Tag Archives: permaculture design

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The Taoist Doctor of Ministry Proposal

Greetings:
I hope you might let me know if you have any interest in a Doctor of Ministry project that would essentially blend M. T. Winter’s work in Quantum Theology with the positive teleological assumptions implied by Buckminster Fuller’s “Synergetics”, which he defined as equivalent to an ecology of love, and/or grace.
While this may be more appropriate to the Doctor of Philosophy program, I am personally more interested in its holistic and feminist applications to at-risk populations in Connecticut, than I am Fuller’s Theory of Regenerativity, as an obscure, but certainly holistic, metaphysical system.
Whatever you think best for Hartford Seminary, and opportunities to link this dissertation/research project with current Hartford Institute initiatives, is fine with me.
Synopsis:
There appears to be a moment in every religious tradition when human enlightenment comprehends why the threshold to paradise requires absolute ego-purgation. Two metric systems theorists who may exemplify this level of comprehension are Buckminster Fuller and Gregori Perelman, of Group Theory fame. Yet the underlying positive teleological assumption that we are, each and all, better as holonically related to an omnipresent and omnipotent Universal Intelligence is as old and culturally pervasive as the Golden Rule. Doing to Environment as we positively hope, with gratitude, Environment will regenerate me is predicated on a rational belief that each of us is systemically related to Environment. The Universal Intelligence Brahman and the CoCreator Atmanic “Ego-Self” are primally related as
  • Yang to Yin,
  • quarks to leptons,
  • Positive-Deviant +1.00% trend-analysis to Negative-Anomalous (+/-)0.00% Axial Binary Assumption,
  • In-Formation is to Dis-function,
  • Explicated Polycultural Nature is to this implicately (David Bohm) structured PermaCultured Design,
  • Polynomial  regenerative energy string algorithms are to Non-Polynomial dissonantly irrational information dispersion, or decomposition
(0)-soul Vortexed Binomial Universal Balance (see Perelman and the (0)-soul Theorem of Group Theory).
If this adage-meets-analogy way of seeing the prime relationship between natural and spiritual systems proves to be scientifically and metrically accurate, pastoral and sociotherapeutic implications abound. One example of the richly abundant wealth of this perspective is the interesting work within Permaculture Design’s “Interior Landscape” of self- and people-care, and this Design’s economic/ecological equity-normative value system. Nutrient flows through our constituencies may be positive resources and/or negatively dissonant and toxic when sustained, tending toward systemic effects that are increasingly volatile, climatic, chaotic, and, in some teleological perspectives, even demonic. Positively confluent deviance is the opposite perspective from that captured in Cognitive Dissonance Theory. The socio- and eco-therapeutic advantages of a Positive Teleological Assumption run rampant through
  • Positive Psychology,
  • the brilliant Positive Deviance Initiative’s missional effectiveness for developing sustainable, indigenously-resourced, well-being systemic change (www.positivedeviance.org),
  • the Ecology of inductive Grace as profoundly balanced with Natural Law and deductive Logic,
  • and may even offer a theoretical and dynamic explanation for the apparent strength of Feminist Psycho-Social Therapy (see Laura Brown, “Subversive Dialogues” as an excellent example).
Financial incentives for Hartford Seminary may be equally generous.
  • The proposed CT Youth ReGenesis EcoMinistry Project may fit confluently with the Association of Theological Schools’ “comprehensive initiative on global awareness and engagement,” currently funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
  • An information systemic implication of Regenerativity Theory may be that Polynomial Information equals Non (or “Ex”)-Polynomial Information. A mathematically and teleologically satisfactory theorem proving this conjecture of metric equity could qualify Hartford Seminary for anywhere from one to seven million dollars in Clay Millennium Challenge awards, pending two years of juried acceptance. Research in this area would also be of interest to the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Engaging the Hartford Institute as the research center for the proposed CT Youth ReGenesis EcoMinistry Project could attract both private and public-sector philanthropic and social-investor interest, and serve as an international prototype for synergetically developing interreligious communities of mindful practice and Appreciative Inquiry (www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net). As an active member of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), I am certain that there would be considerable interest in many academic departments throughout Connecticut and beyond. This proposal is essentially about dynamically balanced communities of spirit-nature discernment. There are global and national political, legislative, policy, and public governance “practice” implications.
  • Finally, I believe it may place in regenerative context the issue of growing and sustaining faith-filled communities, individuals, and culturally-informed species. In this light, all the current Hartford Institute research projects might be theoretically informed by Regenerativity Theory and its Positive Teleological Assumption.
When I last talked to David Roozen about the feasibility of entering the Doctor of Ministry program, I still lacked two essential resources to proceed.  One is capacity to pay tuition and fees–which remains problematic, although I believe I could generate far more than that through research grants and fellowship income should you be willing to take that risk with me. The other was a ministry site. Last week I was offered the part-time position of Chaplain at the Sustainable Farm School, entering its fourth year with a relocation to the 400 block of Farmington Avenue, West End, Hartford (your neighborhood). SFS is an interreligious parochial–but never provincial–laboratory for youth formation in Permaculture Design, both Interior and Exterior Landscapes.
Attached is my final paper for Professor Roozen’s excellent class on change-agency within communities of faith. In it I took some analogous liberties with M.T. Winter’s Paradoxology, which I hope will resonate; and not cause more dissonance.

 

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Positive Deviance as PermaCultured Design and The Great Transition

Abstract: Imagine, for a moment, that the information coding of every psychological system is:

LEFT Hemisphere: (+)1.00% Whole-Qbit/(-)0.00% Null-Qbit

EQUALS

RIGHT hemisphere: Yang/Yin Prime Relationship: (+)Self/Not(-)Other

currently struggling for eco-equity as +1/-0 = +Yang/-Yin binary-dynamic balance.

