stages can be pictured as concentric circles, like layers of an onion, a “nested holarchy”; this image makes it clear that while the higher stages contain all the earlier stages, the reverse is not true. Someone at say Orange “contains” beige, purple, red and Blue, and has access to these stages; particular behaviour may be emanating from the earlier stages but the “default” mode will still be of Orange. Purple, however, would not “have access to” the higher stages: for this, it would be necessary to first grow through each stage in turn.

Secondly, this is a naturally occurring growth hierarchy- not a dominator hierarchy. As such it is an elite to which everyone, in principle, is invited. The hierarchy of needs is fundamental- it is hard to reach the higher stages with an empty belly- but other factors also play important roles. Merely increasing wealth and privilege will not always lead to “raising consciousness”.

Thirdly, the principle characteristic of each successive stage is that it sees a bigger picture that the stage before; the view of the world is expanded and the concerns that the new stage has will be expanded. While the earlier stages in childhood are primarily narcissistic and concerned with the individuals’ own needs, the later stages become more concerned with the needs of first the whole community, then the nation perhaps as in patriotism, or an identification with a religious tradition; and this in turn gives way to eventually global concerns and concern for the well-being of all beings and the whole of nature. These widening circles of compassion/identification are bolstered by an increased cognitive awareness that sees things as parts of systems. This ability of the higher stages to think systemically is crucial in understanding how important the higher faculties are and how they can contribute to addressing the current global problems.

“The ego-centric and the ethno-centric stages of awareness could not care less about the global commons because they do not themselves possess a global awareness. And that means that Gaia’s main problem is not toxic waste dumps, the ozone hole or global warming. Gaia’s main problem is that not enough human beings have evolved from ego-centric to ethnocentric to world-centric levels of consciousness, yes?” -Wilber, IBID.

Growing into Freedom

Rousseau claimed that “man is born free, yet everywhere is in chains”. Wilber has pointed out that in psychological terms, the reverse is true- as new-born babies, we are helpless and dependent; as we grow, a lack of understanding of the world or our own bodies can lead to frustration and a desire to rebel; wisdom only comes with age and experience and it is more the control of desires rather than the egotistical insistence on their fulfillment that brings contentment. From this point of view, freedom is something that we must grow into.

From ego-centric (Beige, Purple and Red) to ethno-centric (Blue and Orange) to World Centric (Green and Yellow) each successive stage represents a “wider circle of embrace”.

In this sense, the developmental model provides an explanation for all the different values, points of view, political persuasion, belief systems and opinions that we find in the post-modern world.

It is not just that there are different views which should all be given an equal value; some are deeper, contain more levels or layers than others.

It was simpler in the earlier stages of human development- for most of human history, there has only been two or three stages present. With the advent of Green from the 1960s onwards and the subsequent (speculated) emergence of Yellow the world becomes much more complex, with many different stages of value-orientation which generally have a poor understanding of each others’ point of view- and which find themselves often in competition with each other.

“You cannot solve a problem from the same level that Created it”- Eintein.

E.F. Schumacher, in A Guide for the Perplexed gave an example of this from the French Revolution. The writers of the constitution for the new Republic could see a conflict between the two competing values of Liberte and Egalite: Too much Freedom leads to more inequality in a free-for-all competition of the market place: the strong get stronger at the expense of the weak, as can be seen in the western world. Too much enforced equality on the other hand as in the old Soviet Union and eastern European socialist countries seems to involve the loss of freedom. The reconciliation comes from a third quality from a higher level- fraternite. This inner quality of a sense of obligation for the good of the whole- that we are all brothers in a sense- requires a wider identification with all people.

Next week we shall look at some criticisms of this model; what the next stage of Yellow might actually look like; and how we might apply this model to meeting the challenges of Peak Oil and Climate change.

Part 1

In “Back to nature #2” I explored Deep Ecology and the idea that the response to the environmental problems we face should be to in some way “go back to nature” because “nature knows best”. I questioned this idea on the grounds that some versions imply an anthropocentric stance, projecting human feelings, consciousness and motives onto the non-human world in a way that seems more intended to fulfill our own psychological needs rather than actually healing our relationship with nature.

In this post, I want to explore an alternative: that rather than try to return to an earlier form of consciousness, that our consciousness itself – our way of understanding and relating to the world- is evolving.

