Back in the day, a “follower” was someone who had faith in the leadership of another person; a leader trusted, in part, due to their adherence to some faith in a solution to dissonance. Mystics and prophets, politicians and mobsters, tycoons and polymathic geniuses, teachers and ministers had a “following.” Since the internet, this Transitional Generation and their allied elders would add to this list: bloggers and on-line journalists.
I have been following the NCDD discernment strings pertaining to the desire for a global political revolution and the more technical desire to facilitate large-scale grassroots discussions about what we do and what we do not want as a global human species. In several of the senses of being a “follower,” I have also been following Joanna Macy’s peaceful revolutionary strategy as it unfolds internationally. While I do not have any authority to interpret, or speak for, someone I greatly respect, and would not want to exceed my place as a follower, rather than a mentor, I think the connection between Joanna Macy and the NCDD listserve is that both urgently desire an internationally sustainable Earth ecological economic design system.
That gold-standard “design system” must be resonant and a well-patterned, balanced, theorem. More than a conjecture about what might inspire this peaceful revolution. A conjecture says “isn’t this an interesting pattern, a dynamic analogy?”; while a theorem adds “we have a positive teleological function for that form-pattern.” Conjectures are not yet polynomial memes. Theorems are polynomial, and binomial, patterns.
Faith in “ecological economics” fits more comfortably into Macy’s (0)-Centric Zen Theorem than into the NCDD discussion and culture. However, probably every NCDD member recognizes that the term “faith community” has an internal redundancy just as the term “faithless community” sounds oxymoronic. There is no community, no dialogue, no communication, no ecologic, no probability of cooperative economic intent where there is no faith that we are all in this mess together, whatever it may be, and that the primordial rules of discernment are best attuned to a radically inclusive “Golden Rule” that we must always treat others, regardless of species, and regardless of whether currently living or not yet living, as we wish ourselves to be sustainably and confluently, even therapeutically, treated.
It seems to both the Macy and NCDD Revolutionaries that there not only already is a global consensus in this basic positive teleological faith, but further, this global consensus is quickly learning to find each other across traditional divides of borders, water, special interests, and language–all we need, which we now have, is a global information system. The discussion has well begun, now it is time to move that from a perhaps sometimes too free-wheeling, and polarizing, discussion, to a positive discernment process. In other words, as a species, we are moving from our already shared positive teleological conjecture toward a positive teleological discernment theorem.
Perhaps NCDD culture is evolving this positive discernment theorem. As I have said perhaps too often, if we look at Positive Deviance, Appreciate Inquiry, Nonviolent Communication, and Dynamic Facilitation as each establishing a mutual discernment event culture that is the opposite of Cognitive Dissonance Theory [we tend to not hear well what does not fit with our current learned landscape; on the other hand we tend to learn quickly from what we all agree we don’t want], perhaps this is our Positive Confluence Theorem:
We hear very well, and revolutionarily embrace, what does fit most abundantly with all of our current learned landscapes. When we mutually acknowledge that we each do trust that we live in a positive-trending teleological economy and ecology. when that is our mutual intent and practice, then we not only comprehend, but incarnate and mentor, this Positive Confluence Theorem.
This Positive Teleological Theorem predicts that we will, globally, increase our investment in cooperative economies and pedagogy and design systems as three faces of one cooperative ecology. As we do so, our current over-reliance on competitive strategies for learning, making a living together, building a polyculture together, will fade away into our collective memory of “back in the pre-millennial day.”