 

Perhaps it is easier to step into this bionic way of comprehending Spaceship Earth, and Her bicameral research species, for any child overwhelmed by the Received-View message that what s/he feels to be Positively Deviant is, in fact, really and truly, according to all cultures in all times, Negatively Deviant. “Your white has been proven beyond doubt to be black.” If we are fundamentally “wrong,” we suffer from an autistically struggling self-identification wound. To grow up “queer,” “defective,” “dysfunctional,” “perpetual underachiever,” “disabled,” “insane,” “bipolar,” “oppositional” is to develop a core-identity protective layer of cynicism about orthodox values, and the exegetical role of culture itself. The alternative, often simultaneously held, is concern that deviance is not fully, or correctly, human in some way.

Bipolar deviance erupts into cognitive dissonance about what is positively deviant, rather than negatively deviant from our Business-As-Usual psychology, what is teleologically helpful or harmful for “Self” preservation. Stigmatization of bi-polarity, from shaman to Transgender, is itself a primal sociopathology emerging with Left-brained cultural dominance. The evolutionary trend toward Left hemispheric dominance has over-valued deductive-only information since the alphabetization of symbolic icons, glyphs, and nature-based audiovisual information. Back in the dim memories of proto-history, what was natural system information was psychologically centric, and normative (Abram, 1996). The Great Transition toward a Gaian Paradigm is a re-volutionary call to return to natural system-based values, with sustainable Positive Deviant trends.

 

 

We are in for the greatest revolution in history. If it’s to pull the top down and it’s bloody, all lose. If it is a design-science revolution to elevate the bottom and all others as well to unprecedented new heights, all will live to dare spontaneously to speak and live and love the truth, strange though it often may seem. (Buckminster Fuller, 1965, p. 160)

Buckminster Fuller predicted a millennial transition crisis of opportunity for Spaceship Earth. Since his death in 1983 many voices have joined Fuller’s Unitarian refrain that the “Universe is eternally regenerative.” (p. 157) When we compile Fuller’s metaphysics with more recent work in Group Theory, including that of William Thurston and Gregori Perelman, the
“soul” of Universal Intelligence synaptically appears when the mutually-appreciative assumption of both Sine (PreGenitor) and CoSine (CoCreator) is “Win-Win,” rather than “Win-Lose,” or “Lose-Win,” or “Lose-Lose.”

Since the post-millennial geometrization (and rationalizing) of Group Theory, Ross Jackson outlined a “Gaian Paradigm,” predicting a “breakaway strategy,” the leading edge of a rapidly accelerating grassroots revolution toward a truly sustainable, equitable, holistic global polyculture (2012, p. 34). He adds that “A very visionary and charismatic leader of high integrity could make all the difference.” Fuller believed this and describes his own intention toward active Positive Deviance with similar words. He thought it of profound importance that we all join him in his regenerative discovery that we are the visionary, charismatic leader-species of universally mindful integrity—as soon as we nail down the “Win-Win” cooperative ecological balance issue. This positive self view, emerging as a dominant global polyculture, will open our sensory receivers to the discovery that we are already, and have always been, engaged in the greatest cooperative revolution in history.  In fact, cooperative and inclusive regenerativity is the teleological message-to-ourselves emanating from our ancestors, to the present moment.

Within this awareness of global climatic impact lurks our growing recognition of systemic dissonance. Elisabet Sahtouris gathers the refrain of three major system crises—energy, economy, and climate—fusing into the Perfect Storm. “This situation…actually makes this an amazing time of opportunity to create the world we all deeply want!” (2012, p. 18). Rather than continuing the messianic hope for an individual prophet of inclusive cooperative integrity, Sahtouris observes that, “The Internet is the largest self-organizing living system created by humanity and is changing everything.” (p. 23). Perhaps Buckminster Fuller reincarnates John the Baptist on our way toward a “We”Messiah comprehensive analysis of Bosons and Information bit-strings, crowding and clouding the eternal World Wide Web.

A bionic agent for global regeneration into a permacultured Gaian Paradigm strangely circles us back to Fuller’s prediction for a post-millennial cultural metanoia.

Electronic means will have been highly developed for continually inventorying all of humanity’s thoughts, volitions, and dispositions regarding all currently evolving problems. Humanity will know at all times what the unique majority volitions may be regarding each and every currently recognized and considered problem. (1965, p. 159)

Here Fuller anticipates an electronically-fueled information system of holistically integrated mindfulness, inclusively accessible for positive, and regenerative, intent.

The post-millennial Editors of Evolutionary Psychology remind us that the evolution of our collective awareness is so accelerated that we are producing unprecedented quantities of information being read word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, by fewer people. Increasingly we are looking for large data trends, and clouds, and crowds, to notice and predict systemic eruptions, climatic tsunamis, and the bicameral Species’ evolution toward a positive-teleological, economic, educational, cultural, ecological, and nutritional embrace of Jackson’s “Gaian Paradigm.” This Paradigm predicts a holistic teleo-psychology of global regenesis, combining the natural system principles of Permaculture Design with the health and well-being principles of Positive Psychology. This synergetic view of natural and psychological evolution romps through the theory, therapeutic practice, intent, principles, and outcomes of the Positive Deviance Institute (www.positivedeviance.org).

We have a large data cultural trend toward a more cooperative and holistically balanced Positive Psychology. We show ourselves this trend through noting on-line Positive Deviance trajectories for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), while we continue exploring a rational basis for equating psychological CQI with the CQI of polynomial trend articulation. The Tellus Institute (www.tellus.org), for example, studying long-term economic, political, and ecological performance trends, has labeled as “The Great Transition” their most positively deviant trajectory, in comparison to lose-lose economic/ecological norms.

Tellus Institute brings together respected scientists who have been developing algorithms for large trend information data analysis since the mid-1970s. The emergence of their Great Transition trend continues to identify the positively deviant trends within the underlying metric assumption of Information Systems Theory: that “positive” is the binary reverse of “not-positive” in a thermodynamically balanced universe.

As a bicameral Species, we prefer “positive” over “negative” outcome projections because we choose as positive those trends that meet CQI global well-being predictions. The Great Transition trend analysis is positively deviant from a core (0) binary axis. An increase in cooperative global system development, practice, and intent has had the greatest effect with least effort for the survival of bicameral (“bi-polar”) balance, confluence, harmony since the beginning of time.