What follows should be seen as a Story of the Evolution of consciousness. It is based on one particular model that has become popular in recent years- Spiral Dynamics, which I first came across in the writings of Ken Wilber. I do not endorse either the theory as a whole nor Wilber in particular, but see it as a tool that I think is worth consideration for anyone interested in the question: “Why aren’t more people interested in sustainabilty and protection of the environment?”

I am freely interpreting this version to make a story and adapting it . I am not claiming to attempt rigorous accuracy, but the basic idea does I feel have many different kinds of evidence to support it. The important thing is the implications such a view would have for seeking solutions to current global problems, and considering how it differs from the “return to nature” story.

In Spiral Dynamics, cultural “memes” or stage of development are colour coded, so I am referring to each stage with the same colours.

Enjoy reading it and make of it what you will.

Beige- Survival

The first glimmerings of what was to emerge as distinctively human forms of consciousness may have occurred some two million years ago. The Dawn Humans- so recently emerging as a novel form in the already 3billion-year old story of Life on earth- were limited still to the vagaries’ of a tough world where survival was the main activity. Instinct and other qualities bestowed by evolution ensured our ancestors survived in the environment they were ideally suited to.

On the scale of the individual this may correspond to a new born baby in terms of its consciousness still largely unformed, aware at first only of itself and subsequently of its mother, siblings, and slowly the awareness grows to form the first concept of an Outside World. This stage is essentially undifferentiated from its surroundings- the individual personality not yet solid.

Purple- Magic and Tribalism

For tens of thousands of years humanity lived lightly on the earth in small tribes. The economic base was hunting and gathering. As the earliest forms of social organization developed, along with language and tool-making, so the efficiency needed to survive and manage energy flows through food increased. Fire was the major technological achievement, making it easier to find game once the brush and understory were burnt. The first more organized systems of cultivation may have emerged at this time, a kind of nomadic forest gardening, in which tree crops and other useful plants may have been favoured through selective thinning and maybe even planted and grown from seed. At this stage, further developments in the human brain permitted language to become more complex. Art, as cave paintings and other symbolic forms emerged. The beginnings of a rich and diverse range of human belief systems tried to make sense of the world they had been born into.

Animistic beliefs saw spirits behind natural phenomena. Divination, messages in the animal and plant worlds, shamanism and hallucinogenic plants may all have played their role in people’s mythology. Neolithic monuments such as the stone circles of Britain and elsewhere may represent this stage of human consciousness. Tribal people were strongly united within the tribe and within their specific set of beliefs; but essentially still parochial with superstition and fear of the unknown still prevalent.

A child at this stage may also understand the world through magical thinking. The centre of its own universe, a young child may believe the clouds are making patterns just for her, that Santa is real and fairies and goblins populate the garden. It is a stage of narcissism: a lack of experience of the wider world, and yet strong receptiveness to it which allows it to develop.

Red- Will and Power

Red becomes more organized but potentially more aggressive. With the eventual expansion of human populations and the first signs of competition over resources coming into play, Red is dominated by egotistical and individualistic impulses. This is the era of the Hero- for a child, perhaps the Superhero phase.

Agriculture has emerged- some ten thousand years ago. Propelled into the domestication of plants and animals by the effects of over-hunting in some areas, or perhaps local climate change, agriculture lead to larger populations, and this required a different kind of belief system. This stage sees the emergence of mythological forms of thinking which began to supersede magical forms. A Pantheon of Gods and more complex mythologies began to be developed to explain the human adventure and the relationship to nature and to the Divine. The Gods were like super-humans, playing out their own stories on a grander stage of immortality. Slavery, sacrifices to the gods to ensure fertility from the land, and increasingly complex city states and empires arose. Debauchery and dysfunction amongst emperors and leaders who, with such large armies and free energy from slaves by invasion and conquer often went hand in hand with overshoot on a grand scale: the Mayans, the Anazasi, ultimately the Roman empire as well may all have suffered the same fate of overstretching their resource base. In child development this could likened to “the terrible two’s”: an egotistical stage where rage may play a role in getting what is wanted as the child tests the boundaries of what is permitted and possible. In the modern world still we may see Red meme structures in the form of the Mafia, street gangs, and fundamentalist terrorism. Red does not want to be negotiated with. Red believes it fortune and power on its side; the only way out of Red is into some kind of Blue structure.

