Transition Pasadena
  • Home
  • Our Projects
  • News
  • Get Involved!
  • Calendar of Events

View From the Piano: Grief (Part 6)

10/14/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
I left off last time saying humans are not in control of this universe. Something else is. I like to think of it as Mother Nature. The lecturer Terence Mckenna has called it the transcendental object at the end of time. I'm sure other philosophers have tried to describe something like this, but I'm only aware of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his term the Omega Point. I haven't read much Teilhard de Chardin, but his ideas seem parallel to what Mckenna is saying. Regardless of what we call it, the more interesting question is... what's it doing, and where is it taking us? 

Time to hit the pause button and say: I don't have the answers to those questions, and I don't think anyone else does either. This is an unfolding mystery that will reveal itself over time. We can't stop it. We can't speed it up, and we certainly can't slow it down.

Is there any evidence to support what I'm saying? History is the best place to look for evidence. And nature as well, out of which history emerged. As I said earlier, Novelty has been conserved during human and natural history. Novelty has occurred with ever increasing complexity and is ever more conserved. We can see the increasing complexity and pace. 

One celled bacteria gives way to multicellular protozoa. Swimming sea creatures (Trilobites) 500 million years ago prepare the way for land animals culminating in gigantic reptiles 250 million years ago. Small mammals become larger mammals resulting in hominids (prehumans) between 10 million and 20 million years ago. And finally Homo sapiens appears on the scene about two million to three million years ago. Notice the increased complexity in an increasingly compressed time frame. 

And similarly with human culture. An acceleration of process in a limited domain of biology (Homo sapiens) beginning about a million years ago has led to abandoning "traditional" hunting and gathering to agriculture around 10,000 years ago. Consider how quickly human society went from agricultural to industrial (300 years ago) and then the informational (only 60 to 70 years ago) Greater complexity in less and less time. And all along the way novelty is conserved, not lost. I have said that this is all moving in a direction. Why shouldn't we assume that the direction is good and moving toward a positive conclusion?

All of the novelty of history has coalesced in the present moment. Every given moment in any human society is a distillation of what has preceded that moment. The presence of ourselves on this planet is the major evidence that a transcendental process of some sort is underway on Earth.

I want to end this month by saying that I'm relatively new to this subject. I've only been at this idea for a couple of years. I'm thinking to myself, "What do I know about this?" Some of you have been exploring some or all of this spirituality a lot longer than I have. I'll just end by saying I feel like I'm just an explorer on a really strange trip. In other words, don't shoot me. I'm just the piano player.

—David Cutter
Pianist
Pasadena, CA
Free Book Excerpt: "Artistry and Piano Students: Inspiring a Lifetime of Enjoyment."

2 Comments
THOMAS J HAWKINS
10/24/2018 12:56:11 pm

Novelty and complexity come at a severe price: destruction of precursors. We can't transcend that.

Reply
David
10/30/2018 08:25:10 pm

Certainly what has come before has to make room for that which is
new. Change is the only thing that we can count on. But when I use the term Conservation of Novelty, I'm saying that at some level, in
some way, those precursors are preserved.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Subscribe To Our Blog

    Want to stay current with news from us on a (almost) weekly basis? Click here to subscribe to our blog feed!

    Transition Network News


    Other Resilience News



    Our Previous Posts

    July 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011


•  Home
•  Latest News  /  Event Photos
•  Throop Learning Garden  /  History  /  Garden Photos
•  Repair Café Pasadena  /  Photo Gallery
•  Get Involved  /  Contact Us

Creative Commons License
Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Picture
Site design: Qrys Cunningham
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, club125.greenbelt, Luigi Mengato, Images_of_Money, KJGarbutt, Will Merydith, Sayjack, skampy, El Coleccionista de Instantes, audreyjm529