When good things happen to us as a species, they tend to last, to be remembered, and coded into our DNA. We tend to survive longer, individually and collectively and inclusively. When bad things happen, we note the negative side of our binary information field with “0”s, “noise,” dismay, desolation, demons, irrationality, darkness, and cognitive dissonance. Perhaps this negative polarity is what David Bohm understood as “the implicate order” and what the Dalai Lama might think of as a purgative mindfulness of suffering, within and without. Our implied “antimatter” is ex-formed awareness of what matters only when its absence harms us, is socioculturally, and historically, pathological to our RNA. Neither individuation nor individuals can survive in the absence of formation, the absence of any form of relationship, or difference, or “self” and otherness.

Does Positive Psychology become germane to Evolutionary Psychology because our post-millennial World Wide Web organizes positive and negative polynomials using the same systemic design, a (0) Core Prime Relationship Principle, as does ribonucleic acid’s information string system? Is uracil, then cytosine, then adenine, then guanine a fused self-regenerative informing string with morphological mimicry as (0)-soul (Perelman, 1994) leads to +.50%, leads to -.50%, leads to 1.00% QBit?  This primal 4-fold Group Theory also seems familiar in trigonometric functional sequence as:

(0) Core Vector YIELDS sine/x-axis, YIELDS cosine/y-axis, YIELDS tangent.

The sine definition determines the cosine definition, and vice versa, like Yang and Yin. The tangent, or tension between appositional trajectories, is the greatest effective positive/negative linear trend, with least effort, greatest simplicity, least dissonance and anomaly, between the opposite extremes of the two polarities.

Prophets, psychics, and polymath advocates, organizers, organic farmers, creative-formational educators and designers, deep learning ecologists and economists seem to share a positive teleological psychology. Julian Jaynes, in his evolutionary theory of human psychological development, suggests that our bicameral speciation event was the progenitor of left-hemispheric dominance, right hand functional dominance, the emergence of language, and cognitive application of metrics to symbology. The fractal-axial right-hemisphere uses proportion, balance, power, and 8-bit octave-frequency audio-visual codex for storing potentially recombinant information. These memory strings of Jacobian-matrixed confluent and dissonant events extend back through our proto-historical Eastern horizon (see Abram, 1996) to arrive again, regeneratively, at our Original Prime Relationship. Perhaps the regenerative unfolding of RNA structure is itself a cultural-historical proof of the Jacobian conjecture, and the creative fractal potential of 4-based Group Development Theory.

The positive teleology of Buckminster Fuller, Jackson, Sahtouris, the Tellus Institute, and the younger leadership voices of the Great Transition Generation, is concerned with why what happens really happens. What are our positive syntropic information strings leading toward therapeutic outcomes? However, the urgency for natural and psychological systems change is driven by the reverse, negative, polarity; why what does not happen does not happen—why sociopathology exists. A positive teleological response within nature might sound like “Because nature abhors a vacuum, and weeds, and prefers to follow the path of greatest nutritional effect by watering just the blossoming plants.” Evil is just the absence of good. While this does indeed seem to be true to my positive experience, I am also aware of a considerable precipitation that has fallen on my days with negative delivery and outcome frequencies. Why do bad things happen to positive people? Why does nature sometimes rain negatively on our positively parading paradigms?[1]

Positive and Negative Psychology might recognize that our natural system has its own teleo-psychologic. Rain is a valuable functional resource within this natural ecology. What determines whether this rain on this day is a positive function or a negative function in relationship to me depends on how I individuate my Self. How do we choose to identify ourselves as a Species within nature? Are we part of this recycling in-forming and ex-forming regenerative rhythm? If so, then rain is always a gift, an act of grace, and the Positive Deviant response is gratitude.

The positive evolutionary strings of human memory, of speciated memory, are axially prime rooted, with “positive” geometrically conceived as “up,” while the negative evolutionary strings of  bad memory are reverse-axially prime rooted—subconsciously buried in negative polarity dissonance, chaos, irrationality, the unknown and unknowable; and downright disagreeable.

Psychological in-formation and ex-formative liminal (implied) Boundary Memory Codex, in a somewhat balanced bicameral mind, speak to each other with gratitude and hope for confluence. At the same time, somewhere in our Right hemispheric function, we are intuitively mindful of purgative aptic[2] non-responsiveness to an environmental absence of relationship and  significant information; trending toward a “Self” individuation threat to sanity. Sustained lack of permacultural confluence may lead to chronic lack of sleep, may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, may lead to autistic double-bind, internal inter-hemispheric, struggles at younger and younger ages.

Negative teleological strings are memories of our sociopathology just as positive teleological memory strings are memories of our fractally developed, synergetically-intuitive, sociotherapy. Positive therapy predicts the greatest regeneration with the least effort within a thermodynamically balanced positive/negative psychic system. Some of us call this optimizing regeneration Permaculture Design; others call it Appreciative Inquiry (www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net), or Dynamic Facilitation (www.wisedemocracy.org), or the TrimTab Principle (Fuller). As a Taoist, as well as a bicameral information processor, I call it the Tao of (0)-soul Yang/Yin Prime Root Relationship. As a communicator, I recognize Positive Deviance as a sustainably and inclusively regenerative “Win-Win” Information String.

The creative act within cognitive, and mechanical, system design follows an aesthetic preference for inclusively positive-trending regeneration, where dissonance is absorbed as further evidence of the potential for positive confluence. This may be why, when I surf my World Without Walls, I am watching Wikipedia fill in, while less cooperative sites for developing holistic information suffer  neglect, why there appears to be more dancing in feminist circles and less marching in macho-squares.