Blue- Structure and Order

Blue is marked by the emergence of whole civilizations united under one common belief: an all-powerful Creator as in the Great Monotheistic religions born in the Middle east of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Blue is characterized by structure, conservativism and hierarchical authority, legitimized in the institutions of the Church. Mythology becomes more standardized as Great Books- the Word of God- lay down the law. The Law of God is immutable- it cannot be disputed- and the conveyors of the law in the Church hierarchy are often considered infallible.

For the Red meme child, the transition into Blue involves going to school and being more formally socialized into the wider mores and rules of the culture. The Scouts and the Police forces of the State could also be seen as Blue structures. Blue represents the limits of the mythological-agriculturally based societies: although Blue managed to unite many of the warring Red tribes into far larger belief systems, held together by faith in one supreme God, no one Blue system could take over the whole world without meeting another similar system at the same stage.

Orange- Making the Miracles Happen

Blue prospered and held sway for at least the past two thousand years. But as agriculture developed and succeeded in yielding more surplus energy, there were more opportunities for a class of intellectuals and administrators to emerge who had time to philosophize and spend time inquiring deeper into the mysteries of the universe.

Eventually this resulted in Galileo and a few other inspired individuals in making a radical discovery about our place in the universe: the Sun is not going around the Earth as it seems to be at all; rather, the earth is going round the sun. Far from being the centre of the universe as taught by the church, the Earth is in fact a mere satellite, orbiting the sun which is the rue centre of our solar system, just like the other planets. The implications of this discovery were dramatic and far-reaching: not only did we have to revise our view of ourselves, but we also had to revise the very way in which we gain knowledge about the world. No longer could we just take the Church authority at face value. The Pope himself might not be infallible after all. To have been in Galileo’s place must have been a truly extraordinary situation. He did not lose his faith, but he felt compelled to challenge the status quo, even at great risk to his personal safety. He could not ignore the Higher Truth that was being revealed to him through his scientific measurements. .

The enormous power of the scientific method, though fiercely resisted by the old Blue Structures that had held sway for so long, quickly gained preeminence and overturned to a degree thousands of years of myth and religion.

How did it mange this? Technology- the offspring of science- was able to make the miracles happen. It was no longer necessary to believe- what counted was what worked. The proof was in the pudding, and the rapid increase in technological innovations that followed particularly in medicine and machines lead to such increases at least on some levels in human well-being that it became clear that science was here to stay.

The most significant aspect of his discovery was the discovery of a new method of seeking the truth: experimentation and inquiry based on the scientific method. No longer was Belief something that was simply given by the particular religion or creed one happened to belong to; evidence became required and the possibility of creating replicable and verifiable evidence based on experiments. Whether a Christian, Buddhist, Jew or Atheist, anyone anywhere in the world had the potential to repeat Galileo’s experiments and check the evidence for themselves.

In so doing, the Orange Meme of Science and rationality heralded in the possibility of something that even the massive continent-wide mythological structures of Blue were unable to achieve: with the scientific evidence- (rather than belief-) based method for revealing the truth about Reality the potential emerged for a truly Global Consciousness.

Green – Feelings for the Earth

While Purple was animistic in its belief systems, Red Polytheistic and Blue Monotheistic, Orange became so infatuated with the technological wonders made possible by the scientific method that “belief” in anything “spiritual” became increasingly redundant. The separation from the natural resource base that had begun with agriculture- or possibly even before with the first tools allowing over-hunting- became greatly exacerbated with the rise of the Industrial Era. The exploitation of fossil fuels suddenly released far more surplus energy than had ever before been available to humankind and lead to the construction of vast cities inhabited with millions and eventually billions of people who were not directly involved with the careful husbandry of the natural resources that sustained them at all. Wealth previously undreamt of became available to substantial classes of people who had leisure time, free education, the ability to travel the world, and the opportunity to explore many more belief systems.

Out of this era, lead by the post-war baby Boom generation, emerged the post-war Civil Rights movements, feminism, gay rights, even Animal Rights movements, and of course the Green and Environmental Movement attempting to redress the excesses of Orange Technology.

Science began to be perceived with suspicion, hostility even by those who saw the damage and destruction that was being perpetrated in its name. At the same time, new but misunderstood ideas from science, especially Quantum Physics became synonymous with a New Spirituality based on a Return to Gaia. The buzz-word was Holism, which covered a multitude of sins from Alternative Therapies- “treating the whole person” to holistic education, design and political movements.

Genuine developments in the Earth Sciences lead to Systems Theory and Gaia theory. One of the drivers in science became concern about climate change which, using advanced computer modeling resulted in dramatic increases in our understanding of the way the biological and physiological systems combine to self-organize.

One of the products of the Green Meme was also permaculture- a Design for Life based on the ecological sciences.

For a whole at least there was optimism for a New Age, and age of healing and holism, of putting back together the fractured pieces of the human spirit, a new integration of old and new, humans and nature, body and spirit, feelings and the intellect.

Yet, 45 years on from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring the brave new world of ecological harmony seems more elusive than ever. The worst predictions of environmental alarmists seems to be coming true, and while governments argue over how to carve up the last remaining slices of the earth’s resource pie the human impact and population seems to be increasing towards an inevitable end-game of collapse and total system failure.

The great promise of Green has not come to pass. The vast majority of the world seems stuck at Blue or Orange with little interest in the values of Green.

In the next installment, I want to unpack some of the implications and issues presented by this story, consider some of the failings and successes of Green more closely, and ask the question: if this evolutionary unfolding of consciousness is in any way valid, each new phase transcending but including the previous ones, what next?

“Our central survival task for the decades ahead, as individuals and as a species, must be to make a transition away from the use of fossil fuels— and to do this as peacefully, equitably, and intelligently as possible.” (from the introduction.)

Richard Heinberg is the acceptable face of Peak Oil. His uncompromising message of the impending collapse of modern society due to resource depletion in his previous books The Party’s Over, Powerdown, and The Oil Depletion Protocol is delivered with too much eloquence and compassion to earn the sobriquet “doomer” and yet he is not afraid of taking on the “difficult” issues of population and collapse.

His latest book, Peak Everything, due to be published later this year, is no exception. This series of essays, some of them previously published on his Museletter website, is not “an introduction to the subject of Peak Oil; Instead it addresses the social and historical context in which Peak Oil is occurring, and explores how we can reorganize our thinking and action in several critical areas to better navigate this perilous time.”

He goes onto say:

“as one contemplates how we humans have so quickly become so deeply dependent on the cheap, concentrated energy of oil and other fossil fuels, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have caught ourselves on the horns of the Universal Ecological Dilemma, consisting of the interlinked elements of population pressure, resource depletion, and habitat destruction — on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Heinberg sets the context of Peak Oil as being the fundamental issue of a time in which we will see many resources and conditions essential for modern society peak, including fish stocks, many essential metals, uranium, arable land and fresh water per capita. Heinberg links these all to the fundamental and issue of cheap fossil energy, but also invites us to consider what may not be peaking- including community, creativity, leisure time, happiness and beauty.

Heinberg’s writings take an essentially human ecological perspective- that human societies are essentially governed by the same energetic and systemic base that all natural systems are subject to, and that the Oil Age has been a temporary blip that has allowed us to imagine we have escaped the inevitability of boom-and-bust-cycles and that we will simply continue onward and upwards with our technology and our innovative minds perhaps eventually to go and live on other planets once this one is used up.

An understanding of ecological systems, the energy base for human societies and the impending consequences of Peak Oil bring us back to reality:

“Our starting point, then, is the realization that we are today living at the end of the period of greatest material abundance in human history — an abundance based on temporary sources of cheap energy that made all else possible… The only real question is whether societies will contract and simplify intelligently or in an uncontrolled, chaotic fashion.”

The following chapters cover a diverse range of topics. In 50 million Farmers, Heinberg considers the need for a reversal of the trend of the last 100 years to leave the land and how in the future far more people will of necessity be involved in food production; Post-petroleum Aesthetics discusses the arts and crafts movement and how hand-tools and hand-craftsmanship may make a revival in the post-peak world; Parrots and Peoples is a touching investigation into the origins of civilization and the domestication of humans looked at through the eyes of parrot society as described in the book The Parrots of Telegraph Hill by Mark Bittner.