That we live and think within a bicameral information system may also explain why positively-cognized space and time (P) is reversely equal, and analogous, to not-polynomial space/time (NP—implicately ex-formed “antimatter” is “antirelationship”).[3]

Fuller’s greatest effect (+1.00%) with least effort (-0.00%) toward a CQI sociotherapeutic psychology is Tellus Institute predicted to produce globally inclusive and sustainably regenerative Great Transition outcomes. These outcomes may, in turn, be summarized as optimal well-being and eco-equity pervading all species, paradigms, energy fields, natural, spiritual, quanta, and in-formation systems. Optimizing the evolution of our psychology is liminally defined as positive polarity, which is linear-trend appositional to the dissonant extremes of sociopathology.  The Great Transition regenerates the Golden Rule; adding more universal integrity to that Rule. We now move toward applying Appreciative Inquiry within our own inter-hemispheric dialogue. Left and Right hemispheric balance teleologically, even messianically, emerges as the last dying-wish gasp of insight at the conclusion of our left-hemisphere, deductively dominant era. A brief flash of synergy as Earth absorbs the Sun once more; a positively deviant omen for a more confluent day emerging.

If evolution is survival of the fittest within a species, revolution is the sustained survival of the greatest, most inclusive, difference between species and paradigms and nutrient/regenerative strings with least dissonance within a polyculture, or environment, or planet, or universe of ideas. Revolutionary evolution of a new paradigm or species is completed through the mutually affinitive synchronization of cultural change within each individual in a species. The Positive Deviance trend of Information decreases by reducing the appositionally correlated Negative Deviance from (0) Axial Prime Relationship Balance. What was positively deviant, becomes the newly recalibrated Business As Usual, with more sustainable outcomes over longer periods of time, for more species and psyches.

ReGenesis is post-millennial global comprehension of revolutionary evolution as sociohistorical therapy. Positive Evolutionary Psychology is mutually cooperative, self-perpetuating form and self-defining functional balance of Yin-Yang interdynamics. Tao psychometrics articulate mindful intentionality and a

diversely creative,

bicamerally (bi-dimensionally) comprehensive,

teleologically trending

global Awareness.

 

There is an evolutionary strain among geneticists and historians that the precursor to the regeneration of a species (or paradigm), that our DNA Codex actually loosens up on instinctive or dominant hardwire. This internal reverse regeneration may be the Stage 1 of what potentially becomes a speciation event. This is the sense of urgency. The Code changes from positive or negative to (0). What was exegetical, orthodox, reality becomes, for a transitional generation, eisegetical; maybe true, maybe not.[4]

During Stage 2, after the information/eformation exchange ratios even out, natural systems produce more positive and negative anomalies from what had been the Received Cultural View (and, possibly, the culture of DNA plasma).

During Stage 3, bicameral minds inductively notice which deviations are positive and which are negative, based on which have the greatest balancing dynamic effect that is most sustainable for our long pilgrimage together. Examples coming up for me are bisexuality and androgyny, in the face of prolific human overpopulation of the planet; but that might just be a faulty intuitive string.

During Stage 4, the “Greatest Effect with Least Effort” teleological principle unfolds as no adjustment of the Codex values-culture. Instead PermaCultured Codex is reinforced by the emerging early Positive Deviants. They slowly, then more quickly, become recognized as predictors of a new speciation opportunity.

During Stage 5, the strengths of +.50% Yang-Information are found to be the therapy needed to respond effectively to the -.50% Yang-dissonant reverse trending Exformation.

During Stage 6, PermaCulturally trained bicameral minds diastatically notice that Yang-NegativeInformation equals Yin-PositiveExformation, which functions within any in/ex-formally balanced psychology as Yang = +1e-Bit Polynomial (P) OVER

-(0)e-Bit 4-Based Prime Relationship.

During the comparatively brief pre-synaptic Stage 7, right about now, (0) soul QBit-implicated Bosonic Vortex becomes psychometrically re-cognized as:

(0) YIELDS

ProGenitor Yang+0.50% YIELDS

(-)0.50% Reverse Temporal-Linear Yin TransitionalCOSINE YIELDS

“+” is a Jacobean Matrix, +=1P and (-)=0NP Teleology String (TANGENT) Theory.

So, the metrics of  logic and analogy, unfold as a 4-Staged teleologically developing information string, when the SINE and COSINE are dynamically balanced.

During the climatic Stage 8, Evolutionary Psychology becomes aligned with Positive Psychology and Compassionate Socioeconomic Therapy because psychologists, even without mindfulness training, realize that the reason one positive thing seems to associate with another positive thing is because everything is both caused and effected by everything trying to achieve thermodynamic balance, and reverse-caused (predicative/implicated function only) or exformed in this Eternal Moment.

Yang’s Negatively Deviant polynomials are dissonant exformative polynomials (NP). Our socioeconomic pathology teaches us our most sustainable therapy. Yin is NP, which is not polynomial information, but is reverse-Polynomial exformation. Yin is the reverse-temporal COSINE toward antirelationship in a univariate-binomial unformed (-e) Universe, decomposing into implicated Bosons of potential future moments. The permacultured seeds of futures past, awaiting their time of ReGenesis.

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the sensuous, Vintage, New York.

 

Dalai Lama. (2011). Beyond religion: Ethics for a whole world. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston-New York.

 

Fuller, R. B. (1963). On education. U. of Massachusetts, Amherst.

 

Fuller, R. B. (1975). Synergetics: Explorations in the geometry of thinking. MacMillan, New York.

 

Fuller, R B. (1979). Synergetics: Further explorations in the geometry of thinking. MacMillan, 1979.

 

Jackson, R. (2012) “A Gaian worldview,” pp. 25-35. In W. Keepin and M. Harland (Eds.). The song of the Earth. Gaia Education and Permanent Publications, Hampshire, United Kingdom.

 

Kuhn, T. (2000). The road since structure. University of Chicago, 2000.

 

Kuijsten, M. (Ed.). (2012) The Julian Jaynes collection. Julian Jaynes Society, Henderson, NV.

 

Lin Yutang (Trans.). (1948). The wisdom of Laotse. Modern Library, NY.

 

Macy, J. & C. Johnstone. (2012). Active hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. New World Library, Novato, CA.

 

Norton, R. and D. Brenders. (1996). Communication and consequences: Laws of interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.

 

Peacock, F. (2001). Water the flowers, not the weeds. 2nd Ed. Open Heart, Quebec.

 

Perelman, G. (1994). “Proof of the soul conjecture of Cheeger and Gromoll”. Journal of Differential Geometry 40 (1): 209–212. MR 1285534.