The second section has a more theoretical examination of “Five Axioms of Sustainability” in which Heinberg draws on the Brundtland definition as well as the Natural Step to produce his own benchmark for a sustainable society;

Heinberg does not avoid the hard issues of population and the total human footprint or of laying down the gauntlet to other activists to include this as one essential part of the sustainability equation:

“The longer we put off choosing the nicer methods of achieving demographic stability, the more likely the nasty ones become, whether imposed by nature or by some fascistic regime…. An ethic of human rights, of sharing, and of equity without a practically expressed awareness of ecological limits is a setup for disaster. But demographic competition by way of fascism, as a response to population-resource crises, is an admission of failure; and it is less an expression of human nature than of the ugly habits formed through the past few thousand civilized years of extreme inequality, hierarchy, and authoritarianism. The longer we wait, the fewer our options. Social liberals and progressives who fail to talk about population and resource issues and to propose workable solutions are merely helping to create their own worst nightmare.”

The thirds section contains perhaps the most important essay on the psychology of peak oil in which Heinberg asks- why have humans got themselves into this situation? Why with all our modern achievements, rational thought, science and technology, have we not seen these converging crises coming?

He discusses the theory of evolutionary psychology which suggests that we still think like hunter-gatherers, who require instant responses to short-term problems; the challenges of the modern world however demand that we learn to think systemically, to see the bigger picture, which our long evolutionary past has not well equipped us to do. He also surveys various other approaches, including Stages of Denial (from Kubler-Ross) and addiction therapy, also examining the idea of psychological maturity- that we need to effectively grow up and think about more than just our own personal well-being if we are to work for change. This idea of maturity is an aspect of developmental psychology, and I would like to have seen more in this section, for example to read his views of developmental models such as Spiral Dynamics and how they can help us understand and create change strategies.

This leads on to his highly entertaining examination of his own generation- the boomer generation- those born between 1946 and 1964 (which incidentally puts me in at the very tale end of this generation- the last of the boomers!) which has been the greatest benefactor of the cheap oil bonanza, and why the hippy revolution with its promise of liberation and harmony failed to deliver:

“…the voltage that made Harrison’s and Clapton’s guitars gently weep, and that wafted Grace Slick’s and Janis Joplin’s voices past the back rows in amphitheaters seating thousands — in short, the power of the music that united a generation — flowed ultimately from coalfired generating plants. That same 110 volt, 60 cycle AC current energized stereo sets in dorm rooms and apartments across America, allowing ten million teenagers to memorize the lyrics to songs impressed on vinyl (i.e., petroleum) disks in the certain knowledge that these were revelatory words that would change the course of history.”

As a permaculture teacher it is of course gratifying to find Heinberg singling out this holistic ecological design system as perhaps the greatest legacy of this culturally revolutionary era.

Heinberg is not afraid to say it as it is, indeed he feels compelled to do so. The lessons of the past are that tragically authorities often fail to alert a population to the severity of their predicament for fear of causing a panic, thus leading it too late before sounding the alarm; Heinberg brings a refreshing voice of realism which helps us see more clearly where we are and what we are facing:

“It may seem cynical to some if I say that it is too late to salvage America’s political system, its economy, its suburban way of life; that it is even too late to contemplate an easy and peaceful transition to a different socio-ecological reality. But as far as I can tell, these are the facts. That possibility probably died in 1980. As they say these days, get over it”.

Far from leaving us hanging without any direction from here, Heinberg points to the way forward:

“People will not willingly accept the new message of “less, slower, and smaller,” unless they have new goals toward which to aspire. They must feel that their efforts will lead to a better world, with tangible improvements in life for themselves and their families.”

-and outlines the kind of culture we will need to create if sustainability is ever more than a distant dream that dies with the last of the 1960s hippies:

“In the best instance, the next generations will find themselves in a low-energy regime in which moral lessons from the fossil-fuel era and its demise have been seared into cultural memory. Like the Native Americans, who learned from the Pleistocene extinctions that over-hunting results in famine, they will have discovered that growth is not always good, that modest material goals are usually better for everyone in the long run than extravagant ones, and that every technology has a hidden cost. There is no free lunch”.

Peak Everything is a really enjoyable and informative look at the cultural, socio-political and psychological aspects of the all-time peaking of energy and resource availability for humanity, a period which we are living through right now. Heinberg puts this experience in context and provides a voice for our generation and our times.

“How can our towns, villages and even our cities transition to economically localised communities? Using the example of processes begun in Totnes, Kinsale and Cloughjordan this dynamic event will look at steps that communities can take to prepare themselves for living with less fossil fuel.”

This event brought together some of the localisation groups around Ireland from around Ireland that have formed over the past year, including Transition Towns Kinsale, FADA from Newbridge, and The Village in Cloughjordan, and others in the Powerdown Community.
The keynote speaker was Dr. David Fleming, who had already presented some of his ideas on preperations for the coming energy crises the night before .

David is the author of Tradeable Energy Quotas and the as-yet-unpublished Lean Logic. He has the ability to explain a huge number of concepts and ideas intelligibly while at the same time presenting a very straight-talking analyses of what we are soon going to have to deal with:
“It’s going to fall to bits” he had told us, referring to the market economy- a result of the double-whammy of peak Oil and Climate Change. His presentation on “Community Transition” covered a lot of ground, and touched on some aspects of the transtion that are not often discussed.

The three tasks of community, he argued, are: -to provide reciprocity; -to cope with conflict; and thirdly, to avoid boredom. Fleming recognises that one of the challenging aspects of re-localising the community in a democratic fashion is to both adapt to the reduction in choice, as we learn to get on with a perhaps less diverse lifestyle with reduced mobility and the soetimes mundane or routine tasks of feeding ourselves and surviving; as well as the tedium of dealing with conflict which he sees as intrinsic to community. He also pointed out that the Peak Oil/Localisatiion movement is not immune to the well-known tendency of environmental groups to divide into factions.

David discussed many other issues that will face communities, including scale, reciprocity, having a common purpose, identity, and the need to accept what he calls “ironic space”- where we encounter and learn to live with “wicked problems” for which there is no solution. Presumably, the combination of crises humanity is facing may furnish some examples of these phenomena.

Like a forest that will go through different stages of succession from mature forest, to fire, to savannah and then regenrates to forest again while remaining a system at each of these stages, human society is will revert to an earlier stage. Fleming listed some of the “resilience conditions” required to sustain this transformation, including diversity, capability and conserved inheritence.

Above all, Fleming emphasised the extreme difficulties we will encounter as we try to build resilience into our communities There will be conflict, at times demorilisation, and a sense of betrayal. We will need to develop rigorous thinking tools and processes for conflict resolution. And we will need to work hard to develop solidarity.

The next speaker was Davie Philip of Cultivate who talked about The Village as an example of low-carbon integrated design. Davie is a co-founder of Cultivate where and tells me he has organised over 1000 events over the last 10 years. He emphasised how Peak Oil and Climate Change provide unprecedented catalysts for the environmental movement to move towards sustainability.

I was next, giving an outline of some of the key issues I believe we need to try to communicate in motivating change (which I will go into more in a later post) and an outline of David Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles and how they will be relevant for the Powerdown Community. John Harrington, who has studied with Tobjorn Latte in Sweden, gave an introduction to the Natural Step for Communities, giving a clear, compelling, science-based definition of sustainability and a practical strategic planning framework to help communities move towards a successful and sustainable future.

Next we were treated to a virtual presentation by Rob Hopkins – his inspirational presentation from the recent Soil Association conference in Cardiff on Creating Energy Descent Plans;

Jackson Moulding gave a presentation on Ashley Vale which is an inner-city community project in Bristol demonstrating self-build and environmentally-sensitive construction;

Alicia Falvey spoke about her experiences of living in Dutch Community Eva Lanxmeer in Holland, an inspiring place demonstrating community living, Permaculture and sustainable building, water and energy use.

Last but not least, Eamonn Parker from Newbridge gave a fascinatingaccount of the rapid progress and activities of the FADA (means “Long” or “Enduring”) group in Newbridge.

I first got to know Eamonn a few years ago through a common interest in Ken Wilber’s Integral Philosophy and it was really interesting to see his application of Spiral Dynamics in the community work that FADA is engaged with.

This small gathering of the Powerdown Community was hopefully the first of many networking events between localisation and Powerdown groups across Ireland, which are will surely only multiply as the reality of energy depletion, economic collapse and climate change becomes unavoidable.