 

Pierson, P. M. (2014). The metaphysics of Buckminster Fuller: How to let the universe work for you. Phillip M. Pierson.

 

Ripley, G. (1471). Compound of alchymy.

 

Sahtouris, E. (2012). “Towards a biomimicry culture of cooperation,” pp. 18-24. In W. Keepin and M. Harland (Eds.). The song of the Earth. Gaia Education and Permanent Publications, Hampshire, United Kingdom.

 

Thurston, W. (1997). “Three-dimensional geometry and topology.” Vol. 1. In S. Levy (Ed.). Princeton Mathematical Series. Princeton University Press, NJ. x+311 pp. ISBN 0-691-08304-5.

 

[1] Thomas Kuhn asks a similar question in the context of scientific learning and research. He called this the “Problem of Incommensurability.” There are similarities to the problem of why we can only label evolution as a true speciating event after the fact, and why even established species sometimes become extinct (physical) or eisegetical (metaphysical/psychological).

[2] Aptic, as coined by Julian Jaynes, is a precameral state of non-awareness of self or other.  It is the reverse polarity of “synaptic,” an event, or difference, from self-awareness, that evolved into Other-awareness.

[3] This questions appears to be of interest to mathematicians and Group Systems theorists, working through the implications of a now logically proven (0)-soul theorem, as it might apply the temporal development of Information Systems (for example, the inverse function theorem), within an In/Ex-Formational Universe. See www.claymath.org for more on the P v. NP info-metric question.

[4] See Dennett (2003) on evolution and positive freedom trending away from instinctive dominance of monocultures and neural networks.

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The Regenerative Design Interview

I am working with a group of people who want to buy a 14-acre rotting estate and convert it into an ecovillage. As I pass by the half dozen log cabin structures, built around a rheumatic, yet lushly charming, apple orchard, my amazement at their intrepid courage propels me toward their future nearest neighbor.

Actually, their only future neighbor residing within a mile of the wildly abandoned estate. My job is to represent the Solidarity Ecovillage intention to this neighbor, and invite her to participate in a permaculture design interview.  Basically, we want to find out if she is with us, against us, couldn’t care less about us one way or the other, and, if her reaction suggests an ally, to include her, and her aspirations for her own property, in the Ecovillage development plan.

The neighbor’s name is Gaia. Gaia What, no one seems to know. There are rumors, mostly benign and gentle, that she roots back to the Iroquois, and is eccentric in a shaman-ish way. This should be interesting.

Gaia: Who are you?

Me: My name is Gerald Oliver, and I am here on behalf of your future neighbors to learn how we can be good neighbors for you.

Gaia: I have been expecting your question for rather too long. It is a good question, an important one, so I wrote them some suggestions about what I think would be helpful.

Here, take it with you. If you have any further questions after reading it, you are welcome to return any time. My home is your home.

And with that, Gaia handed me a scroll and gently, but firmly, almost abruptly, closed her heavy door.

Eventually I closed my mouth, turned around, headed back toward the orchard where I knew of the perfect log, and the perfect vista, for reading–most anything–but especially this Gaia scroll.

The late-morning sun radiated gentle October warmth as I opened the scroll:

Dear Neighbors,

Thank you for your compassionate intent to practice remembering that we are all in this mess, and this potential paradise, together.

There are 4 interdependent principles in learning how to live regeneratively on this planet.

The first of these you have heard from land use planners, real-estate agents, community and economic developers: Notice the potential highest and best use of all resources and nutrients, all property, all people, all species.

The second is similar,but moves from noticing, toward understanding, from using to sustaining. How can we achieve the most abundant effect, and affect, with the least effort, cost, dissonance, chaos?

Combining these first two principles results in the Golden Rule of Regenerative Development: Optimize integrity by deeply learning inclusively holistic potential. In other words, intend and practice today what we all want to wake up to tomorrow. 

Our greatest, most holistic, most resilient, most regenerative potential is discovered through Deep Listening together, the intentional practice of compassion. Deep Learning begins with deeply listening, noticing, and slowly, integrally, inclusively discerning a shared vision of optimized potential intent. This is true whether your shared vocation is to build a regenerative interior landscape, or exterior landscape. It is optimally and inclusively and resiliently true if your intent is to build a regenerative interior/exterior landscape together. Our species’ “Commons,” like the Commons of your Solidarity EcoVillage, expands inward and outward, fertilized by rich, abundant, diversity when we notice, listen, and fully value our current situation.

Fully valuing our current potential brings us to the 3rd principle of Regenerative Development: the Principle of Complementarity. Our Species’ Interior Landscape AND Exterior Landscape are complementary perspectives on one thermodynamically balanced NATURAL Landscape. Humans, at our best, bicamerally learn about our profoundly balanced and harmonious potential within a richly nutritious ecology of nutrients, energy. The “essential orientation of human nature,” to borrow a phrase from the 14th Dalai Lama is scientifically and religiously emerging as the essential orientation of all nature: thermodynamic balance is an Exterior Landscape way of cognizing the theo-dynamic balance of our Interior Landscape.

What we are trying to become, our teleological, and thermodynamic, mission as Earth’s bicamerally-reflective Species, with least effort and cost, suffering and resistance, violence and dissonance, is our highest and best regenerative potential. The most abundantly valued vocation for every intentional community, every faith community, every school, every farm, every government, every recreation center, every health care facility, every human service agency, every family, every individual, is to become the very best balanced Regenerative Research and Design Center possible, given current situations, developing compassionate understanding of complementarity between our natural Interior and Exterior Landscapes.

In our inclusive Research and Design ecology, we recognize communication and thought as information nutrients, with the potential to build up or dissemble, to increase confluence, or contribute to dissonance. The Principle of Complementarity is both spatially and temporally dimensioned. Its spatial dimension spreads across the Interior and Exterior natural landscapes. Its temporal flow dimension is either toward confluence, or toward dissonance, with complementary balance defined in physics and systems theory as intrinsic thermodynamically-valued polarity. What goes up must come down. What goes in must come back out.

The intrinsic value-balance within all religions, all faith paradigms, follows these same complementary patterns: As before, so after. As above, so below. As within, so without. If Self, then Other. If Yang, then Yin. If Becoming (regenerating), then Being. If sociotherapy, then sociopathology. If sociopathology, then sociotherapy.  If confluence, then the potential for dissonance. If dissonance, then the potential for confluence. As theo-dynamism within, so thermo-dynamism without.

The 4th principle of Regenerative Development is the Principle of Holistic Subsidiarity. In systems theory, optimized abundant values matriculate up from integrated/confluent individuals and families, through neighborhoods, to communities, sub-regions, regions, and globally inclusive ecological integrity. There is no such thing as a “natural” division between sustainable economic wealth and ecological integrity. Economies are value-transfer systems within the ecology of our relationships.

The Principle of Subsidiarity is commonly understood, and sometimes practiced, as retaining choice authority at the lowest effective level of function. The form of our self-governance wisely follows functional practice and intent. It is most holistically efficient to leave our current effectiveness at the lowest level of functional autonomy. If I find my life and environment to be richly nutritious, satisfying, meaningful, fulfilling, then it would be a violation of this Principle of Subsidiarity for the Solidarity EcoVillage to even intend to fix what I believe is not broken.

Our current suffering has to do with those times, places, situations, when there is disagreement about which is most important, the Principle of Holistic Subsidiarity or the Principle of Complementarity. For example, if I am a cancerously expanding tumor within your brain, then you and I would probably disagree about which is the currently effective lowest level of functional autonomy. If I am a parasitic species, overpopulating and devouring a planetary ecosystem, causing great trauma to the planet, such as climatic dissonance and the extinction of species diversity, then the Principle of Complementarity reminds us to listen to our pathology because it is our complementary and wise instruction.

We recognize communication and  thoughts as nutrient-value events. The lack of healthy, balanced nutrients is implicated, or potentiated, information of great value because of our faith in holisitic subsidiarity, and balanced thermodynamic complementarity. If we have a Whole System, then we have subsidiary parts. If the subsidiary parts forget the Principle of Holistic Subsidiarity, forget that efficacy is discerned within our intention for sustained whole-system regeneration, then our resulting sociopathology reminds us that our Internal/External health and wealth find therapeutic value by improving their complementarity. This provides us with both a positive and negative feedback loop. Both loops are needed for regenerative self-care, people-care, and Earth-care. Dissonance teaches us about the possibility of confluence. Confluence teaches us about the synchronization of balanced holistic subsidiarity.

The Principle of Complementarity is to Yang-imbalance as the Principle of Subsidiarity is to Yin-imbalance. The natural law of thermodynamic polarity balance, whole-system harmony, holds together all four Deep Ecology principles of regenerative systems development.

 

“Waste” is inefficiency, loss, dissonance and is heuristically held as a potential resource; a suffering that may teach us something we would like to learn. Waste, loss, harm management are all about planning sustained self-organization and self-maintenance through balanced sub-system subsidiarity and whole-system complementarity. This balance optimizes learning (highest and best use of our information ecology) while minimizing loss of thermodynamic balance, or dissonance, and ineffective sustenance, internally and externally.

Community builders, faith community organizers, intentional community developers, public dialogue facilitators, economists, ecologists, even lobbyists, recognize that where you end up is hugely and persistently boundaried by where you start out. Our self-regenerating landscapes value diversely entwined root systems, mutually defining and enriching, mutually protecting and promoting, nutritiously and lavishly seeded investments that will flower to reincarnate our Original Intent, our hope-filled active gratitude for Re-Creating most fully and bountifully together forever. Regenerative intention is the faith infrastructure that underlies the universe of religion, ecology, and Systems Design. Permaculture Design is our ecosystemic metaphor currently on pilgrimage toward a holistic, thermodynamic, Regenerative Systems Development Theory of permanent evolution.

Speaking of evolution, some of the Solidarity EcoVillage wanna-be’s are familiar with Thomas Kuhn’s Theory of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn became somewhat obsessed with an issue about knowledge; the Problem of Incommensurability. How can we be sure that we are using language to signify the same thing, or different things, or things that stand in the same relationship to other things, or not? How can we predict if a new idea will lead to the evolution of an entirely new paradigm, a new scientific theory, or whether it will not really become part of our culture, our way of seeing the world? How can I be sure that my values are, or are not, commensurable with your values, your thoughts, your communications, what feeds you, or causes you despair or anguish and suffering? How can I reliably predict that what I propose, what I notice and try to understand, will inform your interior landscape in the same way that it informs mine?

A theory of regenerative evolution responds to Kuhn’s Problem of Incommensurability with recognizing dissonance and complexity as more than hopeless suffering and confusion. We intend and practice active Complementarity, a compassionate faith that within dissonance lies the fertilizer of potential information. The issue of imbalance between intentions, the disparities of diverse practices and pilgrimages and paradigms, contains the seeds of a universally commensurable meaning. In this way, our pathological fears and concerns point us toward hope and faith in the potential for a more deeply integrated relationship. Compassion, empathy, Deep Learning, plus significant dissonant complexity, inspires revolutionary development toward understanding, integrity, resilience, inclusively rich information and nutrition; solidarity.

Our thermodynamically-balanced exterior informs our theo-dynamic interior, as Permaculture Design potentiates Regenerative Creation.  The difference between Deep Learning and Deep Ecology is that one actively hopes for interior regeneration while the other also hopes for exterior regeneration.

Your grateful neighbor,

Gaia

As I rolled up the fragile scroll, I couldn’t think of any more questions, so I headed back home, not quite the same way I had arrived.

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Regenerative Allies: Habitat and Transition Teams

I sent this to the Hartford, CT, Habitat for Humanity chapter, Habitat International and to http://www.transitionnetwork.org. About regenerative and strategic partnerships informed by Bucky Fuller’s Trimtab, greatest effect for least effort, leverage design.  But, also related to land use policy of “highest and best use.”

To the Board of Directors, Habitat for Humanity—Hartford:

 

Warm greetings and congratulations on 200+ low-income homeownership units during your first 25 years!  Perhaps searching for a new Executive Director is not everyone’s favorite way of celebrating a 25 year anniversary; but there is much precedent and I want to encourage you to take this as an opportunity to look at this transition toward a vision that will serve the next several generations.

 

I have been around Connecticut and affordable housing, economic, and (0) carbon-footprint development since 1991. During the early 90s I was on the Board for Habitat in New Haven and did some consulting with the folks in Americus that led to federal grants for property acquisition, designed specifically to fit with the HforH mission. Then I worked with the YouthBuild-Hartford program for several years and, in that context, brought the first youth-targeted Individual Development Account program to the State of Connecticut.  I also helped form Cheshire Interfaith Housing to retain its indigenous Cheshire leadership and autonomy, while also working on projects in partnership with Habitat-New Haven.  This is a model that I believe has been used elsewhere to avoid the inefficiencies of balkanization of development corporations while enjoying the strengths of local faith-community leadership within each municipality. This organizational structure may be worth considering if you decide to move forward with a project in Cromwell that I have referred in your direction; the Tanner property.

 

With that as personal introduction, please forgive me for ruminating, perhaps at rather too much length, about the strategic issues faced by Habitat for Humanity globally, but also in Hartford County specifically.

 

Twenty-five years ago we defined “inadequate housing” much differently than we think about “unsustainable habitat” today, in North America. Back in the “growth-is-the-answer-to-all-systemic-problems” days of community development, we rightly gave priority to ownership and to affordability when we used adjectives like “decent” and “adequate” and “revitalized” in reference to housing and neighborhoods. Ownership and affordability remain tightly linked to sustainability, but continuing commitment to Business As Usual in the construction industry, use and reuse of materials and resources, the environment, our financial economy, our schools, our aging neighborhood infrastructures, our soaring fuel and energy costs, our continuing despair over health and child and elder care, and growing income disparity is evaporating within the religious sector. A permaculturally rich global and neighborhood habitat for humanity is increasingly informed by an interfaith eco-equity value system that asks “What on earth is adequate housing in Hartford County” from a profoundly different millennial perspective than Millard Fuller asked in Alabama.

 

So I arrive at Hartford Habitat’s mission, to “eliminate inadequate housing” in a 33-town Hartford area, thinking more like a soon-to-be-Certified Permaculture Designer, as well as an interfaith theologian, wanting to understand how we are going to jump from less than 10 units/year, on average, to address the habitat adequacy challenges of approximately 350,000 households in Hartford County.  A truly strategic plan must confront that question with candor, integrity, drawing on the strength of experience during the first 25 years, but also recognizing that habitat issues have moved into an environmentally critical arena of systems analysis.

My work in affordable housing, community, economic, and now permaculture systems development, has often benefitted from what Unitarian Buckminster Fuller called the “Trimtab” leverage question.  How do we get the most effect with the least effort? In a Deep Ecology, and faith, context, we are asking, both within our congregations, and without, Given our eco-equity challenges, where do we discover our most abundant hope for metanoia, for transformation, for regeneration? What is our shared habitat vocation?

 

The Tellus Institute (www.tellusinstitute.org) takes this question into the 21st Century of computer simulation to offer us some comparative projections linking economic and ecological sustainability. We find the most abundantly sustainable trajectory in their Great Transition paradigm:

 

  • Reuse/recycle/incorporate materials and energy to increase the ecosystem’s regenerative capacity.

 

  • Strategically envision for the long-term (i.e., the “7-Generation” perspective of Native American cultures).

 

  • Increase inclusion and diversity in socio-ecological systems therapy.

 

  • Reinsert “humans” into our holistically inclusive concerns for sacred-nature equitable outcomes: optimized and sustainable solidarity, community, health and well-being for all individuals and species.

 

  • Enhance public choice-making to improve consensus (decrease polarization) and eco² [my own symbol for the combination of “economic” and “ecological”] sustainability.

 

  • Strengthen our eco² outcomes by folding in habitat-strengthening cooperative approaches to child care, education, health, pensions, elder care, nutrition, energy-production, acquiring both perishables and non-perishables, landscaping, self-care, employment as vocation.

 

  • Increase public and private investment in cooperative research and design, with specific priority for eco² sustainable well-being.

 

  • Develop and advocate new tax and financial institution regulatory policies and incentives to increase social capital investments. Grow a policy and investment infrastructure that reverses the trend toward economic disparity by committing our wealth deposits and property to a new cooperative-oriented economy of long-term sustainability.

 

  • Remember the Principle of Subsidiarity, and keep it holy, or holistic. In Whole Open Systems Theory, optimized abundant values matriculate up from integrated/confluent individuals and families, through neighborhoods, to communities, sub-regions, regions, and globally inclusive eco² integrity.

 

  • Re-member the PermaCultured Principle of Complementarity: The human-natural interior landscape and the exterior natural landscape inform, and mutually define, each other in a Deep Learning and Listening sacred process of sustainable regeneration. This is our Species’ interfaith hope; it is permanently encultured in all religious traditions and faith paradigms. It is our source of gratitude for Creation as a sacred gift.

 

Religious institutions, congregations, mosques, synagogues, ashrams, intentional communities, scientific communities, and think-tanks, even bionic intelligence, are discovering greatest effect for least effort by noticing the sociotherapeutic value of Deep Eco-Justice, Deep Learning, Deep Ecology, Regenerative Systems design and development. Faith communities that have worked on their “Interior Landscape Design” and their “Exterior Landscape Design” are emergently aware of synchronization around a slower cooperative economic-ecology of nutrient value abundance. As a Regenerative Faith Species, we long for nature balance, for goodness and beauty within and without, while retaining our values for effectiveness, optimized system function, fairness, freedom, inclusion, diversity, gratitude, hope, faith, love.  Vibrant communities of intent, and intentional families, and intentional individuals, are those who holistically practice eco-equity caring for self, other people, and our planet. These three habitats, journeys, pilgrimages, are an integrally Trinitarian conversation.

 

We are remembering the permacultured time when what was good ecologically was understood as what was best economically because they were the same agrarian-natural value system.  Prior to currency, this was obvious in the short terms of life and death growing seasons, and in the longer terms of a “7-Generation” hope for the sustainable future. Economic values separated from ecological values as we forgot that human nature is intrinsically tied to all organic nature. We share RNA back to a tap root much older than the “self” consciousness of our species.

 

I wonder how many Habitat volunteers and property owners identify themselves as global citizens more readily than members of a particular religious institution. If we are many, what can all of us global-habitat citizens from diverse faith communities, and neighborhoods, and families, do to strategically enrich our interior and exterior habitats?

 

 

The Habitat Hartford strategic plan does look for strengthening the Interior Landscape of the staff culture, and does aspire to strengthen the Exterior Landscape through developing ally partnerships. Both of these strategies could be envisioned from a Business-As-Usual perspective, or from a more Great Transition perspective.  At this point it is probably clear where I would put my time and money, but I want to conclude with a more specific resource partnership suggestion. Theology, theory, even computer simulated scenario projections to the year 2100 are all fine and well, but Habitat for Humanity core volunteers tend to like something closer to nuts and bolts, hammers and nails.

 

Perhaps you are familiar with the Transition Network (www.transitionnetwork.org), which originated in the UK, and now has a National Hub in California. I have no direct experience with being part of a Transition Team, although I know there have been some projects in New England. I recently accepted an invitation to comment on their new strategic plan.  Perhaps that is why they come to mind as a potential resource for incarnating HH’s Interior and Exterior Landscape improvement goals.

 

The Transition Network has a fairly well developed eco²-equity culture, and their mission is to help local volunteer groups, with emphasis on building adolescent and young adult leadership, improve their ecological and economic habitats. They have many on-line resources, project stories, and the intent to increase on-line communication and financial resource networking, including, perhaps, the capacity to link projects internationally.  So, for example, if HH wanted to take on a neighborhood improvement and house renovation project while building communication and financial linkages to a Habitat project in Haiti, the Transition Network could probably help you with that.  If a cluster of Cromwell faith communities wanted to organize and support a HH new construction project in Cromwell, linked to a new construction project in South America, or Africa, or not, the Transition Network (TN) resources and fundraising and organizing support system is as accessible as a laptop or smart phone.

 

TN as a Habitat ally, locally, and internationally, seems particularly compelling to me because there is great potential for participating faith communities to develop an inclusive interfaith permacultured eco-justice formation that could capture the imagination and momentum of high school kids and young adults.  This is the age group most needed for a successful Great Transition, for successful Habitat projects, for vibrantly growing faith communities, and it is the age group of priority to the Transition Network.

 

If there were an interest in developing urban neighborhood interfaith, and suburban community interfaith youth EcoMinistry Teams working on HH and TN Interior-Exterior Landscape Care Designs for Self, Others, and Earth, while that is rather a mouthful, I might be able to help with that. These could also be urban/suburban yoked for increased eco²equity—greatest effect for least effort might also include international yoking, if HH might have a Habitat affiliate, or a TN affiliate, or everybody affiliated with everybody. In terms of religious maturation, this is also the time when we may be losing kids from intentional faith communities because they are more interested in spending some time discovering how their own spiritual path is informed by the “Religious Commons,” what is held as sacred by all faith traditions. This is precisely why Habitat and each of the religious traditions invested in Habitat and eco-justice need each other.

 

Resilient learning development systems help us understand “self” identity most effectively in an intentionally diverse environment, with others who we may primordially see as not like me. This seems to be true in all regenerative economies, whether they be pedagogical, spiritual, financial, communication, or possibly even genetic information systems. A Habitat-TN youth EcoMinistry, intentionally diverse and interfaith, could be regeneratively powerful at the local, national, and global levels.

 

 

The Tellus Institute forecasts an emergent Co-Operative CommonWealth. Some things that might emerge from Solidarity Habitat Co-Operatives:

 

Neighborhoods self-organize to cooperatively build solar or wind infrastructure, compost, organize Community Farm Associations, design organic, edible landscapes and gardens, open neighborhood cooperative stores and libraries to ReHabitat clothing, toys, books, tools, seeds, organic fertilizers, mulch.

Neighborhood cooperatives could fulfill multiple functions: child and elder care, employment support groups, homeschooling (maybe even with a “school nurse”), food banks, tax assistance, classes in nonviolent communication, writing, entrepreneurial development, natural construction and crafts, permaculture design, interfaith dialogue, cooking, yoga, Tai Chi, meditation.

With Habitat support, neighborhood cooperative centers might facilitate the formation of residential cooperative ownership in partnership with interested (and often absentee) property owners.

 

Faith communities might help individuals invest in CDFIs, cooperative loan funds, and do so themselves, if they have not already committed any investments in this direction (although many have been global leaders in disinvestment from sociopathology and reinvestment in sociotherapeutic economies).

 

Faith communities could work within their neighborhoods to convert lawns to beautiful and edible landscape designs that are self-regenerating and require no long-term care.  The plants provide shade to each other so watering is seldom needed, if ever.  They cross-pollinate and bring balanced nutrients into the soil.  They self-mulch.  Then the faithful may learn to see that, with sufficient diversity and some re-sourcing ingenuity, we can often take care of each other in ways that are analogous to the ways that our well-designed ecosystems take care of each other.

 

Faith communities might host the neighborhood cooperative schools and stores and libraries, as so many already do.

 

Faith communities might further develop our eco-justice agendas to attend more fully to public sector policies and procedures that would decrease income disparity while enriching the new cooperative, and regenerative, economy.

 

Habitat for Humanity is well-poised to help us move toward a more nutritious and inclusive, more affordable with less effort, regenerative interfaith journey. The Transition Network might be a useful ally, and the locally planted Habitat infrastructure and culture could help TN with some of their own sustainability concerns.  Their all-volunteer, no paid staff, model does help keep the momentum on youth leadership, but young people have a way of going off to college, transitioning to new jobs in new locations. Perhaps the combination of Habitat for Humanity and Transition Network and interfaith volunteer networks is just what we all need to cross-pollinate and regenerate ourselves into the Great Transition.

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